38 



" For this reason we must needs express our disappointment with the 

 more important part of Mr. Darwin's Book. His discussion of the faculties 

 of man in comparison with those of animals appears to us utterly 

 inadequate to the subject, independently of its being insufficient to sustain 

 his theory. As it seeois to us, he has not merely failed, but he has not 

 duly grappled with the essential difficulties of the question. He has 

 thought it possible to leap by the aid of a few illustrations over the 

 momentous and arduous questions respecting the mental powers of men 

 and animals, and the moral nature of man is dissected with a most rapid 

 and unpeuetrating hand. We can only express our conviction on this 

 point by saying that on these subjects Mr. Darwin appears quite out of his 

 element." 



" For a natural philosopher to appeal to such superficial resemblances 

 is much the same as for an astronomer to appeal to the apprehension 

 of the vulgar with respect to the motions of the heavenly bodies." 



'' But the truth is that Mr. Darwin's argument is at every point sup- 

 plemented by enormous assumption. The utmost he proves, not merely 

 in his present but in his former book, is not what has been, but what may 

 have been, and he converts the 'may' into a 'must' by the sole force of 

 the ever-present assumption that all forms of nature have been developed 

 out of other forms. To our minds, the book bears in its very mode of 

 expression, of which we have given some illustrations above, a character 

 which is wholly unscientific. Science tells us what has been, what is, 

 and what will be. But Mr. Darwin's argument is a continuous conjugation 

 of the potential mood. It rings the changes on 'can have been,' 'might 

 have been,' 'would have been,' until it leaps with a bound into 'must 

 have been.' " 



'' When Mr. Darwin is confronted with the extremely remote and 

 uncertain nature of the agencies on which he relies, he continually falls 

 back on what ' might have been ' in the lapse of unlimited periods of 

 time. Such a style of argument is, to say the least, destitute of any 

 scientific value. It is impossible to .say what might or might not have 

 been during periods so vast that we have no experience of them. For 

 all we know, the vitality of species might wear itself out in the lapse 

 of ages, or by some law of cyclic change, they might assume new forms. 

 To call in aid such an indefinite agency is a mere veil for ignorance. 

 It may even be doubted whether to assert that a process takes effect in 

 an infinite time, be not simply a roundabout way of," etc. etc 



" If in short, in its general application, Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is 

 utterly unsupported by observed facts, it is still more destitute of such 

 support in its application to man." 



" This is precisely the solution which Mr. Darwin is unable to apply 

 to his instances of approximation between species. If he could say in a 

 single instance, ' solvitur ambulando^ ' here is a case of one true species 

 having passed into another,' we should have a practical proof that the kind 

 of approximation he brings to light is of such a kind as to end in coinci- 

 dence. But this, as we have seen, is what he has not done. It is. in fact, 

 not a little curious that the finite time which Newton demands is the very 

 condition most energetically repudiated by Mr. Darwin and his followers. 

 They place no limit whatever to the amount of time which their process 

 requires. The knowledge of so prolonged a proof, would have been of no 

 practical avail even to Methuselah." 



'' We are reminded, in fact, by such speculations, of the famous story 

 which Corporal Trim endeavoured so effectually to recite to Uncle Toby. 

 ' There was a certain king of Bohemia,' said Trim ; ' but in whose reign 

 except his own, I am not able to inform your honour.' Uncle Toby was 

 more accommodating than we are able to be from a scientific point of view. 

 But we recommend the gracious permission he accorded to the corporal as 



