6 PUBLICATION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1859. 



all, I am sure, you will understand that I thus write dogmati- 

 cally for brevity sake. 



On the continued Creation of Monads. — This doctrine is 

 superfluous (and groundless) on the theory of Natural Selec- 

 tion, which implies no necessary tendency to progression. A 

 monad, if no deviation in its structure profitable to it under 

 its excessively simple conditions of life occurred, might remain 

 unaltered from long before the Silurian Age to the present 

 day. I grant there will generally be a tendency to advance 

 in complexity of organisation, though in beings fitted for very 

 simple conditions it would be slight and slow. How could a 

 complex organisation profit a monad ? if it did not profit it 

 there would be no advance. The Secondary Infusoria differ 

 but little from the living. The parent monad form might 

 perfectly well survive unaltered and fitted for its simple con- 

 ditions, whilst the offspring of this very monad might become 

 fitted for more complex conditions. The one primordial 

 prototype of all living and extinct creatures may, it is possi- 

 ble, be now alive ! Moreover, as you say, higher forms might 

 be occasionally degraded, the snake Typhlops seems (? !) to 

 have the habits of earth-worms. So that fresh creatures of 

 simple forms seem to me wholly superfluous. 



" Must you not assume a primeval creative power which does 

 not act with uniformity, or how could man supervene ? " — I am 

 not sure that I understand your remarks which follow the 

 above. We must under present knowledge assume the crea- 

 tion of one or of a few forms in the same manner as philo- 

 sophers assume the existence of a power of attraction without 

 any explanation. But I entirely reject, as in my judgment 

 quite unnecessary, any subsequent addition " of new powers 

 and attributes and forces ; " or of any " principle of improve- 

 ment," except in so far as every character which is naturally 

 selected or preserved is in some way an advantage or improve- 

 ment, otherwise it would not have been selected. If I were 

 convinced that I required such additions to the theory of 

 natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish, but I have firm 

 faith in it, as I cannot believe, that if false, it would explain 



