96 PROFESSOR OWEN ch. Hi. 



a word I would wish to keep back. The second 

 publication was in consequence of a complaint to 

 the editor of some glaring misprints — e.g. your 

 name being put for that of Oken, &c, &c. I never 

 asserted that creation (or the appearance of a new 

 or modified fauna) was not by law. But by what 

 law ? Not, I may say, of natural transmutation — 

 not by turning fishes into reptiles, whales into 

 pachyderms, or monkeys into men, in the way 

 of natural generation, but by a higher law, of 

 which we may reach the conception hereafter, 

 as you have reached the conception of an 

 archetypal form. But that conception does not 

 mutilate (it rather magnifies and consolidates) our 

 conceptions of final causes and of a Creator. Our 

 conception of law is, in most cases, only a concep- 

 tion of a certain definite succession of phenomena ; 

 but in every case there lurks behind the word 

 law a conception of a higher kind — of an ordinary 

 and sustaining power exterior to the phenomena 

 themselves. But I have no time, or head, now 

 for such discussion. Do you know who was the 

 author of the article in the " Edinburgh " on the 

 subject of Darwin's theory ? On the whole, I 

 think it very good. I once suspected that you 

 must have had a hand in it, and I then abandoned 

 that thought. I have not read it with any care. I 

 must conclude or miss the post. 



' Yours ever, 



1 A. Sedgwick.' 



