Species, Race and Darwinism. 93 



about the term as his point of departure; and slip- 

 ping over the momentous bearings of the one defini- 

 tion, " species," on which the whole value of his 

 book, the Origin of Species, must depend, he gives 

 us a momentous book in consequence. The neces- 

 sity of this confusion for the maintenance of his 

 system is so well understood among some followers 

 of his, that, as M. de Quatrefages classifies them in 

 chapter viii of his Unity of the Human Species, 

 some among them cry out, it is useless to go about 

 discovering what species and race are; others com- 

 plain that naturalists have so many definitions of 

 species; others again that people who define species 

 and race, in the accepted way, are running about in 

 a vicious circle of logic; others, that in general 

 there is a want of precision here. All these classes 

 alike feel that, for the purposes of Darwinism, a 

 clear definition of what we are speaking about, 

 when we talk of species, is cutting the ground from 

 under their feet, is an impertinence in their line of 

 science, and leaves the graceful curves of thought 

 and observation, which Mr. Darwin knows how to 

 describe, without any logical origin to start from — 

 a performance usually considered suicidal, and 

 therefore justly eyed with disapproval by them. 

 So a clear definition finds no place with them. 



105. Indeed the point from which the Darwinian 

 series of speculations first took their rise, and since 

 then are 



Wont to roam from shade onward to shade, 



