COMING OF AGE OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 343 



for the changed feeling with which the doctrine of evolution is at 

 present regarded by those who have followed the advance of biologi- 

 cal science in respect of those problems which bear indirectly upon 

 that doctrine. 



But all this remains mere secondary evidence. It may remove 

 dissent, but it does not compel assent. Primary and direct evidence 

 in favor of evolution can be furnished only by paleontology. The 

 geological record, so soon as it approaches completeness, must, when 

 properly questioned, yield either an affirmative or a negative answer ; 

 if evolution has taken place, there will its mark be left ; if it has not 

 taken place, there will lie its refutation. 



What was the state of matters in 1859? Let us hear Mr. Dar- 

 win, who may be trusted always to state the case against himself as 

 strongly as possible. 



" On this doctrine of the extermination of an infinitude of connect- 

 ing links between the living and extinct inhabitants of the world, and 

 at each successive period between the extinct and still older species, 

 why is not every geological formation charged with such links? 

 Why does not every collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence 

 of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life ? We meet with 

 no such evidence, and this is the most obvious and plausible of the 

 many objections which may be urged against my theory." * 



Nothing could have been more useful to the opposition than this 

 characteristically candid avowal, twisted as it immediately was into 

 an admission that the writer's views were contradicted by the facts 

 of paleontology. But, in fact, Mr. Darwin made no such admission. 

 What he says in effect is, not that paleontological evidence is against 

 him, but that it is not distinctly in his favor; and, without attempting 

 to attenuate the fact, he accounts for it by the scantiness and the im- 

 perfection of that evidence. 



What is the state of the case now, when, as we have seen, the 

 amount of our knowledge respecting the mammalia of the Tertiary 

 epoch is increased fifty-fold, and in some directions even approaches 

 completeness ? 



Simply this, that, if the doctrine of evolution had not existed, pale- 

 ontologists must have invented it, so irresistibly is it forced upon the 

 mind by the study of the remains of the Tertiary mammalia which 

 have been brought to light since 1859. 



Among the fossils of Pikermi, Gaudry found the successive stages 

 by which the ancient civets passed into the more modern hyenas ; 

 through the Tertiary deposits of Western America, Marsh tracked the 

 successive forms by which the ancient stock of the horse has passed 

 into its present form ; and innumerable less complete indications of 

 the mode of evolution of other groups of the higher mammalia have 

 been obtained. 



* " Origin of Species," first edition, p. 463. 



