Miscellaneous. 227 
The assertion of Darwin, which has crept into the title of his work, 
is, that favoured races are preserved, while all his facts go only to 
substantiate the assertion that favoured individuals have a better 
chance in the struggle for life than others. But who has ever over- 
looked the fact that myriads of individuals of every species constantly 
die before coming to maturity? What ought to be shown, if the 
transmutation theory is to stand, is that these favoured individuals 
diverge from their specific type; and neither Darwin nor anybody 
else has furnished a single fact to show that they go on diverging. 
The criterion of a true theory consists in the facility with which it 
accounts for facts accumulated in the course of long-continued investi- 
gations, and for which the existing theories afforded no explanation. 
It can certainly not be said that Darwin’s theory will stand by that 
test. It would be easy to invent other theories that might account 
for the diversity of species quite as well, if not better than Darwin’s 
preservation of favoured races. The difficulty would only be to prove 
that they agree with the facts of Nature. It might be assumed, for 
instance, that any one primary being contained the possibilities of 
all those that have followed, in the same manner as the egg of any 
animal possesses all the elements of the full-grown individual; but 
this would only remove the difficulty one step further back. It 
would tell us nothing about the nature of the operation by which the 
change is introduced. Since the knowledge we now have, that similar 
metamorphoses go on in the eggs of all living beings, has not yet 
put us on the track of the forces by which the changes they undergo 
are brought about, it is not likely that by mere guesses we shall 
arrive at any satisfactory explanation of the very origin of these beings 
themselves. 
Whatever views are correct concerning the origin of species, one 
thing is certain, that as long as they exist they continue to produce, 
generation after generation, individuals which differ from one another 
only in such peculiarities as relate to their individuality. The great 
defect in Darwin’s treatment of the subject of species lies in the total 
absence of any statement respecting the features that constitute 
individuality. Surely, if individuals may vary within the limits 
assumed by Darwin, he was bound first to show that individuality 
does not consist of a sum of hereditary characteristics combined with 
variable elements not necessarily transmitted in their integrity, but 
only of variable elements. That the latter is not the case, stands 
recorded in every accurate monograph of all the types of the animal 
kingdom upon which minute embryological investigations have been 
made. It is known that every individual egg undergoes a series of 
definite changes before it reaches its mature condition; that every 
germ formed in the egg passes through a series of metamorphoses 
before it assumes the structural features of the adult; that in this 
development the differences of sex may very early become distinct ; 
and that all this is accomplished in a comparatively very short time, 
extremely short, indeed, in comparison to the immeasurable periods 
required by Darwin’s theory to produce any change among species ; 
and yet all this takes place without any deviation from the original 
