444 Proceedings. 



law is still in operation, and tliat branches of it, if not the whole, lie within 

 the power of the intellect of man to trace, and therefore it must be man's 

 duty to investigate and discover them.* 



2. He recognizes the facts of natural selection, variation of offspring, the 

 struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest — to a certain extent at all 

 events — as a part of this law ; or, as he prefers to put it, as " accounting for 

 the success and establishment and spread of new forms when they have 

 arisen." 



3. But he opposes the true Darwinian view that the individual variations 

 always occurring are infinite in number and in every direction, and that the 

 fittest survives to the exclusion of the vast majority of other variations as a 

 natural consequence of its fitness ; but he demands in each case the exercise of 

 a special will or creative act in directing the particular variation which is 

 intended to survive, and which then does survive by reason of its having been 

 created more fit for the new conditions surrounding it. 



Now it is not the object of my present discourse to maintain or to dispute 

 the truth of any of the views which I am merely adverting to as occupying 

 attention elsewhere, and as eminently fit to become subject to investigation 

 and discussion here ; but I may fairly quote the strong and, as it appears to 

 me, crushing answer to this last "providential" theory which Mr. Darwin 

 himself has suggested. He asks, " Can it with any probability be maintained 

 that the Creator specially ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the 

 innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants ; — many of these 

 variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far more often 

 injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did He ordain that the crop and tail- 

 feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his 

 grotesque pouter and fantail breeds ^. Did He cause the frame and mental 

 qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomit- 

 able ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin doNvn the bull for man's brutal sport 1 

 But if we give up the principle in one case, — if we do not admit that the 

 variations of the primaeval dog were intentionally guided in order that the 

 greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigour, might be 

 formed, — no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, 

 alike in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have been the 

 groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly 

 adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially 

 guided, "t 



Mr. St. George Mivart's recent book, " The Genesis of Species," is 



* See "The Eeign of Law," pp. 208-212. 



+ "Animals and Plants under Domestication," Vol. II., p. 431; quoted Mivart, 

 p. 293. Also Wallace'.<3 " Natural Selection," p. 290. 



