3 135 



tingency of brute nstvare ; and it is altogether fallacious 

 to call such process, or such non-process, by a term in- 

 volving foresight and a purpose. We have here, indeed, 

 only a metaphor wholly misapplied. The German wri- 

 ter who, many years ago, said " even the genera are 

 wholly a prey to the changes of the external universal 

 life," saw precisely what Mr. Darwin sees, but it never 

 struck him to style contingency selection. Yet, how 

 dangerous, how infectious, has not this ungrounded 

 metaphor proved ! It has become a principle, a law, and 

 been transferred by very genuine men into their own 

 sciences of philology and what not. People will won- 

 der at all this by-and-by. But to point out the inappli- 

 cability of such a word to the processes of nature re- 

 ferred to by Mr. Darwin, is to point out also the impos- 

 sibility of any such contingencies proceeding, by 

 graduated rise, from stage to stage, into the great sym- 

 metrical organic system the vast plan the grand har- 

 monious whole by which we are surrounded. This 

 rise, this system, is really the objective idea ; but it is 

 utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such 

 agency as natural contingency in geological, or infinite, 

 or any time. But it is this which the word selection 

 tends to conceal. 



We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact 

 of " reversion" or " atavism," Mr. Darwin acknowledges 

 his own failure. We thus see that the species as spe- 

 cies is something independent, and holds its own insita 

 vis natures within itself. 



Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value 

 to Mr. Darwin's book ; nor even his ready ingenuity, 

 whatever interest it may lend : it is the material infor- 

 mation it contains. The ingenuity, namely, verges 



