44 PUBLICATION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1859. 



by law, and under what is called final causes, comprehends, I 

 think, your whole principle. You write of " natural selec- 

 tion " as if it were done consciously by the selecting agent, 

 'Tis but a consequence of the presupposed development, and 

 the subsequent battle for life. This view of nature you have 

 stated admirably, though admitted by all naturalists and de- 

 nied by no one of common sense. We all admit develop- 

 ment as a fact of history : but how came it about ? Here, in 

 language, and still more in logic, we are point-blank at issue. 

 \ There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well a 

 I physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly. 

 I'Tis the crown and glory of organic science that it does 

 J through Jina/ cause, link material and moral ; and yet does 

 (1 /tof allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws, 

 and our classification of such laws, whether we consider one 

 I side of nature or the other. You have ignored this link ; 

 and, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your 

 best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it pos- 

 sible (which, thank God, it is not) to break it, humanity, in 

 my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it, and 

 sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than 

 any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of 

 its history. Take the case of the bee-cells. If your develop- 

 ment produced the successive modification of the bee and its 

 cells (which no mortal can prove), final cause would stand 

 good as the directing cause under which the successive gen- 

 erations acted and gradually improved. Passages in your 

 book, like that to which I have alluded (and there are others 

 almost as bad), greatly shocked my moral taste. I think, in 

 speculating on organic descent, you ^z^^r-state the evidence 

 of geology ; and that you under-stRtQ it while you are talk- 

 ing of the broken links of your natural pedigree : but my 

 paper is nearly done, and I must go to my lecture-room. 

 Lastly, then, I greatly dislike the concluding chapter — not as 

 a summary, for in that light it appears good — but I dislike it 

 from the tone of triumphant confidence in which you appeal 

 to the rising generation (in a tone I condemned in the au- 



