27&amp;lt;&amp;gt; LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [xm. 



cutting the weaker organisms down. The thistle, which has 

 spread over the Pampas, to the destruction of native plants, has 

 been more effectually &quot;selected&quot; by the unconscious operation 

 of natural conditions than if a thousand agriculturists had spent 

 their time in sowing it. 



It is one of Mr. Darwin s many great services to Biological 

 science that he has demonstrated the significance of these facts. 

 He has shown that given variation and given change of 

 conditions the inevitable result is the exercise of such an 

 influence upon organisms that one is helped and another is 

 impeded ; one tends to predominate, another to disappear ; and 

 thus the living world bears within itself, and is surrounded by, 

 impulses towards incessant change. 



But the truths just stated are as certain as any other physical 

 laws, quite independently of the truth, or falsehood, of the 

 hypothesis which Mr. Darwin has based upon them; and that 

 M. Flourens, missing the substance and grasping at a shadow, 

 should be blind to the admirable exposition of them, which Mr. 

 Darwin has given, and see nothing there but a &quot; derniere erreur 

 du dernier siecle &quot; a personification of Nature leads us indeed 

 to cry with him : &quot; O lucidite ! solidite de 1 esprit Frangais, que 

 devenez-vous ? &quot; 



M Flourens has, in fact, utterly failed to comprehend the 

 first principles of the doctrine which he assails so rudely. His 

 objections to details are of the old sort, so battered and hackneyed 

 on this side of the Channel, that not even a Quarterly Keviewer 

 could be induced to pick them up for the purpose of pelting 

 Mr. Darwin over again. We have Cuvier and the mummies; 

 M. Roulin and the domesticated animals of America ; the 

 difficulties presented by hybridism and by Palaeontology; 

 Darwinism a nfacciamcnto of De Maillet and Lamarck; 

 Darwinism a system without a commencement, and its author 

 bound to believe in M. Pouchet, &c. &c. How one knows it 

 all by heart, and with what relief one reads at p. 65 



&quot; Je laisse M. Darwin ! &quot; 



