256 DARWINIANA. 



that it explains moral anomalies, and accounts for the 

 mixture of good and evil in the world, as well as for 

 the merely relative perfection of things ; and, finally, 

 that " the whole scheme which God has framed for 

 man's existence, from the first that was created to all 

 eternity, collapses if the great law of evolution be 

 suppressed." The second part of his book is occupied 

 with a development of this line of argument. By 

 this doctrine of evolution he does not mean the Dar- 

 winian hypothesis, although he accepts and includes 

 this, looking upon natural selection as playing an im- 

 portant though not an unlimited part. He would be 

 an evolutionist with Mivart and Owen and Argyll, 

 even if he had not the vera causa which Darwin con- 

 tributed to help him on. And, on rising to man, he 

 takes ground with Wallace, saying : 



" I would wish to state distinctly that I do not at present 

 see any evidence for believing in a gradual development of man 

 from the lower animals by ordinary natural laws ; that is, with- 

 out some special interference, or, if it be preferred, some excep- 

 tional conditions which have thereby separated him from all other 

 creatures, and placed him decidedly in advance of them all. 

 On the other hand, it would be absurd to regard him as totally 

 severed from them. It is the great degree of difference I would 

 insist upon, bodily, mental, and spiritual, which precludes the 

 idea of his having been evolved by exactly the same processes, 

 and with the same limitations, as, for example, the horse from 

 the palacotherium." 



In illustrating this view, he reproduces Wallace's 

 well-known points, and adds one or two of his own. 

 We need not follow up his lines of argument. The 

 essay, indeed, adds nothing material to the discussion 



