1865. | Darwin and his Teachings. 167 
(Natural Selection) can modify the egg, seed, or young, as easily as 
the adult.* The more one reads and reflects, the more puzzled he 
becomes as to the powers attributed by the author to ‘‘ Natural 
Selection.” At one time it is “ Nature,” and is compared to Man,t 
that is to say, to Man’s mind, for it acts intelligently. Again, the 
“ Conditions of life” are not the same as Natural Selection, for 
“Tndirectly, these” (the conditions of life) “seem to play an 
‘ important part in affecting the reproductive system, and thus 
inducing variability ; and Natural Selection will then accumulate 
all profitable variations, however slight, until they become plainly 
developed and appreciable to us.t Here it is “the Conditions of 
life, something distinct from “Natural Selection,” that begin the 
work of modification; and yet, as we have been told, “ Nature,” or 
“ Natural Selection,” can itself act on every internal organ, on every 
shade of constitutional difference, on the seed, and on the egg; in 
fact, she, or it, can commence the work of variation as well as com- 
plete it. A very easy mode of solving the difficulty would be the 
omission of “ Nature” (which, if it means anything, means the 
visible world), and the substitution of “an intelligent Deity,” 
availing himself of His knowledge and power, and acting through 
His material world, to bring about all those changes to which the 
author refers. 
But, unfortunately, we are precluded from substituting such an 
“hypothesis” on the authority of the author, for, as we have 
already stated, he tells us distinctly that he does not believe the 
more complex organs and instincts to have been perfected “ by 
means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by 
the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the 
individual possessor.” § 
Is not this the same as though he were to tell us that he does 
not believe the perfected steam engine to be the product of human 
intelligence, but the gradual accumulation of slight improvements 
in and additions to its various parts ? 
But let us set aside for the present the cause, and by that we 
mean the active, intelligent agency, which is always modifying 
living beings, whether that agency be the Almighty in nature, or 
man by art ; and let us confine ourselves to the simple propositions 
that all beings are and have been the modified descendants of pre- 
existing ones, and that if we were fully acquainted with the biolo- 
gical history of the globe, we could trace all living races of plants 
and animals back through their ancestry to the “few forms or one” 
into which Darwin believes “the Creator originally breathed life. 
with its several powers ;”|| and also that the conditions of life in 
* «Origin of Species, p. 144, par. 2. § Ibid., p. 492, par. 2. 
t Ibid., p. 87. || Ibid., p. 525. 
{ Ihid., p: 151, par. 1. 
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