DARWINISM AND MALTHUS. 231 
speculation with the grand discovery by which Newton bound 
together all parts of the material universe. To call by the name of 
“science” an unverified conjecture—a conjecture negatived by 
experience—is to dishonour science. To speak of an imagination 
as a “fact” is not conducive to our progress in the knowledge of 
facts. 
On p. 224 Darwin tells us that favourable variations (in animals and 
plants) are preserved, and unfavourable are destroyed. What does 
he mean by “favourable” and “unfavourable” in a species with 
regard to the other species into which he supposes it is being trans- 
muted. The result, he says, ‘‘ would be the formation of a new 
species.” What sort of a reasoner is he who thus piles up assump- 
tions ? 
Improve the breed of horses long enough, and at last you will 
get something which is not a horse but another sort of creature— 
shall we say, a gibbon? What led Darwin to write such nonsense ? 
Was it that he possessed an elastic faculty for believing whatever he 
wished to believe? This seems to have led him to first bamboozle 
himself and then to try to bamboozle his readers.* Dr. Irving has 
alluded to Darwin’s misapplication of Malthus’s theory. Henslowy 
also points out that the “ individual differences,” relied on by Darwin, 
can never transmute a species, for they lack hereditary constancy. 
Darwinism has no doubt exercised a considerable influence over 
many minds, but this has been owing not to ability or truth in the 
speculation, but to the fascination of the subject with which it deals. 
‘The author of the paper has, I think, proved his point that the 
speculation is greatly indebted to the principles of Malthus; and 
we shall concur with him as to the immense importance of recogniz- 
ing parental responsibility, and of working with, and not against, 
the laws of nature. 
The SECRETARY said that he was sorry to have to protest once 
again at the spirit of many of the remarks made. He was sorry to 
see that instead of discussing the main point raised by the paper all 
* Huxley says that Darwin’s style of writing is like “a sort of 
intellectual pemmican—a mass of facts crushed and pounded into shape, 
rather than held together by the ordinary medium of an obvious logical 
bond.” 
t Henslow thinks that Darwin was misled through not observing plants 
-and animals in a state of nature. 
Q 
