et Imbecillitate Darwiniana. 2 1 



struck him dumb with surprise. He simply 

 took it for granted that they could : follow- 

 ing the ordinary method of his school. Just 

 as neither Lyell nor any of his school 

 thought it necessary to verify the power 

 of their minute agents : just as Darwin him- 

 self invented a pure figment the sinking 

 of the whole floor of the ocean to account 

 for Coral Islands, not because, in the lan- 

 guage of Newton, he had deduced it from 

 phenomena^ but simply because the assump- 

 tion would enable him to explain Coral 

 Islands in a Lyellian way : so here, in pre- 

 cisely the same spirit, he invokes successive 

 slight variations to account for the origin 

 of all organic forms, without thinking it in 

 the least degree necessary to enquire, whe- 

 ther in point of fact his agent could do 

 the work, and whether there was not some- 

 thing in Nature's instruments which it was 

 beyond the power of accumulated incre- 



