72 LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 



or reproduction, so essential a part, as we have seen, of the 

 definition of life itself. All these questions are closely 

 allied ; yet each is so large in its objects and details, that 

 volumes have failed to exhaust the argument. We shall take 

 them up chiefly on points which may best show the character 

 of the controversies to which they have given rise. That 

 some of these controversies have been carried on with bitter- 

 ness can scarcely create surprise. The new doctrines put 

 forward have in many ways contradicted harshly the opinions 

 held heretofore ; and offence to the sober-minded adherents 

 of these opinions has been increased by the bold and dog- 

 matic tone which some of their opponents have assumed, and 

 the extreme conclusions to which they have pushed their 

 material hypothesis. Such discussions, moreover, deeply in- 

 volve the relations of Man to the rest of the living creation ; 

 verge on various points of religious belief; and in these 

 respects well explain the earnestness given to their pursuit. 

 In what we have to say of them, we shall seek to put each 

 topic in its simplest form, and to deal with all impar- 

 tially; as questions which science has raised, and for the 

 solution of which, if attainable at all, we must look to science 

 alone. 



First, then, among these questions comes that of the nature 

 and permanence of Species, as distinctive of the different 

 forms of animal life from the highest to the lowest. Our 

 scientific readers need not be told how warmly this question 

 has lately been agitated by naturalists. The controversy, 

 which had its birth in France, and there provoked personal 

 animosity as well as scientific dispute, was translated to 

 England in a mitigated form; but has here also stirred 

 up the depths of an argument, stretching beyond the limits 

 of former enquiry, and liable in some part to the imputa- 

 tions of which we have just spoken. The laws which have 

 governed the creation and succession of living beings come 



