Chap. XIV. 
CONCLUSION. 
481 
the several large classes of facts above specified. I see 
no good reason why the views given in this volume 
should shock the religious feelings of any one. A cele¬ 
brated author and divine has written to me that he 
has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a 
conception of the Deity to believe that He created a 
few original forms capable of self-development into 
other and needful forms, as to believe that He required 
a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the 
action of His laws.” 
Why, it may be asked, have all the most eminent 
living naturalists and geologists rejected this view of 
the mutability of species ? It cannot be asserted that 
organic beings in a state of nature are subject to 
no variation; it cannot be proved that the amount 
of variation in the course of long ages is a limited 
quantity; no clear distinction has been, or can be, 
drawn between species and well-marked varieties. It 
cannot be maintained that species when intercrossed 
are invariably sterile, and varieties invariably fertile; 
or that sterility is a special endowment and sign of 
creation. The belief that species were immutable pro¬ 
ductions was almost unavoidable as long as the history 
of the world was thought to be of short duration; and 
now that we have acquired some idea of the lapse of 
time, we are too apt to assume, without proof, that the 
geological record is so perfect that it would have 
afforded us plain evidence of the mutation of species, 
if they had undergone mutation. 
But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to 
admit that one species has given birth to other and 
distinct species, is that we are always slow in admitting 
any great change of which we do not see the interme¬ 
diate steps. The difficulty is the same as that felt by 
so many geologists, when Lyell first insisted that long 
y 
