2 THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 



appeared to be modelled on the likeness of a succession of rubbers of whist, 

 at the end of each of which the players upset the table and called for a new 

 pack, did not seem to shock anybody. 



I may be wrong, but I doubt if, at the present time, there is a single 

 responsible representative of these opinions left. The progress of scientific 

 geology has elevated the fundament principle of uniformitarianism. that the 

 explanation of the past is to be sought in the study of the present, into the 

 position of an axiom ; and the wild speculations of the catastrophists, to 

 which we all listened with respect a quarter of a century ago, would hardly 

 find a single patient hearer at the present day.&quot; 



Of the party above referred to as not satisfied with this 

 conception described by Professor Huxley, there were two 

 classes. The great majority were admirers of the Vestiges 

 of the Natural History of Creation a work which, while it 

 sought to show that organic evolution has taken place, 

 contended that the cause of organic evolution, is &quot;an 

 impulse &quot; supernaturally &quot; imparted to the forms of life, 

 advancing them, . . . through grades of organization.&quot; 

 Being nearly all very inadequately acquainted with the 

 facts, those who accepted the view set forth in the Vestiges 

 were ridiculed by the well-instructed for being satisfied 

 with evidence, much of which was either invalid or easily 

 cancelled by counter-evidence, and at the same time they 

 exposed themselves to the ridicule of the more philosophical 

 for being content with a supposed explanation which was 

 in reality no explanation: the alleged &quot; impulse&quot; to advance 

 giving us no more help in understanding the facts than 

 does Nature s alleged &quot; abhorrence of a vacuum &quot; help 

 us to understand the ascent of water in a pump. The 

 remnant, forming the second of these classes, was very 

 small. While rejecting this mere verbal solution, which 

 both Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck had shadowed 

 forth in other language, there were some few who, rejecting 

 also the hypothesis indicated by both Dr. Darwin and 

 Lamarck, that the promptings of desires or wants produced 

 growths of the parts subserving them, accepted the single 

 vera causa assigned by these writers the modification of 

 structures resulting from modification of functions. They 



