444 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



and come down to us, except those which were thus suited to their 

 place on the earth. This is true ; but it does not at all remove the 

 necessity of recurring to design as the origin of the construction by 

 which the existence and continuance of plants is made possible. A 

 watch could not go unless there were the most exact adjustment in 

 the forms and positions of its wheels ; yet no one would accept it as 

 an explanation of the origin of such forms and positions that the watch 

 would not go if these were other than they were. If the objector were 

 to suppose that plants were originally fitted to years of various lengths, 

 and that such only have survived to the present time as had a cycle 

 of a length equal to our present year, or one which could be accom- 

 modated to it, we should reply that the assumption is too gratuitous 

 and extravagant to require much consideration." 

 Again, with regard to "the diurnal period," he adds: 

 " Any supposition that the astronomical cycle has occasioned the 

 physiological one, that the structure of plants has been brought to be 

 what it is by the action of external causes, or that such plants as 

 could not accommodate themselves to the existing day have perished, 

 would be not only an arbitrary and baseless assumption, but, more- 

 over, useless for the purposes of explanation which it professes, as 

 we have noticed of a similar supposition with respect to the annual 

 cycle." 



Of course these passages in no way make against Mr. Huxley's 

 allusions to Dr. Whewell's writings in proof that, until the publi- 

 cation of the Origin of Species, the " main theorem " of this work had 

 not dawned on any other mind, save that of Mr. Wallace. But 

 these passages show, even more emphatically than total silence with 

 regard to the principle of survival could have done, the real distance 

 which at that time separated the minds of thinking men from all that 

 was wrapped up in this principle. For they show that Dr. Whewell, 

 even after he had obtained a glimpse of the principle "as a logical 

 possibility," only saw in it an " arbitrary and baseless assumption." 

 Moreover, the passages show a remarkable juxtaposition of the very 

 terms in which the theory of natural selection was afterwards for- 

 mulated. Indeed, if we strike out the one word " intentional " 

 (which conveys the preconceived idea of the writer, and thus 

 prevented him from doing justice to any naturalistic view), all the 

 following parts of the above quotations might be supposed to have 

 been written by a Darwinian. " If not by chance, how otherwise 

 could such a coincidence occur, than by an adjustment of these two 

 things to one another; by a selection of such an organization in 

 plants as would fit them to the earth on which they were to grow ; 

 by an adaptation of construction to conditions ; of the scale of con- 

 struction to the scalt of conditions ? " Yet he immediately goes on to 



