There is hardly an opinion on the subject of descent with modification which does not find support in some one passage or another of the “Origin of Species.” If it were desired to show that there is no substantial difference between the doctrine of Erasmus Darwin and that of his grandson, it would be easy to make out a good case for this, in spite of Mr. Darwin’s calling his grandfather’s views “erroneous,” in the historical sketch prefixed to the later editions of the “Origin of Species.” Passing over the passage already quoted on p. 62 of this book, in which Mr. Darwin declares “habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary”—a sentence, by the way, than which none can be either more unfalteringly Lamarckian or less tainted with the vices of Mr. Darwin’s later style—passing this over as having been written some twenty years before the “Origin of Species”—the last paragraph of the “Origin of Species” itself is purely Lamarckian and Erasmus-Darwinian. It declares the laws in accordance with which organic forms assumed their present shape to be—“Growth with reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life and from use and disuse, &c.” {158a} Wherein does this differ from the confession of faith made by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck? Where are the accidental fortuitous, spontaneous variations now? And if they are not found important enough to demand mention in this peroration and _stretto_, as it were, of the whole matter, in which special prominence should be given to the special feature of the work, where ought they to be made important? Mr. Darwin immediately goes on: “A ratio of existence so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and the extinction of less improved forms;” so that natural selection turns up after all. Yes—in the letters that compose it, but not in the spirit; not in the special sense up to this time attached to it in the “Origin of Species.” The expression as used here is one with which Erasmus Darwin would have found little fault, for it means not as elsewhere in Mr. Darwin’s book and on his title-page the preservation of “favoured” or lucky varieties, but the preservation of varieties that have come to be varieties through the causes assigned in the preceding two or three lines of Mr. Darwin’s sentence; and these are mainly functional or Erasmus-Darwinian; for the indirect action of the conditions of life is mainly functional, and the direct action is admitted on all hands to be but small.