WHAT LED TO THE SUCCESS. 187 



their specific type, no longer of their specific type 

 is there anything less here than actually a new species 

 already to the fore ? Origin of species by natural selec- 

 tion ! why, here is the origin of species by a flatus wcis, 

 the breathing of a word. Mr. Darwin's theory, in its 

 brief two moments, was always dispatch enough ; but 

 here in Mr. Huxley's it is perfunctoriness itself ! That, 

 then, is careless writing ; and it just caps and com- 

 pletes the quoted admissions and the quoted indifference. 

 One cannot help the thought here of how ominous it is 

 that such a sworn nominalist as Mr. Huxley necessarily 

 must be, should have been so easily betrayed (by the over- 

 sight of a moment) into so palpable a realism ! 



Just one other remark or two in passing. Mr. Huxley 

 will rescue Mr. Darwin from the imputation of chance 

 in creation as a substitute for omnipotence ; but, as I 

 amply prove elsewhere, Mr. Darwin himself can be pro- 

 fusely quoted to the fact. Of course, if there is no such 

 thing as chance, then the word itself must be cancelled. 

 But, even with the mechanical necessity of Mr. Huxley's 

 " natural causation," there is still room, I fear, for the 

 rvxy and TO avrojjiarov of Aristotle. Of contingency as 

 such, it is just possible that I have myself said enough 

 (in the Lectures) ; not to mention that the general sub- 

 ject of modality is expressly discussed in modern philo- 

 sophy. An " if," of course, has always the privilege of 

 prophecy. If the wind blew with the absolute uni- 

 formity of so much in a second if the eun shone with 

 the absolute uniformity of so many candles if the sea 

 lay there, whether in whole or in part, in the absolute 

 uniformity of quantity and quality if these data were 

 given, then there might indulgently be speech, even in 

 such a case, a little on this side of absurdity ; but with a 

 wind that varies every instant from a million, and again 

 a million, and once more a million, of utterly indefinable 



