308 Darwin and Pangenesis. [ July, 
disposition of the supposed gemmules in the male organ may have 
been the first cause of this transmission. We admit that surround- 
ing physical conditions, such as like food, climate, and habits, may 
have had some share in moulding the physical frame as it became 
developed. We will even, for argument’s sake, admit the cellular 
hypothesis in its most materialistic form, and suppose that the 
little, hypothetical, invisible, vitalized atoms are themselves the seat 
of all those qualities which accumulate as they (the atoms) accu- 
mulate; and that they are the motive power instead of the mere 
instruments upon which the psychical forces act. But are not these 
very admissions,—does not this very process of reasoning, with all 
its hypotheses and its uncertainties, smk back into ridiculous 
improbability before the clear, unmistakable operation of the 
psychical forces upon the subservient vegetative system—a system 
complex, indeed, as the author declares it to be, but complex only 
in the same sense as a musical instrument is so whilst it stands 
silently and unconsciously awaiting the touch of the master-hand, 
impelled by the master-spirit ? 
Nor is the comparison between Nature and Art in this case so 
entirely figurative as it would appear at first sight. .The musical 
instrument has no power of growth, but the most we can say of 
nature, or “ Natural Selection,’ in moulding man, is that it is the 
unconscious agent, like the artizan who collects and selects the 
materials and builds them up, little dreaming of the heavenly music 
which will be extracted from them. Then comes the skilful tuner, 
Man, who, under the tuition of his Creator, brings the mental chords 
into harmony; and finally the freed Soul, acting independently, 
wakes the fabric into active life, as the inspired musician wakes the 
mute instrument into melodious strains; but, in every case, in 
nature as in art, who doubts that an intelligent designing Mind 
is in constant operation ? 
That the author doubts the constant interposition of a designing 
Mind in nature is clear from his concluding remarks; and in order 
to render him justice, we will extract those remarks in full, for it 
will be seen how thoroughly ungenerous, or how utterly ignorant 
are those who brand his theory as Atheistical, and him as an 
Atheist, whilst at the same time it will exhibit the feebleness of that 
reasoning which has led him and some few of his disciples to dis- 
believe in the immediate and constant interposition of Providence in 
the development of the universe. 
“Some authors have declared that Natural Selection explains 
nothing, unless the precise cause of each individual difference be 
made clear. Now, if it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant 
of the art of building, how the edifice had been raised stone upon 
stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were used for the arches, flat 
