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I believe in all such metamorphoses, though I have no answer 

 to give to the question how, if an elephant were to be changed 

 into an ass, it would be improved, its superior intellect being lost 

 by the exchange. Allow me to be judge. I must be judge, 

 jury, and witness, in my own case. 



I believe in them, I say, because I believe in them, although 

 you may ridicule my idea of improving Nature, and may con- 

 sider it as misplaced and audacious as to attempt a new creation, 

 and may ask me what is to become of all the living creatures 

 when they have been " improved " up to the status of man. 



I believe all this is not the veriest nonsense, though I cannot 

 tell you whether they must all become men in form as well as in 

 sense, or must remain in appearance what we see them to be now. 

 You may consider it an idle and preposterous dream, but I 

 consider it a wonderfully clever and sensible idea. What a world 

 it will be when every animal is "levelled up to the rank of man " 

 and every man still higher to that of a Darwin ! Then you will 

 say surely that the " height of folly can no farther go." But 

 that folly is yours in thinking so. I take my stand on my own 

 superior wisdom. 



I believe it all, yes I believe it all, although I see that with 

 what I hold to have been done in the countless past ages in the 

 way of metamorphosis, elephants have not yet been turned into 

 horses, nor bears into whales (though "very like" them), nor 

 ducks into swallows ; and that the ass, the gander, and the goose 

 still survive, the one to bray and the other to cackle, even like 

 some "men of science " and professors. 



I believe that I can clear up the " mystery of mysteries," as it 

 has been called by one of our greatest philosophers, the origin of 

 species, although " I have found to my cost a constant tendency 

 to fill up gaps of knowledge by inaccurate and superficial 

 hypothesis." You say I have made a " meddle and muddle " of 

 it. You and I differ that's all. 



I believe that varieties are "as steps leading to more strongly 



marked and more permanent varieties, and these latter leading to 



sub-species, and so to species." " Hence, I believe, that a 



well-marked variety may be considered as an incipient species." 



C 



