Notices of New Books. 7611 



in tlie progressive element, first advancing, then declining and be- 

 coming extinguished ; these fluctuations, being dependant on a variety 

 of qualities unconnected with intellect in its highest sense, deny the 

 means of its hereditary accumulation for the collective advancement 

 of the human race : even admitting the abstract theory of advancement, 

 there would be a number of qualities at work competing for the Une of 

 progression ; those benefitting man as an animal, in his sensual 

 prosperity and power of existence and reproduction, would probably 

 compete with and cancel the line of mere intellectual advancement; 

 for, beyond a certain point, we know that the two are not correlated, 

 and that in the ordinary economy of life a man of medium intellectual 

 power is just as successful, accumulates just as much money, and 

 leaves behind him as many children to populate the world, as the most 

 brilliant genius. 



God has ordained certain proportions of the social scale as essential 

 to the well-being of a community, and whenever that proportion is un- 

 balanced (as it soon would be on Mr. Darwin s theory of intellectual 

 advancement) we see its eflFects in the decay and ultimate obhteration 

 of nations. 



The fresh conviction we have received from the perusal of ' The 

 Origin of Species ' is that there is a measure of truth in Mr. Darwin's 

 deductions, that genealogical relationship between species is here and 

 there true to a limited extent, — just to that extent to which naturalists 

 are puzzled in discriminating forms which rank below what are 

 universally acknowledged as good species. 



The great bulk of varieties have so obviously an affinity for certain 

 species that we instinctively acknowledge their genealogical relation- 

 ship, and the great bulk "of species have such strong individual 

 characters that we are impressed with the opposite conviction con- 

 cerning them ; that here and there there are doubtful forms that are 

 difficult to decide upon must be readily admitted, but the proportion 

 of these doubtful forms is so infinitely small that it at once denies our 

 using them as the means by which to graduate the identity of species 

 with varieties ; for if specific differences and the differences separating 

 varieties were only in measure we certainly should find a regular 

 gradation between the kinds of differences separating individual 

 varieties and the kinds of differences separating individual species, or 

 at all events a fair proportion of the forms of intermediate degree. 



