Luck or Cunning

f the Quest

e; I shall therefore devote the rest of my book as far as possible to this subject only. Natural selection (meaning by these words the preservation in the ordinary course of nature of favourable variations that are supposed to be mainly matters of pure good luck and in no way arising out of function) has been, to use an Americanism than which I can find nothing apter, the biggest biological boom of the last quarter of a century; it is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Professor Ray Lankester

rck answered this question in favour of cunning. They settled it in favour of intelligent perception of the situation-within, of course, ever narrower and narrower limi

isms show more ready wit and savoir faire than others; that some give more proofs of genius and have more frequen

om time to time occur in the race histories even of the dullest and most dead-level organisms under the name of "sports;" but they would hold that even these occur most often and most happily to those that have persevered in well-doing for some generations. Unto the organism that hath is given, and from the organism that hath not is taken away; so that even "sports" prove to be only a little off thrift, which still remains the sheet anchor of the early evolutionists. They believe, in fact, that more organic wealth has been made by saving than in

nt change their habits, and changed habit, if persisted in, involves corresponding change, however slight, in the organs employed; but their plasticity depends in great measure upon their failure to perceive that they are moulding themselves. If a change is so gr

an organ has been modified cumulatively in some one direction, until it has reached a development too seriously out of harmony with the habits of the organism taken collectively, then the organism holds itself excused from further effort, throws up the whole concern, and takes refuge in the liquidation and reconstruction of death. It is only on the relinquishing of further effort that this death ensues; as long as effort endures, organisms go on from change to ch

ps did, et la mort ce n'est que la vie transformée. Life and death are the extreme modes of something which is partly both and wholly neither; this something is common, ordinary change; solve any change and the mystery of life and death will be revealed; show why and how anything becomes ever anything other in any respect than what it is at any given moment, and there will be little secret

doing them. Life and growth are an attuning, death and decay are an untuning; both involve a succession of greater or smaller attunings and untunings; organic life is "the diapason closing full in man"; it is the fulness of a tone that varies in pitch, quality, and in the harmonics to which it gives rise; it ranges through every degree of complexity from the endless combinations of life-and-death within life-and-death which we find in the mammalia, to the

s for the time as most convenient. There is neither perfect life nor perfect death, but a being ever with the Lord only, in the eternal φορα, or going to and fro and heat and fray of the universe. When we were young we thought the one certain thing was that we should one day come to die; now we know the one certain thing to be that we shall never wholly do so. Non omnis moriar, says Horace, and "I die daily," says St. Paul, as though a life beyond the grave, and a death on this side of it, were each some strange thing which happened to them alone of all men; but who dies absolutely once for all, and for ever at the hour that is commonly called that of death, and who does not die daily and hourly? Does any man in continuing to live from day to day or moment to moment, do more than continue in a changed body, with changed feelings, ide

motion are one, so that we have substance, feeling, change (or motion), as the ultimate three-in-one of our thoughts, and may suspect all change, and all feeling, attendant or consequent, however limited, to be the interaction of those states which for want of better terms we call mind and matter. Action may be regarded as a kind of middle term between mind and matter; it is the throe of thought and thing, the quivering clash and union of body and soul;

nce does not succeed in making it clear that it understands our business, we conclude that it cannot have any business of its own, much less understand it, or indeed understand anything at all. But letting this pass, so far as we are concerned, χρημ?των π?ντων μ?τρον ?νθρωπο?; we are body ensouled, and soul embodied, ourselves, nor is it possible for us to think seriously of anything so unlike ourselves as to consist either of soul without body, or body without soul. Unmattered condition, therefore, is as inconceivable by us as unconditioned matter; and we must hold that all body with which we can be conceivably concerned is more or less ensouled, and all soul, in like manner, more or

and above preconceived opinion and the habits to which all are slaves, there is a small salary, or, as it were, agency commission, which each may have for himself, and spend according to his fancy; from this, indeed, income-tax must be deducted; still there

ur thoughts run, and extends into that unseen world wherein they have no jurisdiction. Fancy is as the mist upon the horizon which blends earth and sky; where, however, it approaches nearest to the earth and can be reckoned with, it is seen as melting into desire, and this as giving birth to design and effort. As the net res

ion is of the same kind as that which is denuding a modern one, though its effect may vary in geometrical ratio with the effect it has produced already. As we are extending reason to the lower animals, so we must extend a system of moral government by rewards and punishments no less surely; and if we admit that to some considerable extent man is man, and master of his fate, we should admit also that all organic forms which are saved at all h