Luck or Cunning

e Question at I

k is not a sound one. Some organisms, indeed, are so admirably adapted to their surroundings, and some organs discharge their functions with so much appearance of provision, that we are apt to think they must owe their development to sense of

bly no idea of any more perfect form of the instrument than the one he had himself invented. Indeed, if he had, he would have carried his idea out in practice. He would have been unable to conceive such an instrument as Lord Rosse's; the design, therefore, at present evidenced by the telescope was not design all on the part of one and the same person. Nor yet was it unmixed with chance; many a detail has been doubtless due to an acciden

onishing result has been arrived at. We may indeed be tempted to think this, but, according to Mr. Darwin, we should be wrong. Design had a great deal to do with the telescope, but it had nothing or hardly anything whatever to do with the eye. The telescope owes its development to cunning, the eye to luck, which, it would seem, is so far more cunning than cunning that one does not quite understand why there sh

as most proper to insist. And what is luck but absence of intention or design? What, then, can Mr. Darwin's title-page amount to when written out plainly, but to an assertion that the main means of modification has been the preservation of races whose variations have been unintentional, that is to say, not connected with effort or intention, devoid of mind or meaning, fortuitous, spontaneous, accidental, or whatever kindred word is least disagreeable to the reader? It is im

arwin's readers. Perhaps it ought not to have done so, but we certainly failed to catch it. The very words themselves escaped us-and yet there they were all the time if we had only chosen to look. We thought the book was called "On the Origin of Species," and so it was on the ou

itle should have been "On Natural Selection." The title would not then have involved an important difference between its working and its technical forms, and it would have better fulfilled the object of a title, which is, of course, to give, as far as may be, the essence of a book in a nutshell. We learn on the authority of Mr. Darwin himself [83a] that the "Origin of Species" was originally intended to bear the title "Natural Selection;" nor is it easy to see why the change should have be

I have said, carried away by the three large "Origins of Species" (which we understood as much the same thing as descent with modification), and finding, as I shall show in a later chapter, that descent was ubiquitously claimed throughout the work, either expressly or by implication, as Mr. Darwin's theory. It is

n of Species, &c." (the word "on" being dropped in the latest editions). The distinctive feature of the book lies, according

Charles Darwin has said more about these last two points than his predecessors did, but all three were alike cognisant of the facts and attached the same importance to them, and would have been astonished at its being supposed possible that they disputed them. The fittest alone survive; yes-but the fittest from among what? Here comes the point of divergence; the fittest from among organisms whose variations arise mainly through use and disuse? In other words, from variations that are mainly functional? Or from among organisms whose variations are in the main matters of luck? From var

is not the case. Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck believed in natural selection to the full as much as any follower of Mr. Charles Darwin can do. They did not use the actual words, but the idea underlying them is the essence of their system. Mr. Patrick Matthe

have superior adaptation and greater power of occupancy than any other kind; the weaker and less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed. This principle is in constant action; it regulates the colour, the figure, the capacities, and instincts; those individuals in each species whose colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from enemies, or defence from inclemencies or vicissitudes of climate, whose figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support; whose capacities and instincts can bes

tions that have been effected, from whatever cause, in parents; both hold that the best adapted to their surroundings live longest and leave most offspring; both, therefore, hold that favourable modifications will tend to be preserved and intensified in the course of many generations, and that this leads to divergence of type; but these opinions involve a theory of natural selection or qua

harge of functions which can only be ascribed legitimately to living and reasoning beings. Granted, however, that while Mr. Charles Darwin adopted the expression natural selection and admitted it to be a bad one, his grandfather did not use it at all; still Mr. Darwin did not mean the natural selection which Mr. Matthew and those whose opinions he was epitomising meant. Mr. Darwin meant the selection to be made from variations into which purpose enters to only a small exten

as no correspondence with the actual course of things; for if the variations are matters of chance or hazard unconnected with any principle of constant application, they will not occur steadily enough, throughout a sufficient number of successive generations, nor to a sufficient number of individuals for many generations together at the same time and place, to admit of the fixing and permanency of modificatio

tter how much writers like Mr. Grant Allen and Professor Ray Lankester may say about "Mr. Darwin's master-key," nor how many more like hyperboles they brandish, they never put a succinct résumé of Mr. Darwin's theory side by side with a similar résumé of his grandfather's and Lamarck's? Neither Mr. Darwin himself, not any of those to whose advocacy his reputation is mainly due, have done this. Professor Huxley is the man of all others who foisted Mr. Darwin most upon

and effort (letting the indisputably existing element of luck go without saying), but to the fact that if any telescop

re is no doubt about this; how perverted should we not consider the ingenuity of one who tried to persuade us we were wrong in thinking that the bu

improvement in the hands of an almost infinite succession of thieves; but may not this inference be somewhat too hastily drawn? Have we any right to assume that burglars work by means analogous to those employed by other people? If any thief happened to pick up any crowbar which happened to be ever such a little better suited to his purpose than the one he had been in the habit of using hitherto, he would at once seize and carefully preserve it. If it got worn out or broken he would begin searching for a crowbar as like as possible to the one that he had lost; and when,

other also, and that therefore the preceding paragraph has no force. A man is not bound to deny design in machines wherein it can be clearly seen because he denies it in living organs where at best it is a matter of

c hand was not going to make things unnecessarily clear unless it suited his convenience. Then, indeed, he was like the man in "The Hunting of the Snark," who said, "I told you once, I told you twice, what I tell you three times is true." That what I ha

very part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. Further, we must suppose that there is a power always intently watching each slight accidental alteration in the transparent layers, and carefully selecting each alteration which, under varied circumstances, may in any way, or in any degree, tend to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be m

ntal," and accidental they remained for ten years, but in 1869 the word "accidental" was taken out. Mr. Darwin probably felt that the variations had been accidental as long as was desirable; and though they would, of course, in reality remain as accidental as ever, still, there could be no use in crying "accidental variations" further. If the reader wants to know whether they were accidental or no, he had better find out for himself. Mr. Darwin was a master of what may be called scientific

al" in express terms, the word does not fall, so to speak, on a strong beat of the bar, and is apt to pass unnoticed. Besides, Mr. Darwin does not say point blank "we may believe," or "we ought to believe;" he only says "may we not believe?" The reader should always be on his guard when Mr. Darwin a

ction" only, because he saw that to talk too frequently about the fact that the most lucky live longest as "intently watching" something was greater nonsense than it would be prudent even for him to write, so he fogged it by making the intent watching done by "a power represented by" a fact, instead of by th

t if this was allowed to stand, it might be fairly asked what natural selection was doing all this time? If the power was able to do everything that was necessary now, why not always? and why any natural selection at all? This clearly would not do, so in 1861 the power was allowed, by t

he reader if I give the various readings of this passage as taken

that there is a power always intently watc

here is a power (natural selection) always intentl

represented by natural selection or the survival of the fitte

distinctive feature which entitled him to claim the theory of evolution as an original idea of his own. He found his natural selection hang round his neck like a millstone. There is hardly a page in the "Origin of Species" in which traces of the struggle going on in Mr. Darwin's mind are not discernible, with a result alike exasperating and pitiable. I can only repeat what I said in "Evolution Old and New," namely, that I find the task of extracting a well-defined meaning out of Mr. Darwin's words comparable only to that of trying to act on the advice o

natural selection. It is impossible to doubt that Mr. Wallace believed he had made a real and important improvement upon the Lamarckian system, and, as a natural consequence, unlike Mr. Darwin, he began by telling us what Lamarck had said. He did not, I admit, say quite all that I should have been glad to have seen him say, nor use exactly the words I s

re developed renders such an hypothesis quite unnecessary. . . . The powerful retractile talons of the falcon and cat tribes have not been produced or increased by the volition of those animals; . . . neither did the giraffe acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly s

the variations whose accumulation amounts ultimately to specific difference. It is a pity, however, that instead of contenting himself like a theologian with saying that his opponent had been refuted over and over again, he did not refer to any particular and tolerably successful attempt to refute the theory that modifications in organic structure are mainly functio

mockingly eludes us; it is like life or death-a rope of many strands; there is design within design, and design within undesign; there is undesign within design (as when a man shuffles cards designing that there shall be no design in their arrangement), and undesign within undesign; when we speak of cunning or design in connection with organism we do not

he giraffe are alike due to the accumulation of variations that are mainly functional, and hence practical; according to Charles Darwin they are alike due to the accumulation of variations that are accidental, fortuitous, spontaneous, that is to say, mainly cannot be reduced to any known general principle. According to Charles Darwin "the preservation of favour

ty and freewill, meet and pass into one another as night and day, or life and death. No one can draw a sharp line between ego and non ego, nor indeed any sharp line between any classes of phenomena. Every part of the ego is non ego qua organ or tool in use, and much of the non ego runs up into the ego and is insepar

theory of descent at all; nor do I believe that this can be done more effectually and accurately than by saying, as above, that Mr. Charles Darwin (whose name, by the way, was "Charles Robert," and not, as would appear from the title-pages of his books, "Charles" only), Mr. A. R.

Butler wrote to his father (Dec. 1885) about a passage in Hora

ppi furtim pra

on me rebus su

ting the second of these two ver