RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION 435 



incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that 

 form be a true species. This, I feel sure, and I speak after ex- 

 perience, will be no slight relief. The endless disputes whether 

 or not some fifty species of British brambles are good species will 

 cease. Systematists will have only to decide (not that this will be 

 easy) whether any form be sufficiently constant, and distinct 

 from other forms, to be capable of definition; and if definable, 

 whether the differences be sufficiently important to deserve a 

 specific name. This latter point will become a far more essential 

 consideration that it is at present; for differences, however slight, 

 between any two forms, if not blended by intermediate gradations, 

 are looked at by most naturalists as sufficient to raise both forms 

 to the rank of species. 



Hereafter, we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only 

 distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that 

 the latter are known or believed to be connected at the present 

 day by intermediate gradations, whereas species were formerly 

 thus connected. Hence, without rejecting the consideration of the 

 present existence of intermediate gradations between any two 

 forms, we shall be led to weigh more carefully and to value higher 

 the acturl amount of difference between them. It is quite possible 

 that forms now generally acknowledged to be merely varieties 

 may hereafter be thought worthy of specific names; and in this 

 case scientific and common language will come into accordance. 

 In short, we shall have to treat species in the same manner as 

 those naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely 

 artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a 

 cheering prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain 

 search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term 

 species. 



The other and more general departments of natural history 

 will rise greatly in interest. The terms used by naturalists, of 

 affinity, relationship, community of type, paternity, morphology, 

 adaptive characters, rudimentary and aborted organs, etc., will 

 cease to be metaphorical, and will have a plain signification. When 

 we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, 

 as something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard 

 every production of nature as one which has had a long history; 

 when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the 

 summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, 

 in the same way as any great mechanical invention is the sum- 

 ming up of the labor, the experience, the reason, and even the 

 blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic 



