CHAPTEK VII. 



DETERMINATION OF WHAT THE DARWINIAN THEORY IS. 



IF we are to venture to attempt to refute the theory 

 of Mr. Darwin, it stands to reason that we must first 

 know what that theory is. Is the theory known truly 

 known ? that, naturally, a reader first asks. There have 

 been, of course, already many indications in this regard ; 

 but what is now concerned is, once for all, a formal 

 precise statement ; and that statement must accurately 

 express what Mr. Darwin means by natural selec- 

 tion. 



Now it must have been observed that Mr. Darwin 

 nay, even Sir Charles Lyell always brackets the term 

 selection with the term variation, and both terms again 

 are qualified by natural. Natural variation, and natural 

 selection, in some way, name the two moments, the 

 consecutive and correlative moments, which are together 

 constitutive of what peculiar process for the production 

 of species is under their inscription figured or feigned. 



As regards the first moment, the variation, it is but a 

 general fact, and assumed to be granted. All organisms 

 vary. Whether in man, or beast, or plant, the progeny 

 varies from the parent. But what becomes of the 

 variation ? It is with this question that Mr. Darwin 

 opens his enterprise. The variation, he says, is not idly 

 overlooked by nature, but is taken advantage of, and 



