468 CONCLUSION. - 



which are those produced by secondary laws. They admit 

 variation as a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject 

 it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two 

 cases. The day will come when this will be given as a curi- 

 ous illustration of the blindness of preconceived opinion. 

 These authors seem no more startled at a miraculous act of 

 creation than at an ordinary birth. But do they really 

 believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's history 

 3ertain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to 

 flash into living tissues ? Do they believe that at each sup- 

 posed act of creation one individual or many were produced ? 

 Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants 

 created as eggs or seed, or as full grown ? and in the case 

 of mammals, were they created bearing the false marks of 

 nourishment from the mother's womb ? Undoubtedly some 

 of these same questions cannot be answered by those who 

 believe in the appearance or creation of only a few forms of 

 life, or of some one form alone. It has been maintained by 

 several authors that it is as easy to believe in the creation of 

 a million beings as of one ; )ut Maupertuis' philosophical 

 axiom of " least action " leads the mind more willingly to 

 admit the smaller number; and certainly we ought not to 

 believe that innumerable beings within each great class have 

 been created with plain, but deceptive, marks of descent from 

 a single parent. 



As a record of a former state of things, I have retained in 

 the foregoing paragraphs, and elsewhere, several sentences 

 which imply that naturalists believe in the separate creation 

 of each species ; and I have been much censured for having 

 thus expressed myself. But undoubtedly this was the 

 general belief when the first edition of the present work 

 appeared. I formerly spoke to very many naturalists on 

 the subject of evolution, and never once met with any 

 sympathetic agreement. It is probable that some did then 

 believe in evolution, but they were either silent or expressed 

 themselves so ambiguously that it was not easy to understand 

 their meaning. Now, things are wholly changed, and almost 

 every naturalist admits the greal principle of evolution. 

 There are, however, some who still think that species have 

 suddenly given birth, through quite unexplained means, to 

 new and totally different forms. But, as I have attempted 

 to show, weighty evidence can be opposed to the admission of 

 great and abrupt modifications. Under a scientific point of 

 View, and as leading to further investigation, but little advan- 



