124 LOUIS AGASSIS. [CHAP. xvin. 



Between variations of extinct species and their affin- 

 ities to each other and to living species, and transform- 

 ism, or the theory of descent from common parents, 

 there is a gap ; rather, an immense abyss, over which 

 Agassiz was not willing to leap. A bridge was needed, 

 but natural selection seemed to him too frail a struct- 

 ure for so dangerous a passage. In his view, natural 

 selection 1 was only a beautiful circumlocution ; for he 

 clearly saw that selection in natural history could not 

 be other than natural. When naturalists like Cuvier, 

 Agassiz, Barrande, Owen, Pictet, Lartet, Deshayes, 

 etc., hesitate, it is simply because the conclusions pre- 

 sented to them are too full of obscurity and of sup- 

 position. True savants, accustomed to rigid scientific 

 methods and exact principles, do not like to move 

 in the dark. It is possible that for some of them, 



1 Darwin had obtained his idea of natural selection from the work of 

 Malthus, as he says in his introduction to the " Origin of Species," and also 

 in a private letter, published by Haeckel. The idea was not original with 

 him, but only an application to all the animal and vegetable species of what 

 Malthus held to be the principle governing the human species in its struggle 

 for existence. Curiously enough, Wallace also got the same idea of natural 

 selection from reading Malthus, while in camp in the jungles of Java, and 

 he at once outlined the " revelation," which had come to him almost 

 as an " inspiration." After all, it was simply a coincidence in the minds 

 of two men who were interested in the same subject and were trying 

 to theorize in regard to the progress of life through some sort of agency. 

 Malthus furnished " natural selection," and at once both Darwin and 

 Wallace found that their ideas had fashioned themselves into a complete 

 system. So Malthus is the revelator and inspirer of what has been called 

 by an enthusiastic admirer of both Darwin and Wallace " the greatest syn- 

 thetical emanation of the scientific mind of our day." To this case the say- 

 ing of Marshal Canrobert after the cavalry charge at Balaklava, "C'est 

 beau, mais ce n'est pas la guerre," may be applied, with a slight change: 

 " C'est beau, mais ce n'est pas 1'origine des especes." 



