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THE DARWINIAN THEORY. 277 
Mr. Darwin’s origin of species, and so in many other questions these 
learned gentlemen learnedly disagree. 
Dr. Büchner, nevertheless, comes at last to a checkmate, and pre- 
cisely in the same position in which Mr. Darwin lost the game :— 
* Spontaneous generation played no doubt a more important part in 
the primeval epoch than at present, nor can it be denied that in this 
way beings of a higher organization were produced than now. We 
possess, however, neither certainty nor well-founded data on this point, 
and are ready to confess our ignorance; but though as regards organic 
creation much may be doubtful, we may still positively assert that it 
may have and has proceeded without interference of external force ” 
(p. 84). This acknowledgment of ignorance and want of information 
at the very point in which the system requires direct and certain 
knowledge is precisely Mr. Darwin’s case, and is expressed in words 
very similar. Dr. Büchner, after all, cannot explain the great mystery, 
even with the aid of spontaneous generation; only of this he is quite 
certain, that divine power had nothing to do with the production of 
life and of organized beings. 
After all this evidence, we come to the conclusion that in the great 
question of the Origin of Species,—which is, in fact, the beginning of 
things,—we have learned nothing at all from the various conjectures 
and theories of the Transmutationists, and least of all from Mr. Dar- 
win. We have received nothing from the school but a variety of 
hypotheses and many guesses in the dark, and many contradictions 
and disagreements of the several teachers. Neither is it possible that 
anything ean be learned on the origin of species. We can only know 
that which nature shows us, and which we all can understand, that 
species exist ; the commencement of their existence is concealed in im- 
penetrable obscurity. To what power the commencement is owing we 
do not doubt at all, but of the mode and means of commencement we 
do not pretend to suggest anything. The Transmutationists have 
undertaken to show the mode and the means, and we see the result ; 
it isa medley of blind men groping in the dark and stumbling over 
one another. M. Quatrefages, in his great work, * L’Unité de l Espèce 
Humaine,’ has well said, “Les vues de M. Darwin s'attachent à 
l'origine des choses, ef il me parait difficile que la science positive re- 
monte jusque-là" (p. 198). They, therefore, that will undertake to 
scale these inaccessible heights ought not to be surprised if their 
