AUTHORITIES USED, COMPILATION, ETC. 151 



Another reason is the superiority in simplicity and 

 clearness of the familiar, everyday explanation to what 

 shall be the full-length exposition, so to speak, of 

 formality and purpose. Lastly, the chief reason is 

 perhaps this that depends partly on the matter and 

 partly on the form of the great book, the Origin, itself. 

 The matter, for example, is greatly in excess of all that 

 is required for the specialty of the theory in question. 

 We may see as much as that very clearly if we but 

 look from the one statement to the other. In the 

 Letters, which are seen to have been written with no 

 other intention, the most of them, than to win over to 

 his doctrine such naturalists of repute as Sir Charles 

 Lyell, Sir Joseph Hooker, and Dr. Asa Gray, it is that 

 doctrine, and in its own constitutive moments, that by 

 Mr. Darwin is alone discussed. He names indeed there 

 also " the affinities, embryology, rudimentary organs, 

 geological history, and geographical distribution of 

 organic beings ; " but he only names them only names 

 them so so as I quote. It is in the Origin that he 

 treats expressly and at full of each of these topics, 

 with the result that they largely are the matter of the 

 book. Now the fact is that all these topics belong, on 

 the whole, quite as much to all other evolutionary 

 doctrines as to that of Darwin. Nay, let us but con- 

 sider this, that, under a general creationary theory, 

 before any one evolutionary doctrine, Lamarckian, 

 Vestigian, Erasmo- Darwinian, Carlo-Darwinian, or other, 

 came up, never, whether in affinities, or embryology, 

 or geology, or geography, or even rudimentary organs, 

 was there a single difficulty felt, let us but consider 

 this I say, and it will be plain to be seen that all that 

 concerns affinities and the rest constitutes no fee-simple 

 that shall be proper and peculiar to natural selection 

 alone. The opposing doctrine that upheld creation 



