1 1 o specific Genesis 



An admission which Mr. Darwin makes, and which I con- 

 sidered and consider to be important, is sought to be explained 

 away by Mr. Chauncey Wright in a mode I cannot think 

 admissible. He tells us that when Mr. Darwin says that the 

 goose ' seems to have a singularly infiexible organisation,' Mr. 

 Darwin's ' obvious meaning ' is ' that the goose has been rriuch 

 less changed by domestication than other domestic birds.' 

 Certainly if Mr. Darwin had meant this, he would not have 

 used the word 'inflexible,' but 'unmodified,' or some equi- 

 valent expression. To have a ' singularly inflexible organisa- 

 tion' is to have one which cannot without great difficulty 

 be modified, not one which, as a fact, has not been modified. 



Similarly where Mr. Darwin speaks of ' a whole organism 

 having become plastic and tending to depart from the 

 parental type,' Mr. Wright asserts that Mr. Darwin means 

 'capable of being moulded or fashioned to the purpose, as 

 clay.' This is to credit Mr. Darwin with the enunciation of a 

 truism which I am sure he would never have written. The 

 words 'tends to depart'^ are plainly a repetition and explana- 

 tion of the epithet ' plastic,' and fix its meaning. Mr. Darwin 

 here evidently predicates an existing predisposition, and not a 

 mere state of indifference. By ' tends to depart ' he cannot 

 mean ' capable of being made to depart,' for that would not 

 indicate any influence which has affected the ' whole organi- 

 sation,' as by his hypothesis every organism is ' capable ' of 

 being modified. 



I will now turn to the second matter of argument, that in 

 which Mr. Chauncey Wright treats of the alleged possibly 

 irrehgious tendencies of Mr. Darwin's theory, and of my 

 incompetency in physics and ignorance of the experimental 

 philosophy. 



1 The omission of the words ' in a slight degree ' in my book was purely 

 accidental. As, however, tlie question is one of principle, I do not see that 

 the omission was of any importance. 



