SPECIES AS TO VARIATION, ETC. 199 



some endeavors to the contrary, to allow derivative 

 hypotheses to stand or fall upon their own merits — to 

 have indeed upon philosophical grounds certain pre- 

 sumptions in their favor — and to be, perhaps, quite as 

 capable of being turned to good account as to bad ac- 

 count in natural theology.' 



Among the leading naturalists, indeed, such views 

 — taken in the widest sense — have one and, so far as 

 we are now aware, only one thoroughgoing and thor- 

 oughly consistent opponent, viz., Mr. Agassiz. 



Most naturalists take into their very conception 

 of a species, explicitly or by implication, the notion of 

 a material connection resulting from the descent of 

 the individuals composing it from a common stock, of 

 local origin. Agassiz wholly eliminates community 

 of descent from his idea of species, and even conceives 

 a species to have been as numerous in individuals and 

 as wide-spread over space, or as segregated in discon- 

 tinuous spaces, from the first as at the later period. 



The station which it inhabits, therefore, is with 



1 What the Kev. Principal Tulloch remarks in respect to the phi- 

 losophy of miracles has a pertinent application here. We quote at 

 second hand : 



" The stoutest advocates of interference can mean nothing more 

 than that the Supreme Will has so moved the hidden springs of Nature 

 that a new issue arises on given circumstances. The ordinary issue is 

 supplanted by a higher issue. The essential facts before us are a cer- 

 tain set of phenomena, and a Higher Will moving them. How moving 

 them ? is a question for human definition ; the answer to which does 

 not and cannot affect the divine meaning of the change. Yet when 

 we reflect that this Higher Will is everywhere reason and wisdom, it 

 Beems a juster as well as a more comprehensive view to regard it as 

 operating by subordination and evolution, rather than by interference 

 or violation." 



