demands just the right amount of adverse circumstances 
which shall not exterminate, on the one hand, and which 
shall not fall short of a life-and-death severity on the 
other hand. This is surely a large demand to make on 
natural phenomena to start with. 
But, in the second place, in this time of danger, 
in this critical period in the history of the race, it is 
most important that Natural Selection should act with 
promptitude. But here another difficulty occurs. Like 
Mr. Micawber it has to wait for favourable variations 
“to turn up;” and with respect to the emergence of these 
favourable variations Natural Selection is precisely 
analogous to a game of pure chance. In this sense it is 
perfectly true to say— 
“The origin of mimetic coloration, like many other things, is 
yet unknown. An orthodox Darwinian attributes it to Natural 
Selection, which turns out on analysis to be hazard. The survival 
of useful coloration is no doubt the result of Natural Selection.”— 
(Cope. The Origin of the Fittest, p. 410.) 
“ On the Darwinian hypothesis, man is the child of Chance ; 
as from the Evolution hypothesis, in its full generality, all life is 
the result of Chance.”—(Graham. The Creed of Science, p. 27.) 
If this be so, it is obvious that Natural Selection is 
heavily handicapped. We are not surprised, therefore, to 
find that the advocates of Natural Selection have repudi 
ated with scorn the idea that Natural Selection has 
anything to do with chance. 
Professor Huxley says :— 
“But there are two or three objections of a more general character, 
based, or supposed to be based, upon philosophical and theological 
foundations, which were loudly expressed In the early days of the 
Darwinian controversy, and which, though they have been answered 
over and over again, crop up now and then at the present day. 
“The most singular of these, perhaps immortal, fallacies, which live 
on, Tithonus-like, when sense and force have long deserted them, is