DARWINISM IN ENGLAND. 109 



lative possibilities. It showed that the doctrine of Progressive 

 Development might be put into the form of a definite scientific 

 hypothesis; in favour of which a vast mass of evidence could 

 be adduced, whilst the objections to its acceptance were shown 

 to arise chiefly out of that " imperfection of the geological 

 record" which we were all prepared to admit. It showed that 

 on general grounds the probability of a genetic continuity of 

 organic life throughout the geological series— the fauna and 

 flora of any epoch being the product of "descent with modifica- 

 tion" from that which preceded it, — is far greater than that of 

 successive n^\s creations. And to such as admitted this, it was 

 plain that the conclusion can scarcely be evaded, that as the 

 tendency throughout has been clearly one of progressive dif- 

 ferentiation or specialization, the number of original types might 

 have been very small — perhaps even a single primordial "jelly- 

 speck " being the common ancestor of all. 



But we could not attach the importance which Mr. Darwin 

 seemed to do, to the doctrine of Natural Selection, or the 

 " survival of the fittest," as in itself an adequate explanation of 

 the progressive modifications that have produced the long and 

 diversified succession of animal and vegetable forms which have 

 peopled our globe from the first appearance of life on its surface 

 to the present time. The instances adduced by Mr. Darwin as 

 results of artificial selection were cases of varietal modification 

 only ; and he was unable to prove that the character which 

 most strongly marks what the naturalist had been accustomed 

 to accept as a true species — viz. its incapacity for producing with 

 any congener an intermediate self-sustaining race — is otherwise 

 than fixed and permanent. All that he could show is that 

 va?'ieties placed under artificial conditions may come to be so 

 far differentiated constitutionally as to breed together with 

 difiiculty. But of the actual origination of what a philosophical 

 botanist or zoologist would accept as a true species, incapable 

 of breeding except with its own type, I do not recollect that he 

 was able to produce any instance whatever. If, then, Natural 

 Selection could not be shown to have produced a new species, 

 still less could it be looked to as a vera causa, for the establish- 

 ment of still greater differences. 



