so greatly that what is luck in one season is disaster in another); “but it appears to me that as fast as the number of bodily and mental faculties increases, and as fast as the maintenance of life comes to depend less on the amount of any one, and more on the combined action of all, so fast does the production of specialities of character by natural selection alone become difficult.  Particularly does this seem to be so with a species so multitudinous in powers as mankind; and above all does it seem to be so with such of the human powers as have but minor shares in aiding the struggle for life—­the aesthetic faculties, for example.

“Dwelling for a moment on this last illustration of the class of difficulties described, let us ask how we are to interpret the development of the musical faculty; how came there that endowment of musical faculty which characterises modern Europeans at large, as compared with their remote ancestors?  The monotonous chants of low savages cannot be said to show any melodic inspiration; and it is not evident that an individual savage who had a little more musical perception than the rest would derive any such advantage in the maintenance of life as would secure the spread of his superiority by inheritance of the variation,” &c.

It should be observed that the passage given in the last paragraph but one appeared in 1864, only five years after the first edition of the “Origin of Species,” but, crushing as it is, Mr. Darwin never answered it.  He treated it as nonexistent—­and this, doubtless from a business standpoint, was the best thing he could do.  How far such a course was consistent with that single-hearted devotion to the interests of science for which Mr. Darwin developed such an abnormal reputation, is a point which I must leave to his many admirers to determine.

CHAPTER VIII—­Property, Common Sense, and Protoplasm

One would think the issue stated in the three preceding chapters was decided in the stating.  This, as I have already implied, is probably the reason why those who have a vested interest in Mr. Darwin’s philosophical reputation have avoided stating it.

It may be said that, seeing the result is a joint one, inasmuch as both “res” and “me,” or both luck and cunning, enter so largely into development, neither factor can claim pre-eminence to the exclusion of the other.  But life is short and business long, and if we are to get the one into the other we must suppress details, and leave our words pregnant, as painters leave their touches when painting from nature.  If one factor concerns us greatly more than the other, we should emphasize it, and let the other go without saying, by force of association.  There is no fear of its being lost sight of; association is one of the few really liberal things in nature; by liberal, I mean precipitate and inaccurate; the power of words, as of pictures, and indeed the power