and great changes; so that there is nothing in Mr. Charles Darwin's
system of modification through the natural survival of the lucky, to
prevent gain in one direction one year from being lost irretrievably
in the next, through the greater success of some in no way
correlated variation, the fortunate possessors of which alone
survive. This, in its turn, is as likely as not to disappear
shortly through the arising of some difficulty in some entirely new
direction, and so on; nor, if function be regarded as of small
effect in determining organism, is there anything to ensure either
that, even if ground be lost for a season or two in any one
direction, it shall be recovered presently on resumption by the
organism of the habits that called it into existence, or that it
shall appear synchronously in a sufficient number of individuals to
ensure its not being soon lost through gamogenesis.

How is progress ever to be made if races keep reversing, Penelope-
like, in one generation all that they have been achieving in the
preceding? And how, on Mr. Darwin's system, of which the
accumulation of strokes of luck is the greatly preponderating
feature, is a hoard ever to be got together and conserved, no matter
how often luck may have thrown good things in an organism's way?
Luck, or absence of design, may be sometimes almost said to throw
good things in our way, or at any rate we may occasionally get more
through having made no design than any design we should have been
likely to have formed would have given us; but luck does not hoard
these good things for our use and make our wills for us, nor does it
keep providing us with the same good gifts again and again, and no
matter how often we reject them.

I had better, perhaps, give Mr. Spencer's own words as quoted by