v MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS 151 



evolution, and of the certainty of the action of 

 natural selection " (p. 49). 



I do not quite see, myself, how, if the action of 

 natural selection is certain, the occurrence of evolu- 

 tion is only probable; inasmuch as the development 

 of a new species by natural selection is. so far as 

 it goes, evolution. However, it is not worth while 

 to quarrel with the precise terms of a sentence 

 which shows that the high water mark of intelli- 

 gence among those most respectable of Britons, the 

 readers of the Quarterly Review, has now reached 

 such a level that the next tide may lift them 

 easily and pleasantly on the once-dreaded shore of 

 evolution. Nor, having got there, do they seem 

 likely to stop, until they have reached the inmost 

 heart of that great region, and accepted the ape 

 ancestry of, at any rate, the body of man. For 

 the Reviewer admits that Mr. Darwin can be said 

 to have established : 



"That if the various kinds of lower animals have been 

 evolved one from the other by a process of natural generation 

 or evolution, then it becomes highly probable, d priori, that 

 man's body has been similarly evolved ; but this, in such a 

 case, becomes equally probable from the admitted fact that he is 

 an animal at all " (p. 65). 



From the principles laid down in the last sen- 

 tence it would follow that if man were constructed 

 upon a plan as different from that of any other 

 animal as that of a sea-urchin is from that of a 

 whale, it would be " equally probable " that he 





