vin OBJECTIONS TO DERIVATIVE HYPOTHESIS 109 



The first, taking its leading idea from the title of Mr. 

 Darwin's book, is that it is unprofitable work to trouble 

 ourselves about the origin of species, or, indeed, of anything 

 else. These events of the very remote past, it is said, are 

 quite beyond our ken ; we really can never know anything 

 certain about them, and had far better occupy ourselves with 

 things of the present things which we can really hope to 

 know much about. 



The other, akin to this, has lately been put forth on high 

 authority. Let the " derivative hypothesis " be granted, the 

 studies of the zoologist are not thereby in any way affected. 

 " For all intents and purposes of the descriptive and recording 

 naturalist," it is said, " species are constant ; they will last 

 our time. When the existing binomial units of botanical 

 and zoological specific lists cease to show their present dis- 

 tinctive characters, the homo sapiens of Linnaeus will have 

 merged into another, probably a higher specific form." * 



As I have said, both these objections are founded on an 

 entire misconception of the main question at issue. If the 

 developmental theory as held by Darwin, Wallace, and their 

 followers is true, the origin of species is as much a thing 

 of the present as of the past. It is an essential part of the 

 theory that the laws which have produced the diversity of 

 organic forms in the world are those by which the world not 

 only has been, but is governed. They are as constant, ever- 

 acting, and unchanging as the laws which direct the move- 

 ments of the clouds or cause the torrents to flow down from 

 the mountain side) There is no proof whatever that the laws 

 of variation and natural selection, if such be the laws which 

 lead to the introduction of new forms and the extinction of 

 old ones, were ever more potent than they are at present. 

 A large class of the arguments by which the theory is 

 supported is derived from observation upon the present 

 phenomena of life. According to the hypothesis, transitional 

 forms and incipient species are to be met with everywhere 

 around us. It is this, in fact, which has given rise to the 

 difficulty zoologists and botanists always meet with in defining 

 the limits of the various so-called species composing so many 



1 Owen on the "Aye-Aye." Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. v. p. 92. 



