18 DARWIN'S THEORY. 



made such an analysis ; but that he has gratuitously 

 assumed a view, the sole warrant of which, is, he 

 urges, that there is no reasonable, opposing view. He 

 candidly admits that he has made no scientific induc- 

 tion from the facts. He contents himself with the fact 

 alone that these improvements do arise. Conscious, 

 that such a treatment of this subject, at the very incep- 

 tion of his problem, is practically to limit all inquiry 

 at the point where the principles of the inductive phil- 

 .osoghy especially require an analysis, he concedes rhat 

 there must be a law governing them, but that it is 

 seemingly inscrutable ; and, all that he can say, on the 

 subject, is, that the reason animals and plants vary, or 

 improve, is because they are possessed of " an innate 

 tendency to vary," or because of a " spontaneous vari- 

 ability!" though this, he admits, "is wholly incorrect, 

 and only serves to show our ignorance of the cause of 

 each particular variation." 



In science, in law, in the every day affairs of life, it 

 is fair to presume that, in the absence of all evidence, 

 or other presumption to the contrary, anything which 

 occurs regularly, or at frequent intervals, will ever con- 

 tinue so to recur. This presumption is a valid one, 

 always, if all the preceding points in the problem, of 

 which this presumption enters as an element, have been 

 resolved. If, however, there be an hiatus in the chain of 

 reasoning, anterior to the employment of this presump- 

 tion that things will ever continue as they have been, 

 the presumption is manifestly invalid. In Darwin's 

 problem, he would be fairly entitled to the presump- 

 tion, that, as variations have ever been occurring, under 



