HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 125 



state of mind which he calls " Thiitige Skepsis " — active doubt. 

 It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in 

 doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief ; and we 

 commend this state of mind to students of species, with 

 respect to Mr. Darwin's or any other hypothesis as to their 

 origin. The combined investigations of another twenty years 

 may, perhaps, enable naturalists to say whether the modifying 

 causes and the selective power, which Mr. Darwin has satis- 

 factorily shewn to exist in Nature, are competent to produce 

 all the effects he ascribes to them ; or whether, on the other 

 hand, he has been led to over-estimate the value of the prin- 

 ciple of natural selection, as greatly as Lamarck over-estimated 

 his vera causa of modification by exercise." 



Of all the statements about natural selection 

 made by Huxley, this one seems to me the nearest 

 to the spirit of the two speeches he made in 1894, 

 in which it became evident that the intervening 

 thirty-five years had not brought the increased 

 confidence he had hoped for. Furthermore, in the 

 Preface to "Darwiniana" (1893) he expressly stated 

 that he had not changed his mind as regards this 

 article and the next which will be considered (see 

 p. 137, where the passage is quoted). 



In 1860 Huxley wrote the article on " The Origin 

 of Species " which appeared in the Westminster 

 Review for April, and is reprinted in " Darwiniana." 

 He here states the reasons for his doubts about 

 natural selection in considerable detail. At the 

 beginning of the essay ("Darwiniana," p. 23) he 

 asserts that — 



" . . . all competent naturalists and physiologists, what- 

 ever their opinions as to the ultimate fate of the doctrines put 



