94 DARWUflAHTA. 



disappearance of intermediate forms, less adapted to 

 any one particular purpose ; wherefore these go slowly 

 out of use, and become extinct species: this is Natu- 

 ral Selection. Now, let a great and important advance 

 be made, like that of steam navigation : here, though 

 the engine might be added to the old vessel, yet the 

 wiser and therefore the actual way is to make a new 

 vessel on a modified plan : this may answer to Specific 

 Creation. Anyhow, the one does not necessarily ex- 

 clude the other. Yariation and natural selection may 

 play their part, and so may specific creation also. 

 Why not ? 



This leads us to ask for the reasons which call for 

 this new theory of transmutation. The beginning of 

 things must needs lie in obscurity, beyond the bounds 

 of proof, though within those of conjecture or of ana- 

 logical inference. Why not hold fast to the customary 

 view, that all species were directly, instead of indi- 

 rectly, created after their respective kinds, as we now 

 behold them — and that in a manner which, passing 

 our comprehension, we intuitively refer to the super- 

 natural ? Why this continual striving after " the un- 

 attained and dim?" why these anxious endeavors, 

 especially of late years, by naturalists and philosophers 

 of various schools and different tendencies, to pene- 

 trate what one of them calls " that mystery of mys- 

 teries," the origin of species ? 



To this, in general, sufficient answer may be found 

 in the activity of the human intellect, " the delirious 

 yet divine desire to know," stimulated as it has been 

 by its own success in unveiling the laws and process- 

 es of inorganic Nature ; in the fact that the principal 



