ws ase a. 
14 THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS ie 
things are formed of the same elements as the - 
inorganic world, that they act and react upon it, ; 
bound by a thousand ties of natural piety, is it 
probable, nay is it possible, that they, and they — 
alone, should have no order in their seeming 
disorder, no unity in their seeming multiplicity, — 
should suffer no explanation by the discovery - 
of some central and sublime law of mutual 
connection ? 
Questionsof this kind have assuredly often arisen, 
but it might have been long before they received 
such expression as would have commanded’ the © 
respect and attention of the scientific world, had 
it not been for the publication of the work which 
prompted this article. Its author, Mr. Darwin, 
inheritor of a once celebrated name, won his spurs 
in science when most of those now distinguished 
were young men, and has for the last twenty 
years held a place in the front ranks of British 
philosophers. After a circumnavigatory voyage, 
undertaken solely for the love of his science, Mr. 
Darwin published a series of researches which at 
once arrested the attention of naturalists and 
geologists; his generalisations have since received’ 
ample confirmation and now command universal’ 
assent, nor is it questionable that they have had 
the most important influence on the progress of 
science. More recently Mr. Darwin, with a 
versatility which is among the rarest of gifts, 
turned his attention to a most difficult question of 
