68 Evohition and its Consequences. 



As to the principles embodied in Mr. Darwin's Origin of 

 Species, the further study of them more and more brings 

 home to me their unsatisfactoriness, as pointed out by me 

 in my Genesis of Species. Indeed, 'natural selection/ as il>' 

 agent for the determination of specific animal forms, is, I am 

 convinced, utterly insufficient to the task assigned it ; while 

 the reasoning employed in the Descent of Man to support 

 the hypothesis of our ape origin ^ seems to me, to say the 

 least, unworthy of Mr. Darwin's earlier productions. 



Professor Huxley attributes to the Quarterly Reviewer 

 ' peculiar notions of probability,' because he affirms that if all 

 animals below man have been evolved one from the other, 

 then a close resemblance in man's body to any particular 

 animal's does not increase that a priori probability as to his 

 bodily evolution, which springs from the fact of liis being ' an 

 animal at all.' But surely if it was of the essence of an 

 animal to be ' evolved,' so that to be an animal impHed being 

 a creature formed by evolution, then the fact of man being 

 an animal would necessarily have a similar implication, and I 

 fail to see what additional force that probability would obtain 

 through any particular resemblance. On the other hand, if 

 there is authority for believing that man's body was miracu- 

 lously created, such particular resemblance would not render 

 such a miracle one bit less credible ; for there is no necessity, 

 on the hypothesis of such miraculous creation, for more than 

 even a specific difference between his body and that of some 

 other animal. 



Professor Huxley also speaks of the Quarterly Reviewer's 

 making the admission as to the similarity of man's body to 

 that of brutes ' grudgingly.' With regard to myself, no one 

 is better aware than Professor Huxley how I have worked at 



1 The much ridiculed Lord Monboddo has been successfully redeemed 

 from very unjust depreciation in an interesting article which has lately 

 appeared. See the Month for November 1871. 



