THE DARWINIAN THEORY. 275 
of facts (pour nous il y a ici une fausse interprétation des faits). We 
do not believe in this accidental native disposition, which can transmit 
itself so as to become a specified character. We have shown, in 
speaking of hybridity, that a native individual disposition must always 
disappear, by the simple fact that it is individual; it is of necessity 
extinguished by crossing in the tenth generation, if, indeed, it be not 
in the first, in the midst of a population which does not possess this 
peculiar disposition. We quite admit with Lamarck that species are 
formed from one another by the appearance of organic modifications, 
more or less pronounced ; but we leave nothing* /o accident in this 
phenomenon, as Mr. Darwin does, and we see in it nothing but the 
application of general laws.” f 
The Transmutationists, therefore, are not a happy family. There is 
very little harmony amongst them; in negative information they are 
unanimous, but in positive instruction all is confusion and discord 
amongst them. They can agree to deny creation, but when they 
come to explain their own systems, they contradict and rebuke one 
another. Mr. Darwin would tell M. Pouchet that his system is based 
on a principle which modern science does not confirm ; and M. 
Pouchet would return the compliment by saying, that Mr. Darwin’s 
* The difference between the Longin ire oe caes is P idee = this impor- 
tant point. Mr. Darwin says, in the plainest Gr believe in no law of 
n His 
TP uchet, * De la Pluralité des Races Humaines, p. 175. M. Pouchet, in 
eid sketch of the theo eory of natural selection, has es Piiched it with cireum- 
whi do not — E Mr. Darwin never supposes that the suc- 
pecies in asd struggle for life; he 
constantly ao Rie that us parent pes will be destroyed. This, of vectes 
his theory requires ; for if the parent species from which the improved one is 
precisel: i 
he a that matter d the dark. The new variation is ect we know 
not how. M. Poio et interprets the theory according to his own ideas of 
what would be visis i 
T 2 
