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vantage over its fellows — but it could not add thirty more inches, useless and 

 unused ; it contains no principle by which the brain could be thus doubled at 

 a single leap. The same line of argument is applied to the hand, endowed 

 even in the savage with a sensibility far beyond his wants ; and to the Vfjice, 

 which is capable, even in the savage, of delicate inflections and sweet tones 

 never used and wholly inappreciable by him. But these violate the canon of 

 Natural Selection which requires that no variation shall be perpetuated which 

 is not immediately and actually useful. The higher mental faculties present 

 similar difficulties. The capacity for the conceptions of space, time, beauty, 

 morality, does not seem possible, in Mr. Wallace's judgment, to be accounted 

 for by the jirinciple of the preservation of useful variations. III. But all these 

 modifications of lower forms, though hurtful or useless at first, become in the 

 highest degree useful at a much later period. The naked skin necessitates 

 clothing, the large brain supplies the inventive faculty required for this and 

 other advances, the delicacies of hand and voice minister in a thousand ways 

 to the later development of the luiman species. This indicates an action 

 precisely the reverse of Natural Selection, which simply works upwards, step 

 bj"- step, from the past. It indicates the action of a mind, foreseeing the 

 future, and preparing for it. It suggests the idea of a being framed before- 

 hand to fulfil a preconceived purpose. It is analogous, in Mr. Wallace's own 

 •words, to the case in which " we see the breeder set himself to work with the 

 determination to produce a definite improvement in some cultivated plant or 

 domestic animal." Such briefly is Mr. Wallace's argument. If he is right, 

 it follows that whUe Natural Selection is to be admitted as a very powerful 

 agent, exercising a imiversal influence over the kingdom of life, it must never- 

 theless be regarded as subordinated to a Higher Power which uses this agent 

 itself for purposes of its own ; and that this Higher Power must be conceived 

 by us under the notion, not of law, but of personal will. That is an impor- 

 tant conclusion which wUl affect largely our whole view of creation, and 

 •which may tend to replace on a new and firmer basis the much •vilified science 

 of natural theology; Mr. Wallace's views may be read in his o-svn words in 

 a volume of essays entitled " Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," 

 published by MacmUlan and Co. 



The President, in returning a vote of thanks to Mr. Buckle for 

 his paper, said that the subject to which it related derived an ad- 

 vantage from being taken up by those ■who are not professed 

 naturalists. Mr. Jenyns then alluded to the oppositions to Mr. 

 Darwin, who had been much written against, and much spoken 

 against. His views, however, were greatly misunderstood by many. 

 There were two distinct theories enunciated by him, or if con- 

 sidered as one, it was divisible into two distinct portions, one of 

 which might be true without the other. The first was that of the 



