THE PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC 

 NATURE 



WHEN it was my duty to consider what subject I would 

 select for the six lectures* which I shall now have the 

 pleasure of delivering to you, it occurred to me that I could 

 not do better than endeavour to put before you in a true 

 light, or in what I might perhaps with more modesty call, 

 that which I conceive myself to be the true light, the 

 position of a book which has been more praised and more 

 abused, perhaps, than any book which has appeared for 

 some years ; I mean Mr. Darwin's work on the Origin of 

 Species. That work, I doubt not, many of you have read ; 

 for I know the inquiring spirit which is rife among you. 

 At any rate, all of you will have heard of it, some by one 

 kind of report and some by another kind of report ; the 

 attention of all and the curiosity of all have been prob- 

 ably more or less excited on fiie subject of that work. 

 All I can do, and all I shall attempt to do, is to put before 

 you that kind of judgment which has been formed by a 

 man, who, of course, is liable to judge erroneously ; but 

 at any rate, of one whose business and profession it is to 

 form judgments upon questions of this nature. 



And here, as it will always happen when dealing with an 

 extensive subject, the greater part of my course if, indeed, 

 so small a number of lectures can be properly called a course 

 must be devoted to preliminary matters, or rather to a 

 statement of those facts and of those principles which the 

 work itself dwells upon, and brings more or less directly 

 before us. I have no right to suppose that all or any of 

 you are naturalists ; and even if you were, the miscon- 

 ceptions and misunderstandings prevalent even among 

 naturalists on these matters would make it desirable that 

 I should take the course I now propose to take, that I 

 should start from the beginning, that I should endeavour 



* To Working Men, at the Museum of Practical Geology, 1863. 



11 



