62 Evolution and its Conseqtiences, 



an 'absolute and pure Darwinian,' — a doubt which is 

 certainly a surprise to me, as I had always understood him 

 as guarding himself carefully against the identification of his 

 own views with those of Mr. Darwin, and as allowing that it 

 was one thing to hold the doctrine of evolution and another 

 to accept the Darwinian hypothesis. In a lecture ^ delivered 

 in 1868 at the Royal Institution, he observed : ' I can testify, 

 from personal experience, it is possible to have a complete 

 faith in the general doctrine of evolution, and yet to hesitate 

 in accepting the Nebular, or the Uniformitarian, or the 

 Darwinian hypotheses in aU their integrity and fulness.' 



It is plain then that up to a recent period Professor Huxley 

 distinguished himself from thoroughgoing disciples of Mr. 

 Darwin; implying by this distinction a recognition of the 

 existence of such disciples, pure Darwinians, like those of 

 whom he now ignores the existence. 



The very essence of Mr. Darwin's theory as to the * origin 

 of species' was, the paramount action of the destructive 

 powers of nature over any direct tendency to vary in any 

 certain and definite line, whether such direct tendency 

 resulted mainly from internal predisposing or external 

 exciting causes. 



The benefit of the individual in the struggle for Hfe was 

 announced as the one determining agent, fixing slight 

 beneficial variations into enduring characters, and the evolu- 

 tion of species by such agency is justly and properly to be 

 termed formation by ' natural selection.' 



That in this I do not misrepresent Mr. Darwin is evident 

 from his own words. He says : — 



'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed 

 which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, 

 slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.' ^ Also : 



^ See Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol. v. p. 279. 



- Origin oj Species, p. 208. 



