The Origin of Species 



secondary laws. They admit variation as a true 

 cause in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in 

 another, without assigning any distinction in the 

 two cases. The day 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 innumerable 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 infinite 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 appearance 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's philosophical axiom "of 

 least action" leads the mind more willingly to 

 admit the smaller number; and certainly we 

 ought not to believe that innumerable 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 else- 

 23 



