8 THE PRESENT CONDITION 



And here, as it will always happen when dealing 

 with an extensive subject, the greater part of my course 

 — if, indeed, so small a number of lectures can be prop- 

 erly called a course — must be devoted to preliminary 

 matters, or rather to a statement of those facts and of 

 those principles which the work itself dwells upon, and 

 brings more or less directly before us. I have no right 

 to suppose that all or any of you are naturalists ; and 

 even if you were, the misconceptions and misunder- 

 standings prevalent even among naturalists on these 

 matters would make it desirable that I should take the 

 course I now propose to take, — that I should start from 

 the beginning, — that I should endeavour to point out 

 what is the existing state of the organic world — that 

 I should point out its past condition — that I should 

 state what is the precise nature of the undertaking 

 which Mr. Darwin has taken in hand ; that I should 

 endeavour to show you what are the only methods by 

 which that undertaking can be brought to an issue, 

 and to point out to you how far the author of the work 

 in question has satisfied those conditions, how far he has 

 not satisfied them, how far they are satisfiable by man, 

 and how far they are not satisfiable by man. And for 

 to-night, in taking up the first part of this question, 

 I shall endeavour to put before, you a sort of broad 

 notion of our knowledge of the condition of the living 

 world. There are many ways of doing this. I might 

 deal with it pictorially and graphically. Following 

 the example of Humboldt in his " Aspects of Nature," 

 I might endeavour to point out the infinite variety of 

 organic life in every mode of its existence, with refer- 

 ence to the variations of climate and the like ; and such 

 an attempt would be fraught with interest to us all ; 



