54 8 



ON THE RECEPTION OF 



exist, becoming the only occupants of the globe. And the 

 dilemma then presents itself to us anew : — either we must 

 accept the doctrine of the transmutation of species, and must 

 suppose that the organized species of one geological epoch 

 were transmuted into those of another by some long-con- 

 tinued agency of natural causes ; or else, we must believe in 

 many successive acts of creation and extinction of species, 

 out of the common course of nature ; acts which, therefore, 

 we may properly call miraculous." * 



Dr. Whewell decides in favour of the latter conclusion. 

 And if any one had plied him with the four questions which 

 he puts to Lyell in the passage already cited, all that can be 

 said now is that he would certainly have rejected the first. 

 But would he really have had the courage to say that a 

 Rhinoceros tichorhinus, for instance, " was produced without 

 parents ; " or was " evolved from some embryo substance ; " 

 or that it suddenly started from the ground like Milton's lion 

 "pawing to get free his hinder parts." I permit myself to 

 doubt whether even the Master of Trinity's well-tried courage 

 — physical, intellectual, and moral — would have been equal to 

 this feat. No doubt the sudden concurrence of half-a-ton of 

 inorganic molecules into a live rhinoceros is conceivable, and 

 therefore may be possible. But does such an event lie suffi- 

 ciently within the bounds of probability to justify the belief 

 in its occurrence on the strength of any attainable, or, indeed, 

 imaginable, evidence ? 



In view of the assertion (often repeated in the early days 

 of the opposition to Darwin) that he had added nothing to 

 Lamarck, it is very interesting to observe that the possibility 

 of a fifth alternative, in addition to the four he has stated, has 

 not dawned upon Dr. Whewell's mind. The suggestion that 

 new species may result from the selective action of external 

 conditions upon the variations from their specific type which 

 individuals present — and which we call "spontaneous," be- 



* Whewell's ' History of the Inductive Sciences.' Ed. ii., 1847, vol. iii. 

 pp. 624-625. See for the author's verdict, pp. 638-39. 



