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should be the case under Mr Darwin’s theory were it true in fact.* 
Centaurs and mermaids, nay, even dryads, would cease to be im- 
possible fables, and the beauty of creation would be lost in one 
undistinguishable chaos. To guard against this, and to preserve 
species from extinction by confusion, as well from extinction by 
death, nature has furnished species with another attribute as a 
counterpoise to the facility of modification and variation, and 
that is the tendency to reversion to type. This is seen working in 
two ways ; the one in the reappearance of typical forms or pecu- 
liarities after having been absent for one or more generations. 
We see it well in our own race, where a parent’s face and talents, 
lost in the child, reappear in the grandchild — where even here- 
ditary diseases show themselves after the intermission of a genera- 
tion or two. This phase of reversion to type is slightly alluded 
to, and slightingly admitted as an element by Darwin. But the 
second, and, as it appears to me, by much the most important phase 
of reversion to type (and which is practically, if not altogether 
ignored by Mr Darwin), is the instinctive inclination which in- 
duces individuals of the same species by preference to intercross 
with those possessing the qualities which they themselves want, so 
as to preserve the purity or equilibrium of the breed. I again 
refer to our own race for an apt example. It is trite to a proverb, 
that tall men marry little women, tall women little men ; a man of 
genius marries a fool, a great beauty the ugliest man she can find ; 
and we are told that this is the result of the charm of contrast, or of 
qualities admired in others because we ourselves do not possess 
them. I do not so explain it. I imagine it is the effort of nature 
to preserve the typical medium of the race. Did a different feeling 
prevail, we should have our species broken up into giants and dwarfs, 
Newtons and idiots, Yenuses or Apollos and satyrs, Sampsons 
and weaklings ; or, if we should adopt Darwin’s notions, the dwarfs, 
weaklings, and idiots, would all be extirpated by the predominancy 
of the stronger varieties. Now we know that this is not the case; 
* One of Mr Darwin’s explanations of the absence of intermediate forms 
may be taken as his answer to this objection — viz., that these forms are, in 
point of fact, numerically weaker than the forms on each side which they link 
together, and thus are liable to be exterminated sooner than them. But, ad- 
mitting the fact to be that they are less numerous, why should they be so 
under Mr Darwin’s theory ? With unlimited powers of modification, why 
should the intermediate forms always be originally fewer. 
VOL. IV. 2 P 
