DARWIN 



Bentham that: "The belief in natural selection must 

 at present be grounded entirely on general considera- 

 tions. . . . When we descend to details, we can 

 prove that no one species has changed {i.e.^ we can- 

 not prove that a single species has changed) ; nor can 

 we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, 

 which is the groundwork of the theory."^ 



It is most unfortunate that Darwin should have 

 devoted his life to a problem which required for its 

 solution philosophical genius, the very trait which 

 was foreign to his nature, rather than to those induc- 

 tive questions which he was so eminently fitted to at- 

 tack. It is almost unaccountable that his contempo- 

 raries regarded his Origin of Species as a model of 

 scientific accuracy and thought and passed this esti- 

 mate on to us, when a careful analysis of its contents 

 shows that his argument for natural selection is based 

 on the vague confirmation from geology that species 

 have in some way changed and on the analogy of 

 changes in domesticated animals and plants by man's 

 selective breeding. Only a few in England, notably 

 Sedgwick, realized at once, and wrote to Darwin, that 

 he had taken the generally known law of change and 

 had narrowed it down to a specific method of varia- 

 tion unsupported by any adequate body of facts, and 

 had written of natural selection as if it were done 

 consciously by a selecting agent; in Germany, Dar- 



^Life and Letters, vol. II, p. 210. 



