CONCLUSION 307 



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 in- 

 finitely 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 questions 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 

 Maupertius' 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 re- 

 tained in the foregoing paragraphs, and elsewhere, several 

 sentences which imply that naturalists believe in the 

 separate creation of each species; and I have been much 

 censured for having thus expressed myself. But un- 

 doubtedly this was the general belief when the first 

 edition of the present work appeared. I formerly spoke 

 to very many naturalists on the subject of evolution, and 

 never once met with any sympathetic agreement. It is 

 probable that some did then believe in evolution, but 

 they were either silent, or expressed themselves so am- 

 biguously that it was not easy to understand their mean- 

 ing. Now things are wholly changed, and almost every 



