444 Darwin, and after Darwin. 
and come down to us, except those which were thus suited to their 
place on the earth. This is true; but it does not at all remove the 
necessity of recurring to design as the origin of the construction by 
which the existence and continuance of plants is made possible. A 
watch could not go unless there were the most exact adjustment in 
the forms and positions of its wheels; yet no one would accept it as 
an explanation of the origin of such forms and positions that the watch 
would not go if these were other than they were. If the objector were 
to suppose that plants were originally fitted to years of various lengths, 
and that such only have survived to the present time as had a cycle 
of a length equal to our present year, or one which could be accom- 
modated to it, we should reply that the assumption is too gratuitous 
and extravagant to require much consideration.” 
Again, with regard to ‘‘the diurnal period,’ he adds :— 
‘* Any supposition that the astronomical cycle has occasioned the 
physiological one, that the structure of plants has been brought to be 
what it is by the action of external causes, or that such plants as 
could not accommodate themselves to the existing day have perished, 
would be not only an arbitrary and baseless assumption, but, more- 
over, useless for the purposes of explanation which it professes, as 
we have noticed of a similar supposition with respect to the annual 
cycle.” 
Of course these passages in no way make against Mr. Huxley’s 
allusions to Dr. Whewell's writings in proof that, until the publi- 
cation of the Origin of Species, the “‘ main theorem ” of this work had 
not dawned on any other mind, save that of Mr. Wallace. But 
these passages show, even more emphatically than total silence with 
regard to the principle of survival could have done, the real distance 
which at that time separated the minds of thinking men from all that 
was wrapped up in this principle. For they show that Dr. Whewell, 
even after he had obtained a glimpse of the principle ‘as a logical 
possibility,” only saw in it an “arbitrary and baseless assumption.” 
Moreover, the passages show a remarkable juxtaposition of the very 
terms in which the theory of natural selection was afterwards for- 
mulated. Indeed, if we strike out the one word “ intentional” 
(which conveys the preconceived idea of the writer, and thus 
prevented him from doing justice to any naturalistic view), all the 
following parts of the above quotations might be supposed to have 
been written by a Darwinian. ‘If not by chance, how otherwise 
could such a coincidence occur, than by an adjustment of these two 
things to one another; by a selection of such an organization in 
plants as would fi¢ them to the earth on which they were to grow; 
by an adaptation of construction to conditions; of the scale of con- 
struction to the scale of conditions?” Yet he immediately goes on to 
