522 ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



will come when this will be given as a curious illustration of 

 the blindness of preconceived opinion. These authors seem 

 no more startled at a miraculous act of creation than at an 

 ordinary birth. But do they really believe that at innu- 

 merable periods in the earth's history certain elemental atoms 

 have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues? 

 Do they believe that at each supposed act of creation one 

 individual or many were produced? Were all the infinitely 

 numerous kinds of animals and plants created as eggs or 

 seed, or as full grown? and in the case of mammals, were 

 they created bearing the false marks of nourishment from 

 the mother's womb? Undoubtedly some of these same ques- 

 tions cannot be answered by those who believe in the appear- 

 ance or creation of only a few forms of life, or of some 

 one form alone. It has been maintained by several authors 

 that it is as easy to believe in the creation of a million beings 

 as of one; but Maupertuis' philosophical axiom "of least 

 action" leads the mind more willingly to admit the smaller 

 number; and certainly we ought not to believe that innu- 

 merable beings within each great class have been created 

 with plain, but deceptive, marks of descent from a single 

 parent. 



As a record of a former state of things, I have retained in 

 the foregoing paragraphs, and elsewhere, several sentences 

 which imply that naturalists believe in the separate creation 

 of each species; and I have been much censured for having 

 thus expressed myself. But undoubtedly this was the general 

 belief when the first edition of the present work appeared. 

 I formerly spoke to very many naturalists on the subject of 

 evolution, and never once met with any sympathetic agree- 

 ment. It is probable that some did then believe in evolution, 

 but they were either silent, or expressed themselves so am- 

 biguously that it was not easy to understand their meaning. 

 Now things are wholly changed, and almost every naturalist 

 admits the great principle of evolution. There are, however, 

 some who still think that species have suddenly given birth, 

 through quite unexplained means, to new and totally differ- 

 ent forms: but, as I have attempted to show, weighty evi- 

 dence can be opposed to the admission of great and abrupt 

 modifications. Under a scientific point of view, and as lead- 



