170 Permanence and Evolution. 



mythical dreams ; that the processes by which 

 evolution is supposed to act are so vague and 

 undetermined as to be equally incapable of 

 proof or disproof; that as far as the hypothesis 

 of natural selection pure and simple is con- 

 cerned, the facies of animated nature is in many 

 respects different from what it would be if that 

 were true, while no other form of evolutionism 

 has ever assumed even an appearance of scientific 

 precision ; that the support evolution derives from 

 geographical distribution, not unjustly supposed 

 to be its stronghold, is not so great as is com- 

 monly supposed, and does not become more 

 when carefully looked into, but the contrary ; 

 that sexual selection is a dream. 



From all these things it seems to me we 

 must consider that evolution is not only not 

 a proved law, but not even a scientific hypo- 

 thesis, but a mere conjecture which may be 

 proved or disproved at some future period, yet 

 likely at present to remain a guess. We must 



