24.0 THE COMING OF AGE OF VII 
be left; if it has not taken place, there will lie 
its refutation. 
What was the state of matters in 1859? Let 
us hear Mr. Darwin, who may be trusted always 
to state the case against himself as strongly as 
possible. 
“Qn this doctrine of the extermination of an 
infinitude of connecting links between the living 
and extinct inhabitants of the world, and at each 
successive period between the extinct and still 
older species, why is not every geological forma- 
tion charged with such links? Why does not — 
every collection of fossil remains afford plain 
evidence of the gradation and mutation of the 
forms of life? We meet with no such evidence, 
and this is the most obvious and plausible of the 
many objections which may be urged against my 
theory.” } 
Nothing could have been more useful to the 
opposition than this characteristically candid — 
avowal, twisted as it immediately was into an — 
admission that the writer's views were contra- 
dicted by the facts of paleontology. But, in fact, — 
Mr. Darwin made no such admission. What he © 
says in effect is, not that paleontological evidence — 
is against him, but that it is not distinctly in his — 
favour ; and, without attempting to attenuate the — 
fact, he accounts for it by the scantiness and the — 
imperfection of that evidence. 
1 Origin of Species, ed. 1, p. 463. 
