70 



I have floundered so long and deeply myself that I have little 

 doubt that this well-known and useful fish was my own direct 

 ancestor, that I came, down, or up, from it, for to all practical 

 intents and purposes it is a distinction without a difference which 

 way it was, and it all comes to one and the same thing-, in the 

 " sequence of events ;" as natural as possible, you see. 



I believe that advantages secured to any creature by Natural 

 Selection are secured to it for ever, though never so small and 

 infinitesimal as they may be at the time. I believe this, though 

 I see before me every day much greater advantages gained to 

 men by habit and practice, such as the most astonishing gift of 

 touch to the blind, and yet that these are never inherited by 

 their descendants, but end with those to whom they have thus 

 been of temporary use. In like manner, I see some men gifted 

 with the advantage of great strength, others with that of great 

 beauty, and so on, but none of them transmitted in specific form 

 in perpetuity to those who come after them. No doubt it is so, 

 but theory before fact, any day, for me. Each has its quid pro quo. 



I believe, for one of my brother philosophers has said so, that 

 by the " use of the Imagination," we may yet see it to be possible 

 that two and two might make five. You say that the laws of 

 arithmetic are against me. May be so, but I am against the 

 laws of arithmetic. It's all very well for a Duke to write a book 

 about the " Reign of Law," but I have a ready answer in Latin 

 for him "forte dux f el flat in guttur" 



I believe in 'all I have said about the eye and its forming, 

 itself from darkness to light to suit my " Evolution Craze," as you 

 call it. You tell me that the Rev. C. Pritchard, President of the 

 Astronomical Society, has said that to be able to compute the 

 causes and distances of its refracting surfaces, and to assign the 

 proper law of density for the several layers in their proper place, 

 would require the application of a mathematical analysis, such as 

 was never yet possessed by a human geometrician very well. 

 You go on to say that he states that the mechanism required for 

 the instantaneous change of the fopns and distances, and in one 

 instance the magnitude of its component parts, would require a 

 handicraft such as never yet has been possessed by a human 



