:',:><; DAHWINIANISM. 



tions new species will form ? What is the use of 

 gratuitously putting off the climax by the shoving in of 

 an imagined variation, that adds not one single iota of 

 what explanation is desired ?" This, I say, is so obvious, 

 that the power of a religious prejudice over the clearest 

 and quickest of minds can appeal only to our wonder. 

 The moment of selection is not different : it is wholly 

 dependent on, and conditioned by, the variation, and, in 

 simple supposititiousness, it is only a degree further. The 

 dilemma is quite the same whether we should suppose the 

 initial variation to be small or great, and it must be either 

 the one or the other. If great, then species are simply 

 spontaneous. If small, then there is the difficulty of 

 these everyday accidental smalls (that always- revert!) 

 ever accumulating into a species the very accumulation 

 being only another way of saying that species just acci- 

 dentally form themselves. If divergence be preferably 

 regarded as a separate idea, then that idea also must 

 submit itself to the same two alternatives : it must be at 

 once either great or small, and with exactly the same. 

 consequences. Further (p. 188), it is for Mr. Huxley's 

 special consideration that Mr. Darwin's "primordial form," 

 his "single prototype," is tantamount to Mr. Huxley's 

 <>\vn Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and must stultify for him 

 the entire affair in advance. Absolutely, when, in the 

 dilemma of " the Darwinian hypothesis " or " the creation 

 hypothesis," we see Mr. Huxley rush to the former, we 

 may know that it is only the latter has driven him. 



Altogether, in view of the whole matter, would it not be 

 well to bethink ourselves at last of the words of Professor 

 Flower, in his presidential address to the British Associa- 

 ti"ii, at Newcastle, in 1889: "On these mysteries of 

 nature a frank confession of ignorance is the most 

 straightforward, indeed the only honest position we can 

 assume when questioned on these subjects"? If " an 



