92 THE ' ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [i860. 



the theory, because of its unflinching materalism ; — because 

 it has deserted the inductive track, the only track that leads 

 to physical truth ; — because it utterly repudiates final causes, 

 and thereby indicates a demoralised understanding on the 

 part of its advocates." 



" Not that I believe that Darwin is an atheist ; though I 

 cannot but regard his materialism as atheistical. I think it 

 untrue, because opposed to the obvious course of nature, and 

 the very opposite of inductive truth. And I think it intensely 

 mischievous." 



" Each series of facts is laced together by a series of 

 assumptions, and repetitions of the one false principle. You 

 cannot make a good rope out of a string of air bubbles." 



" But any startling and (supposed) novel paradox, main- 

 tained very boldly and with something of imposing plausi- 

 bility, produces in some minds a kind of pleasing excitement 

 which predisposes them in its favour ; and if they are unused 

 to careful reflection, and averse to the labour of accurate in- 

 vestigation, they will be likely to conclude that what is 

 (apparently) original^ must be a production of original genius^ 

 and that anything very much opposed to prevailing notions 

 must be a grand discovery^ — in short, that whatever comes 

 from the ' bottom of a well ' must be the ' truth ' supposed to 

 be hidden there." 



In a review in the December number of ' Macmillan's 

 Magazine,' i860, Fawcett vigorously defended my father from 

 the charge of employing a false method of reasoning ; a charge 

 which occurs in Sedgwick's review, and was made at the time 

 ad naiiseani^ in such phrases as : " This is not the true 

 Baconian method." Fawcett repeated his defence at the 

 meeting of the British Association in 1861.*] 



* See an interesting letter from my father in Mr. Stephen's * Life of 

 Henry Fawcett,' 18S6, p. loi. 



