DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS. 133 



tive conclusions upon one side or the other of every 

 mooted question. 



In fact, most people, and some philosophers, refuse 

 to hold questions in abeyance, however incompetent 

 they may be to decide them. And, curiously enough, 

 the more difficult, recondite, and perplexing, the 

 questions or hypotheses are — such, for instance, as 

 those about organic [Nature — the more impatient they 

 are of suspense. Sometimes, and evidently in the 

 present case, this impatience grows out of a fear that 

 a new hypothesis may endanger cherished and most 

 important beliefs. Impatience under such circum- 

 stances is not unnatural, though perhaps needless, and, 

 if so, unwise. 



To us the present revival of the derivative hy- 

 pothesis, in a more winning shape than it ever before 

 had, was not unexpected. We wonder that any 

 thoughtful observer of the course of investigation and 

 of speculation in science should not have foreseen it, 

 and have learned at length to take its inevitable com- 

 ing patiently ; the more so, as in Darwin's treatise it 

 comes in a purely scientific form, addressed only to 

 scientific men. The notoriety and wide popular pe- 

 rusal of this treatise appear to have astonished the 

 author even more than the book itself has astonished 

 the reading world. Coming, as the new presentation 

 does, from a naturalist of acknowledged character and 

 ability, and marked by a conscientiousness and candor 

 which have not always been reciprocated, we have 

 thought it simply right to set forth the doctrine as 

 f airly and as favorably as we could. There are plenty 

 to decry it, and the whole theory is widely exposed 



