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NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 247 



nathematical law of probability, and exhibit statistical types, there - 

 s no necessary or inherent parallelism between the " generic types " 

 )f the physical world and those which are known to naturalists as 

 ;pecies ; for we find mollusks and Crustacea and fishes living side by 

 ;ide in every little brook, the world over ; and every part of the land 

 ind of the water, in all regions of the earth, has its own representatives 

 ^f most of the great groups of animals and plants. Agassiz's "Essay 

 on Classification" failed to deal that death blow to the "Origin," 

 which was in the mind of the author, although Lamarckians might 

 still study, with profit, its clear, earnest, and impregnable demonstra- 

 tion that there is no parallelism between the generic types of the 

 physical environment of each species and the attributes of the 

 species itself. 



The most notable peculiarity of the English attitude of mind 

 regarding the species question was the feeling so clearly expressed 

 by Darwin, by Huxley, and by many other naturalists, that the 

 attempts at a solution had so far been valueless, and that they 

 had even excited hostility. Another notable fact is that, while the 

 thirty-five authors, between i8cx) and i860, to whom Darwin refers, 

 wrote in many countries, in England, Ireland, Scotland, the United 

 States, France, Belgium, Germany, and Russia, the four who defi- 

 nitely recognized and clearly stated the law of natural selection, 

 Wells, Mathew, Wallace, and Darwin, were English in their 

 intellectual training. 



In order to grasp the full significance of the influences which 

 led to the production and acceptance of the " Origin," it is clear that 

 we must try to understand what caused a hostile frame of mind 

 towards Lamarck, while there was no permanent hostility to the 

 " Origin." 



There seems to me to be no doubt that this influence came, in 

 part at least, from the works of a school of writers on what was 

 called natural theology, among whom John Ray (1624- 1705), Wil- 

 liam Derham (1657-1735), and William Paley (1743- 1805) are best 

 known. None of these men was a notable contributor to science : 

 even Ray, who has the greatest claim to remembrance as a natu- 

 ralist, was by no means the equal of contemporary students of 

 science; and Derham did nothing in science except to edit Ray's 

 works ; while Paley makes no claim to originality, owing much. 



