I fancy this stuff he has written here is an outcome of an indigestion
of Samuel Butler by Mr. Belloc. I should not have thought Mr. Belloc
had read Samuel Butler, and I doubt if he has read him much. But there
is a decided echo of _Luck or Cunning_ in the one indistinct paragraph
in which, without committing himself too deeply, Mr. Belloc seems to
convey his own attitude towards the procedure of Evolution. “Design,”
whatever that is, is at work, and Natural Selection is not. “There
is an innate power possessed by the living thing to attempt its own
adaptation.” It is quite a delusion apparently that rabbits that cannot
run or sparrows that are not quick on the wing are killed off more
frequently than the smarter fellows. That never happens, though to the
atheistically minded it may seem to happen. If it happens, it would
“get rid of a God.” But there are rabbits which, unlike Mrs. Micawber,
do make an effort. You must understand that all creation, inspired by
design, is striving. The good fungus says to itself, “Redder and more
spots will benefit me greatly,” and tries and tries, and presently
there are redder hues and more spots. Or a happily inspired fish says:
“There is a lot of food on land and the life is more genteel there, so
let me get lungs.” And presently it gets lungs. Some day Mr. Belloc
must take a holiday in Sussex and flap about a bit and get himself some
wings and demonstrate all this. But perhaps this is caricature, and
Mr. Belloc when he talks about that “innate disposition” just means
nothing very much--just an attempt or something. I will not pretend to
understand Mr. Belloc fully upon this point.