SPECIES AS TO VARIATION, ETC. 199 



some endeavors to the contrary, to allow derivative 

 hypotheses to stand or fall upon their own merits to 

 have indeed upon philosophical grounds certain pre- 

 sumptions in their favor and to be, perhaps, quite as 

 capable of being turned to good account as to bad ac- 

 count in natural theology. 1 



Among the leading naturalists, indeed, such views 

 taken in the widest sense have one and, so far as 

 we are now aware, only one thoroughgoing and thor- 

 oughly consistent opponent, viz., Mr. Agassiz. 



Most naturalists take into their very conception 

 of a species, explicitly or by implication, the notion of 

 a material connection resulting from the descent of 

 the individuals composing it from a common stock, of 

 local origin. Agassiz wholly eliminates community 

 of descent from his idea of species, and even conceives 

 a species to have been as numerous in individuals and 

 as wide-spread over space, or as segregated in discon- 

 tinuous spaces, from the first as at the later period. 



The station which it inhabits, therefore, is with 



1 What the Rev. Principal Tulloch remarks in respect to the phi- 

 losophy of miracles has a pertinent application here. We quote at 

 second hand : 



" The stoutest advocates of interference can mean nothing more 

 than that the Supreme Will has so moved the hidden springs of Nature 

 that a new issue arises on given circumstances. The ordinary issue is 

 supplanted by a higher issue. The essential facts before us are a cer- 

 tain set of phenomena, and a Higher Will moving them. How moving 

 them ? is a question for human definition ; the answer to which does 

 not and cannot affect the divine meaning of the change. Yet when 

 we reflect that this Higher Will is everywhere reason and wisdom, it 

 ueems a juster as well as a more comprehensive view to regard it as 

 operating by subordination and evolution, rather than by interference 

 or violation." 



