SIXTH day's sitting, 137 



and also " unknown agencies," as playing an important part 

 in the production of the changes for which he formerly 

 maintained that Natural Selection alone was sufficient to 

 account. Thus, as Mr. Darwin's knowledge of the world 

 of animated nature increases, so does his consciousness of 

 ignorance as to the powers and processes working in con- 

 nection with it. He finds life to be a greater mystery than 

 ever. After the researches of a lifetime, he finds it obsti- 

 nately refusing to reveal itself to him, and ever retreating 

 farther and farther from his gaze. And thus he comes to 

 learn, what all his predecessors have learned, and what, 

 most probably, his contemporaries also will have to learn — 

 that there are powers and agencies at work in connection 

 with life which baffle the keenest pursuit, and that there 

 is something in " the nature and constitution " of every 

 living creature which we cannot comprehend. The acknow- 

 ledged mystery which thus veils life, in its nature and origin, 

 from human research, should induce modesty in those 

 whose studies lead them to consider it, and restrain 

 them from the formation of rash and vain hypotheses. 



Taking Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, however, as it is now 

 presented to us, it is confessedly destitute of anything like 

 proof. Professor Huxley, with assuredly no bias against 

 it, yet admits that he can point to no " group of animals, 

 having all the characters exhibited by species in nature, 

 that has ever been originated by Selection, whether natural 

 or artificial ;" and Mr. Darwin himself can give us no facts 

 that prove even the possibility of the evolution for whi.h 

 ,he contends. History and the experience of living men 

 are equally appealed to in vain for help on this subject. 

 Yet, if this process of " Selection " be one which, as Mr. 

 Darwin contends, is ever going on in nature, it might reason- 

 ably be expected that some unmigtakeable phenomena in 



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