82 De Vi Physica 



as Darwin pronounces it, incapable of ori- 

 ginating fresh starts and departures. Darwin 

 attempts to make out, that each animal 

 form must have arisen slowly, by accidental 

 increment in a vast period of time, simply 

 because he holds that Nature cannot produce 

 them abruptly, except by a miracle. But 

 his denial of Nature's power is pure gra- 

 tuitous dogmatism : as Ockam said of an- 

 other such assertion, simpliciter falsa et 

 absurda. 



Yet it is palpable, from the very nature 

 of the case, that we never can expect to 

 know the details : how each particular form 

 arose : because it is impossible to reconstruct 

 the conditions. Cases where we can trace a 

 genealogy as e.g. the foot of the horse, really 

 tell us nothing : because a horse might 

 exist well enough with feet constructed on 

 twenty different plans. I myself possessed 

 a turkey which was born with feet crumpled 



