t may have been
intended, for in the first edition the usual qualification was given and
must therefore have been deliberately excised. Anyhow I should like to
think that Darwin did throw over that tuft of hair, and that he felt
relief when he had done so. Whether however we have his great authority
for such a course or not, I feel quite sure that we shall be rightly
interpreting the facts of nature if we cease to expect to find
purposefulness wherever we meet with definite structures or patterns.
Such things are, as often as not, I suspect rather of the nature of
tool-marks, mere incidents of manufacture, benefiting their possessor
not more than the wire-marks in a sheet of paper, or the ribbing on the
bottom of an oriental plate renders those objects more attractive in our
eyes.

If Variation may be in any way definite, the question once more arises,
may it not be definite in direction? The belief that it is has had many
supporters, from Lamarck onwards, who held that it was guided by need,
and others who, like Nageli, while laying no emphasis on need, yet were
convinced that there was guidance of some kind. The latter view under
the name of "Orthogenesis," devised I believe by Eimer, at the present
day commends itself to some naturalists. The objection to such a
suggestion is of course that no fragment of real evidence can be
produced in its support. On the other hand, with the experimental proof
that variation consists largely in the unpacking and repacking of an
original complexity, it is not so certain as we might like to think
that the order of these events is not pre-determined. For instance
the original "pack" may have been made in such a way that at the nth
division of the germ-cells of a Sweet Pea a colour-factor might be
dropped, and that at the n plus n prime division the hooded variety be
given off, and so on. I see no ground whatever for holding such a view,
but in fairness the possibility should not be forgotten, and in the
light of modern research it scarcely looks so absurdly improbable as
before.

No one can survey the work of recent years without perceiving that
evolutionary orthodoxy developed too fast, and that a great deal has
got to come down; but this satisfaction at least remains, that in the
experimental methods which Mendel inaugurated, we have means of reaching
certainty in regard to the physiology of Heredity and Variation upon
which a more lasting structure may be built.

VI. THE