THE DARWINIAN THEORY. 185 
By this statement we may perhaps conjecture that the progenitor of 
the bats had wings, for these appendages have been “transmitted to 
many descendants,” but if so we should inquire whence the progenitor 
acquired his wings? this is the great question in this aspect of the 
origin of species, and of this we shall have more to say presently. 
What Mr. Darwin may mean by a bat’s wing being “ no more vari- 
able than any other structure,’ we cannot imagine; for, as all struc- 
tures are variable, that is mutable, in his system this proposition can 
only inform us that a bat’s wing is as variable as it is variable,—a 
zoological law of no very great depth. In the meantime we learn that 
though the bat’s wing has been as it is for an immense period, yet it 
is by no means impossible or improbable that another animal may ac- 
quire the wing of a bat. “I see no insuperable difficully in believing 
it possible that the membrane-conueeted fingers and forearm of the 
Galeopithecus might be greatly lengthened by natural selection, and 
this, as far as the organs of flight are concerned, would convert it into 
a bat” (p. 209). 
Here of course.we cannot follow Mr. Darwin, for to be obedient to 
the faith and to keep to the path of science are very different engage- 
ments; “ pour être philosophe," says Malebranche, “il faut voir évi- 
demment, et pour étre fidèle, il faut croire aveuglement.” As we are 
not of Mr. Darwin's persuasion, we do not accept his revelations. 
These progenitors of groups of animals are introduced for two ob- 
jects; the first and the most important is to meet “ the ordinary views, 
that it so pleased the Creator to construct each animal and plant,” and 
the next, “because it can rarely have happened that natural selection 
will have modified several species fitted to more or less widely different 
habits in exactly the same manner.” These are Mr. Darwin’s reasons in 
his own words; they both, however, amount to the same thing, that 
he wishes to exclude the idea of a general plan or a design in the many 
species of a genus, and therefore he has invented a common progenitor 
with which he would have us believe that the various species keep up 
a sort of connection, and so resemble one another more or less, because 
they are all descended from one common parent. 
Now we must observe that Mr. Darwin does not pretend to say that 
any such progenitor has been discovered in geological research, or that 
he has ever seen any remnant of such an animal, or ever heard of any 
in any part of the world ; on the contrary, he distinctly says “ we never 
