on of the action of an animal on
itself as a factor in producing modification."

Lamarck did nothing of the kind. It was Buffon and Dr. Darwin who
introduced this, but more especially Dr. Darwin. The accuracy of
Professor Huxley's statements about the history and literature of
evolution is like the direct interference of the Deity--it vanishes
whenever and wherever I have occasion to test it.

"But _a little consideration showed_" (italics mine) "that though Lamarck
had seized what, as far as it goes, is a true cause of modification, it
is a cause the actual effects of which are wholly inadequate to account
for any considerable modification in animals, and which can have no
influence whatever in the vegetable world," &c.

I should be very glad to come across some of the "little consideration"
which will show this. I have searched for it far and wide, and have
never been able to find it.

I think Professor Huxley has been exercising some of his ineradicable
tendency to try to make things clear in the article on Evolution, already
so often quoted from. We find him (p. 750) pooh-poohing Lamarck, yet on
the next page he says, "How far 'natural selection' suffices for the
production of species remains to be seen." And this when "natural
selection" was already so nearly of age! Why, to those who know how to
read between a philosopher's lines the sentence comes to very nearly the
same as a declaration that the writer has no great opinion of "natural
selection." Professor Huxley continues, "Few can doubt that, if not the
whole cause, it is a very important factor in that operation." A
philosopher's words should be weighed carefully, and when Professor
Huxley says, "few can doubt," we must remember that he may be including
himself among the few whom he considers to have the power of doubting on
this matter. He does not say "few will," but "few can" doubt, as though
it were only the enlightened who would have the power of doing so.
Certainly "nature"--for that is what "natural selection" comes to--is
rather an important factor in the operation, but we do not gain much by
being told so. If however, Professor Huxley neither believes in the
origin of species, through sense of need on the part of animals
themselves, nor yet in "natural selection," we should be glad to know
what he does believe in.

The battle is one of greater importance than appears at first sight. It
is a battle between teleology and non-teleolog