Early Letters 



which he has taught as a master all his life, and confessing 

 that he has all his life been wrong. 



It is clear that you have not yet sufficiently read the 

 book to enable you to criticise it. It is a book in which 

 every page and almost every line has a bearing on the 

 main argument, and it is very difficult to bear in mind 

 such a variety of facts, arguments and indications as are 

 brought forward. It was only on the fifth perusal that I 

 fully appreciated the whole strength of the work, and as 

 I had been long before familiar with the same subjects I 

 cannot but think that persons less familiar with them can- 

 not have any clear idea of the accumulated argument by 

 a single perusal. 



Your objections, so far as I can see anything definite 

 in them, are so fully and clearly anticipated and answered 

 in the book itself that it is perfectly useless my saying any- 

 thing about them. It seems to me, however, as clear as 

 daylight that the principle of Natural Selection must act in 

 nature. It is almost as necessary a truth as any of mathe- 

 matics. Next, the effects produced by this action cannot he 

 limited. It cannot be shown that there is any limit to them 

 in nature. Again, the millions of facts in the numerical 

 relations of organic beings, their geographical distribution, 

 their relations of affinity, the modification of their parts 

 and organs, the phenomena of intercrossing, embryology 

 and morphology — all are in accordance with his theory, 

 and almost all are necessary results from it; while on 

 the other theory they are all isolated facts having no con- 

 nection with each other and as utterly inexplicable and 

 confusing as fossils are on the theory that they are special 

 creations and are not the remains of animals that have 

 once lived. It is the vast chaos of facts, which are ex- 

 plicable and fall into beautiful order on the one theory, 

 which are inexplicable and remain a chaos on the other, 



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