MODERN EVOLUTION. ^3 



the transmutation of species presented to them under 

 the phrase of natural selection. .'.".*' Owen has long 

 stated his belief that some pre-ordained law or 

 secondary cause is operative in bringing about the 

 change . . . we therefore regard the painstaking 

 and minute comparison by Cuvier of the osteological 

 and every other character that could be tested in the 

 mummified ibis, cat, or crocodile with those of species 

 living in his time; and the equally philosophical 

 investigation of the polyps operating at an interval 

 of thirty thousand years in the building-up of coral 

 reefs by the profound palaeontologist of Neuchatel 

 (Agassiz is here referred to), as of far truer value in 

 reference to the inductive determination of the ques- 

 tion of the origin of species than the speculations of 

 Demailler, Buffon, Lamarck, ' Vestiges/ Baden 

 Powell, or Darwin " (p. 532). 



Entangled in the meshes of this theory of a " pre- 

 ordained law," which seems to bear some relation to 

 Aristotle's " perfecting principle," and is in close 

 alliance with the teaching of the great Cuvier, at 

 whose feet Owen had sat, he remained to the end of 

 his life a type of arrested development. While the 

 Church cited him as an authority against the Dar- 

 winian theory, especially in its application to man's 

 descent, there remained in the memory of his brother 

 savants his lack of candour in never withdrawing the 

 statement made by him, and demonstrated by Hux- 

 ley as untrue, that the " hippocampus minor " in the 

 human brain is absent from the brain of the ape. 



