HUTTON — ON THE DIFFICULTIES OF DARWINISM. 
287 
1. It seems that he had only read one-half of my paper when he -vNTote this. 
He has by this time, I hope, found my opinion on it in the second half. 
2. I must 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 know 
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 naturaHsts 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 dijfferent "species, but as of 
difierent genera and even orders, " must, in all probability, have had a common 
origin." 
Mr. Grindley says that, imtil 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 behoved to be true on accoimt 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 Dar%vinian theory, to the best of my knowledge, 
ever said that " the mental and moral powers of man" were developed fi-om the 
instincts of the lower animals. On the contrary, I see many reasons for beheving 
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 aU things. 
The Rev. J. Kenrick, in his essay on Primaeval History, pubKshed 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 
