TRANSMUTABLE. 18 ( J 



organic links that ought to bind together the 

 older fauna with that of the lias. 



I need hardly go on any further with these 

 objections. But I cannot conclude without ex- 

 pressing my detestation of the theory, because of 

 its unflinching materialism ; because it has de- 

 serted the inductive track, the only track that 

 leads to physical truth; because it utterly re- 

 pudiates final causes, and thereby indicates a 

 demoralized understanding on the part of its ad- 

 vocates. In some rare instances it shews a 

 wonderful credulity. Darwin seems to believe 

 that a white bear, by being confined to the slops 

 floating in the polar basin, might be turned into 

 a whale; that a lemur might easily be turned 

 into a bat; that a three-toed tapir might be the 

 great grandfather of a horse ! or the progeny of 

 a horse may (in America) have gone back to 

 the tapir. 



But any startling and (supposed) novel paradox, 

 maintained very boldly, and with something of 

 imposing plausibility, produces, in some minds, a 

 kind of pleasing excitement, which pre-disposes 

 them in its favour; and if they are unused to 

 careful reflection, and averse to the labour of 

 accurate investigation, they will be likely to con- 

 clude that what is (apparently) original, must 

 be a production of original genius, arid that 

 anything very much opposed to prevailing notions 

 must be a grand discovery, in short, that what- 

 ever comes from 'the bottom of a well' must be 

 the 'truth' supposed to be hidden there." 



