PT. ii. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Buckle. 67 



There is a method of reasoning not unfrequent in 

 Mathematics whereby any proposition is proved to 

 be false by assuming hypothetically that it is true, 

 and then showing that the conclusions it leads to are 

 absurd. Such a mode of reasoning may be applied 

 to Mr. Darwin's system, which repudiates, if not by 

 name, yet in fact, all the operation of an Intelligent 

 First Cause, and traces all advance to what he calls 

 the Evolution or spontaneous action in the bodies 

 themselves. I do not know how otherwise to inter- 

 pret his theories ; for if he does assign any place to 

 the influence of an external power, or the prompt- 

 ings of an invisible Intelligence, then he does exactly 

 that which he refuses to admit when he rejects the 

 action of a force superior but analogous to the 

 intelligent will of Man. I therefore believe that I 

 am not misconceiving or misrepresenting Mr. Darwin 

 when I assume that in his theory of Life he regards 

 it as effecting all the transformations it presents, 

 and generating all the varieties it exhibits, by the 

 working of certain occult principles which it generates 

 by an insensible and involuntary action, as I trans- 

 late his two main agencies Natural Selection and 

 Sexual Selection. 



In his summary to the work on the ' Origin of 

 v 2 



