moreover, that they are intended in this passage to be accidental or
spontaneous, although neither of these words is employed, inasmuch
as use and disuse and the action of the conditions of existence,
whether direct or indirect, are mentioned specially as separate
causes which purvey only the minor part of the variations from among
which nature selects. The words "that is, in relation to adaptive
forms" should be omitted, as surplusage that draws the reader's
attention from the point at issue; the sentence really amounts to
this--that modification has been effected CHIEFLY THROUGH SELECTION
in the ordinary course of nature FROM AMONG SPONTANEOUS VARIATIONS,
AIDED IN AN UNIMPORTANT MANNER BY VARIATIONS WHICH QUa US ARE
SPONTANEOUS. Nevertheless, though these spontaneous variations are
still so trifling in effect that they only aid spontaneous
variations in an unimportant manner, in his earlier editions Mr.
Darwin thought them still less important than he does now.

This comes of tinkering. We do not know whether we are on our heads
or our heels. We catch ourselves repeating "important,"
"unimportant," "unimportant," "important," like the King when
addressing the jury in "Alice in Wonderland;" and yet this is the
book of which Mr. Grant Allen {163a} says that it is "one of the
greatest, and most learned, the most lucid, the most logical, the
most crushing, the most conclusive, that the world has ever seen.
Step by step, and principle by principle, it proved every point in
its progress triumphantly before it went on to the next. So vast an
array of facts so thoroughly in hand had never before been mustered
and marshalled in favour of any biological theory." The book and
the eulogy are well mated.

I see that in the paragraph following on the one just quoted, Mr.