Bibliographical Notice. 133 



replaced by another class of beings which occupied their places ; and 

 that this latter set was, at a far earlier age, represented by another ; 

 and this, again, by an older one still ; and so on, until we seem to reach 

 at length the primordial beings with which this planet was originally 

 stocked. It is to discuss, and to account for, this succession of beings 

 throughout time and space that Mr. Darwin's book has been com- 

 piled ; and the great principle by which he believes them all to have 

 been successively produced he terms "Natural Selection." 



The opinion amongst naturalists that species were independently 

 created, and have not been transmitted one from the other, has been 

 hitherto so general that we might almost call it an axiom. True it 

 is that we cannot prove this ; but then, on the other hand, we can- 

 not prove the converse ; and, since of two unproveable proposi- 

 tions we have a right to take our choice, the former has been univer- 

 sally accepted, as most in accordance with the intelligible announce- 

 ments of revelation, and as aiding us in the otherwise hopeless task 

 of understanding what a species really is. This proposition Mr. 

 Darwin boldly calls in question, and believes, on the contrary, that 

 all species (man included) may have been derived, each in its turn, 

 from those below them by the mere " selecting power of nature," 

 which is supposed to have been continually at work, through count- 

 less ages, in rejecting (by inevitable annihilation) the weakest and 

 most ill-developed individuals which everywhere existed, and in 

 preserving every little modification which chanced from time to time 

 (in the " great struggle for life " which has ever been going on 

 amongst organic beings) to turn out for the benefit of its possessor, 

 and transmitting it, by the law of inheritance, to the next generation, 

 to be further increased in the same direction, until, at length, in the 

 course of centuries, the various races have each become so far modi- 

 fied in structure (and that, too, intermittently, or, as it were, en route, 

 according to their position, or advancement, in the animal pedigree) 

 as to have assumed the various forms, past and present, which na- 

 turalists have described under the name of " species." The fossils 

 of each geological formation, on this view, " do not mark a new and 

 complete act of creation, but only an occasional scene, taken almost 

 at hazard, in a slowly-changing drama" (p. 315) ; and "the fact of 

 the fossil remains of each formation being in some degree intermediate 

 in character between the fossils in the formations above and below 

 is simply explained by their intermediate position in the chain of 

 descent" (p. 476). 



Now, whether right or wrong in their assumption, and however 

 much they may differ in their exact definitions, it is quite evident 

 that there is an idea involved by naturalists in the term " species " 

 which is altogether distinct from the fact (important though it be) 

 of mere outward resemblance, viz. the notion of blood-relationship 

 acquired by ail the individuals composing it, through a direct line of 

 descent from a common ancestor ; and therefore it is no sign of me- 

 taphysical clearness when our author (p. 51) refuses to acknowledge 

 any kind of difference between " genera," " species," and " varieties," 

 except one of degree. Practically, no doubt, the differences, as we 



