disregard the undesigned element; in others the details cannot
without violence be connected with design, however much the position
which rendered the main action possible may involve design--as, for
example, there is no design in the way in which individual pieces of
coal may hit one another when shot out of a sack, but there may be
design in the sack's being brought to the particular place where it
is emptied; in others design may be so hard to find that we rightly
deny its existence, nevertheless in each case there will be an
element of the opposite, and the residuary element would, if seen
through a mental microscope, be found to contain a residuary element
of ITS opposite, and this again of ITS opposite, and so on ad
infinitum, as with mirrors standing face to face. This having been
explained, and it being understood that when we speak of design in
organism we do so with a mental reserve of exceptis excipiendis,
there should be no hesitation in holding the various modifications
of plants and animals to be in such preponderating measure due to
function, that design, which underlies function, is the fittest idea
with which to connect them in our minds.

We will now proceed to inquire how Mr. Darwin came to substitute, or
try to substitute, the survival of the luckiest fittest, for the
survival of the most cunning fittest, as held by Erasmus Darwin and
Lamarck; or more briefly how he came to substitute luck for cunning.



CHAPTER XII--Why Darwin's Variations were Accidental