MR. DARWIN ON NATURAL SELECTION. 37 1 



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" With regard to the conception as now put forward 

 by Mr. Darwin, I cannot truly characterize it but by 

 an epithet which I employ only with much reluctance. 

 I weigh my words and have present to my mind the 

 many distinguished naturalists who have accepted the 

 notion, and yet I cannot hesitate to call it a 'puerile 

 hypothesis' " * 



I am afraid I cannot go with Professor Mivart farther 

 than this point, though I have a strong feeling as though 

 his conclusion is true, that " the material universe is 

 always and everywhere sustained and directed by an in- 

 finite cause, for which to us the word mind is the least 

 inadequate and misleading symbol." But I feel that 

 any attempt to deal with such a question is going far 

 beyond that sphere in which man's powers may be at 

 present employed with advantage: I trust, therefore, 

 that I may never try to verify it, and am indifferent 

 whether it is correct or not. 



Again, I should probably differ from Professor 

 Mivart in finding this mind inseparable from the 

 material universe in which we live and move. So that 

 I could neither conceive of such a mind influencing 

 and directing the universe from a point as it were out- 

 side the universe itself, nor yet of a universe as existing 

 without there being present or having been present 

 in its every particle something for which mind should 

 be the least inadequate and misleading symbol. But 

 the subject is far beyond me. 



As regards Professor Mivart's denunciations of 

 * * Lessons from Nature/ p. 300. 



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