"imagined a natural selection: he imagines afterwards that this power of selecting (_pouvoir d'élire_) which he gives to Nature is similar to the power of man. These two suppositions admitted, nothing stops him: he plays with Nature as he likes, and makes her do all he pleases." (P. 6.) And this is the way M. Flourens extinguishes natural selection: "Voyons donc encore une fois, ce qu'il peut y avoir de fondé dans ce qu'on nomme _élection naturelle_. "_L'élection naturelle_ n'est sous un autre nom que la nature. Pour un être organisé, la nature n'est que l'organisation, ni plus ni moins. "Il faudra donc aussi personnifier _l'organisation,_ et dire que _l'organisation_ choisit _l'organisation. L'élection naturelle_ est cette _forme substantielle_ dont on jouait autrefois avec tant de facilité. Aristote disait que 'Si l'art de bâtir était dans le bois, cet art agirait comme la nature.' A la place de _l'art de bâtir_ M. Darwin met _l'élection naturelle,_ et c'est tout un: l'un n'est pas plus chimérique que l'autre." (P. 31.) And this is really all that M. Flourens can make of Natural Selection. We have given the original, in fear lest a translation should be regarded as a travesty; but with the original before the reader, we may try to analyse the passage. "For an organised being, Nature is only organisation, neither more nor less." Organised beings then have absolutely no relation to inorganic nature: a plant does not depend on soil or sunshine, climate, depth in the ocean, height above it; the quantity of saline matters in water have no influence upon animal life; the substitution of carbonic acid for oxygen in our atmosphere would hurt nobody! That these are absurdities no one should know better than M. Flourens; but they are logical deductions from the assertion just quoted, and from the further statement that natural selection means only that "organisation chooses and selects organisation." For if it be once admitted (what no sane man denies) that the chances of life of any given organism are increased by certain conditions (A) and diminished by their opposites (B), then it is mathematically certain that any change of conditions in the direction of (A) will exercise a selective influence in favour of that organism, tending to its increase and multiplication, while any change in the direction of (B) will exercise a selective influence against that organism, tending to its decrease and extinction. Or, on the other hand, conditions remaining the same, let a given organism vary (and no one doubts that they do vary) in two directions: into one form (_a_) better fitted to cope with these conditions than the original stock, and a second (_b_) less well adapted to them. Then it is no less certain that the conditions in question must exercise a selective influence in favour of (_a_) and against (_b_), so that (_a_) will tend to predominance, and (_b_) to extirpation.