and to Wellington as to every other warrior that ever fought. With an in Physical necessity and physical contingency, at once law and lawlessness-nay lawlessness from law; for the streams, lines, are law, while the crossings, the touchings together (contingencies), are lawlessness. That is the fate, the doom of externality as externality. and in of internality as internality, there may be the necessity of reason; but with an out and out boundlessly -difference out and out boundlessly, of externality as externality, self-externality, externality to self, there must be the necessity of unreason. There is still, doubtless, the externality of law-physical force gives that-So to speak, there is the face of law, but contingency is ever at work marring it. Were not contingency as a stage for free-will, how could free-will be? In the first half of this century there were the best— the best that have ever been-almost in all thingsin war and politics, in poetry, criticism, fiction, philosophy, but now? We are a feeble and a puny folk." Hemisphere east or hemisphere west, the latter half of the nineteenth century will be known, it may be, with all its exceptions, as probably the feeblest half century in the whole of history. It is fitting that at such a time the brocard that rules should be the Survival of the Fittest; for it is not easy to imagine a more meaningless scroll to march under. The proposition, as we have seen in fact, is wholly false as it stands. That is, it is not a truth, or a certainty, or a necessity that the Fittest survives, or should survive, unless the proposition be true when converted simpliciter thus: Who survives is fittest. If that be a just definition in the case, then the terms are exactly equivalent and may be converted simpliciter. But is that an apodictic proposition, That a survivor, just by surviving, demonstrates himself fittest to survive? Now that is what we have before us. There is no truth in the proposition, The Fittest are the Survivors, unless it be absolutely true also that the Survivors are the Fittest. If those who do fittest to survive, survive are, simply by surviving, the then the survival of the fittest is an established fact, but not unless! Unless survival be the very definition of the fittest, survival of the fittest is as idle, empty, and, at the same time, mischievous a cry as Plundering and Blundering, or Masses and Classes, or any other such cries in favour with, and characteristic of, this povertystricken generation. Or, to take it in yet another way: "The Survival of the Fittest:" What does that mean? what is it that is meant by the Fittest? is it that what is meant by the Fittest is the Fittest to Survive? Why, then, in one way, the survival of the fittest can only concern a question in medicine. What can enable an animal body —a man, say-to be the fittest to survive? Plainly that, born with every organ in the perfection proper to it, he (the man) is maintained ever afterwards in the full enjoyment of every due condition. Barring contingency, then this fittest to survive really-it may be granted-would survive. Are we to understand, then, that fittest means no more than that? The survival of the fittest, means simply the fittest to survive? Or, if not the fittest to survive, then the fittest to-do what? The fittest to weigh heavy? How about his cracking the ice, sinking in the marsh, or upsetting the row-boat? Is it to be tallest is to be fittest? Then how about the bunks, etc., on board ship? In short, to be tall or short, to be light or heavy, to be small or large, to be strong or weak, to be clever or unclever, to be brave or cowardly, is so far as survival is concerned-a question that varies with a thousand circumstances, a question that is absolutely relative. According to "the haughty Persian" in Gibbon (c. 65), "even the casses, the smallest of fish, find their place in the ocean." The fittest to survive is he who has varied to advantage in the struggle for life; for, of course, he who has varied to disadvantage must simply go to the wall. But is there any stop, then, in this rise to advantage? Nay, rather, how can any one see a stop? By the very terms of the doctrine any end to the process does not for a moment appear. But if there be no limit to the propagation of the beneficiaries of an advantage, what, simply of necessity, must be the result? Is it possible in such a struggle a struggle that just constitutes existence is it possible in such a struggle for even a single competitor to survive him who is the fittest to survive? If individual with individual, species with species, genus with genus, must struggle, how is it that the infinitude of time has not already reduced all life to a single unit? Ah, but as we have seen indeed -the race is not to the swift; it is from a novelist that I again borrow a truth: "I shall come back-if I am alive. How you say that you are as strong as I.— Stronger, perhaps. But then-who knows? The weak ones sometimes last the longest." The soft pod of the pea is quite as happy with its seed as the hard stone of the cherry. When we sneeze we draw our breath through our nostrils: if this were not so, to sneeze when we have food in our mouths would be to die. Is it the variation to, and the propagation of, advantage that has killed off every man and woman, and the children of every man and woman, that sneezed through their mouths. when they ate ? And then against the ordinary moralisation of existence, is it possible to support the survival of the fittest? Thus Napier of Merchiston, in reference to the patronage of James VI., remarks on "works worthy of memory which, lacking some mighty Mæcenas to encourage them, might perchance be buried with eternal silence." For no one can tell how many a soul sublime has felt the influence of malignant star and dropped into the grave unpitied and unknown. As the loveliest flower may be born to blush unseen, so may their lot doom to nothingness many a soul quite as great as a Hampden, a Milton, or a Cromwell. It is not necessary that the fittest should survive. Survival of the fittest is a brocard false. Who shall say that alone the seed was good that fell on the good ground, and alone the bad that fell on the bad? Endless night lies on those that want the poet. "Paulum sepultæ distat inertiæ 1 That from M. Jules Verne (p. 209) ought to have been followed by a passage from Mr. R. M. Ballantyne, who (The Dog Crusoe, p. 261) writes thus : "Animal life swarmed on hill and dale. Woods and valleys, plains and ravines teemed with it." Then he names, as in "profusion" together, "red deer in herds, beavers, otters, racoons, the martin, the black fox, and the wolf, sheep, goats, badgers, wild-horses, elks, bears, black, brown, and grizzly." The whole passage is a very strong one, and from a man who had really seen the Rocky Mountains and the valleys in them. CHAPTER VII DETERMINATION OF WHAT THE DARWINIAN THEORY IS. If we are to venture to attempt to refute the theory of Mr. Darwin, it stands to reason that we must first know what that theory is. Is the theory known-truly known? that, naturally, a reader first asks. There have been, of course, already many indications in this regard; but what is now concerned is, once for all, a formal precise statement; and that statement must accurately express what Mr. Darwin means by natural selection. Now it must have been observed that Mr. Darwinnay, even Sir Charles Lyell selection with the term are qualified by natural. always brackets the term variation, and both terms again Natural variation, and natural selection, in some way, name the two moments, the consecutive and correlative moments, which are together constitutive of what peculiar process for the production of species is under their inscription figured or feigned. As regards the first moment, the variation, it is but a general fact, and assumed to be granted. All organisms vary. Whether in man, or beast, or plant, the progeny varies from the parent. But what becomes of the variation? It is with this question that Mr. Darwin opens his enterprise. The variation, he says, is not idly overlooked by nature, but is taken advantage of, and |