io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We can not admit that anything deducible from such premises can have any 

 application in the case before us. What we are here concerned to determine is 

 the effect of the operation of the laws of nature in the state of nature ; and this 

 can not be affected by anything that could be achieved in a state in which those 

 laws are superseded by wn-natural restraints. The conditions of existence in a 

 state of domestication, whereinsoever they differ from those in the state of 

 nature, are by their very definition peculiar to the state of which they are pred- 

 icated, and consequently out of place in an argument that concerns the ages 

 which preceded the advent and dominion of man. Granted the very utmost 

 that is sought to be established by such means, even to the extent of the actual 

 production of a new species — and nothing of this kind is pretended to — it would 

 leave the question of development by evolution (in the abstract) wholly un- 

 touched." 



Whether or not this passage has been written after a perusal of 

 the "Variation," it displays an inability to appreciate the function of 

 experiment that to most persons will appear, and rightly appear, la- 

 mentable. Comment on so astonishing a passage would be useless, for 

 nothing that I could say could throw its condensed absurdity into any 

 stronger relief. As well might it be said that all our study of elec- 

 tricity is useless for the purpose of furthering our knowledge of natu- 

 ral forces, except so far as observations on the subject are confined to 

 the phenomena of lightning. 



Next in order we come upon the writer's estimate of the argument 

 from classification : 



The validity of this argument [he says] disappears altogether in view of 

 the fact that just the same state of things would be practicable in the case of a 

 creation according to the vulgar hypothesis of an exercise of the divine power. 

 Considering the mass of animal life to be dealt with, amounting, as just observed, 

 to 120,000 different species, it is almost of necessity that they should be formed 

 upon one or more types or models, implying a certain uniformity of character 

 among the members of the same typical construction, which it is not unreason- 

 able to suppose intended to be evidenced in those animals that were apparently 

 least, amenable to it, by the otherwise inexplicable indications of imperfectly de- 

 veloped organs. 



Disregarding the error that it is not only in such animals that 

 rudimentary organs are present — seeing that, on the contrary, their 

 occurrence is so general that almost every species presents one or 

 more of them — the idea Avhich is conveyed by this passage is one of 

 the wildest attempts at criticism that I have ever encountered. The 

 instances of afiinities in the animal and vegetable kingdoms would, if 

 they could be enumerated, run up into the thousand millions, and ex- 

 tend to the most complex and delicate traits of structure that it is 

 possible to imagine. That such a state of things may be due to intel- 

 ligent design is a suflSciently reasonable hypothesis, and as such may 

 be properly opposed to the hypothesis of hereditary descent. But the 

 supposition that such a state of things can be due to any *' necessity " 



