246 THE GENESIS OF SPEuiES. [CHAP. 



a cranial skeletal theory by the phrase " Vertebre pen- 

 sante." 4 



In fact, however, it is a real explanation of how a man 

 lives to say that he lives independently, on his own income, 

 instead of being supported by his relatives and friends. In 

 the same way, there is fully as real a distinction between 

 the production of new specific manifestations entirely ab 

 externo, and by the production of the same through an in- 

 nate force and tendency, the determination of which into 

 action is occasioned by external circumstances. 



To say that organisms possess this innate power, and 

 that by it new species are from time to time produced, is 

 by no means a mere assertion that they are produced, and 

 in an unknown mode. It is the negation of that view which 

 deems external forces alone sufficient, and at the same time 

 the assertion of something positive, to be arrived at by the 

 process of reductio ad absurdum. 



All physical explanations result ultimately in such con- 

 ceptions of innate power, or else in that of will-force. The 

 far-famed explanation of the celestial motions ends in the 

 conception that every particle of matter has the innate 

 power of attracting every other particle directly as the 

 mass, and inversely as the square of the distance. 



We are logically driven to this positive conception if 

 we do not accept the view that there is no force but voli- 

 tion, and that all phenomena whatever are the immediate 

 results of the action of intelligent and self-conscious will. 



We have seen that the notion of sudden changes salta- 

 tory actions in Nature has received countenance from 

 Prof. Huxley. 5 We must conceive that these jumps are 

 orderly, and according to law, inasmuch as the whole cos- 



4 Noticed by Prof. Owen in his " Archetype," p. 76. Recently it 

 has been attempted to discredit Darwinism in France by speaking of it as 

 " de la science mousseuse ! " 



6 " Lay Sermons," p. 342. 



