NATURAL SELECTION CRITICISED. 269 



struck me as very original. He is one of the very few / 

 who see that the change of species cannot be directly 

 proved, and that the doctrine must sink or swim accord- 

 ing as it groups and explains phenomena. It is really 

 curious how few judge it in this way, which is clearly 

 the right way." 



Now what is the effect of all this ? 



Mr. Darwin acknowledges himself to depend for the 

 most part on breeders for his support ; and not one 

 breeder ever made a new species not one breeder ever 

 fostered an individual specialty, an individual modifica- 

 tion, into an increase or decrease of development, but 

 that increase or decrease of development, and the whole 

 peculiarity thereupon dependent, did, when left alone, 

 in the end, return into its ancient and original quality, 

 into its ancient and original proportions. And now in 

 these two quotations, namely he, Mr. Darwin, declares / 

 it impossible to prove any such process in nature ! 



We come now to (5), or what concerns the last of Mr. 

 Darwin's articles in his theory, what he calls Divergence, 

 namely. This, however, has been fully anticipated in our 

 seventh chapter, and leaves no call for more than a 

 reminder or two here. There was, for example, the 

 extraordinary joy of Mr. Darwin when he came upon 

 Divergence in his carriage. There was the little per- 

 plexity, too, of Mr. Francis in regard to it, with his 

 explanations to meet any such perplexity on the part of 

 his father's readers. There were the illustrations of the 

 horses, too, and of the plot of ground with the mixed 

 seeds. But the important point was Divergence itself. 

 Divergence and modification are explained to mean 

 pretty well the same thing ; or divergence is but the 

 new " place " that modification takes. The new relation 

 with nature is what conditions the new species ; and both 

 modification and divergence, the one included in the other, 



