DARWIN AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 263 



even if no limit be drawn to the possible difference between off- 

 spring and their progenitors, and if natural selection were 

 admitted to be an efficient cause capable of building up even 

 new senses, even then, unless time, vast time, be granted, the 

 changes which might have been produced by the gradual selec- 

 tion of peculiar offspring have not really been so produced. 

 Any one of the main pleas of our argument, if established, is 

 fatal to Darwin's theory. What then shall we say if we believe 

 that experiment has shown a sharp limit to the variation of 

 every species, that natural selection is powerless to perpetuate 

 new organs even should they appear, that countless ages of a 

 habitable globe are rigidly proven impossible by the physical 

 laws which forbid the assumption of infinite power in a finite 

 mass ? What can we believe but that Darwin's theory is an 

 ingenious and plausible speculation, to which future physiolo- 

 gists will look back with the kind of admiration we bestow on 

 the atoms of Lucretius, or the crystal spheres of Eudoxus, con- 

 taining like these some faint half-truths, marking at once the 

 ignorance of the age and the ability of the philosopher. Surely 

 the time is past when a theory unsupported by evidence is 

 received as probable, because in our ignorance we know not why 

 it should be false, though we cannot show it to be true. Yet 

 we have heard grave men gravely urge, that because Darwin's 

 theory was the most plausible known, it should be believed. 

 Others seriously allege that it is more consonant with a lofty 

 idea of the Creator's action to suppose that he produced beings 

 by natural selection, rather than by the finikin process of making 

 each separate little race by the exercise of Almighty power. 

 The argument, such as it is, means simply that the user of it 

 thinks that this is how he personally would act if possessed of 

 almighty pow r er and knowledge, but his speculations as to his 

 probable feelings and actions, after such a great change of cir- 

 cumstances, are not worth much. If we are told that our expe- 

 rience shows that God works by law, then we answer, ' Why the 

 special Darwinian law ? ' A plausible theory should not be 

 accepted while unproven ; and if the arguments of this essay be 

 admitted, Darwin's theory of the origin of species is not only 

 without sufficient support from evidence, but is proved false by 

 accumulative proof. 



