156 DARWINIANA. 



seem to be, that a material connection between a series 

 of created things such as the development of one of 

 them from another, or of all from a common stock is 

 highly compatible with their intellectual connection, 

 namely, with their being designed and directed by 

 one mind. Yet upon some ground which is not ex- 

 plained, and which we are unable to conjecture, Mr. 

 Agassiz concludes to the contrary in the organic king- 

 doms, and insists that, because the members of such a 

 series have an intellectual connection, "they cannot 

 be the result of a material differentiation of the ob- 

 jects themselves," 1 that is, they cannot have had a 

 genealogical connection. But is there not as much 

 intellectual connection between the successive genera- 

 tions of any species as there is between the several 

 species of a genus, or the several genera of an order ? 

 As the intellectual connection here is realized through 

 the material connection, why may it not be so in the 

 case of species and genera? On all sides, therefore, 

 the implication seems to be quite the other way. 



Returning to the accidental element, it is evident 

 that the strongest point against the compatibility of 

 Darwin's hypothesis with design in Nature is made 

 when natural selection is referred to as picking out 

 those variations which are improvements from a vast 

 number which are not improvements, but perhaps the 

 contrary, and therefore useless or purposeless, and 

 born to perish. But even here the difficulty is not 

 peculiar ; for Nature abounds with analogous instances. 

 Some of our race are useless, or worse, as regards 



1 " Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," vol. 

 i., p. 130 ; and American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143. 



