1884.] 
An Exegesis of Darwinism. 727 
adlion of changing conditions upon the parents, but more 
especially remoter ancestors, of the varying individual 
(v- 15 )- 
1. “ It is immaterial whether or not it be accepted ” that 
“ some one primordial form ” or several forms commenced 
the career of life upon this earth. — (“ Origin of Species,” * 
p. 425). Analogy, which “ may be a deceitful guide ” (p. 424), 
and Maupertuis’s axiom of least adtion (p. 423, i. , 13) favour 
the former view. Mr Darwin “ believes that animals are 
descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and 
plants from an equal or lesser number ” (p. 424), though 
“ he does not wish to lay much stress upon the greater sim- 
plicity of the view of a few forms or of one form only having 
been originally created, instead of innumerable miraculous 
creations having been necessary at innumerable periods ” 
(i., 12). 
2. It was not that each geological epoch was honoured by 
the vivification of a prototype ; the several prototypes were 
“ some few beings which lived long before the first bed of 
the Cambrian system was deposited ” (p. 428). 
3. “ A cabbage may have been the parent plant, a fish the 
parent animal — it may have been a whale,” remarked the 
“Athenaeum and I once read that in Church Congress a 
Fellow of the Royal Society had solemnly urged the claims 
of the elephant. And, indeed, what more natural supposi- 
tion than that Mr. Darwin assumed a plurality of prototypes 
to account for the wider differences between the several sub- 
kingdoms ? It appears, however, that they were unicellular- 
organisms, for firstly, in the same paragraph in which he 
contends for the evolution of “ each great kingdom, such as 
the Vertebrata, Articulata, &c.,” on embryological (and 
other) grounds, he remarks that “ all organisms start from 
a common origin ; . . . the germinal vesicle is the same ” 
(p. 425) : secondly, enquiring how could differentiation suc- 
ceed the dawn of life, he says, “ Mr. Herbert Spencer would 
probably answer that as soon as simple unicellar organism 
came by growth and division to be compounded of several 
cells,” &c. (p. 100) ; the implication being that Mr. Darwin 
himself starts with simple unicellar organism : thirdly, if 
the Foraminifera “ could be proved to have come into ex- 
istence during the Laurentian epoch ” the circumstance 
would be fatal to “ my view ” (p. 308). Why then did Mr. 
* Sixth Edition, with Additions and Corrections to 1872. The title will be 
omitted in subsequent references. Pages preceded by the numerals i. or ii. 
refer to the first or second volume of the “Variation of Animals and Plants 
under Domestication,” Second Edition, revised, 1875. 
