august, 1860. 157 



to us. We have an object, but no idea. The noun and the 

 imago may be well known to us, but until we have followed 

 them through all the collateral terms in which they exist as 

 the materials of thought, we cannot duly value the conceptions 

 which may be connected with them. 



The advocates of the Darwinian Theory of the origin of 

 species would have us believe that species is an abstraction ; 

 that it represents nothing ideal ; that in nature nothing but 

 individuals exist, and in these must we look for the charac- 

 teristics of species. The entire superstructure of reasoning 

 on which the theory is built, is one that admits what is 

 material in the specific group, probably because it is obvious 

 to the senses of every one, but ignores the existence of that 

 which is immaterial, intellectual, spiritual in every true 

 specific creation, and which is to it as the soul to the material 

 body of man ; that which distinguishes the vital machine from 

 mechanical inventions or imitations, created by the concep- 

 tions of the human mind. Nor does this belong to the 

 imago alone, but is written in vital characters in the 

 various transitional forms which belong to each species, in 

 their organs, and their acts and manifestations of life, and 

 intelligence or instinct. It is this, the definite conception, 

 that casts each individual of a species in the same organic 

 and instinctive mould, that cannot change. Individuals of 

 the same species may change in ornamentation, but never in 

 structure, unless as the consequence of amalgamation with 

 another species, or an occasional abnormal modification, 

 which is individual, not specific, and disappears, with the 

 individual. The creative fiat involved in the life of every 

 species, and in its conditions, remains unalterable, because 

 change in that which has an organic, vital and spiritual 

 significance cannot take place without destruction to the 

 species. 



The supposition that " profitable variations of structure" 

 may be initiated in the cell action of the reproductive system, 

 in order that organisms may more successfully maintain an 

 overestimated " struggle for existence," is simply a monstrous 



