364 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



discordant through the land for some years after the 

 publication of Mr. Darwin's ' Origin of Species. 5 Well, 

 the world- -even the clerical world has for the most 

 part settled down in the belief that Mr. Darwin's book 

 simply reflects the truth of nature : that we who are 

 now ' foremost in the files of time ' have come to the 

 front through almost endless stages of promotion from 

 lower to higher forms of life. 



If to any one of us were given the privilege of 

 looking back through the aeons across which life has 

 crept towards its present outcome, his vision, according 

 to Darwin, would ultimately reach a point when the 

 progenitors of this assembly could not be called human. 

 From that humble society, through the interaction of 

 its members and the storing up of their best qualities, 

 a better one emerged ; from this again a better still ; 

 until at length, by the integration of infinitesimals 

 through ages of amelioration, we came to be what we 

 are to-day. We of this generation had no conscious 

 share in the production of this grand and beneficent 

 result. Any and every generation which preceded us 

 had just as little share. The favoured organisms whose 

 garnered excellence constitutes our present store owed 

 their advantages, first, to what we in our ignorance are 

 obliged to call ' accidental variation ; ' and, secondly, 

 to a law of heredity in the passing of which our 

 suffrages were not collected. With characteristic felicity 

 and precision Mr. Matthew Arnold lifts this question 

 into the free air of poetry, but not out of the atmo- 

 sphere of truth, when he ascribes the process of ameli- 

 oration to ' a power not ourselves which makes for 

 righteousness.' If, then, our organisms, with all their 

 tendencies and capacities, are given to us without our 

 being consulted ; and if, while capable of acting within 

 certain limits in accordance with our wishes, we are 



