05 



I believe, I repeat again and again, " How do we know that it 

 would be any advantage for the lower forms to be more highly 

 organised?" You say you agree with me. Of course you do; 

 everybody must agree with me. Plainly it would be a great 

 advantage, as you say, for an oyster to be changed into an 

 alderman, for then he could not be eaten by him. No doubt about 

 it. For myself I can swallow anything. Even such a palpable 

 contradiction as all this goes down with me. I make short work 

 of any such. No one can contradict me so well as I do myself, 

 and there, you see, I have the advantage of you. 



I believe, between you and me, for all I have just said, that 

 " each creature will tend to become more and more improved in 

 relation to its condition in life." Yes ; and yet you say that this 

 is to blow hot and cold, for that the lower forms have not been 

 " exterminated " -by the improved ones, but that both live close 

 together in innumerable forms without the slightest tendency to 

 any such imaginary improvement the horse and the ass for 

 instance, Ay, the ass ! How is this ? you say. Yes, how 

 is it? 



I believe, this is my reply, that we must " see no difficulty in 

 believing " anything in fact. My argument, in short, is this, 

 simply this : if my theory be true, it must be so ; but my theory 

 is true, therefore it is so. Professor Sedgwick has, indeed, said 

 that if a theory proves no law, it is " worse than nothing," " it 

 is nothing better than imposture." Professor Sedgwick was a 

 weak-minded man, if he said anything of the kind. I hold the 

 opposite doctrine. That is enough. All's well. 



I believe that " assuredly if this (my) theory be true," an 

 " inconceivably great " number of links must have existed 

 " between all living and extinct species." You say there is no 

 trace of them, and you ask, where are they ? Echo saves me 

 the trouble of a reply, and answers, " Where ?" 



I believe that every animal, bird, plant, &c., are one and all 



striving and " struggling " with and against each other 



" for existence," and that Natural Selection is looking on with 



fell pleasure at the destruction of all the weakest which must go 



to the wall. You say, But do you not see, year after year, the 



E 



