MR. DARWIN ON NATURAL SELECTION. 17 1 



" With regard to the conception as now put forward 

 by Mr. Darwin, I cannot truly characterize it but by 

 an epithet which I employ only with much reluctance. 

 I weigh my words and have present to my mind the 

 many distinguished naturalists who have accepted the 

 notion, and yet I cannot hesitate to call it a '^wmfo 

 hypothesis' " * 



I am afraid I cannot go with Professor Mivart farther 

 than this point, though I have a strong feeling as though 

 his conclusion is true, that " the material universe is 

 always and everywhere sustained and directed by an in- 

 finite cause, for which to us the word mind is the least 

 inadequate and misleading symbol." But I feel that 

 any attempt to deal with such a question is going far 

 beyond that sphere in which man's powers may be at 

 present employed with advantage: I trust, therefore, 

 that I may never try to verify it, and am indifferent 

 whether it is correct or not. 



Again, I should probably differ from Professor 

 Mivart in finding this mind inseparable from the 

 material universe in which we live and move. So that 

 I could neither conceive of such a mind influencing 

 and directing the universe from a point as it were out- 

 side the universe itself, nor yet of a universe as existing 

 without there being present — or having been present; — 

 in its every particle something for which mind should 

 be the least inadequate and misleading symbol. But 

 the subject is far beyond me. 



As regards Professor Mivart's denunciations of 



• ' Lessons from Nature,' p. 300. 



2 B 2 



