106 ON THE LATEST FORM OF THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 
resting upon no evidence whatever, but only upon the faint presumption afforded by 
the fact, that certain Species at widely separated times have become extinct, through what 
causes we know not; and therefore, for all that we know to the contrary, Natural Selec- 
tion may have had something to do with their disappearance. This is to found a theory, 
not upon knowledge, but upon ignorance. If such reasoning be legitimate, we are 
entitled to affirm that the moon is inhabited by men * whose heads do grow beneath 
their shoulders." It may be so, for all we know to the contrary. 
This review of the state of the evidence upon each of Mr. Darwin’s five points is 
enough to show that the testimony fails entirély just where it is most wanted. Facts 
and arguments are accumulated where they are of little or no avail, because the con- 
clusions to which they tend, when properly limited and qualified, are admitted and 
familiar principles in science. But the theory of the Origin of Species by Cumulative 
Variation, which is all that is peculiar to this form of the transmutation hypothesis, 
rests upon no evidence whatever, and has a great balance of probabilities against it. 
Individual Variation, the Struggle for Life, and Natural Selection, each within clearly 
defined limits, are acknowledged facts, which still leave the main question in the phi- 
losophy of creation precisely where it was before; and even the doctrine of Inherited 
Variation relates only to the origin of Varieties, which is a distinct question, and one 
of subordinate importance and interest, except to naturalists. Mr. Darwin has invented 
a new scheme of cosmogony, and finds that, like other cosmogonies, it is a blank . 
hypothesis, not susceptible either of proof or disproof, and needing an eternity for 
its development. There is nothing new in such a speculation of what is possible in an 
infinite lapse of years. This latest form of the speculation has no advantage over the 
one first propounded some three thousand years ago ; — that a chaos of atoms, moving 
about fortuitously in infinite space, may have happened, in an eternity, to settle into 
the present kosmos; for the chance of order and fitness is at least one out of an in- 
finite number of chances of disorder and confusion; and in an infinite series of years, 
this solitary chance must sooner or later be realized. Mr. Darwin begins, not with a 
crowd of inorganic atoms, though consistency required him to do so, but with four or 
five primeval organisms very low down in the scale, — say zoóphytes and mollusks; 
and supposes these to multiply and to vary their organization at random, each Variation, 
if an improvement, being preserved, and if useless or injurious, being killed out by 
Natural Selection ; and thus, in an eternity, the present kosmos of animal and vegeta- 
ble life may have been perfected, not exactly out of chaos, but out of very few and poor 
rudiments, without the necessary intervention anywhere of an intelligent Creative 
Cause. ne | 
