78 De Vi Physica 



Thus the potentiality, the power, can respond 

 to conditions in some degree. Nature can, 

 then, transmute her creatures : she has the 

 power. How much has she got ? How far 

 can she go ? Is any man of science in a 

 position positively to assert that this power 

 which can do things that we see, could not 

 in the past under other [conditions have ori- 

 ginated the structures which it continues to 

 perpetuate ? The perpetuation is a common 

 fact : even the modification, up to a certain 

 point, is a fact, rare, yet not unknown : then 

 why not origination, in this manner, but 

 much greater in degree in the past ? LIKE 

 generally produces LIKE : but even now, 

 LIKE can disobey its own rules : is it then 

 so certain that under conditions favourable 

 to the case, like could not produce unlike ? 



Darwin looked for the origin of species in 

 a wholly wrong direction. Falsely conceiv- 

 ing both the power of Nature and the process 



