46 INTRODUCTION. 
Charles Darwin has made a really grand advance beyond his 
predecessors ; although he too, after much ingenious effort, has 
left the most important part of the problem for some successor to 
elucidate; while he has unfortunately mixed up the probably 
sound portion of his doctrine almost inextricably with views which 
cannot be accepted for anything better than crude hypothesis 
unsupported by facts. 
An example may here be permitted, in illustration of the similar 
but crudely unsettled ideas which were afloat before Darwinism 
gave a more precise direction to them. The example is suitable 
for showing in contrast the onward advance made by the ‘ Origin 
of Species... The Author of the Cybele Britannica, im a con- 
troversial pamphlet published so long ago as 1836, intimated his 
own leaning in favour of the transition-of-species theory, as it was 
then designated. That subject, however, was connected only 
indirectly and incidentally with the immediate purpose of the 
pamphlet, and was therefore only slightly alluded to. But he 
introduces here some extracts from the pamphlet, as a record of 
the direction which his own thoughts had taken full thirty years 
ago, at a date when comparatively few naturalists would have 
admitted that species and varieties differ only in degree, and that 
the present species may be the actual descendants of the extinct 
species. Witness the opposite views advocated by Dr. Hooker, a 
score of years later; and still the prevailing views among botanists. 
The extracts must in fairness be read by the rush-lights of thirty 
years ago, not by any luminous lamp of the present time. 
“The facts of geology, explained by the only test which science 
can legitimately apply to them—namely, the causes now in action 
—lead to inferences showing a very different course of events 
prior to the time when man is supposed to have commenced his 
existence. And thus explained, they give some probability that 
the earth has contained within itself the elements of all the 
changes hitherto unfolded to us by geological researches. In the 
present state of scientific knowledge, a philosopher, reasoning 
solely on philosophical grounds, is not entitled to say that the 
productions of our globe were created hy the direct exercise of 
