NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 91 



say is, that probably there is some truth on both 

 sides. 



" Natural selection," Darwin remarks, " leads to 

 divergence of character ; for the more living beings can 

 be supported on the same area, the more they diverge 

 in structure, habits, and constitution" (a principle 

 which, by-the-way, is paralleled and illustrated by the 

 diversification of human labor) ; and also leads to much 

 extinction of intermediate or unimproved forms. Now, 

 though this divergence may " steadily tend to increase," 

 yet this is evidently a slow process in Nature, and 

 liable to much counteraction wherever man does not 

 interpose, and so not likely to work much harm for 

 the future. And if natural selection, with artificial to 

 help it, will produce better animals and better men 

 than the present, and fit them better " to the condi- 

 tions of existence," why, let it work, say we, to the 

 top of its bent. There is still room enough for im- 

 provement. Only let us hope that it always works 

 for good : if not, the divergent lines on Darwin's litho- 

 graphic diagram of " Transmutation made Easy," omi- 

 nously show what small deviations from the straight 

 path may come to in the end. 



The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the 

 whole pleasant and encouraging. It is only the back- 

 ward glance, the gaze up the long vista of the past, 

 that reveals anything alarming. Here the lines con 

 verge as they recede into the geological ages, and point 

 1o conclusions which, upon the theory, are inevitable, 

 but hardly welcome. The very first step backward 

 makes the negro and the Hottentot our blood-rela- 

 tions — not that reason or Scripture objects to that, 



