ON THE CREATION AND GOD. 33 



in developing the animal and plant world, still denies 

 that these causes are adequate to account for the main 

 part of the development in the organic sphere, which he 

 ascribes to the direct action of the Unconscious, working 

 on to its own special ends. But in my own opinion, the 

 difficulty the hypothesis labours under is simply the tre- 

 mendous and all but incredible range of effects of which 

 natural selection is the only explanation offered, and 

 which, if its pretensions are to be justified, it must 

 actually have accomplished. For we are asked to believe 

 that natural selection evolved or made the thousands and 

 tens of thousands of species of plants and animals from 

 one or a " few primordial forms ; " that natural selection 

 made not only the tree, but the bird that sings in it ; not 

 only the flower, but the bees that suck it ; not only the 

 man himself, but also, in great measure or altogether, his 

 art, science, invention, language, institutions, civilizations, 

 and all his special higher associations. Besides the 

 species, natural selection made the music of the bird, the 

 beauty of the flower, the thought of the man for, beyond 

 natural selection and the facts of adaptation and inheri- 

 tance, no other causes are offered ; and all these different 

 effects, when we view them in their totality, are so pro- 

 digious in comparison with the cause assigned, that the 

 hypothesis seems wholly incredible. That natural selec- 

 tion, the seizing hold of an accidental variation* useful 

 to the individual, according favour to its possessor in the 

 struggle for existence, and transmitting this advantage 

 to the next generation ; that a constant repetition of this 

 simple process should alone have accomplished all the 

 marvels of organic creation, and produced all the higher 

 mental and moral peculiarities of the species, seems too 

 futile an explanation to be seriously believed or enter- 



* Origin of Species, ch. iv. p. 63. 



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