27 
that which charges Mr. Darwin with having attempted to reinstate 
the old pagan goddess, Chance. It is said that he supposes varia 
tions to come about ‘ by chance,’ and that the fittest survive the 
‘ chances ’ of the struggle for existence, and thus ‘ chance ’ is 
substituted for providential design.”—{Life and Letters of Darwin, 
vol. zV., p. igg.) 
It must be confessed that this subject is beset with 
no little difficulty ; for if it is contended—as Pfaffer 
Kneipp* does contend—that chance is in reality “a vague 
and nonsensical word, because there is no such thing as 
chance,” we ask in perplexity—Is there no such thing 
as a “ game of chance ? ” There must be some sense in 
which that phenomenon, which has ruined so many, is a 
reality. 
Some definitions throw very little light upon the subject. 
Dr. Johnson, for example, defines chance as the cause of 
fortuitous events, which leaves me, at any rate, about as 
wise as I was before, because I am still anxious to know 
what “ fortuitous ” means! It seems to me very much 
like defining an archdeacon as a clergyman who performs 
archidiaconal functions. 
But Mr. Huxley asserts that Mr. Darwin has defined 
the sense in which he wishes the word chance to be 
understood. 
“It is not a little wonderful that such an accusation as this should 
be brought against a writer who has, over and over again, warned his 
readers that when he uses the word ‘ spontaneous,’ he merely means 
that he is ignorant of the cause of that which is so termed, and 
whose whole theory crumbles to pieces if the uniformity and regu 
larity of natural causation for illimitable past ages is denied.”—{Life 
and Letters, ii., p. igg.) 
But when the opponent of Natural Selection is charged 
with forgetting that Mr. Darwin has defined a spontaneous 
phenomenon as one which occurs in connection with a law 
Blackwood, Dec., i8go, p. 817.