But if we are content to start with a number of organisms ready made--a somewhat humiliating start, however--we still have to ask--How do these vary so as to give new species? It is a singular illusion, and especially in the case of men who profess to be believers in natural law, that variation may be boundless, aimless and fortuitous, and that it is by spontaneous selection from varieties thus produced that development arises. But surely the supposition of mere chance and magic is unworthy of science. Varieties must have causes, and their causes and their effects must be regulated by some law or laws. Now it is easy to see that they cannot be caused by a mere innate tendency in the organism itself. Every organism is so nicely equilibrated that it has no such spontaneous tendency, except within the limits set by its growth and the law of its periodical changes. There may, however, be equilibrium more or less stable. I believe all attempts hitherto made have failed to account for the fixity of certain, nay, of very many, types throughout geological time, but the mere consideration that one may be in a more stable state of equilibrium than another, so far explains it. A rocking stone has no more spontaneous tendency to move than an ordinary boulder, but it may be made to move with a touch. So it probably is with organisms. But if so, then the causes of variation are external, as in many cases we actually know them to be, and they must depend on instability with change in surroundings, and this so arranged as not to be too extreme in amount, and to operate in some determinate direction. Observe how remarkable the unity of the adjustments involved in such a supposition!--how superior they must be to our rude and always more or less unsuccessful attempts to produce and carry forward varieties and races in definite directions! This cannot be chance. If it exists, it must depend on plans deeply laid in the nature of things, else it would be most monstrous magic and causeless miracle. Still more certain is this conclusion when we consider the vast and orderly succession made known to us by geology, and which must have been regulated by fixed laws, only a few of which are as yet known to us. Beyond these general considerations we have others of a more special character, based on palæontological facts, which show how imperfect are our attempts as yet to reach the true causes of the introduction of genera and species.