ich it is
allowed to fasten. Mr. Wallace, therefore, may well be excused if
he casts longing eyes towards Weismannism.

And what was Mr. Darwin's system? Who can make head or tail of the
inextricable muddle in which he left it? The Origin of Species in
its latest shape is the reduction of hedging to an absurdity. How
did Mr. Darwin himself leave it in the last chapter of the last
edition of the Origin of Species? He wrote:--

"I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which have
thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified during a
long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the
natural selection of numerous, successive, slight, favourable
variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of
the use and disuse of parts, and in an unimportant manner--that is,
in relation to adaptive structures whether past or present--by the
direct action of external conditions, and by variations which seem
to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously. It appears that I
formerly underrated the frequency and value of these latter forms of
variation, as leading to permanent modifications of structure
independently of natural selection."

The "numerous, successive, slight, favourable variations" above
referred to are intended to be fortuitous, accidental, spontaneous.
It is the essence of Mr. Darwin's theory that this should be so.
Mr. Darwin's solemn statement, therefore, of his theory, after he
had done his best or his worst with it, is, when stripped of
surplusage, as follows:--

"The modification of species has been mainly effected by
accumulation of spontaneous variations; it has been aided in an
important manner by accumulation of variations due to use and
disuse, and in an unimportant manner by spontaneous variations; I do
not even now think that spontaneous variations have been very
important, but I used once to think them less important than I do
now."

It is a discouraging symptom of the age that such a system should
have been so long belauded, and it is a sign of returning
intelligence that even he who has been more especially the alter ego
of Mr. Darwin should have felt constrained to close the chapter of
Charles-Darwinism as a living theory, and relegate it to the
important but not very creditable place in history which it must
henceforth occupy. It is astonishing, however, that Mr. Wallace
should have quoted the extract from the Origin of Species just