32 DARWIN'S THEORY. 



which life was first breathed,'' and its descendants, 

 have been gradually and variously developed, and differ- 

 entiated, through all intervening species, into the mon- 

 key, and thence, by an easy transition, into Man ! 



The above is a fair statement of Darwin's theory. 

 Condensed, it may be thus stated: Variations, or 

 improvements, or slight, successive advances from sim- 

 plicity to greater complexity of structure, have, owing to 

 an " innate tendency to vary," occurred with animals 

 and plants, under domestication. Similar, inexplicable 

 modifications may have occurred (and some warrant 

 for this assumption is furnished) with animals and 

 plants, in the state of nature. Under domestication, 

 Man's Selection has so accumulated, and directed these 

 variations or improvements, that, at the same rate of 

 progression from simplicity to complexity of structure, 

 the higher species may continue to improve indefi- 

 nitely, and each of the lower species may continue to 

 improve into other species, genera, families and orders, 

 as high as the highest in the existing scale of develop- 

 ment. By analogy with domestication, the same pro- 

 gression, or evolution, may be 'said to have occurred 

 in the past under nature; and it is possible, if not 

 probable, that man, and all other animals, have evolved, 

 by means of these inexplicable variations, and with the 

 aid of the process of Natural Selection, from the low- 

 est type of organic structure. 



There is — dove-tailed within this theory of the evo- 

 lution of the species — another theory with which 

 Darwin supplements his main argument. It is, that, 

 besides an advance in development, by means of the 



