70 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES [Chap. II. 



and indefiuite variations could Inive brought about sucli 

 special forms and modifications as have been enumerated 

 in this chapter, seems to contradict not imagination, but 

 reason. 



That either many indiviiUials amongst a species of 

 butterfly shoukl be simultaneously preserved through a 

 similar accidental and minute variation in one definite 

 direction, when variations in many otlier directions would 

 also preserve ; or tliat one or two so varying should succeed 

 in supplanting the progeny of thousands of other indi- 

 viduals, and that this should by no other cause be carried 

 so far as to produce the appearance (as we have l)efore 

 stated) of s[)ots of fungi, &c. — are alternatives of an 

 improbability so extreme as to be practically eij[ual to 

 impossibility. 



In spite of all the resources of a fertile imagination, 

 the Darwinian, pure and simple, is reduced to the assertion 

 of a i>aradox as great as any he opposes. In the place of 

 a mere assertion of our ignorance as to the way these phe- 

 nomena have been produced, he brings forward as their 

 explanation a cause which, it is contended in this work, is 

 demonstral)ly insufficient. 



Of course here, as elsewhere throughout nature, we liave 

 to do with the operation of fixed and constant natural 

 laws, and the knowledge of these may before long be 

 obtained by human patience or liuman genius. There 

 seems, however, already enough evidence to show that 

 these as yet unknown natural laws will never be resolved 

 into the action of " Natural Selection," but will con- 

 stitute or exemplify a mode and condition of organic 

 action of which the Darwinian theory takes no account 

 whatsoever. 



