BUTTON — ON THE DIFFICULTIES OF DARWINISM. 



287 



1. It seems that he had only read one-half of my paper when he wrote this. 

 He has by this time, I hope, found my opinion on it in the second half. 



2. I mnst confess that I do not understand -what Mr. Grindley means by "no 

 specimen in the transition state has ever been found ;" although it cannot be a 

 mistake, for he uses the same words again. 



According to Mr. Darwin's theory, all species are in a transition state. Mr. 

 Grindley cannot have formed very clear ideas on the subject, if he thinks that 

 we ought to find animals of half one species and half another, like mermen or 

 centaurs. If he means connecting links between species, any elementary work 

 on natural history or palaeontology will point out many to him. 



3. I have not the slightest doubt but that Professor Owen is quite right, and 

 that it is a fact that " no hioicn cause of change productive of the varieties of 

 mammalian species could operate in altering the size, the shape, &c, &c. ;" but 

 I do not see how Mr. Grindley obtains from it the conclusion which he implies, 

 viz., that therefore the variations could not have taken place. We do not knovj 

 the causes of many things. Besides, it is not at all necessary to Mr. Darwin's 

 theory to suppose that man has been developed from the gorilla ; on the contrary, 

 as they are recent species, the parent stock of both is most likely extinct. 



4. Mr. Darwin does not pretend to adduce direct evidence of one species 

 changing into another ; although, when we see two forms so different as to have 

 been at first classed by all naturalists as distinct species, and afterwards, on the 

 discovery of connecting links, obliged to be referred to one and the same, I think 

 that we might fairly take that as an instance of one species having passed into 

 another. For even if one of them should not be a lineal descendant of the other, 

 yet, as they are allowed to be of the same species, they must have had a common 

 progenitor, which could not have been like them both. Among species, I need 

 hardly say, instances of this kind are innumerable, and in the case of the forami- 

 nifera, Messrs. Carpenter, Jones, and Parker have been obliged to acknowledge 

 that many forms, previously considered not only as of different species, but as of 

 different genera and even orders, " must, in all probability, have had a common 

 origin." 



Mr. Grindley says that, until direct evidence can be produced, it is no " true 

 physical law," but a " mere dream." I am sorry to have to refer him again to 

 my paper, but, if he will take the trouble to look, he will see that I do not say 

 that it is a true physical law, but that at present it must be considered as a very 

 probable hypothesis. A probable hypothesis only becomes a true theory when 

 the probabilities in its favour amount to certainty ; and it then becomes one even 

 if no direct proof can be given. The first law of motion itself has not been, and 

 cannot be, proved by direct experiment ; yet who disbelieves it ? The theory 

 of the undulation of light, and even the very existence of ether upon which it 

 depends, cannot be proved directly, yet it is believed to be true on account of the 

 immense number of phenomena that it explains ; and, although I do not mean to 

 say that the proof of the transmutation of species is at all equal to the proof of 

 the undulatory theory of light, still it easily explains a great number of 

 phenomena. 



With regard to paragraphs 4, 5, and 6, I am willing to admit that Adam may 

 have been " a noble specimen of man, and Eve a soft Circassian beauty," though 

 I do not know that "the Scriptures of Truth" anywhere " assert" this ; but I am 

 sorry to see Mr. Grindley wasting the best and most eloquent parts of his letter 

 on shadows. No advocate of the Darwinian theory, to the best of my knowledge, 

 ever said that " the mental and moral powers of man" were developed from the 

 instincts of the lower animals. On the contrary, I see many reasons for believing 

 that, when the time was come that man was fitted to receive them, they were 

 given him by a special interposition of the same power that created all things. 

 The Eev. J. Kenrick, in his essay on Primaeval History, published in 1846, has 

 remarked that " it is impossible to define the time which he (man) occupied in 

 advancing from his primaeval condition to that in which he appears at the com- 

 mencement of history ;" and we must remember that it is the mental qualifi- 

 cations of man, and not the physical strength of his body, which gives him 



