u 



did not, my theory must fall to the ground never mind that I stand 

 and fall myself by my theory. 



I believe that though man does appreciate and admire beauty, 

 whether in form, colour, harmony, or any other mode, monkeys do no't, 

 so that if you ask me how man, who has come from the monkey, has 

 come by this faculty, which the monkey has not. I must decline to 

 answer the question. 



I believe, I say, that natural selection improved us by giving us 

 the power to value beauty which she herself ignores and sets aside. 

 You may say this is nonsense. You may say so if you like. I have 

 said it, and I mean to stand by it. 



I believe, on my theory, that Nature makes species : but that 

 man can only make varieties by culture. It is mere assertion, and the 

 argument, if carried out, annihilates my theory. Let it do so if it likes 

 what care IV I believe that ' if nature had to make" the bill of a 

 pigeon short, it would be a slow process indeed, and you would see 

 all the young pigeons in the eggs striving with one another to see 

 which could come out with the shortest and strongest bill. If you can't 

 see this you must be very dull indeed in comparison with me. I 

 have said elsewhere that natural selection is only the ' sequence of 

 events." It might perhaps take ten thousand million years to make 

 one bill strong enough, so that the whole brood would have been 

 dead and gone thousands and millions of years before the necessary 

 degree of strength could be arrived at. I am not able to reconcile 

 these palpable and gross contradictions : it is quite enough for me 

 to be able to swallow them and any number more. 



I believe that the old-fashioned Book which tells us that " we are 

 but of yesterday, and know nothing" is quite out of date. 



I believe, on the contrary, that we are of to-day, and know every- 

 thing. 



I believe that though I was born with a bee in my bonnet. I am 

 descended from a monkey and not from a bee, for all its wisdom 

 of instinct. 



I believe that natural selection is "a power incessantly ready for 

 action " upon a creature, and therefore something outside it, while in 

 reality you will say it is plain that it is nothing but the working of the 

 creature itself. In other words, unless some at least of the offspring 

 inherit any chance advantages, nothing can come of them, viz.. that 

 advantages cannot be inherited unless they be inherited. This I con- 

 sider a weighty and powerful argument, and not a most sapless piece 

 of scribblemeiit. 



I believe that "lion-inheritance of any character is, in fact, the 

 same thing as reversion to the character of the grand-parents or 

 remote ancestors, and no doubt this tendency to reversion may often 

 have checked or prevented the action of natural selection." I hear 

 you say, *'No doubt at all about it!" I don't care what you say, I must 

 stand by my theory, though it leaves me in the lurch. 



I believe that " it inevitably follows that as new species are formed 

 through natural selection, others will become scarce or finally extinct." 

 I can't deny that you and all other animals seem to continue as you 

 and they were since the day you tell me they were created, and that 

 elephants, horses, lions, tigers, and all the rest do not change into one 

 another, nor can I point to a single one in the process of changing. 

 You may laugh at me when I say that for all that they do, but it is 

 no laughing matter for me to have my theory overturned by facts, so 

 all my vagaries must be as they are. 



I believe that by natural selection a bustard becomes changed into 

 an ostrich, a horse into some other animal, and so on, because I see 



