UC-NRLF 
 
 K-QH 
 
 ID 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
 IfllTIi i 
 
WHICH STRAIN AT A GNAT AND SWALLOW A CAMEL." 
 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES." Darwin. 
 
 ALL THE 
 
 ARTICLES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 BY THE REV. 
 
 F. 0. MOKRIS, B.A., 
 
 Author of 
 
 A History of British Birds," 
 dedicated by permission 
 
 Ridiculum acri fortius ac meliu* 
 
 BIPED. 
 
 DARWIN 
 FAITH. 
 
 Rector of 
 
 Nuuburnholtne, 
 
 Yorkshire. 
 
 to her moat gracious 
 
 Majesty the Queen, 
 
 etc., etc. 
 
 plerumque secat res" 
 
 HOBACtt. 
 
 PRICE 
 
 ONE ^ SHILLING. 
 
 Ib 
 
 " DIFFERENTIATED INTO MAN." --Tyndall. 
 EEDOUBLED EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM POOLE, 12, PATEBNOSTEB BOW, E.G. 
 
 1877. 
 
DEDICATE D 
 
 BY PERMISSION 
 
 TO THE R I G II T II X 1 T R A B L E 
 
 THE COMMON SENSE 
 
 THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAX1) 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 HAVE much pleasuro in giving tho following PEDIGREE AND COAT 
 
 OF ARMS OF THE DARWINIAN FAMILY. 
 
 The antiquity of this very ancient race is beyond dispute, its 
 genealogy having been famished by the present head of the family him- 
 self, so that its authenticity and its genuineness are both alike 
 established. 
 
 It traces its origin to an ancestor who lived, or vegetated, it is not 
 quite certain which, billions upon billions of years before the " year one " 
 of our records. It is briefly given, as above stated, on pages 10 and 11 
 of the present work, from which it is clearly shown that neither families 
 of Norman, or Saton, or even, before them, of Ancient British origin, 
 are fit to be named in the same day with it for precedence. 
 
 It is also extremely interesting to notice that a coat of arms was 
 borne by the first man so, though not quite correctly, strictly 
 speaking, to call him though it appears that he wore .no other clothes 
 of any kind. 
 
 Of still more importance is it to note that all the doubts which 
 have heretofore existed as to the origin of language, are hereby and for 
 ever set at rest. 
 
 For though it is, indeed, true that in our times mottoes may be 
 changed at pleasure, while shields and crests can not, yet it need not 
 for a moment be supposed that such was the case in that early period 
 whereunto no record or " memory of man runneth." 
 
 Hence, "I believe." "we may believe," "I cannot doubt," "I can 
 indeed hardly doubt," by the " use of Imagination,'' or, in other 
 words, it is certain, that both Latin and English were, in common 
 parlance, the speech of the great ancestor of the Darwinian race. 
 
 BLAZON OF THE COAT OF ABM^ OF THE DARWINIAN FAMILY: 
 
 Tarty per pale, quarterly, first and fourth, azure (-'the infinite azure 
 of the past"), a demi-semi-savage, sable, standing on vacancy, decorated 
 with tho Order of the Garter on the right knee, and with a long tail curled 
 up; over it a scroll with the legend,"! could a' tale unfold," and the 
 motto, ' Noil tali auxilio" Second and third, a mermaid, vert, in full 
 ball costume, crined, hair dressed a la Eugenie, -and wreathed with an 
 embroidered sash or girdle marked with the morels, " Dcsinit in piscem 
 mulier formosa sup erne." 
 
 On an escutcheon of pretence, per bend, gules and . argent, inter- 
 changed, a Philosopher, in Purls Natitralibus Selectissimis, standing on the 
 air, in nubibus, gorged with a bar sinister, and holding in both his hands 
 a library of lectures, intituled, " Da omnibus rebus c.t quibutdiin a///'.---." 
 
 Crest, a monkey rising out of a monad, all improper, within a halo 
 of moonshine. 
 
 Supporters, dexter, a bear naiant, argent, tusked and langued, ' with 
 hre mouth open catching flies" (Darwin), "very like a whale" (ditto). 
 Sinister, a ^ivat't'c. rampant reguardant, gules, the tail nowhere, but in 
 placo of it the legend, Non cst inreiitus, and over the head a .swarm of 
 Tzctze flics. 
 
 Mottoes: Above the arms, Qni vult decipi dccipiatur ; beneath the 
 arms, S-ic volo, stet pro ration e -coluntas ; under the crest, "Homo sum ;" 
 above the crest, "Am I not a man and a brother?" 
 
 With these few prefatory remarks I leave the following " Confession 
 of Faith'' of the present representative of the " Origin " of mankind, to 
 commend itself, as best it may, to the common sense of the people of 
 England, well assured and confident that they will thoroughly appreciate 
 the great value of Darwinism to immortal men. 
 
 M375JL45 
 
'' The old questions whence men come and whither they go, and \vhat 
 is the end of all their labour, still perplex philosophers and trouble the 
 simple. The anxieties of the human soul force their way even through 
 French logic into the midst of the Positive Philosophy. As long as such 
 questions are asked, so long will there be an ear for an answer." 
 
 TIMES, October, 1809. 
 
 " The highest intellect which issues in no certainty has completely 
 failed." THOMAS CARLYLE, 18(59. 
 
 " Every few years some reformer or another has sprung up .... 
 and all past as well as all present experience further shows, that the 
 greater the degree of dogmatism and effrontery with which any such 
 pretender proclaims his doctrine, the greater in all probability will be 
 his success in gaining patrons amongst the credulous public." 
 
 SIR J. Y. SIMPSON, BAET., M.D. 
 
" O ye fools, when will ye understand! He that made the 
 
 EYE; shall He not see!" Psalm xciv. 8, 9. 
 
 ALL THE 
 ARTICLES OF THE DARWIN FAITH. 
 
 CREDO QUIA IMTOSSIRILE EST. 
 
 IB ELI EVE that we are the people, and that wisdom shall die 
 with us. 
 
 I believe, I am ready to believe, anything- like the Infidel of old 
 provided only it is not in the Bible. 
 
 I believe that my theory of natural selection is right, and that 
 every one who does not hold it is in the wrong 1 , although the difficulties 
 " are so grave, that to this day I can never reflect 011 them without 
 being- staggered." (Dtinc'ui.} 
 
 I believe that man, and all the animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, and 
 insects in the world have descended from one single original, and not 
 any of these from ancestors of their own kinds ; that the gnat and t'ie 
 elephant, the cat and the mouse, the bat and the butterfly, the whale 
 and the ant, the toad and the swallow, the hare and the tortoise, the 
 croco lile and the lamb, the humming-bird and the snake, the mole and 
 the monkey, and then the man, are all one species and only one. 
 
 I believe this, although I see that while animals of the several 
 species described by naturalists breed solely together, and that their off- 
 spring are prolific, in like manner, generation after generation, any 
 others which may exceptionally breed together have no progeny, except 
 in very rare cases, and that any they may have leave no descendants, 
 except still more rarely for perhaps one further generation or so. 
 
 I believe that all the various creatures on the earth have sprung 
 from a single parent, although I hold that each new species has "sup- 
 planted and c.i-tcrniinated its original parent and all the trtinsiliomil 
 rarirfir* between its past and present status." (D/t-i'H'itt.) 
 
 I believe that the drooping of the ears in domestic animals is due 
 to the disuse of the muscles of the ear, from the animals not being 
 much alarmed by danger, althou >h I see the horse with erect ears, 
 and the hare and the rabbit with strikingly drooping ears. 
 
 I believe that the temporary variation of several races of any one 
 species of plant is a proof that permanent so-called species are thus 
 produced, although I see that the varieties if left for many generations 
 in a poor soil would to a large extent by degrees, and in the end 
 wholly, revert to the form of the wild aboriginal stock. 
 
 I believe that I am using an able and sensible argument in 
 saying that the mistletoe may metaphorically be said to struggle with 
 other fruit-bearing plants in order to tempt birds to devour and thus 
 disseminate its seeds rather than those of other plants. 
 
I believe that the eye of every living creature was produced by 
 natural selection, although in some species it consists of 4,000 lenses, 
 in others 12,000, 17,000, or 25,000, and in others of various other vast 
 numbers. 
 
 I believe that my theory is right, although I allow that according 
 to it " all nature" ought to be " in confusion" instead of the species 
 being, as we see them, " well denned." (Darwin.} 
 
 I believe " there seems to me no great difficulty in believing" 
 (Ddrichi) that the swim-bladder in fishes "though originally constructed 
 for one purpose," has been " actually converted" " into a lung or organ 
 used exclusively for respiration." 
 
 I believe that the " electric organs of fishes" have been produced 
 by " natural selection," although it is " impossible to conceive by what 
 steps those wondrous organs have been produced." I believe this, 
 although these organs only occur in species "widely remote in their 
 affinities," while we " might have expected " (on Darwinian grounds), 
 that they would all -'have been specifically related to each other." I 
 believe the same in the like cases of luminous insects. 
 
 I believe that the most simple parts of species are due to natural 
 selection, although I see that their "importance does not seem suffi- 
 cient to cause the preservation of successively varying individuals. 1 ' 
 
 I believe that the tail of the giraffe has grown by degrees into a 
 "fly-flapper" (!), although I cannot explain how the species did with- 
 out it in previous countless ages before it grew to its present length, 
 when, no doubt, there were just as many flies in those hot countries, if 
 not more, than there are now. 
 
 I believe that every "well-developed tail'' in a water animal has 
 been ' ; worked in " as a ;< fly-flapper" for land animals, or as a " prehensile 
 instrument," or to " help them in turning ;" although I see that in the 
 dog it is of next to no such use at all, and that the hare can double 
 quickly enough, though with hardly any tail. 
 
 I believe that long tails are necessary to animals in hot countries 
 to give them the " power of resisting the attacks of insects," although 
 I see that sheep have heavy tails which they cannot and do not 
 make use of for any such purpose, and are especially attacked by flies on 
 their heads, which, if their tails were ever so light they could not 
 possibly reach. 
 
 I believe that as I hold that the swim-bladder in creatures of the 
 sea is modified into lungs in their descendants changed into land 
 animals -the tail, having been so useful to the former as a means of 
 locomotion, still proves its origin in the latter, though of so little use 
 to them. 
 
 I believe that the green colour of the green woodpecker is due to 
 selection by the male or female bird, because I see that there are black 
 and pied woodpeckers also. 
 
 I believe that it is not the case that many structures have been 
 created for beauty in the eyes of man. or for mere variety, although I 
 ' fully admit that many structures are of no direct use to their 
 possessors." 
 
 I believe that there is "110 logical impossibility in the acquire- 
 ment of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selec- 
 tion," although I must admit that the case of the eye is "more than 
 enough to stagger any man." 
 
 I believe that the Imerican ostrich "is not yet perfect," although 
 I can give no proof whatever that it is in the process of becoming 
 so. 
 
 I believe that the " most wonderful of all known instincts," that 
 of the hive bee, can be explained by rne, as a Darwinite, and the 
 
illogical way in which it has been attempted to be accounted for in 
 the work on "The Origin of Species" I believe to be a master-piece of 
 reasoning, though nine out of ten of its facts prove nothing whatever 
 by way of conclusion for it. 
 
 I believe the same in the case of the working or sterile ants, 
 though "how the workers have been made sterile is a difficulty ;" that 
 is to say, in itself, but none whatever to my more " fertile" brain, 
 which thinks nothing of any difficulty that stands in its way. 
 
 I believe that the difficulty, though " appearing insuperable," " dis- 
 appears" by my imagining that selection may be exercised by a whole 
 " family" as well as by an " individual." I choose to forget that 
 families are made up of individuals. 
 
 I believe that on my theory no account need be taken of the 
 " prodigious amount of difference . between the fertile and sterile indi- 
 viduals of many insects. " 
 
 I believe that my theory is perfectly correct, although there is a 
 " climax of the difficulty" beyond all these that I have yet stated, some 
 of the neuters differing even from each other to an " almost incredible 
 degree ;" some " with jaws and instincts extraordinarily different ;" 
 others with forms " the use of which is quite unknown." 
 
 I believe that I am right, and all the world else wrong, although 
 it will be thought that I have an " overweening confidence in my own 
 wisdom," which makes me " not admit that such wonderful and well- 
 established facts at once annihilate my theory." 
 
 I believe tha,t I must be right, although I can't " pretend that the 
 facts given in this chapter (VII.) strengthen in any degree my theory," 
 and that all I can say is that they do not " annihilate it ;" ergo I 
 must be right. 
 
 I believe that the sterility of hybrids is no disproof of my theory 
 of natural selection, which is that it acts for the good of the creatures 
 which exercise it, although it could not possibly be of any advantage 
 to the several animals, and although I think that the importance of 
 the fact has been " much underrated by some writers." 
 
 I believe that my theory of hybridism is right, although it does 
 npt "go to the root of the matter" and "no explanation is offered" of 
 the main fact. " Ibrida quo pacto ,W" is quite beyond me. 
 
 I believe that "no part of the structure of any one species has 
 been formed for the exclusive good of another species, though " natural 
 selection" can and does often produce structures for the direct injury 
 of other species, and though I see that the aphis voluntarily uses its 
 structure for the sole good of the ants, and I can only " probably" 
 imagine that it is of any convenience to the aphides themselves. 
 
 I believe that tumbler-pigeons have been produced by the long 
 continued selection of such in many generations, though I can't at all 
 tell how they first came to have the habit, or why it should have been 
 fortunately noticed by some fancier, or how he came to think that it 
 might be propagated and preserved, and succeeded in doing so. 
 
 I believe that I strengthen my argument by saying that dogs only 
 rarely require, when young, to be taught not to attack sheep, etc., 
 though I see that it is the very commonest thing that some dogs can 
 never be broken of the habit, and that there is not a dog in existence 
 but might be encouraged to it. 
 
 I believe generally that *' natural instincts are lost under domesti- 
 cation," although I have the preceding fact and numberless others 
 staring me in the face to show me the exact contrary, and that they are 
 at the most but dormant, and ready to bo restored to their former fulness. 
 
 I believe that young chickens have lost by habit the fear of dogs 
 
fi 
 
 and cats, although I have no possible proof whatever, and cannot pos- 
 sibly have any proof, that they ever had such. 
 
 I believe that the ctickoo "once upon a time" did not lay her eggs 
 in other birds' nests, but has acquired the habit by degrees, some " old 
 bird " or other profiting by the mistake, or the young being made 
 stronger by it, viz. : by being tended by a foster parent instead of by 
 their natural one ! and so becoming " apt to follow " that unnatural 
 practice : and this though I see that various birds " occasionally " lay 
 their eggs in other birds' nests, and yet have acquired no such habit. 
 
 I believe that although in spite of an " enormous accumulation of 
 probabilities, we yet stand without the direct production of a new 
 species from one common stock," yet nevertheless, against the evidence 
 of my senses, I believe, I say, that such has been the case with all 
 the so-called species in the world. 
 
 I believe that although the remains of the horse existed in geo- 
 logical strata of " enormous antiquity " long before any indications of 
 the existence of man have yet been found, and although those remains 
 show that the horse and the ass at that remote period exactly re- 
 sembled in nearly every respect the horse and the ass which now run 
 wild in many parts of Asia and Africa, and although, " going still 
 farther back to the Upper Miocene period, the horse is still found with 
 its present peculiarities, and the two differ from each ether only in 
 minute details," yet as the remains of the hipparion or " little horse,'' 
 are found in the same deposit as the horse, namely, the Upper Miocene, 
 so that it could not have been its ancestor, though like it in several 
 respects, and as the remains of the anchotherium are only found in 
 the Lower Miocene, so that there is a wider gap between it and the 
 hipparion than between the latter and the horse, still, for all that, 
 inasmuch as in the anchotherium the leg bones are still more sepa- 
 rated, as it has three bones on the fore limb, which " theory requires 
 that it should have," (!) " it being impossible to obtain evidence more 
 complete in kind than this of the origin of the horse," ergo, I say, I 
 believe that the horse is descended from the anchotherium. Q. E. r>. 
 (Huxley.) 
 
 Horses have sometimes been born with extra toes, crijo I believe 
 that " the horse must at one time have had the leg and foot bones 
 complete, although they were blotted out before the horse was turned 
 into a perfect running machine ! " (Huxley.} 
 
 The Darwin Doctrine therefore being THUS (!) " made out in this 
 one case of the horse," I believe that it is strong evidence that " similar 
 modifications have taken place in all cases." (Huxley) (Equally strong, 
 no doubt ! No doubt at all about it ! ) 
 
 I believe that the common saying that one " cannot draw blood 
 out of a stone " is the reverse of truth, and that not only bones, sinews, 
 and life can be produced from them, but also, mind, reason, and the 
 voice of conscience, which though would-be philosophers and atheists 
 brave out in daylight, they are so horribly afraid of in the dark. 
 
 I believe that I alone am right, although I see that though slight 
 crosses benefit the offspring, greater crosses, i.e., those of widely sepa- 
 rated species, produce sterile hybrids, and I "cannot persuade myself 
 that this parallelism (!) is an accident or an illusion." 
 
 I believe I am right, although I see that the widely different forms 
 of the pigeon among birds, and the cabbage and other varieties among 
 plants, are productive together, while other species " though resembling 
 each other most closely, are utterly sterile when crossed," and I admit 
 that the former is " almost invariably the case." 
 
 I believe that the " imperfection of the geological record," showing 
 no regular chain of species, and so giving no proof of my theory, and 
 
therefore the most obvious and gravest objection that can be urged 
 against it, may nevertheless be assumed by me as conclusively proving it. 
 
 I believe that it is a sufficient answer to the question what has 
 become of the innumerable forms which must have existed before the 
 Silurian deposit, that " long before that " the world " may have," then, 
 " presented a totally different aspect ; " that the older continents, " may " 
 now " all be in a metamorphosed condition," or " may " " lie buried 
 under the ocean ; " that there has " probably " been more extinction of 
 species during the periods of subsidence, and that the duration of each 
 formation was " perhaps " short compared with the average duration of 
 specific forms. 
 
 In fine, I believe that although the Mosaic account of the Creation 
 is borne out by the " Testimony of the Rocks " in a most wonderful 
 manner, yet as it does not suit the theory I have taken into my head, 
 it cannot possibly be true, and I do not believe a word of it. 
 
 I believe that if ever there was such a person as Moses, the five 
 books called the five books of Moses were none of his at all, but a 
 mere compilation of some impostor or victim of delusion. 
 
 I believe that no one who believes in the Bible has any sense or 
 wisdom compared with me, in accounting for the Creation of the world 
 and all the creatures in it. 
 
 I believe that such persons in former times as Sir Isaac Newton, 
 Herschell, Lord Bacon, Dr. Johnson, Milton, Locke, Sir Matthew Hale, 
 etc., etc., etc., who were Believers in the Bible, must have been utterly 
 wrong and mistaken, and in the dark as to such matters. 
 
 I believe, in like manner, that others in the present time who are 
 Believers also, as they were, such as Sir Roundell Palmer (Lord 
 Selborne), Lord Hatherley, Lord Shaftesbury, Faraday, Sir David 
 Brewster, etc., etc., etc.. and others who like them have taken the 
 highest honours in the Universities, and distinguished themselves in 
 the highest departments of art, soieiice, and politics, are also quite in 
 the dark, for if I am right, as I must be, and therefore am, they of 
 course must be wrong. 
 
 I believe that mine is a much more valuable opinion, and much 
 more to be received than that of Humboldt, who said of Strauss 
 " what displeases me in him is the scientific levity which causes him 
 to see no difficulty in the organic springing from the inorganic, nay, 
 man himself, from the Chaldoeaii mud." 
 
 I believe that the following supposititious guesses are "worthy of 
 all men to be received," and should be accepted by all the world as 
 scientific facts and truths, inasmuch as " I have spoken ;" namely, 
 
 I believe, u By considering the embryological structure of man 
 the homologies which he presents with the lower animals the rudi- 
 ments which he retains and the reversions to which he is liable. 
 we can partly recall, in imagination, the former condition of our early 
 progenitors, and can approximately place them in their proper position 
 in the zoological series. We thus (!) learn that man is descended 
 from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, pro- 
 btiltly arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. This 
 creature, if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, 
 would have been classed amongst the quadrumana, as surely as would 
 the common and still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New 
 World Monkeys. The quadrumana and all the higher mammals are 
 probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal ; and this, through 
 a long line of diversified forms, cither from some reptile-like or some 
 amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. 
 In the dim obscurity of the past we can see (?) that the early progeni- 
 tor of all the vertebrata inut li/icc bern(?) an aquatic animal, provided 
 
8 
 
 with branchiae, with the two sexes united in the same individual, and 
 with the most important organs of the body (such as the brain and 
 heart) imperfectly developed. This animal seems to hare 'been more 
 like the larva of our existing marine Ascidians than any other known 
 form." (Quite so !) 
 
 I believe that an argument based on that which seems, is quite 
 as valuable as one based on that which is ; that a chain with gaps 
 in the links, is quite as firmly held together as one without : and to 
 lack no evidence but that of facts is amply sufficient for me, of which 
 the following will serve for examples. 
 
 I believe " / cannot doubt, that the theory of descent with modi- 
 fication embraces all the members of the same class." " / can indeed 
 hardly doubt that all vertebrate animals having- true lungs are descended 
 by ordinary generation from an ancient prototype, of which we know 
 nothing, furnished with a floating apparatus or swim bladder." 
 
 I believe " It -is conceivable, that the now utterly lost braiichise 
 might hare been gradually worked in by natural selection for some 
 quite distinct purpose, in the same manner as ... it /'.? probable 
 that organs which at a very ancient period served for respiration, 
 have been actually converted into organs of flight." 
 
 I believe that the opinion of Dr. Carpenter on the non-progressive 
 character of the Foraminifera is as valuable as that of "any other 
 man in England" (except myself) : and therefore whereas Dr. Carpenter 
 distinctly asserts that there has been " no advance in the Foraminif'er- 
 ous type from the Palasozoic period to the present time," and states 
 his conviction that " the present state of scientific evidence, instead of 
 sanctioning the idea that the primitive descendants of the type or typi-s 
 of Foraminifera can ever rise to any higher grade, justifies the antl- 
 Darminian inference, that however widely they diverge from each other 
 and from their origins, they still remain Foraminifera," I believe that 
 as I think differently from him, he must be wrong, and I must 
 be right. Q.E.D. 
 
 I believe that an assertion " not proven" is as good as, or better 
 than, one that is proved. 
 
 I believe that I must admit Dr. Carpenter's assertion as an " abso- 
 lute matter of fact ;" but for all that, as it does not suit my theory,. 
 I must hold that " as we do not know under what forms, or how, life 
 originated in this world, it would be rash to assert that even such 
 lowly endowed animals as the Foraminifera, with their beautiful shells, 
 as figured by Dr. Carpenter, have not in any degree advanced in 
 organization !" 
 
 I believe, therefore, that we can thus ''partly recall" the former 
 condition of our earlier progenitors ; though even that ''partly" is in 
 imagination!'''' Thus! too, Ave can ''approximately place them in their 
 proper position" (" in imagination"). " We thus learn," also "in imagina- 
 tion," about the "tail and pointed ears," '"jjroltally derived" from 
 something or from something else (" some reptile-like, or some amphibian- 
 like creature") or " this again from some fish-like animal." Thus " in 
 the dim obscurity of the past, we can see" (?) what this animal "must 
 have been ;" or what I must after all own it to have been. 
 
 I believe this is a highly satisfactory and conclusive tesult of the 
 "eleven years" labour I have expended on my last publication. 
 
 I believe that all the wisest men in the world for the six thousand 
 years since it is commonly supposed to have been created, or six 
 hundred thousand million years, or any number more, as I believe, 
 have been altogether wrong, and that it has been reserved for me in 
 this so-called nineteenth century to set them all right and lay down 
 the law for ever. 
 
I believe that it may help my argument, if I can find people 
 simple enough to believe that humble bees are common in gardens, 
 and scarce elsewhere in comparison, in consequence of their being 
 preyed on by field-mice which are kept down by cats about houses ; 
 the fact being, as any national-school boy can see, that these bees 
 abound near woods, or in any other uncultivated places where thistles 
 and other- wild flowers which bees are fond of are found, a hundred-fold 
 more than they do in gardens, and that if they are found more or less 
 numerously in gardens, it is only because of there being more flowers 
 there, for which they will fly for long distances, it is said for miles, there 
 being no more nests there than anywhere else, and in ninety-nine cases 
 out of one hundred nothing like so many. 
 
 I believe that all creation is derived from some one form, a mere 
 monad, although I admit that " no one can at present say by what 
 line of descent the three higher and related classes, namely, mammals, 
 birds, reptiles, were derived from either of the two lower vertebrate 
 classes, namely, amphibians and fishes." 
 
 I believe that it requires several generations of cultivated talent 
 to make the mind equal to higher intellectual attainments, but I find 
 it convenient to forget that it is just as easy a supposition that the 
 debasement of the intellect at any given time, even assuming it as thus 
 to be slowly recovered from, may have been acquired gradually by 
 neglect from a previous height equal to that to be finally attained to. 
 
 I believe that there is no such art as logic, at least, if there is, 
 that it is quite beneath me to be guided by it, and that one premiss, 
 or at all events a number of single premisses strung together so as to 
 give a great appearance of argument to those who know no better, is 
 amply sufficient to prove any conclusion. 
 
 1 believe that the Christian is the happiest of men, because he evi- 
 dently has a hope for another world in addition to the peaceful happi- 
 ness he enjoys here. 
 
 I believe that an infidel or an Unbeliever is "of all men most 
 miserable ;" nevertheless I have done all I could to make others as 
 wretched as I am myself, and have given, and can give them, nothing 
 in return but a dreary blank. If you ask me about the future, there, 
 I confess, I am in the dark ; all I can say is that you and I will 
 " melt into the infinite azure of the past," (Tyndall) (whatever that 
 may mean). I repeat that I believe that Christian Believers have a 
 peace of mind which I have not myself. They have " a good 
 hope" for the future, which I must admit I have not myself, 
 "having no hope, and without GOD in the world." I do my little 
 best, or worst, to shake their faith or rob them of their peace of mind, 
 but I have nothing better, because I have nothing at all to give them 
 in the place of it. I cannot offer them any happiness in this world or 
 in any future state, because I do not believe that there will be any future 
 state, so that if you ask me what is the cm Itono of all I have written, 
 I cannot tell you. If you ask me what is the cul malo? that is quite 
 another question, and much more easily answered. I offer you no 
 happiness here or hereafter, and all I can do is to rob those of you 
 who are fond and foolish enough to take up with the idle conceits of 
 my "vain philosophy," of their present hope, and therewith of their 
 expectation of future happiness, which but for me they might have. 
 
 I, (Huxley) believe that there is a good deal to be said for the 
 hypothesis, that animals are mere machines, as much so as if they 
 were mills or steam engines, and that they Have no feeling ; that 
 they do not hear, see, or smell, and that their u apparent states of con- 
 sciousness," as they seem to us, are only the results of a " mechanical 
 reflex process." (" Risum tencatis amid / " This is philosophy ! This 
 
10 
 
 is science !). It is true I believe that I am only an animal, come from 
 one of them myself, and therefore you may argue that I have no 
 feeling, and may ask me to allow myself to be experimented on 
 accordingly for the good of science, but I must beg of you to ex- 
 cuse me. It might interfere rather unpleasantly with my theory, and 
 with the calmness, or to speak more truly, the cool assurance, not to 
 use a stronger word which a " Philosopher " ought to exhibit to the 
 public when he lays down the law to them. No one more ready than 
 a Philosopher to cry out even before he is hurt ; but he has no feeling 
 for dumb animals : he keeps all he has for himself.* 
 
 I believe it would be highly imprudent in me to accept the chal- 
 lenge which was thrown down to me at the meeting of the British 
 Association in 1874. to meet the challenger face to face before the 
 public and discuss the truth or otherwise of my assertions. On the 
 contrary, though I have the advantage of a good memory, a fluent 
 tongue, and any amount you please of assurance, if you will oblige me 
 by using so mild a term, I altogether shrink from the touchstone of 
 common sense. Theory and assertion are all I have to do with, to 
 which I always make it a rule (a very convenient one) to bend any 
 given number of facts. 
 
 I believe that though Professor Salmon has shown that Darwinism 
 is a mere scientific imagination, not a scientific fact, nevertheless the 
 human species is descended from the semi-human, and this again 
 from so low an origin as the larva or caterpillar of some sea animal. 
 
 I therefore believe, for all the above satisfactory reasons, that 
 the origin of man is to be derived as follows: 
 
 1. Marine animals, resembling the larva? of existing Ascidians. 
 
 2. Fishes as lowly organised as the Lancelot. 
 
 3. Fishes like the Lepidosirens: 
 
 * I here add some few of the terms applied to the places, persons, and practices referred 
 to, by many eminent men : A " Hell," (Sir ARTHUR HELPS) ; " Abominable and atrocious," 
 (LoRD SHAFTESBURV) ; " Hellish," (DR. KITCHING); "Atrocious crimes," " Barbarities," 
 "Wickedness," "Worse than the worst Inquisitors, "Dens of torture," "Disgrace to 
 Science," " Never surpassed in impudence," " Polluters of the minds of School Children," 
 "Ruffians," "Young reprobates," " Perpetrators^ of atrocities," " Spouters of Blasphemy 
 and Infidelity," " Professors of Brutality," "Worse than Heathen persecutors," " Deceivers 
 of the I'eople,'' " Scientific crimes," "An outrage to the moral sense of every human being 
 who is not as depraved as themselves," "A few brutalized physiologists," '' who go whining 
 about the country with the importunity of beggars, because every right-minded man and 
 woman in the country is. not compelled by law to contribute his or her hard earned wages to 
 support the perpetration of crimes which they abhor, (DR. W. B. A. SCOTT.) " Disgraceful 
 butchery," "devilish," "loathsome," "fiendish," "would disgrace the lowest type of 
 savages," "merciless and unpitying/' "demons," "devilry," "wretches," "a depraved 
 instinct," " frightfully horrible," "disgraceful butchery," "devilish torment," "horrible,'' 
 "abominable devilry," "brutal beyond conception," "useless beyond belief," "all most 
 horrible," "a disgrace to the profession," "brutal deeds," (A LONDON SURGEON, Mr. 
 Waldron Bradley, in the Echo.) " Detestable villanies, protracted butcheries, degrading 
 the operator far lower than the brute on which he exercised his fiendish skill, soiling 
 the hands in blood, and grovelling in torture for hours, aye for days together," (The late 
 LORD CARNARVON.) "Who have made a path over the bodies of writhing animals to seats 
 of most questionable honour," (J.F.B., in The Hour. 1 " Their practice as various as their 
 theories." " Much in the aspect of school-boys playing with weapons of which they under 
 stand neither the use nor nature," (ROYAL COMMISSION.' "A set of young devils," (Dn. 
 HAUGHTON.) "A new horror," (PROFESSOR NEWMAN.) "Cruelty in its worst form is 
 the ultimate result of Science." " Cruelty in the garb and pretences of Science." "Now, 
 Science has become the rival of the tortures of the Inquisition, and by increase of learning 
 has learned to torment still more ingeniously." "Ancient Paganism may well put us to 
 shame." ''To cut up a living horse, day after day, in order to practise students in dissection, 
 is a crime and abomination hardly less monstrous from his not having an immortal soul." 
 " An inevitable logic would in a couple of generations unteach all tenderness towards 
 Jiuinaii suffering if such horrors are endured and carry us back into greater heartlessness 
 than that of the worst barbarians." "A new oppression." "The scientific Torquemadas 
 of the day." " The inseparable companion of the vilest impurities and vices to which flesh 
 is heir," (Saturday Review.) 
 
11 
 
 4. Amphibians. 
 
 '5. Reptiles. 
 
 G. Monotremata. 
 
 7. Marsupials. 
 
 8. Placental Mammals. 
 
 9. Lemuridae. 
 ] 0. Simiadae. 
 
 11. Old World Monkeys. 
 
 12. Man. 
 
 " O most lame and impotent conclusion ! " 
 
 I, (Tyndall) believe that I can " prolong- my intellectual vision 
 backwards, into regions where the unscientific cannot follow," (none 
 but myself and those who think with me are scientific in my opinion,) 
 " and can discern in matter the promise and potency of every form and 
 quality of life." All who are opposed to me I, (Huxley), pronounce, 
 ex cathedra, to be " pigmies in intellect." This is a very easy way of setting 
 down opponents, and especially becoming, I think, in a " scientific man," 
 who calls himself a '' professor " of science, when before the annual 
 meeting of a scientific society. (At Belfast, 1874.) 
 
 As to "prolonging my vision" forward, there I am in the dark, 
 even on my own confession. I am compelled to acknowledge that a 
 time may be coming when even a " professor " of irreligion and science, 
 " falsely so called," may have to say to religion, " give us of your oil, 
 for our lamps are gone out" into ''outer darkness." 
 
 I, (Tyndall), aleo believe that life is a " continuous adjustment of 
 internal relations to external relations," by which process some original 
 tissue " vaguely sensitive all over " has come by degrees to be '' differ- 
 entiated " into man. " (0 Sapient la!)" I do not believe with Darwin 
 in a " Primordial form," the origin of all living beings ; I cannot tell 
 whence he proposes to derive it, but neither can I tell you whence my 
 original (very original !)" tissue" came. (Doctors differ you see.) 
 
 All this is science ! knowledge ! ! philosophy ! ! ! very clear, as well 
 as very useful, and very profitable, is it not? as clear as the " Chaldsean 
 mud." 
 
 It is really hard to say which of these " Philosophers " talks and 
 writes in the most senseless manner. These are some of their choicest 
 sayings. " These be thy Gods, Israel," and " miserable comforters 
 are they all." 
 
 I believe that " the difficulty of understanding the absence of 
 various piles of strata" which, on my theory, no doubt were "sonten'hci'c . n 
 " /.v renj ///w/f." " The case at present must remain inexplicable, and 
 may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here enter- 
 tained," Nevertheless, though I thus own that the evidence of nature 
 is against me and that I cannot get over the difficulty. I cannot give up 
 my own opinion, which must be right. 
 
 I believe that as my theory must be true, the records of geology 
 are of no account. For " IF my theory be true " (as of course, as I have 
 said, it must be), " during those vast, yet quite unknown periods of time, 
 the world wanned with living creatures," but to the question why we 
 find no remains of them, as we do of others, ' I can give no satisfactory 
 answer." But what matters that V The evidence I want is not to be 
 had, but I can do equally well with or without evidence. 
 
 I believe that all existing plants and animals " may " have been 
 " developed " from a seed of a seaweed, and If we admit this, as we 
 must, because I fancy it, then there can be no difficulty about the 
 matter. It may have been first " characteristically animal," and then 
 " unequivocably vegetable ;" and " I cannot doubt " but that it held 
 within it the potential existences of all creation, so as to develop in 
 
12 
 
 the end into a whale and a crab, a butterfly and a tortoise, an oak tree 
 and a man. But if you ask me who were its parents, or how it was 
 first made, or how it acquired its double quality of animal and vege- 
 table, you must go to some one else than me for an answer. I decline 
 giving one, for the best of all possible reasons. 
 
 I believe that it was. That must be enough for you. What was 
 the " origin " of this " species " I cannot tell you, though all my book 
 pretends to be about it. It went "on the principle of Natural Selection 
 with divergence of character." Is not that clear enough for you ? 
 I say that it was so, though how it came by natural selection, when 
 there was nothing to select, is beyond even my capacity to say ; nor 
 how the next came from it. nor whether the animal came first or the 
 vegetable. All I can tell you is that there was some " divergence of 
 character " in the first seed, some " modification," some " development," 
 some " plastic " tendency, so that the first seed had to "' struggle for 
 existence " with itself, for there were then no others to struggle with ; 
 and thus came out of one both male and female, and so on till the 
 process came down to man ! 
 
 I believe all this. It "does not appear incredible" (to me), yet, 
 as to Iwm ''the first steps in advance" came " out of the original simplest 
 structure, I can make no sufficient answer," and can only say that 
 "all speculation on the subject would be baseless and useless." So that 
 though I own that here we have no facts to guide us, still, as I say 
 it is " not incredible," what more can you possibly want ? You must 
 admit on trust all that I choose to invent for you, while all the time 
 I admit that it is quite inexplicable " no one ought to feel surprised 
 at all this." Take my word for it. 
 
 I believe that the title I have given to my book, " On the Origin 
 of Species," is not a false one, though it tells nothing- as to the origin 
 of my " origin," where there could by no possibility have been any 
 selection, nothing to select, nothing to select from. 
 
 I believe that as we possess (viz., in my doctrine) only the "last 
 volume " of the " geological record," although the difficulties of my 
 notion are " inexplicable," I can make them " disappear." Xo doubt 
 I have to beg the whole question, but that is the only sort of logic 
 that I care to be guided by. I have furnished my library from the 
 land of dreams, and I much prefer it to the volume of the " Testimony 
 of the Rocks." The latter I own is in existence, while no page of 
 mine is to be found, except in my own brain ; but " I am of the same 
 opinion still." 
 
 I believe that Geology giving us no traces of the existence of 
 "infinitely numerous" gradations of extinct species is "the most 
 obvious of the many objections which may be urged against my views," 
 but what have I to do with that ! 
 
 I believe that the remains of the horse and of the tapir are found 
 in the same formation, but for all that I hold that there must have 
 been innumerable links between them, though not one of them has 
 ever been found. 
 
 I believe that geology tells us truly all about the large and the 
 small genera, but nothing about all the intermediate species which 
 must once have existed because I choose to say so. You may call this 
 what you like, but that is my opinion, which is final. 
 
 I believe that no trace even of such organic life has been detected 
 in the basement of the strata of the rocks, it being destitute of the 
 remains of any animals, so that I have no evidence of my theory, but it 
 matters not. Evidence to prove it is not wanted by a person like 
 me. I maintain that it is indubitable that life swarmed in that primi- 
 tive region, though we only meet with the lowest creatures at the lower 
 
13 
 
 part of the next, and with nothing higher in the scale of creation 
 than fishes in even the upper part of it. Never mind that ; facts are 
 not stubborn things when they have to do with me. I make them all 
 bend and yield to me. Veni, rldl, "lei! 
 
 I believe that there must have been some ancestor of the trilobite, 
 ' which probably differs from any known animal," long before that 
 curious creature ; but for proof of it I refer you to the invisible 
 world, whither no one has yet travelled to find it. What more would 
 you have ? 
 
 I believe that these most ancient of old rocks, whose existence 
 you will find ample proof of in my " imagination," were " somewhere 
 accumulated," but where that " somewhere " was or is I am not going 
 to tellyou, so you may save yourself the trouble of asking me. 
 
 I believe there were and are such rocks many miles thick, if only 
 we could find them. 
 
 I believe that the sudden appearance of whole groups of species 
 in some strata by no means overturns my doctrine of slow descent by 
 natural selection, though Sedgwick, Agassiz, and others have main- 
 tained that it does. YVhat does anyone but myself know about the 
 matter ? Geology as at present understood must be false if my Theory 
 is true, and as my theory must be true because it is mine, e'en so 
 let it be. Flat Erolutio, mat ecelum. 
 
 I believe that though geologists tell us that certain animals cannot 
 be found in any geological formation before certain periods, which is tanta- 
 mount to a high probability that they never did exist in them, I assert 
 that they did exist, basing my assertion on the main stay of negative 
 evidence. 
 
 It is true that when it suits my purpose I can turn round and 
 argue that negative evidence is worthless. 
 
 I believe this is not too barefaced a piece of contradiction to palm 
 off on the credulity of weak-minded persons. 
 
 I believe that the geological record is imperfect to an " extreme 
 degree," but if you can bring yourself at my dictation to disbelieve the 
 facts which geology does attest, then you see you will take in my 
 theory, and si poptdus vult decipi decipiatur. 
 
 I believe that the extinct rhinoceros was more advantageously 
 organised than the existing one, so that it ought, on my theory, to 
 have " infallibly exterminated the inferior ones." The contrary is before 
 me, but black I always make white when I choose. 
 
 I believe that in the race for existence the weakest must succumb 
 to the stronger, though I see before my eyes that the whole of creation 
 contradicts this. 
 
 I believe that there must have been, and therefore were, an infinite 
 number of previous forms of the large elephant and the mighty mam- 
 moth, though the fragment even of the remains of not one of these 
 has ever been discovered, while those of the most fragile a^d delicate 
 shells are found in abundance in the chalk in the lower rocks. 
 
 I believe anything and everything as it suits my purpose. 
 
 I believe that natural selection selects itself, that nature has a 
 " power of selection," that she is more powerful than " feeble man," so 
 that if he can do so much in improving animals, why can't she do all 
 I choose to imagine, only time enough be given beyond the power of 
 imagination. 
 
 I believe that if feeble man can do so much, I can see no limit to 
 the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity which may 
 be effected in the long course of time by " Nature's power of selection" 
 so that " powerful" nature is superior to feeble man. It is true I have 
 argued elsewhere that natural selection spurns beauty, and that if it 
 
u 
 
 did not, my theory must fall to the ground never mind that I stand 
 and fall myself by my theory. 
 
 I believe that though man does appreciate and admire beauty, 
 whether in form, colour, harmony, or any other mode, monkeys do no't, 
 so that if you ask me how man, who has come from the monkey, has 
 come by this faculty, which the monkey has not. I must decline to 
 answer the question. 
 
 I believe, I say, that natural selection improved us by giving us 
 the power to value beauty which she herself ignores and sets aside. 
 You may say this is nonsense. You may say so if you like. I have 
 said it, and I mean to stand by it. 
 
 I believe, on my theory, that Nature makes species : but that 
 man can only make varieties by culture. It is mere assertion, and the 
 argument, if carried out, annihilates my theory. Let it do so if it likes 
 what care IV I believe that ' if nature had to make" the bill of a 
 pigeon short, it would be a slow process indeed, and you would see 
 all the young pigeons in the eggs striving with one another to see 
 which could come out with the shortest and strongest bill. If you can't 
 see this you must be very dull indeed in comparison with me. I 
 have said elsewhere that natural selection is only the ' sequence of 
 events." It might perhaps take ten thousand million years to make 
 one bill strong enough, so that the whole brood would have been 
 dead and gone thousands and millions of years before the necessary 
 degree of strength could be arrived at. I am not able to reconcile 
 these palpable and gross contradictions : it is quite enough for me 
 to be able to swallow them and any number more. 
 
 I believe that the old-fashioned Book which tells us that " we are 
 but of yesterday, and know nothing" is quite out of date. 
 
 I believe, on the contrary, that we are of to-day, and know every- 
 thing. 
 
 I believe that though I was born with a bee in my bonnet. I am 
 descended from a monkey and not from a bee, for all its wisdom 
 of instinct. 
 
 I believe that natural selection is "a power incessantly ready for 
 action " upon a creature, and therefore something outside it, while in 
 reality you will say it is plain that it is nothing but the working of the 
 creature itself. In other words, unless some at least of the offspring 
 inherit any chance advantages, nothing can come of them, viz.. that 
 advantages cannot be inherited unless they be inherited. This I con- 
 sider a weighty and powerful argument, and not a most sapless piece 
 of scribblemeiit. 
 
 I believe that "lion-inheritance of any character is, in fact, the 
 same thing as reversion to the character of the grand-parents or 
 remote ancestors, and no doubt this tendency to reversion may often 
 have checked or prevented the action of natural selection." I hear 
 you say, *'No doubt at all about it!" I don't care what you say, I must 
 stand by my theory, though it leaves me in the lurch. 
 
 I believe that " it inevitably follows that as new species are formed 
 through natural selection, others will become scarce or finally extinct." 
 I can't deny that you and all other animals seem to continue as you 
 and they were since the day you tell me they were created, and that 
 elephants, horses, lions, tigers, and all the rest do not change into one 
 another, nor can I point to a single one in the process of changing. 
 You may laugh at me when I say that for all that they do, but it is 
 no laughing matter for me to have my theory overturned by facts, so 
 all my vagaries must be as they are. 
 
 I believe that by natural selection a bustard becomes changed into 
 an ostrich, a horse into some other animal, and so on, because I see 
 
15 
 
 that man has created many hereditary varieties, such as the different kinds 
 of dogs, and though these are only varieties, as is proved by their 
 breeding- together, their nature not being changed but having a ten- 
 dency to reversion, I am determined not to give up my notion, 
 groundless as this shows it to be. 
 
 I believe that man " creates " these varieties, but I cannot allow any 
 other creator but that of my own creating. 
 
 I believe that the " ; action of natural selection will depend on 
 some of the inhabitants becoming xloit'ly modified. Nothing can be 
 effected miles* favourable, variations occur, and variation itself is always 
 a slow process." What I mean is, that unless animals or plants begin 
 to change, they never will be changed. A very recondite argument, is 
 it not ? 
 
 I believe, I " suspect," that an "occasional intercross with a 
 distinct individual is a law of nature. I am well aware that there 
 are, on this view, many cases of difficulty, some of which I am trying 
 to investigate " Right or wrong, therefore, you must take for granted 
 that any difficulty either has been or will be solved by me. That is a 
 matter of course. 
 
 I believe that if I only " suspect " a new law of nature, a new law 
 of nature there must be. 
 
 I believe, that is to say, that this new law brings about occasional 
 exceptions only occasionally. That I consider a grand discovery, worthy 
 of Aristotle, Pliny, Plato, or Solomon himself. 
 
 I believe that the several species of a genus " must have proceeded 
 from the same source, as they had descended from the same pro- 
 genitor," although ' undoubtedly there are many causes of extreme 
 difficulty in understanding how the same species could possibly have 
 migrated from some one point to the several distant and isolated points 
 where now found." For instance, " why do we not find a single animal 
 common to Europe and Australia and South America V " The conditions 
 of life are the same. The answer, I believe, is that the animals 
 have not been able to migrate. I grant you that there are as many 
 animals in each of the same genus as formerly, and which must, 
 therefore, have "descended from the same progenitor." There they are ; 
 they can't have migrated. They must have been, I say, separately 
 created. Yes, there they are ! I do not. either, believe that continents 
 '' which are now quite separate have been continuously, or almost con- 
 tinuously, united with each other ; so that I do not " for a moment 
 pretend that any explanation could be offered of many such cases, but 
 as they or my theory must give way, I need not say which must do 
 so. My theory, it is true, here fails to explain the very point it 
 undertook to interpret ; but never mind that. I would call it a miracle, 
 only that I don't believe in miracles. 
 
 I believe in a bear " swimming for hours with a widely open 
 mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects on the water." " Very 
 like a whale !" I think I hear you saying, but I can't help it if 
 you do. "I see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered by 
 natural selection more and more aquatic in their habits, with longer 
 and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a 
 whale." Don't laugh, I beg yon. It's all of a piece with my whole 
 argument, for I have said all along that it is easy for natural selection 
 to fit any animal for any changed habits whatever. ' It is difficult to 
 tell, and immaterial for us. whether habits generally change first and 
 structure afterwards, or whether slight modifications of structure lead 
 to changed habits." How can I tell you ? All is fish that comes to my net. 
 
 I believe what I have just said, though it may perhaps be suggested 
 that if the bear was determined to live in the " dark unfathomed caves " 
 
16 
 
 of the ocean before he was quite fitted for it. he might find that 
 natural selection had led him into a somewhat awkward mistake, not 
 much to his benefit ; or if, on the other hand, he had to wait above 
 till he was fitted to go down below, he would fare but badly and on 
 very short commons among the' mountains and forests. A demi-semi- 
 bear-cum- whale would be perhaps rather an " odd fish " to look at. but 
 then, you see, it is quite as easy for you to swallow my story of the 
 bear as it is for the bear to swallow the flies, so you ought to be very 
 much obliged to me for telling you so very pretty a fairy tale. 
 
 I believe that if an animal or bird has more than one habit, 
 that is a proof that it is in a transition state. AVhy not believe 
 in a transmigration of bodies as well as in a transmigration of souls V 
 
 I believe, therefore, that as a dog sometimes eats grass, it shows 
 clearly that in due time he will turn into an ox : and just in the 
 same way as the reindeer sometimes devours the hamster, so is he sure 
 to turn into one or other of the carnivora. I can't exactly at present 
 say which, but if you wait long enough you will see it to be as I say 
 no doubt about it. 
 
 I believe that when the buffalo is floating under the water, with 
 only his mouth out, for some hours at a time, natural selection is li at 
 play," and has her eye upon him with a view to his becoming this, 
 that, or the other, as the case may be. 
 
 I believe that Shakespeare must have been of my way of thinking, 
 for he gives his well-known character in the llidtu miner Night's Dream 
 an ass's head, who then naturally enough says. ' Methinks I have a 
 great desire for a pottle of hay : good hay, sweet hay. hath no fellow.'' 
 So that you see when a man is turned into an ass, he will be sure to 
 like thistles in the end, and to bray like a donkey as he must be. 
 
 I believe, " I see no difficulty in believing." anything at all that 
 comes into my head, and you must do the same, without expecting any 
 proof from me. 
 
 I believe, it is with me a nine qua non, that ''in order that any 
 great amount of modification should in the course of time be produced, 
 it is necessary to believe that when a variety has once arisen, it ag-ain 
 varies and so onwards." That is to say. you must take all this on 
 credit; for I have no proof of it, and therefore can give you none. 
 You must take assertion for proof, a:ad is not that enough for any 
 one? It may be a novelty in a scientific enquiry, but with that you 
 have nothing to do. Leave it all to me. 
 
 I believe that " many ancient forms of life have been utterly lost." 
 Therefore I must needs allow that they can never be found, and so 
 much the better for me, for then I can desire you to " readily believe 
 that the unknown progenitor of the vertebrata possessed many vertebras." 
 I cannot take upon me to say that he acquired them by natural 
 selection, for he must have had them all at once or not at all. I 
 cannot help allowing that the vertebra? began with a sort of rudimentary 
 one with a view to the future benefit of the animal, and though this 
 is the very thing which all my theory goes against, it even must be 
 so, but I hold to my theory for all that. 
 
 I believe that ' every single organised being around us lives by a 
 struggle at some period of its life." " The merest trifle would often 
 give the victory to one organised being over another." ' If any one 
 species does not become modified and improved in a corresponding 
 degree with its competitor, it will soon become exterminated." It is 
 true that, as you may see in any wood where the trees if thickly 
 planted together try each to overtop the other for the sake of light 
 and air, no new species are produced, but the survivors remain of the same 
 kind as before ; but I am ' of the same opinion still," and though facts 
 
17 
 
 are against me, I am against facts. I have nothing to do with them 
 in any such case. 
 
 I believe that all living beings have this struggle against each 
 other, and that the weaker must go to the wall and be exterminated, 
 although I see that all sorts keep their own places as of old, and that 
 the weaker of countless kinds, such as the herring, still exist in 
 innumerable numbers, so to speak. It is a most defenceless creature, 
 and must have been overlooked and neglected by natural selection, 
 for still it nourishes and abounds beyond all calculation. This fact 
 you may say is too much for me. Not so, I am too much for it. 
 
 I believe that the forms are so nearly balanced that things remain 
 in stata quo " for a long period of time," in fact for unknown ages ; 
 so that it would seem as if the result of some omniscience which saw 
 into all futurity beforehand, had arranged for the general good of all, 
 but for all that I hold that natural selection still acts and always has 
 acted for the benefit of individuals only. 
 
 I believe that the order of Nature is and always has been well 
 balanced, though arranged by no superior intelligence, whilo numerous 
 destructive creatures let loose by natural selection to live by destruction, 
 are still, as always before, neither too many nor too few. 
 
 I believe that " the modified offspring from the more highly im- 
 proved branches in. the line of descent will, it is probable, often take 
 the place of, and so destroy, the earlier and less improved branches :" 
 but I cannot tell you what I mean by " improving animals," nor when 
 an animal is "less improved" than it ought to be. I cannot tell you 
 of any animal that would be better for improving, nor what improve- 
 ment it needs, nor how I would improve it. How can I tell you when 
 I have elsewhere said myself, ' Who will pretend that he knows the 
 history of any organised being sufficiently well to say whether any 
 particular change would be to its advantage?" And, ag'ain, "What 
 advantage would it 'be to an earth-worm to be highly organised?" No, 
 I cannot tell you what advantage it would be to a camel to be turned 
 into a lion, or an ostrich into a hawk. 
 
 I believe, however, for all that, that " the ultimate result will be 
 that each creature will tend to become more and more improved in 
 relation to its condition of life." No doubt these assertions are self 
 contradictory, but so let them be. 
 
 I believe, yes I believe, that this improvement will take place with 
 the greater number of beings throughout the world. You may reply 
 that in that case there would in time be no more natural selection, 
 her work being done ; and you may ask me what will be the next step ? 
 Possum non mi recordo. 
 
 I believe in these improvements and transformations, but I cannot 
 at present explain t > you how a transformed animal is an improved 
 one. You may say that a camel turned into a horse is not therefore 
 "improved." If I choose to say it is, is not that enough? 
 
 I believe in all such metamorphoses, though I have no answer to 
 give to the question how, if an elephant were to be changed into an 
 ass, it would be improved, its superior intellect being lost by the 
 exchange. 
 
 I believe in them, I say, because I believe in them, although you 
 may ridicule my idea of improving Nature, and may consider it as 
 misplaced and audacious as to attempt a new creation, and may ask 
 me what is to become of all the living creatures when they have been 
 " improved " up to the status of man ? 
 
 I believe it is not the veriest nonsense, though I cannot tell you 
 whether they must all become men in form as well as in sense, or 
 must remain in appearance what we see them to be now. You may 
 
 B 
 
. 18 
 
 consider it an idle and preposterous dream, but I consider it a -wonder- 
 fully clever and sensible idea. What a world it will be when every 
 animal is " levelled up " to the rank of man, and every man still 
 higher to that of a Darwin ! Then you will say surely that the " height 
 of folly can no farther go." But that folly is yours in thinking so. 
 I take my stand on my own superior wisdom. 
 
 I believe it all. yes, I believe it all. although I see that with what I hold 
 to have been done in the countless past ages in the way of metamor- 
 phosis, elephants have not yet been turned into horses, nor bears into 
 whales (though "very like" them), nor ducks into swallows ; and that 
 the ass, the gander, and the goose still survive, the one to bray and 
 the other to cackle, even like some "men of science.'' 
 
 I believe that I can clear up the " mystery of mysteries." as it has 
 been called by one of our greatest philosophers, the origin of species, 
 although " I have found to my cost a constant tendency to fill up gaps 
 of knowledge by inaccurate and superficial hypothesis." 
 
 I believe the varieties are " as steps leading to more strongly 
 marked and more permanent varieties, and these latter leading to a 
 sub-species, and so to species." ' Hence, I believe, that a well-marked 
 variety may be considered as an incipient species." You may say. on 
 this, that I hold permanency to be an attribute of species, and not of 
 variety : and you may ask me, why, if they are essentially the same, 
 they trouble themselves so much to make a change, and that for 110 
 object V That is for them to say, not for me. 
 
 I believe that varieties " become ultimately converted into good and 
 permanent species," which ' differ from each other far more than do 
 the varieties of the same species." You may ask me what I mean by 
 the term species, but as I do not know I cannot tell you. All I can 
 say is, that to discuss the question before a definition of the terms has 
 been asked is " vainly to beat the air." This I apply to you, but I 
 cannot for a moment allow it to apply it to myself. Such a thing 
 must not be thought of. 
 
 I believe that it would be a " vain search " to seek for the ' essence 
 of the term species." Nevertheless, I elsewhere state that " good and 
 distinct species ".unquestionably occur. 
 
 I believe that Mr. Gould is utterly wrong where he says that " the 
 gorgeous colouring of the humming birds has been given for the mere 
 purpose of ornament," " in other words, that ornament and beauty, 
 merely as such, was the end proposed." That is " absolutely fatal" to 
 my theory, consequently I cannot for a moment admit it. 
 
 I believe that species are ' ; permanent varieties, and that this is a 
 characteristic of species," that they always remain the same, which it 
 is the object of the whole of my book to disprove. But let that pass. 
 
 I believe that " one hand has only worked through the universe." 
 but I labour in all my works to disprove it. " One is apt to wonder 
 why a distinct species should have been created," but ' we see whole 
 series of animals which have been created." Nevertheless, I utterly 
 disbelieve in creation. 
 
 I believe that I am right in my view, in opposition to John Hunter 
 who held that no proof has ever been obtained that a hybrid race can 
 continue. In opposition to De Candolle, who states that ' permanent 
 differences cannot be referred to any one of the actual courses of 
 variation, and that these differences are what constitute species :" in 
 opposition to Lyell. who wrote that it cannot be shown that a single 
 permanent species has ever been produced by hybridity ; in opposition 
 to Lawrence, who says that " we must admit for all the species which 
 we know at present a distinct origin and common date ;" and in 
 opposition to Cuvier, who declares that there is no difference whatever 
 
19 
 
 between the remains of animals embalmed in Egypt of old and those 
 of the ''present day." 
 
 I believe that Sir Charles Lyell was utterly wrong when he wrote 
 that " species have a real exist once in nature, and that each was 
 endowed at the time of its creation with the attributes and organisation 
 by which it is now distinguished." 
 
 I believe that I may manipulate the word " species "as I like, and 
 that I can play fast and loose with it as I please ; that I can make 
 use of it or discard it as it suits my purpose, and make the most of 
 the differences between some naturalists as to whether certain supposed 
 species are really species or only varieties. 
 
 I believe that inasmuch in very many cases one form is marked 
 as a variety of another, though in the absence of the intermediate 
 links, on the ground that any analogy that may be supposed to 
 exist somewhere "or may formerly have existed," therefore I may 
 open the door of my fanciful imagination as wide as I please. 
 
 I believe that, during " vast, yet unknown, periods of time, the 
 world swarmed with living creatures," of which not a vestige or trace 
 is to be found. " I believe this to be indisputable," though, as I have 
 just said, " quite unknown," but I can never allow any opponent to 
 argue anything from conjecture ; certainly not. That prerogative is 
 for myself alone. 
 
 I believe that it is, perhaps, impossible to bring forward one case 
 of the hybrid offspring of two animals clearly distinct, being itself 
 perfectly fertile. 
 
 I believe that I may argue as I please in the teeth of this fact, 
 but if a brother naturalist gives an argument from it, that cannot be 
 allowed for a moment, " though it must be confessed that we cannot 
 understand, except ~by vac/tie hypothesis, several facts with regard to the 
 sterility of hybrids. Nor do I pretend that the foregoing remarks go 
 to the root of- the matter. JY?> explanation is offered why an organism, 
 when placed under unnatural conditions, is rendered sterile." In other 
 words, I stumble at the threshold when pretending to explain the 
 origin of species, and am hopelessly low in the labyrinth of error in 
 which I have involved myself. 
 
 I believe that the sterility of hybrids " could not possibly be of any 
 ad raiitdye to them /" but as I hold that natural selection has done every- 
 thing that has been done in. nature, or almost everything, and all for 
 the good of the creatures, you may ask me if sterility did not originate 
 by natural selection. By what other means was it introduced V But for 
 this I must refer you to any other person who may be able to answer 
 the question, for I am not. 
 
 I believe that natural selection had no hand in sterility, for it 
 could be of no advantage to any creature, and yet sterility is a law of 
 Nature. This, it is not for me to explain. I must leave it for Nature 
 and natural selection to settle that question between them. 
 
 I believe, I say, that sterility " could not possibly be of advantage to 
 animals," but for all that I have laid it down (emphatically) that the 
 sterility of the worker bees u has been advantageous to the community." 
 You may call this blowing hot and cold, but that is my affair. 
 
 I believe that all varieties of dogs are " descended from several wild 
 species," though naturalists think otherwise ; but as they differ from 
 me they must be wrong, for I must be right. 
 
 I believe that though they all breed together now without sterility, 
 yet it was not so at first. This may be & petitio prhn-ipll, but so let it be. 
 
 I believe that "new races of animals and plants are produced 
 under domestication ;" but I do not allow this to be the case with dogs, 
 for it does not suit my purpose. 
 
20 
 
 I believe that it is " a strange arrangement " of Nature to " grant 
 to species the power of producing hybrids," and then to say to them. 
 " Hitherto shalt thou go and no farther :" " No road this way." I could 
 have done much better than Nature, and rny path is, in my own 
 opinion, a much better one than the old high road. You may think 
 that " species have been endowed with sterility simply to prevent their 
 being confounded in Nature. I think not. n That settles the matter. 
 
 I believe that those who are opposed to me as to the question of 
 sterility "slur it over" as beyond their ''reasoning powers," though it 
 must be confessed that we ' do not understand, except on vague 
 hypothesis, several facts with respect to the sterility of hybrids," and 
 as to myself "no explanation is offered of it." You may consider this 
 as a confession of my own ignorance as being as great as your own 
 about the matter, but what is ig-norance in you is wisdom in me when 
 spread over many pages of high-sounding talk. 
 
 I believe that on my " principle of natural selection," both animals 
 and plants may have been developed " from some " low form " of sea 
 weed ; and ' if we admit this," which I shall henceforth take as proved, 
 we must, of course, ' admit " that " all the organised beings have 
 descended from some one primordial form." In other words, my 
 theory being thus conclusive you may have done with a CREATOR. 
 Natural selection is the creation of my brain, and the only creation 
 that I mean to admit of. This is my Book of Genesis, and no other 
 can be admitted as true. This is a specimen of my reasoning powers. 
 If in law there is a " Coke upon Littleton," why should there not be in 
 logic a " Darwin upon Whately V" Why not? Echo answers, " Why not ?" 
 
 I believe that " natural selection is a power incessantly ready for 
 action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts as the 
 works of nature are to those of art." In other words, as, according 
 to me, Nature and natural selection are all one, it results that 
 Nature's works are as superior to man's as Nature's works are. This 
 is a notable discovery, is it not ? At all events you will allow that it 
 is worthy of me of me, C. Darwin. 
 
 I believe every useful variation is '-preserved by the term natural 
 selection ;" as for instance, that " the swiftest and slimmest wolves 
 would have the best chance of surviving, and so be preserved or 
 selected." You may, if you like, call this a figure of speech, as if 
 one were to say that when a ship is wrecked and a hundred of 
 the crew are drowned out of two hundred, the other hundred are 
 ' selected." Well and good. All is well that ends well. Certain animals 
 continue to exist. That is the great discovery that I have made. 
 
 I believe that though geology " does not reveal " any traces 
 of the u missing links " in my chain, which, however, hangs together 
 to my view just as well without them as with them, yet that it ought 
 to have recovered and revealed them, which, in my judgment, comes 
 to exactly the same thing 
 
 I believe that "certain forms are supplanted by new ones." True 
 this does away with the belief in the power and wisdom of a CREATOR, 
 but that you will never miss in the terra incoynita of my discovery. 
 
 I believe, " I can see no reason to doubt," ' that all the various 
 gorgeous tints of birds" (and so, no doubt, of insects and fishes, too) 
 were organised by the admiration of the females for the first " feather 
 in the cap" of this, that, or the other cock bird. You may ask me 
 how on this supposition I account for the black colour of the crow, 
 and the dingy hue of the coot. You may ask me how I account for 
 the young birds not having the gay and gaudy colours which they 
 attain oftimes. You may ask me how I account for the fact that 
 some species of birds, as, for example, the crossbills, have every variety 
 
21 
 
 of colour in one kind, green, blue, red, orange, yellow, " mille traJien* 
 niriox (irtccrxo sole colores" Yes, you may ask me, but your question 
 reminds me of the poet and his suggestion of the reply to " calling 
 spirits from the vasty deep," "will they come when you do call them V" 
 u Ay, there's the rub !" 
 
 I believe that natural selection has " given the proper colour to 
 grouse " and other birds and insects for " preserving them from 
 danger," but I do not not tell you how they did before they " selected " 
 their present colour. I cannot condescend to answer any such questions. 
 
 I believe that their colours were produced by the " aggregate 
 action and production of the sequence of events," or, in plain English, 
 that we see them as they are, and that is the reason of their being 
 so. What would you have more ? You may ask me, as I hold that 
 natural selection is vastly superior to any art or skill of man, whether 
 a watch or a steam engine is the " result of the aggregate action and 
 product of the sequence of events?" I am quite above replying to the 
 enquiry. 
 
 I "see no greater difficulty" in natural selection giving wings to 
 seeds than in a planter improving his plants, but I cannot tell you 
 how they come to be. It is enough for me to have them ready-to-be- 
 made for my theory. 
 
 I believe that the ostrich came from a bustard, by using its legs 
 more and its wings less, until it got to have no wings to fly with. I 
 do not pretend to tell you what it has gained by this loss. You may 
 say that wings would be very useful to it, hunted as it is. That I 
 cannot help. My theory requires it to be as it is. Whatever is, is. 
 That you cannot dispute. 
 
 I believe that bustards still exist, though elsewhere I have said 
 that in all such cases of improvement by natural selection the original 
 species is "exterminated." You may ask me to reconcile those two 
 contradictory statements. It is no business of mine to do so. You 
 must take things as you find them, for me. 
 
 I believe that a wingless bird comes by degrees, though we have 
 never seen the '" transitional grade," to be the first to " float along the 
 surface of the sea," and " ultimately to rise from its surface and glide 
 through the air." I hope you do not mean to doubt this, for I myself 
 am a standing proof of a far greater flight of fancy than even this. 
 
 I believe that all this is much more scientific than the opinions 
 to the contrary held by such men as Cuvier and Owen, Agassiz and 
 Phillips, Jones and Sedgwick. They never knew how to interpret 
 Nature as I do. 
 
 I believe that a " well-developed tail " in an aquatic animal might 
 " come to be worked in for all sorts of purposes " in a land animal. 
 But how it came to be formed in the aquatic animal, this deponent 
 sayeth not. Natural selection being an exceedingly slow process, these 
 aquatic animals must have been for thousands of millions of years 
 without any tail at all to begin with. No doubt, in time, they began 
 to be formed, or rather, to form themselves. It is true that a fish 
 without a tail must have been a queer sort of a creature, an " odd 
 fish," perhaps you will say. You may say what you like, but " all is 
 fish that comes to my net." So it was before " their tails were formed," 
 so it was in those " good old times," and so it came to pass that in due 
 time the tail of a shark got to be '' worked in " for the tail of a cow, 
 and that of an herring for that of an ass. All a priori to po.th'-i'iari. 
 Ci'i'ditc jtoxfcri ! 
 
 I believe that "it certainly is not true that the new organs appear 
 suddenly in any class ;" but if you had had a microscope of sufficiently 
 strong power, let me tell you, you would have discovered if only the 
 
22 
 
 hundred thousandth part of such a tail ab initio in the cow, the giraffe, 
 or the ass, just as I have said. 
 
 I believe that it was so, though what conceivable use it could 
 have been to that animal as a " fly-flapper." even when it grew to be 
 an inch long (for I do not pretend to say that it came per saltum), you 
 must ask some one else to tell you. 
 
 I believe the same, the very same, of all the other parts of 
 animals, mutatis mutandis, such as the trunk of the elephant, the horn 
 of the rhinoceros, and the hoof of the horse, &c., &c., &c. Neither 
 Aristotle, indeed, nor Pliny, Buffon, nor Limiseus ever thought anything 
 of the sort ; but what of that ? I do, and that is enough for me, and 
 if it is not enough for you, it is all I can offer you. 
 
 I believe that as many aquatic creatures have become land animals 
 so many land animals were once upon a time denizens of the sea. 
 That as the giraffe was once a fish, so, as I have elsewhere said, a 
 bear became a whale, or uncommonly like one, " catching flies :" possibly, 
 as the thought just strikes me, the ancestor of the flycatcher, the bird 
 so called who knows ? You may tell me that it would be a curiosity 
 in its way. No doubt about it, but being dovetailed (apropos of tails) 
 into my theory, it must have been so Don't ask me to give up such 
 a convenient argument for making up my book. Non possum HX. 
 
 I believe, " I we no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered by 
 natural selection more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, 
 with larger and longer mouths, till a creature was produced as mon- 
 struous as a whale.'' I repeat it if I can get you to swallow this as easily 
 as my bear did his flies, well and good : if not, I can only say that it has 
 all gone down with me and my brother philosophers. True, this 
 wonderful creed, as promulgated in my first edition, having been ridi- 
 culed by the Rev. F. 0. Morris in his " Difficulties of Darwinism," I 
 have thought it expedient to omit that from the next edition of my 
 modern " Metamorphoses," but only as a sujtpressio rerl. 
 
 I believe all the time that this is in harmony with all the rest of 
 my story-book, and as such no doubt you will not consider it as a 
 whit more ridiculous than all the rest of it. I leave it to you to 
 strike the balance of absurdity, as you consider it, between my title 
 page and my "tail-piece." Have I not Horace on my side, where he 
 writes, Dcsinit in jjixcon mulier fomttosa fnipeme? 
 
 I believe that, as elsewhere I make fishes go on land to become 
 land animals with tails, so I can make my land animal go into the 
 water to grow his tail. 
 
 I believe that the penguin and the ant. the hog and the swallow, 
 the camel and the kingfisher, the porpoise and the bat are, one and 
 all, as well as ourselves, " joined together by family ties," though from what 
 common ancestor they spring is not certain. Certain, however, it is 
 that something of the sort took place, me judice, 
 
 I believe that our having all this mixed blood in our veins, may 
 perhaps account for the different dispositions we see in ourselves, our 
 friends, and relations ; who can tell ? I grant you that it may be 
 rather hard to prove it ; but that is no concern of mine. All I have 
 to do is to propound theories, and the more outrageous the better for 
 me and my book. 
 
 I believe that an "ideal similarity," leading to an ancestor of 
 which we know nothing, is, or ought to be, very convincing. 
 
 I believe, "I see no good reason to doubt." that when " males and 
 females of any animal differ in structure, colour, or ornament," the 
 admiration of the females for such has producedthe apparently different 
 species we see. I admit that though I have elsewhere stated that 
 natural selection always works for some useful end, there is no useful 
 
23 
 
 end in all this, except in a " forced sense," but I have set forth the 
 theory, and by it I mean to stand or fall. 
 
 I believe all this, I say, although I have somewhere or other stated 
 that ' natural selection cares nothing for appearances," and that if it 
 were true that many " structures have been created for beauty in the 
 eyes of man or for mere variety, THIS DOCTRINE, IF TRUE, WOULD BE 
 ABSOLUTELY FATAL TO MY THEORY." You may say that if this be not 
 self-contradiction and self -confutation, you do not know what is. Per- 
 haps you do not, but you must allow me to decide. 
 
 I believe, for instance, that one peacock having by some lucky 
 accident come by a new feather of striking appearance, became at once 
 an object of great attraction to the lady-birds about him, so that the 
 next eggs laid hatched out an improved peacock. No doubt about it. 
 No doubt about it ; only see it as I do, and you will see what you will 
 see. " Some naturalists believe " that this is nonsense. All naturalists, 
 do you say? all mankind? Let them say what they like, and think 
 what they like, what is that to me ? 
 
 I believe it all ; I " see no good ground to doubt " it, although it 
 " should appear childish to attribute any effect to such weak means." 
 Thus you may get at the mental, if not the moral, qualities of birds by 
 the " help of the imagination " the " imagination " according to Tyndall. 
 
 I believe it, I say, again and again, though you may ask me how 
 it came to pass that the admiration was all so on one side, and 
 that the gentleman birds had no such admiration for the " lady-birds," 
 very ungallant, you say, do you ? Well, perhaps it was ; but then, you 
 know, dc ffustibux nou dixputandum, " when a lady is in the case." Nor 
 can I tell you how it has come to be very much the opposite with 
 mankind, descended as we are from monkeys, or cock sparrows, or 
 what not. I allow that the courting is on the side of the male ; but 
 they must change sides for my argument. 
 
 I believe, "I do not doubt, that some domestic animals vary less 
 than others, yet the variety or absence of distinct breeds of the cat, 
 the donkey, goose, &c., may be attributed in main part to selection not 
 having been brought into play." Don't laugh. Its no laughing matter. 
 It may be a difficulty with you, but it is none with me, though it 
 seems (to you I say) very unaccountable that no change should have 
 taken place in these interesting animals the cat to wit, with all its 
 caterwauling in all the millions upon millions of ages that my theory 
 supposes, down to the present time. Nor is it any difficulty with me 
 that, as I allow, the cats in the mummies of Egypt are precisely ' the 
 same as those of to-day ; for what is five thousand years in my scale 
 of time ? 
 
 I believe that "the goose seems to have a singularly inflexible 
 organisation." It is a bird that is too much for natural selection. I 
 am sorry for it, but I can't help it. 
 
 I believe, " I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and 
 accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that was profitable. 
 It is thus I believe that all the most complex and wonderful instincts 
 have originated." Once on a time, I mean, bees had no such instincts 
 as they have now ; nor had ants, nor migratory birds. At that early 
 date natural selection had not been " called into play." 
 
 I believe that the spider was once without the instinct which now 
 prompts it to spin its web, without the legs it now has, without the 
 habits it now has, without its spinnerets, and therefore without the 
 power of catching insects to live on. How it lived then, I am not 
 quite prepared at present to say, nor whether it was a spider at all or 
 not. Nor can I say, as to its " complex instincts," how it could have 
 done with only the beginning of a web to support it through all the 
 
24 
 
 thousands and millions of ages that it took to come to its present 
 state. You may suggest that it must have been created a spider to be 
 able to act as a spider, but that does not fit in with my notions. 
 
 I believe that originally the ' fertile males and females of the same 
 community transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce 
 sterile members." How there could have been a community of the 
 kind we now see without any sterile members of it, all being fertile, 
 I do not explain. You may call my theory a mere fable and idle 
 dream, but in my own opinion it is worthy of Aristotle himself. 
 
 I believe that while some of the fertile females of the community 
 were transforming themselves or their offspring into sterile members 
 for the benefit of a future society which did not then exist, some one 
 female was acting in the opposite direction, for the production of a 
 mother general of the whole hive ; in other words, that their opposite 
 instincts were "coming into play" at one and the same time, in one 
 and the same community. You can, no doubt, at once see the 
 probability of it just as I do that, in fact, sterility came from fertility, 
 sterile grandchildren from fertile parents and grandparents, and, rice 
 rersa, a still more fertile queen from the same source. This is one of 
 the ways in which I prove my theory. 
 
 I believe, as I said, that a " slight modification in instinct 
 * * * * has been advantageous to the community." I cannot deny 
 that this is, in fact, to beg the whole question, a " change of instinct " 
 being only an idea suitable to a fairy tale, but by me thought as easy 
 a thing as for one to open and shut a book. How can I doubt, since 
 it suits my theory, that at the proper moment " certain members of 
 the community " foresaw the benefit to it of sterility, and were so very 
 accommodating and obliging as to agree to have sterile grandchildren 
 all but some one who remained fertile to the admiration and loyalty 
 of the rest of the society. 
 
 I believe in, the " long continued selection of the fertile parents," 
 but who they were selected by I do not say, beyond that it came to 
 pass in the sequence of events. It is thus I make words the factors 
 of my system. 
 
 I believe that the whole of the polity of the honey bee has come 
 to pass out of nothing at all of the kind, although the figure of it is 
 to be seen in Old Egypt exactly the same as it is to be seen now. 
 But it must be as I say. Sic colo. 
 
 I believe that " if the Mexican bee had made its spheres at some 
 given distance from each other," and " if she had made them of equal 
 sizes," and if she had " arranged them symmetrically," and if she had 
 made them " in a double layer," then the comb would " probably" have 
 been as perfect as the comb of the hive-bee. All this, " if we could 
 slightly modify the instincts already possessed" by the Mexican bee. 
 Then "we muxt Hujyttw her to make her cells truly spherical and of 
 equal sizes ;" we must suppose her " to arrange her cells in level layers ;" 
 " we must suppose that she can somehow accurately judge as to what 
 distance to stand from her fellow- labourers ;" and " we have further to 
 suppose," "but this is no difficulty" (to me), that she can "prolong 
 the hexagon to any length requisite" (only five suppositions, a mere 
 trifle in such a book as mine), and then you will see what you shall 
 see. Talk about Ovid and his metamorphoses, " nauci. rnuci, jnli, 
 nihilo (estinw." You tell me that all this reminds you of Mr. Thornhill, 
 in the " Vicar of Wakefield," and his '' Hence I shall proceed to observe 
 that the concatenation of self-existences, proceeding in a reciprocal 
 duplicate ratio, etc., etc." 
 
 You may tell me what you like, but facts cannot alter fancies, can 
 they? Answer me that question, if you can. You say that if I can 
 
25 
 
 effect all this, beginning only to " slightly modify " an instinct, I can 
 do as much as the magicians of Egypt, or the wizards of the Arabian 
 Night's Entertainments. Of course, I can ; " wonders never cease " in 
 the creations of my brain. I grant you, if you put it to me, that in 
 like manner, by only " slightly modifying " the instincts of the sheep, 
 it would in due time, by a touch of my wand, heigh presto ! be turned 
 into a wolf. That is my mode of philosophical enquiry, though you 
 may think it a preposterous series of assumptions, all purely imaginary 
 and utterly incapable of proof, strung together in the attempt to cancel 
 Creation and so ignore a CKEATOK. 
 
 I believe that "it seems at first quite inconceivable how bees have 
 practically solved a recondite problem," but I can soon get over such 
 a trifle as this, or the equally slight apparent difficulty how the spider 
 came to construct its web (on my theory), or how the tailor-bird learned 
 to sew together leaves to construct its nest, or to whom the beaver 
 served its apprenticeship in the art of cutting down timber and 
 building* a house, and so on through all the instincts of all the 
 creatures of Nature. I hold that " the difficulty is not nearly so great 
 as it at first appeared." Oh, dear 110 ! Shew me the difficulty that I 
 cannot ride over on my hobby. I will thank you, I say, to show me 
 any such. 
 
 I believe, as I said, that bees have learned by degrees to " strike 
 imaginary spheres," being able " somehow to know the proper distance" to 
 work at. You may reply to this that if carpenters and masons were to 
 ' l strike imaginary spheres," and ' ; somehow " to ascertain the " proper 
 distances " without rule or plummet, they would be likely to make but 
 a bungling job of it. I pass that by ; all I say is that the bee 
 imagines a circle which it never really sweeps, knows when and where one 
 such circle meets another, and builds its building on these baseless dreams. 
 
 I believe that natural selection has by degrees, in untold ages upon 
 ages, led the hive-bee to make its comb " absolutely perfect in the 
 economising of wax." It may be a difficulty to you, but it is none 
 to me, that swarm after swarm must have been hatched with new 
 instincts, a queen producing 20,000 eggs capable of " striking imaginary 
 spheres," suggestive to modern philosophers of striking out the most 
 wild freaks of the imagination to be set forth in due time in a mere 
 jingle of words making a pretence to science. Supposed facts, in my 
 opinion, are to be established by the " use of the imagination " 
 inventing phenomena which have no real existence, taking for granted 
 what had to be proved, and by the unlimited use of inaccurate language 
 enveloped in a cloud of words involved as much as possible. 
 
 I believe all I have said about the bees, and I do not consider that 
 it is for me to explain with whom or with what they have to struggle, the 
 humble bee doing just as well with its rough architecture as the 
 Mexican bee with its mathematical construction, and wanting no 
 improvement, excepting in the brain of a " philosopher." 
 
 I believe that we ought never to refer to final causes, though Dr. 
 Whewell says we cannot help doing so, as we prove by ourselves often using 
 such expressions as Nature's '' designs " and " her objects," protesting all 
 the while that we only use them in a "wide metaphorical sense." 
 
 I believe that Sir Charles Lyell was quite wrong when he said 
 that " species have a real existence in Nature," and that each was 
 " endowed at ite creation " with its present attributes, because, he says, 
 "we must suppose that when the author of Nature creates an animal 
 or plant, all the possible circumstances in which its descendants are 
 destined to live are foreseen." 
 
 I believe in the transmutation of species, though Sir Charles Lyell 
 holds that the argument from the brain in the young of animals lends 
 
26 
 
 " no support whatever to the notion of a gradual transmutation of one 
 species to another," least of all "from an animal of a more simple to 
 one of a more complex structure." 
 
 I believe that Sir C. Lyell was talking- at random when he' said, 
 speaking of a philosopher like me, " Henceforth his speculations know 
 no definite bounds ; he gives the rein to conjecture, and fancies that 
 the outward form, instinctive faculties, nay that reason itself may have 
 been gradually developed from some of the simplest states of existence. 
 That all animals, that man himself, and that irrational beings, may 
 have had one common origin." 
 
 I believe that male and female apes must have become simla- 
 multaneously endowed with the reason of man ; for, if not. the one that 
 had such reason could not have consorted suitably with one that had not, 
 and such pairs, to be well matched, must have arisen contemporaneously 
 for several generations, or there would have been a reversion to the 
 ancestral ape, which never, since the world began, could light a fire or 
 cook its food, make a bow and arrow, or even a hoop. 
 
 I believe all this, although I cannot deny that the dog or the 
 elephant exhibits far more of the human character than the ape, and 
 that there never has been, and never can be, any friendship or com- 
 munication between man and an ape such as there is with the dog or 
 even the wolf, and that the ape can never be trusted by man, or be 
 made useful to him, as the dog, the horse, and many other animals 
 can. 
 
 I believe all this, I say. although it will be no use for me to deny 
 that the common bee closely resembles man in its classes, its govern- 
 ment, its laws, its public zeal, its loyalty, and its architecture ; in not 
 one of which respects does the ape even approach to it, much less to 
 us. 
 
 I believe that our speech has its origin in the tones of the voices 
 of birds and beasts. You may ask me how. if so, it is that being so 
 much nearer to the ape than the nightingale, we do not screech like 
 the gorilla instead of singing as we do ; but I consider such a question 
 quite irrelevant to my grand argument. 
 
 I believe that Agassiz was quite wrong when he stated that there 
 is nothing like parental descent connecting the line of creation ; that 
 Cuvier, to the same effect, was also equally wrong : and Owen also in 
 his notion that the foreknowledge of such a being as man must have 
 existed before man appeared or could appear. 
 
 I believe that the wing of the bat, the thousands of lenses of the 
 eye, the electrical organs of fish, and all such wonders of Nature were 
 the results of natural selection, or to speak more plainly (?), by 
 " development," " plastic tendencies," " slight modifications," " genera- 
 tive variability," and so on. No doubt you must see all this as clearly 
 as I do. I have rather unfortunately said in another part of my book 
 that it is " most difficult to conjecture by what transitions such organs 
 could ever have arrived at their present state." Yes, it may be 
 unfortunate, but I have contradicted myself so often that I now do 
 not mind at all about it. Conjecture has so much befriended me that 
 it must stand me in stead once more here ; for " nothing can be more 
 hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in 
 members of the same class by natural selection and the struggle for 
 life." 
 
 You may say that if even conjecture can do nothing here, it must 
 be hopeless to look for certainty. So be it. I must follow my own 
 method. If I am satisfied, that is enough. 
 
 I believe that we are clearly of the same descent with animals of 
 the various kinds, as proved by the number of our vertebra. I believe, 
 
27 
 
 also, that we are clearly of the same descent as birds, because of our 
 similitude to them in our imperfect condition before birth. Birds, I 
 admit, have not the same number of vertebrae that we have, but if 
 you think that I shall allow that this overturns my argument, you 
 are very much mistaken. You may call it a " meddle and muddle " 
 if you like. I do not. I have spoken. 
 
 I believe that all organised beings have been produced by empirical 
 efforts at the cost of myriads of imperfect experiments, though " on 
 the theory of Creation " there is every appearance of One Mind, master 
 of the whole work, foreseeing the end from the beginning, holding all 
 forms of life in view, having them all, as it were, in its hand, and 
 all carried out on one plan. 
 
 I believe that natural selection has made any animal perfect only 
 after " exterminating " enormous numbers of experimental ones ; 
 failures in faci, like Beau Brummell's neck-ties, so that the world has 
 been one vast shambles of incalculable slaughter for an inconceivable 
 period of time. It is true that the remains of not one individual of 
 all these failures has ever been found, but I have only to say that 
 they ought to be, for there must have been mountains upon mountains 
 of them, " Pelion upon Ossa" (ay, ossa, bones indeed), over and over 
 again, to build my theory on. 
 
 I believe that ' ' natural selection results from the struggle for 
 existence," or in plainer English, is the Result of Destruction; yes, 
 every part of every animal, the wing of the bat, and the hand of the 
 ape, is so. The whole of Nature is one great battle-field, in which 
 every living creature, and every part of each, has only been produced 
 by the murder of its ancestors, time out of mind, and could only have 
 " survived " by the " extermination " of every competitor in hecatombs, 
 so that its own life is, after all, only a triumphant blunder. 
 
 I believe that the bones in the arm of the monkey, the wing of 
 the bat, the fore leg of the horse, and the flipper of the seal, are not 
 of any " special use to those animals," but are only due to 
 " inheritance." You may call this solemn trifling, and may ask how 
 these animals would do without them ? That is their affair, not mine. 
 It follows, indeed, that a better architect would have given these 
 animals more useful limbs, and that the works of Nature might be 
 vastly improved upon in my opinion, though I see that, even as it 
 is, a horse can gallop a mile in a minute, a monkey can climb from 
 bough to bough in a most surprising manner, and a seal glide through 
 the water in a marvellous way, the similarity of its structure to tbat 
 of those others being no manner of hindrance to it. You may, indeed, 
 reply that if the bones of the fore arm of the ape were of no use to 
 the "ape they cannot be to us its descendants. You may call this 
 logic, but I have no place for such an argument in my book. 
 
 I may " believe " that the ancestor of the seal had not a flipper, 
 but a foot with five toes; and I may "further venture to believe" 
 that the several bones in the limbs of the monkey, the horse, and the 
 bat, were of more use to their common ancestor than they are to 
 themselves. 
 
 I believe, I cannot deny, that you would be justified in saying 
 that if the ancestor of the seal had five toes, it may have been either 
 a man or an ape, or more probably, perhaps, a bear, which, as I have 
 elsewhere stated, had a natural tendency to become " very like a whale." 
 All you see is fish that comes to my net, as I said before. 
 
 I believe, yes I believe, that on my theory, among the " swarms " of 
 creatures "totally unlike any existing animal," it is highly probable 
 "that the ancestor of the seal with five toes "may" have played his pranks. 
 
. 28 
 
 I believe that iny own ancestor's legs and arms, in that form, 
 were of more special use to him than they are to me, but that Nature 
 has done the best she could for me with those limbs under existing 
 circumstances. 
 
 I believe, accordingly, that the machinery of our bodies has been 
 deteriorating as to practical use ; and as to their being of special use 
 to us, they have rather retrograded as to that, so far as we are con- 
 cerned. I grant you that we are, that we must be, improved upon 
 apes, but, nevertheless, have deteriorated in our limbs from their and 
 our unknown ancestors, whose history is lost in the mists of antiquity. 
 All this rather involves a contradiction, I own, but I cannot help it. 
 I must stand by my theory. 
 
 I believe, indeed, that on my theory this ' Great Unknown" having 
 limbs of such special use to him ought to have come off conqueror in 
 the " struggle for existence,'' but it seeems to have been all the other 
 way, and the favoured animal was " exterminated " and the inferior 
 perpetuated, so that instead of the chef dP&uvre, we have nothing but 
 bats, seals, donkeys, apes, and men ! 
 
 I believe that the " indefinite repetition " of the same part or 
 organ is the common characteristic of all " low nr little-modified forms," 
 and therefore we may readily conclude that the unknown progenitor of 
 the vertebrata "possessed many vertebrae" It militates rather against 
 this dictum that the said ancient Incognito had limbs of more use to 
 him than are those of his descendants, the horse, seal, bat, and monkey, 
 are to them, and yet that he was a " low and little -modified form." But 
 N'importe ; if my theory cannot put up with such contradictions, what 
 is it good for? 
 
 I believe that Nature does nothing " by leaps," and that every 
 separate part of every animal is the result of natural selection in the 
 inconceivably vast allowance of time I ask for my theory, and 
 although this also flatly contradicts my statement that the ancestor of 
 the vertebrata put in an appearance with many vertebras ready made, 
 I cannot give up the back-bone of my argument. 
 
 I believe, I say, that the ancestor of the vertebrata had a great 
 many vertebras to begin with ; he must have been the first, and could 
 therefore have had no vertebrated animal before him ; or, in other 
 words, if you like it better, was rm//YY/, for I do hold with the 
 doctrine of spontaneous generation. You may ask me whether it may 
 not have been in like manner that the ancestor of the birds had 
 feathers, he of the fishes had scales, and so on. Yes, you may ask me 
 if you like. 
 
 I believe that the fore and hind legs of the vertebrata and 
 articulate classes are homologous, but the middle legs of insects are 
 not so. They, therefore, have no business where they are, but are 
 mere interlopers. As such, I have nothing to do with them. 
 
 I believe that the bear, "with his mouth open to catch flies," as 
 I have said, was the immediate ancestor of the whale. Yet the bear 
 has hind feet very useful to him, but the whale, though it has fins or 
 paddles in the place of hands, is absolutely without even the analogues 
 of the hinder limbs. How is this? you ask me. I don't know. 
 
 I believe, of course, that the bat was not so created at first, but 
 was " worked out " of some other form in the usual way. It had at 
 first a body without wings, small or large, just as bats are now, or 
 wings without a body. I am not quite sure which. 
 
 I believe that they were formed to live on insects, but how they 
 managed to catch them it is not for me to say. I suppose they did 
 the best they could. They only can live from foot to mouth now, 
 so that they must have been much worse off then. But by degrees their 
 
29 
 
 fore hands began to lengthen, and then their wings. As they lost 
 their fore feet, aud before they got their wings, they must have been 
 in rather a bad way, for it is clear they could neither run nor fly. 
 Myriads of them must have succumbed to the process in the untold 
 ages I have to beg, but those that somehow or other lived on in the 
 quarter or half state, and all the intermediate stages, "exterminated" 
 all competitors. This is my natural history of the bat, first edition. 
 
 I believe that the like to this is the natural history of every other 
 species of living creature, iwft&ii& mutandis. You may say that it is 
 really too ridiculous. It is not so to my mind. No doubt the animals 
 in transition must have perished, being neither one thing nor the 
 other, and of course those which had no beneficial change must have 
 perished also for want of it. This I must own ha,s rather a queer 
 look about it, and ''if it had been asked how an insectivorous quadruped 
 could possibly have been converted into a flying bat, the question would 
 have been far more difficult, and I could have given no answer ;" 
 yet I think " such difficulties have little weight." 
 
 I believe that dogs preying on hares and rabbits, the rabbits be- 
 came scarce and the hares increased. Then the dogs would try to catch 
 more hares, and the dogs " with slightly plastic limbs " (for which I 
 beg the whole question) would be " slightly favoured," and so would 
 live longer and survive through a scarcity of food, and would also 
 have more young with a tendency to inherit their advantages. Yes, 
 " I see no reason to doubt that these causes would in a thousand 
 generations produce a marked effect, and adapt the form of the dog 
 to catching hares." You may quote Professor Owen that "this 
 condition of things, if followed out to its full consequences, seems only 
 to tend to my original inference, viz., an extinction of species, for when 
 the hares were all destroyed the long-legged dogs would perish ; at 
 most there could be but a reversion to the first form and condition." 
 Professor Owen may argue in this way if he likes. He and I differ, 
 that is all. As to the short-legged dogs and what would become of 
 them in one generation, not to say in a thousand, all I have to say 
 is, " Love me, love my dog-ma." 
 
 I believe, as to birds, that it took untold ages to make the first 
 bird out of I know not what. The process began at first somewhere 
 or other, though I know not where. One new form succeeded another 
 in untold profusion for a few hundred millions of ages more or less, 
 each form becoming more and more like a true bird, till at length, 
 after the slaughter of more than as many hundreds of millions of 
 them, a bona fide cock and hen were hatched, the product of the 
 extermination of innumerable ancestors. " Further this deponent 
 sayeth not," except that I cannot tell you of what so-called species it 
 was may be an eagle or may be a dove. I rather incline to think 
 that it must have been the latter, as it would be somewhat awkward. for 
 a bird of prey to come into being and to find n prey for it to prey 
 on. At all events the "new and peculiar line of life" was secured. 
 
 I believe that after this, " many divergent forms spread rapidly." 
 It is indeed true that 1 have before now laid it down, and that over 
 and over again, that " natural selection always acts very slowly," but if 
 I cannot say a little of anything where should I be? I tell you that 
 when once my first bird came out-, I cannot say whether " ab ovo " or 
 not. all the tens of thousands of species there are now soon began to fly 
 about, Such were their " plastic tendencies." How pretty ! 
 
 I believe that all this " believing " is a most excellent substitute for 
 proof. Hodge's razors were made to " sell," not to '"cut," and I think 
 his a very good example to follow. No doubt in the process of bird- 
 making many unusual forms were totally lost, ami that by myriads on 
 
30 
 
 myriads, to say nothing of the failure of countless experiments wasted 
 in the endeavour to connect the different orders, genera, and species. The 
 " struggle for life " you see Avas too much for them, though not for me, 
 and so it came to pass that there is such a vast hiatus between birds 
 and the vertebrated animals, as also the separation between all the 
 families of birds themselves. 
 
 I believe that Cuvier only showed his ignorance in comparison 
 with me when he laid it down as to "every organised being" that all 
 their parts " correspond," and that " none of these parts can change 
 without the whole changing.'' 1 Such a dictum 1 have sense enough to see 
 musjt be fatal to my whole theory. Ergo, he must be wrong, and I must 
 be right. I cannot for a moment allow that any single created being 
 is perfect ; I can only suggest ideal improvements in every one of them, 
 " beneficial changes in a slight degree," and so on, and on. and on. 
 
 I believe that all the correspondence in any creatures between their 
 organisation and instincts are purely accidental, and must be so. All 
 are explained by the " sequence of events " as ascertained by me. 
 
 I believe that a spider had at first no capacity for catching insects, 
 and that the instinct by which it makes its web was not given to it for 
 that purpose ; that carnivorous animals were not designed to keep down 
 others, that birds were not made for living in trees, nor fishes in the 
 sea, nor insects to act the various parts they do, and that the plants of 
 the earth were not created for food for man or animals. No ; all these 
 things are the results of blind chance acting at random through incal- 
 culable ages of failures, the present end being at last hit upon, all the 
 predecessors of existing creatures having been " exterminated " in the 
 process. Design had nothing to do with the result.* ; they are all come 
 of the " sequence of events." Very good of them, was it not ? 
 
 I believe that none of the beauties of Creation were intended to 
 please the eye, or any other sense. " This doctrine, if true, ivould, no 
 doubt, be absolutely fatal to my theory :" neither the colours of flowers, 
 nor their scents, nor the varied plumage of birds nor their songs. No ; 
 they are all accidents. You must take them as you find them, and 
 believe me that they are all the results of the " sequence of events," or 
 the " chapter of accidents," and not of any studied plan. 
 
 I believe that the beauty of the male birds is to be attributed to 
 the coquetry of the females, beginning with their admiration of some 
 eccentric feather till the whole plumage followed suit, "fine by degrees" 
 and " beautifully more." You may call this a miserable puerility. So 
 be it. i hold it to be equal to the wisdom of Solomon, or if my 
 modesty will allow me to tell the whole truth, vastly superior to it. 
 
 I believe, " I see no good reason to doubt," that female birds by selecting, 
 during thousands of generations, the most melodious or beautiful males, 
 according to their standard of beauty, might produce a marked efiect." 
 You say, how much obliged to the hen birds we ought to be for the 
 production of all the beautifully plumed forms of birds we see. foreign 
 and British, and all their variety of songs. Yes, I think so too. You 
 are right for once. 
 
 I believe that changes in the structure of animals, which imply and 
 involve an intuitive knowledge of the profoundest secrets of Physiology, are 
 effected in all creatures, w r hile yet, as in 'the case of a toad or an oyster 
 there_ is no intellect at all exercised in the transmutation, nor any 
 definite plan or object in view as to what is to be attained to. Yes ; 
 thus from utter imbecility and the most profound ignorance, the highest 
 wisdom and the greatest perfection of strength are evolved by evolution 
 Only give helplessness, ignorance, and nothingness time enough, and they 
 will conjiue you up anything I please. " I am monarch of all I survey 
 
31 
 
 is the motto of my theory, like Crusoe's fable of old. Wisdom and 
 power have had nothing to do with the "wonderful works" of Nature. 
 Ex nihllo they all have come. All is the result of innumerable millions 
 of blunders. It is they that have filled the world with what you call 
 the wonders and beauties of Creation. 
 
 I believe that natural selection is infinitely better adapted to the 
 more complex " conditions of life," and " of far higher workmanship " 
 than any thing man can produce ; and by " natural selection " I mean 
 the " sequence of events." Thus, you see, events are workers, and 
 causes are produced by results. This, even common sense will at once 
 tell you. 
 
 1 believe that though Professor Phillips has said that the human 
 mind could not, even with the materials, have predicted the complete 
 arrangements we find in such adaptations as the various kinds of tails in 
 the falcons and the swallows, the woodpeckers and the divers, yet that 
 a monad could have a capability for the development of all such in the 
 "sequence of events." I hold it to be so, that is sufficient for me. 
 Let it suffice, I repeat, for you. 
 
 I believe that for the formation of the most, complex form, it is 
 not necessary to know how to make it. That being so, because I say 
 it, there could not be supposed to be any All-Wise CREATOR. Q.E.D. 
 
 I believe that by natural selection pairs of creatures appeared at 
 the same time suited to each other (and to my theory). How kind of them 
 I believe that it must have been so, because my theory would break 
 down if it were to be supposed that in any number of millions of ages 
 only one individual elaborated a tail, or a wing, as the case may be. 
 No ; there must have been two worked out for each other "just in the 
 nick of time," as the saying is. 
 
 I believe that natural selection is the Great CREATOR. And why 
 not ? Ipse dixi. How do you get over that ? 
 
 I believe that there was no intelligence presiding over the plan of 
 Nature. Cuvier, indeed, says that there was, but what do I care for 
 Cuvier ? 
 
 I believe in many "beautiful contrivances," though I do not 
 believe in any contriver. It suits me to do so, and that is all I have 
 to say. 
 
 I believe that the " struggle for life," which I have fancied, must 
 have " exterminated " millions upon millions of luckless failures. I 
 may be a mere assumption on my part, but 1 deal in assumptions. 
 
 I believe that no explanation is at all necessary of my taking it 
 for granted that before the eye in its present state was formed there 
 must have been a " single rudimentary eye," able, but only able to 
 discern " light from darkness, but nothing else." How the first animal 
 came to have it, is not for me to say. It had it, I say. I cannot tell 
 you how natural selection made it, or made it to discern light from 
 darkness. All I can say, is, that. " he who will go thus far, ought not 
 to hesitate to go farther." (True enough !) "His reason ou^ht to con- 
 quer his imagination" (for all that Tyndall says about the "use of 
 imagination in science") "in extending the principle of natural selection 
 to such startling lengths:' That is my opinion, and opinion, mine at 
 least, is everything. 
 
 I believe that I can give you a receipt like Mrs. Glass's one for making 
 an eye " Take a thick layer of transparent tissue," and so on. You 
 may ask me how the materials came to be at hand, and so readily 
 You may call this a pertinent question. I call it a very impertinent 
 one. I don't like it at all. It does not suit me. I altogether therefore 
 gnore it. 
 
32 
 
 I believe, to proceed, "I see no very great difficulty in believing" 
 that " natural selection " has worked out an eye of some 24,000 lenses, as 
 in an insect, from my supposed original " optic nerve, merely coated with 
 pigment." Aladdin's Lamp was nothing to my natural selection ! 
 
 I believe that only let this "process go on for millions on millions of 
 years, and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds, and 
 may we not suppose that a living optical instrument might thus be formed, 
 as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to those of 
 man." You say its all " suppose and suppose," as the old Scotch ballad 
 says. Well, suppose it is what then? 
 
 I believe that " thick layers of tissue " were manipulated, in some way 
 or other, to produce that result ; but as I was not there to see the process 
 going on, it is very unreasonable of you to expect me to tell you all or any- 
 thing about it. 
 
 I believe that it all came of a "nerve sensitive to light ;" but how there 
 came to be such a nerve is a question you need not ask me. Whatever 
 was, was. That is a self-evident proposition, and proves my case. 
 
 I believe that there was no design to produce such an eye, but only 
 that there happened to be a " nerve sensitive to light " just where it ought 
 to be in the head, and at the same time " spaces filled with fluid," all to 
 hand in fact, " this, that, and the other," and a "power intently watching 
 the process," natural selection to wit but all accidental, nothing of purpose. 
 You may say that you have a right to be indignant at such an insult 
 offered to your common sense. You may be ; but I have nothing to do 
 with common sense. 
 
 I believe that natural selection was thus " intently watching each 
 accidental alteration," but without any prescribed plan of her own. It 
 was altogether a fortuitous proceeding. Thus, you see, the eye was the 
 result of a series of accidents, going on in millions upon millions of billions 
 upon billions of years, and at a sacrifice of a still greater number of lives 
 in failures. This is a philosophical argument ; and as it is quite sufficient 
 for me, let it suffice for you also. In a word, only take for granted all rny 
 " vain imaginations," and " we may believe that a living optical instrument 
 was thus formed, as superior (as I said) to one of glass as the works of 
 the Creator are to those of man." By " Creator, "you will of course under- 
 stand that I mean a Creator of my own creating that is to say, in other 
 words, " natural selection." 
 
 I believe, you see, that in order to make a perfect animal or creature 
 of any kind, it is not necessary at all to know how to make it. Not 
 in the least certainly not. The only three postulates that I claim are, 
 Accident, Ignorance, and Extermination. By these three acting together, 
 all that is called Creation came into being as we see it. 
 
 I believe, for I cannot deny, that one of the Trilobite family, the 
 Asaphus Tyrannus, has no fewer than 6,000 facets to each of its eyes, and 
 Buckland states that it was " created in the fulness of perfection," or to 
 use my own words, " as perfect as possessed by any of the articulate class." 
 I have, no doubt, contended that it takes millions upon millions of ages, 
 each million with millions upon millions of failures, to make anything like 
 an eye at all ; yet, as here we find a perfect eye in the Trilobite, whose 
 fossil remains are found in the most ancient of all the formations, and 
 which, therefore, in the words of Ansted, must have been among " the 
 earliest of created beings," this fact, I say, staring me in the face, I 
 "see no difficulty" whatever in it, by simply "imagining" that it must 
 have been gradually coming to that state of perfection in billions upon 
 billions of ages before the beginning. You understand, do you not ? 
 Nothing can be more plain or simple. It merely is an instance of the 
 " use of the imagination in science," Tyndall's grand discovery of which 
 
33 
 
 is the greatest fact in modern philosophy. You may say, if you please, 
 that it is all fiction, and so on. Leave that to me ; I know better. 
 
 I believe that if " humble bees were to become rare in any country," 
 it " might be a great advantage to red clover " to have a shorter flower, 
 so that the " hive bee should visit its flowers." " Thus I can under- 
 stand how a flower and a bee might slowly become, either simultaneously, 
 or one after another, modified and adapted in the most perfect manner 
 to each other." This, you see, would be of mutual advantage to both 
 of them, the bee getting honey and the clover fertility ; but, of course, 
 this could only be after the destruction of millions of races of bees and 
 ditto ditto of clover till they became suited to each other. You may 
 exclaim with Dominie Sampson, Prodigious ! Prodigious ! ! Prodigious ! ! ! 
 Well, perhaps it is. You may add, too, if you like, that it must be 
 exceedingly kind of the bees, as they have done from the first without 
 the red clover, to self-sacrifice themselves as such in untold millions 
 for what they can do so well without. It no doubt is so, but I have 
 always found bees very obliging to all my demands upon them. I may 
 say that I feel particularly obliged to the queen bee, who, though she 
 does not " gather honey every day from every opening flower " herself, 
 resolved to lay eggs which should produce bees so well-behaved towards 
 the red clover. 
 
 I believe that this notion is to " banish the belief of the creation 
 of new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modification of their 
 structure." Such notions serve the purpose of Infidels till they are 
 exploded. Professor Phillips has, indeed, said that " No one who ad- 
 vanced so far in philosophy as to have thought of one thing in relation 
 to another will ever be satisfied with laws which had no author, works 
 which had no maker, and co-ordination which had no designer." That 
 was his opinion, no doubt ; mine is different. Fiction before fact, any 
 day, for me. 
 
 I believe that "there is no such thing as species," and I also 
 believe that " all varieties are in the act of becoming species." What 
 next? you will ask me. Whatever I please, is my answer. 
 
 I believe that natural selection will, some time or other, cease from 
 her carnage of extermination, after the slaughter of infinite millions 
 beyond all power of calculation, or even of thought ; and that every 
 plant and every animal will be perfect. Whether they are to feed on 
 one another or not, I leave to them to say what care I? There may 
 be men with wings for aught I know, or sirens and satyrs, mermaids 
 and dragons, centaurs and sphinxes, animals able to talk, and so forth 
 in the " sequence of events." The understanding is all very well in its 
 way, but commend me to the "use of the imagination," as aforesaid. 
 Nothing like it in science ! Has not Tyndall said so ? Of course, he has. 
 
 I believe that all this is to be brought about without any designer 
 and without any plan. What are a few impossibilities, more or less, in 
 the way of such a grand idea ? 
 
 I believe that the intellect in man has proceeded from that which 
 had no intellect, all by natural selection. You may ask me who selected 
 natural selection. Ay, " there's the rub," as I have said before. I am 
 not going to tell you, so you need not ask me. It is easy enough to 
 ask a question, but not always so easy to answer it. 
 
 I believe that the first creature did, in my own words, " flash into 
 existence," somehow or other. You may call this an act of Creation, I 
 do not. I have, indeed, put the question " Were the numerous kinds 
 of animals created as eggs, or seeds, or full grown"? What I mean, so 
 far as I know my own meaning, is, that as whatever is, is, so whatever 
 was, was. Intelligis-ne? 
 
 
34 
 
 I believe that this was the "simple beginning" of all things. You 
 may call it a miraculous act of a Creator, but I hold that it was 
 nothing at all of the sort. It was a Creation, but there was no 
 CREATOR. It may be quite unreasonable, but that is no affair of mine. 
 "What is a hobby good for if I cannot ride it over a fence like this, 
 especially when mounted on such a one as Huxley's "little hoise," 
 which he has found out for me ready saddled and bridled, perhaps, I 
 hear you say. You are mistaken again, I can ride quite well without 
 either. 
 
 I believe that the only creation, if I must use the word, was that 
 of the first organic form 
 
 That every plant and animal has since acquired its present shape 
 by minute accidental changes, one after another; 
 
 That these changes were useful, though without any intention that 
 they should be so ; 
 
 That in the "struggle for life" those thus formed survived, and that 
 those not thus favoured were " exterminated ;" 
 
 That no plant or animal became, what we now see it to be, by 
 design, but by pure accident, favoured as just stated ; 
 
 That every plant and animal is still " struggling " to keep its place, 
 if it can, in Nature. 
 
 You probably will here ask me, whence principles of virtue or 
 morality came to men ? For if man was intended to have any sense 
 of virtue, he must have been created for it by some antecedent. Well ; 
 but there was none such, and therefore it is all the result of the 
 u sequence of events," just like all the rest of all the changes that have 
 come to the various animals. It follows, therefore, on my theory, that 
 virtuous men must have " exterminated " all who were not so lucky as 
 to be virtuous. About this there can be no manner of doubt. 
 
 I believe that aD such creatures have universally tended to rise in 
 the scale of beings. You may indeed say, if so, how is it that such vast 
 multitudes of the lowest forms of all still exist ? Perhaps you think this is 
 fatal to my theory. It is not that is all I have to say on the subject. 
 Don't tell me it is a figment of my own brain. Even suppose it was, 
 it would be none the worse for that. 
 
 I believe, though it flatly contradicts my belief, that it was not 
 necessary for all the lower forms to be advanced, for " what advantage " 
 would it be to the lowest forms to be advanced ? Very true, you say ; 
 and you tell me to use the same argument in the case of my bears, 
 ostriches, logger- headed ducks, and all the rest of them. How. you say, 
 can we tell that it would be an advantage to any of them to be 
 changed ? That is a captious question, and you need not expect any 
 answer to it from me. 
 
 I believe, have I not told you before, that all animals have been 
 changed by some accidental benefits ; but if you ask me to point to any 
 existing animal, and say how it could be benefited by some change, 
 that is quite another question, and one with which I do not consider I 
 have anything to do. You tell me that it would be no advantage to a 
 swallow to be changed into a snail, nor to an antelope to be trans- 
 muted into a frog. Perhaps not, hut tell me what you like; I tell 
 you what I have just told you. 
 
 I believe, for I have said it, that many a one of even the lowest 
 animals in the scale, has a "really wondrous and beautiful organisation," 
 and you may say, that if so, you do not see how it can be improved. 
 Say so. 
 
 I believe, I repeat again and again, "How do we know that it 
 would be any advantage for the lower forms to be more highly organised?" 
 You say you agree with me. Of course you do ; everybody must agree with 
 
35 
 
 me. Plainly it would be a great advantage, as you say, for an oyster to 
 be changed into an alderman, for then he could not be eaten by him. 
 No doubt about it. For myself I can swallow anything. Even such a 
 palpable contradiction as all this goes down with me. No one can con- 
 tradict me so well as I do myself, and there, you see, I have the 
 advantage of you. 
 
 I believe, for all I have just said, that "each creature will tend to 
 become more and more improved in relation to its condition in life." 
 Yes ; and yet you say that this is to blow hot and cold, for that the 
 lower forms have not been "exterminated" by the improved ones, but 
 that both live close together in innumerable forms without the slightest 
 tendency to any such imaginary improvement the horse and the ass 
 for instance. Ay, the ass. How is this, you say. Yes, how is it ? 
 
 I believe, this is my reply, that we must " see no difficulty in 
 believing " anything in fact. My argument, in short, is this : if my 
 theory be true, it must be so ; but my theory is true, therefore it is so. 
 Professor Sedgwick has, indeed, said that if a theory proves no law, it 
 is " worse than nothing," " it is nothing better than imposture." Pro- 
 fessor Sedgwick was a weak-minded man, if he said so. I hold the 
 opposite doctrine. c^**** 
 
 I believe that " assuredly if this (my) theory be true," an " nrfcfcjaably 
 great " number of links must have existed " between all living and^ ex- 
 tinct species." You say there is no trace of them, and you ask, where 
 are they? Echo answers, "Where?" 
 
 I believe that every animal, bird, plant, &c., are one and all striving 
 and "struggling" with and against each other "for existence," and that 
 natural selection is looking on with fell pleasure at the destruction of 
 all the weakest which must go to the wall. You say, but do you not 
 see, year after year, the same beautiful flowers as before, primroses, 
 violets, cowslips, and bluebells? Do you not hear the same sweet notes 
 of the birds, and do you not see them build the same wonderfully- 
 constructed nests that they did of yore? Do you not listen to the cry 
 of the cuckoo as ever of old, and note the instincts of the various 
 animals ? My reply to all such questions is stereotyped, and therefore 
 can never change, " All organic beings are striving to seize on each 
 place in the economy of Nature." 
 
 I believe it, though I see the smaller and the smallest birds main- 
 tain their numbers as of yore the wren and the robin, the thrush and 
 the blackbird, the swallow and the dove, and so on through all Creation. 
 So let it be. I have no objection, but what I say I say; and what I 
 say is, natural selection is the be-all and end-all for me. It works by 
 accidental change and " extermination." Every creature that does not 
 change must be expunged from the page of Nature. You may ask me 
 if the "origin of species" is "by means of natural selection," where it 
 is that natural selection exists ? You may further ask me. as I speak 
 of "favoured races," whom or by what it is they are favoured. In 
 reply, I can believe that any effect may be produced without an existent 
 cause. 
 
 I believe in assumption without proof as the highest philosophy ; in 
 speculation not borne out by facts, and, in a word, in " imagination in 
 science." 
 
 I believe that Locke lays it down that want of proof is one 
 of the "causes of error," but what of that? 
 
 I believe, in fine, that " new forms " are continually being produced . 
 You ask me to say, where? That I do not mean to do. All I can say 
 is that unlimited time " might " have produced such ergo, it has been 
 so. There must have been such unlimited time, as bagged by my 
 theory, and consequently my case is proved. 
 
36 
 
 I believe, for I have confessed it, that my theory is based on 
 imagination, not on proved fact. I have no faith in inductive reasoning, 
 as I think you will allow I have shown all along. 
 
 I believe that there is no Supreme Governour of the Universe, though 
 Laplace has shown by the calculation of probabilities that it is four 
 millions to a unit that the motions of the planets have been directed 
 by a "First Great Cause," and nearly two millions to one that there 
 was such, rather than that the sun will rise at a given moment of any 
 given day. I have spoken. 
 
 I believe, because Huxley says so, that the Pyramids were built on 
 the mud of the Nile deposited at a very slow rate, the fact being that 
 it is deposited in enormous quantities in a short space of time. 
 
 I believe that the horse was tamed 19337 years B.C., though history 
 relates that it was not introduced into Egypt till the era of the 
 Shepherd Kings. 
 
 I believe that religion is a novelty, though in the " Book of the 
 Dead," perhaps the oldest book in the world, the future life is clearly 
 spoken of as well as the doctrine of a future state of rewards and 
 punishments. 
 
 I believe what I have just said, although the Sphinx, "the father 
 of terror," is found to have belonged to a range of temples, looking out 
 as it does on the vast desert around with its cold impassive face, un- 
 moved by the wreck and ruin of the world, age after age. 
 
 I believe so, I say, although it is shown that Horus was, in those 
 ancient days, a type of the Kesurrection, as Osiris restored to life by 
 Isis, a symbol from the sun settling down in darkness and rising up 
 again in glory. 
 
 I believe so, although there are some most excellent precepts of 
 morality in the Papyrus Prisse, in the Koyal Library of Paris, written 
 between 3300 and 3400 B.C. 
 
 I believe, for I cannot help it, that the proportion throughout the 
 whole of nature, between males and females, is very wonderful, and if 
 you ask me what natural selection has had to do with it, all I can say is 
 Excuse me you understand Excuse me. 
 
 I believe that the bright colours in snakes may " perhaps " be due 
 to the admiration of the male for the female, or of the female for the 
 male. You may ask me what evidence I have to prove this? What 
 is evidence good for unless it proves my theory? That is the way I 
 answer one question by another. 
 
 I believe that the beautiful eyes in the wing of the Argus pheasant 
 were produced by the desire of the male bird to exhibit himself to 
 advantage before the female, and "in HO other way." You may 
 think that the oblong spots which (on my theory) gave way in the 
 course of " billions " of years to the round ones, for this end and 
 object, even more beautiful than the eventual rounded ones. Let 
 the bird be the judge about that. " Tastes differ," you know. 
 
 I believe, with Lucretius, that the Queen of Beauty was thus 
 the creative power of the world. You may consider it a gross and 
 degrading idea, worthy only of the Heathen Poet. That I cannot 
 help. 
 
 I believe, as I have all along said, in the "survival" of the 
 stronger creatures, and the " extermination " of all the weaker ones. 
 You ask me how I can reconcile this doctrine with the disappearance 
 from the earth of the Mammoth, whose skull alone, without the 
 tusks, which were nine feet long, weighed four hundred pounds, ; of the 
 Mastodon, the mightiest animal known to have lived ; of the Mega- 
 therium, that "great beast," as Professor Sedgwick called it at the 
 
37 
 
 meeting of the British Association at York, a monster clothed in 
 " armour plate," whose feet were a yard long ; of the gigantic 
 Dinotherium, no less than eighteen feet in length ; of the Iguonodon, 
 seventy feet on end ; of the Icthyosaurus, with jaws six feet in 
 length and containing a hundred and eighty teeth ; of the Plesiosaurus, 
 of enormous size, with the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile, 
 the body of a serpent, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a 
 whale? You ask me also, whether this last-named came by "natural 
 selection " from a fish, a reptile, or a beast, or from all three at once ? 
 I say that it came from something, or that something came from it. 
 Which way it was, I leave you to find out for yourself, if you can. 
 
 I believe also, as to birds, in the " survival " of the strongest, 
 though the marks of the footsteps and egg of a bird have been found 
 which must have been twice as large as an ostrich. 
 
 I believe the same as to flying reptiles, though I have before me 
 the fossil remains of the Pterodoctyle, an enormous vampire, with a 
 long snout like a crocodile, and which was able either to swim, fly, 
 or creep, or to hang by its claws from trees. 
 
 You tell me that Buckland said that all these " point out 
 unity of purpose and deliberate design in some intelligent First 
 Cause, from which they were all derived." I think no more of 
 Buckland than I do of Cuvier, or Sedgwick, or any other such. 
 How could either of them be Darwin ? I should like to know. Who cares for 
 the opinion of any of them, or of all of them ? I do not, for one, not I ! 
 
 I believe, as I have told you again and again, that the imagina- 
 tion is of far more use in science than reason. You tell me that 
 Milton has said, " Our Reason is our Law." He said so, did he ? 
 Perhaps he did, but pray do not name Milton's opinion in the same 
 day with mine. That would be rather too much. 
 
 I believe that the world has lasted for long enough in pre-historic 
 times, and man upon it in all so-called Time of inconceivable duration. 
 You may possibly ask me how it is that if so it has not been filled and 
 overfilled with mankind ages before this ? That is a question I cannot 
 answer, at least I decline to answer it. I consider it as quite beneath me 
 to notice it. 
 
 I believe that " one hand has surely worked through the Universe," 
 though I have also said, over and over again, that there has been no such 
 hand at work at all. You may call this a palpable contradiction. Let it be. 
 
 I believe that the old-fashioned notion that humility is the unfailing 
 characteristic of a man of science is quite exploded, and that conceit and 
 self-opiniation have properly taken its place. I can only speak for my- 
 self, and I am thoroughly self-satisfied. Let that content you. MiM me 
 plaudo. 
 
 I believe, to conclude, you will allow me to repeat, that if such writers 
 as Cuvier, Sedgwick, Buckland, and others agree with me, they are in 
 the right ; if not, they are in the wrong. What more need be said ? 
 Why waste more words about it V That is the long and the short of the 
 matter, and it settles the question. 
 
 To which I may add, what is an opinion good for, unless one 
 stands to it V At all events I am of the " same opinion still," evidencee 
 or no evidence, proof or no proof, right or wrong. That is my ultimatum, 
 
 THE CONFERENCE is AT AN END. 
 
 I will supplement the above per contra, with the opinions of The Times 
 and other papers, which are not so flattering to the scientific attainments 
 or reasoning powers of the Darwinites as their own estimate of themselves : 
 
38 
 
 " For this reason we must needs express our disappointment with the 
 more important part of Mr. Darwin's Book. His discussion of the faculties 
 of man in comparison with those of animals appears to us utterly 
 inadequate to the subject, independently of its being insufficient to sustain 
 his theory. As it seeois to us, he has not merely failed, but he has not 
 duly grappled with the essential difficulties of the question. He has 
 thought it possible to leap by the aid of a few illustrations over the 
 momentous and arduous questions respecting the mental powers of men 
 and animals, and the moral nature of man is dissected with a most rapid 
 and unpeuetrating hand. We can only express our conviction on this 
 point by saying that on these subjects Mr. Darwin appears quite out of his 
 element." 
 
 " For a natural philosopher to appeal to such superficial resemblances 
 is much the same as for an astronomer to appeal to the apprehension 
 of the vulgar with respect to the motions of the heavenly bodies." 
 
 '' But the truth is that Mr. Darwin's argument is at every point sup- 
 plemented by enormous assumption. The utmost he proves, not merely 
 in his present but in his former book, is not what has been, but what may 
 have been, and he converts the 'may' into a 'must' by the sole force of 
 the ever-present assumption that all forms of nature have been developed 
 out of other forms. To our minds, the book bears in its very mode of 
 expression, of which we have given some illustrations above, a character 
 which is wholly unscientific. Science tells us what has been, what is, 
 and what will be. But Mr. Darwin's argument is a continuous conjugation 
 of the potential mood. It rings the changes on 'can have been,' 'might 
 have been,' 'would have been,' until it leaps with a bound into 'must 
 have been.' " 
 
 '' When Mr. Darwin is confronted with the extremely remote and 
 uncertain nature of the agencies on which he relies, he continually falls 
 back on what ' might have been ' in the lapse of unlimited periods of 
 time. Such a style of argument is, to say the least, destitute of any 
 scientific value. It is impossible to .say what might or might not have 
 been during periods so vast that we have no experience of them. For 
 all we know, the vitality of species might wear itself out in the lapse 
 of ages, or by some law of cyclic change, they might assume new forms. 
 To call in aid such an indefinite agency is a mere veil for ignorance. 
 It may even be doubted whether to assert that a process takes effect in 
 an infinite time, be not simply a roundabout way of," etc. etc 
 
 " If in short, in its general application, Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is 
 utterly unsupported by observed facts, it is still more destitute of such 
 support in its application to man." 
 
 " This is precisely the solution which Mr. Darwin is unable to apply 
 to his instances of approximation between species. If he could say in a 
 single instance, ' solvitur ambulando^ ' here is a case of one true species 
 having passed into another,' we should have a practical proof that the kind 
 of approximation he brings to light is of such a kind as to end in coinci- 
 dence. But this, as we have seen, is what he has not done. It is. in fact, 
 not a little curious that the finite time which Newton demands is the very 
 condition most energetically repudiated by Mr. Darwin and his followers. 
 They place no limit whatever to the amount of time which their process 
 requires. The knowledge of so prolonged a proof, would have been of no 
 practical avail even to Methuselah." 
 
 '' We are reminded, in fact, by such speculations, of the famous story 
 which Corporal Trim endeavoured so effectually to recite to Uncle Toby. 
 ' There was a certain king of Bohemia,' said Trim ; ' but in whose reign 
 except his own, I am not able to inform your honour.' Uncle Toby was 
 more accommodating than we are able to be from a scientific point of view. 
 But we recommend the gracious permission he accorded to the corporal as 
 
89 
 
 a most appropriate motto for speculations of this kind. ' Leave out the 
 date entirely, Trim,' said my Uncle Toby. In almost similar language, 
 ' there was a certain Monkey,' says Mr. Darwin ; of that he is quite sure, 
 and he frequently reiterates the assurance ; ' There was a certain Monkey ; 
 but in what period or country, excfipt his own, I am not able to inform my 
 readers.' The certainty, unfortunately, is hypothetical, and the particular 
 monkey unknown." 
 
 " We are at a loss to understand the value of all this complicated 
 guess-work. It represents a kind of Ptolemaic theory of creation heaping 
 supposition on supposition and multiplying cycles of action as each 
 supposition requires to be supplemented. It is the most conspicuous 
 example yet afforded of that ' use of the imagination in science, 8 on which 
 professor Tyndall dilated with such unscientific enthusiasm last Autumn. 
 Mr. Darwin's imagination is inexhaustible, and his power in this respect 
 contributes greatly to the charm of his strictly philosophical writings, but 
 he does not hesitate, in accordance with Professor Tyndall' s advice, to let it 
 take the place of science when the means and methods of science fail." 
 
 " In section D (Anthropological Department) the meeting was held in 
 the great lecture theatre of the museum, so as to accommodate the large 
 number of persons who desired to attend. The question of haman relation- 
 ship to the ape was again talked about (for it cannot be said to have been 
 discussed) by many speakers who vied with one another in loudness of 
 declamation and shallowness of argument." 
 
 " This assumption is the very point to be proved. To argue from, it is to 
 assume the whole doctriue of evolution. The assertion in question is 
 scientific or not, according as it is true or not. The only scientific question 
 is whether, as a matter of fact, species have been developed by force of cir- 
 cumstances out of other species, and man out of an ape. It is certainly no 
 scientific argument to assume that they must have been." 
 
 " Starting from the unsubstantial presumption just indicated, Mr. 
 Darwin proceeds to speculate on the manner of man's development, 
 without being able to adduce the slightest evidence that facts correspond 
 with his hypothesis. The history, however ingenious, is purely imaginary 
 from beginning" to end." 
 
 " Further consideration has led him to perceive an imperfection in his 
 hypothesis of natural selection. ' He had not,' he says, ' sufficiently con- 
 sidered the existence of many structures in animals which appear to be, as 
 far as we can judge, neither beneficial nor injurious ; ' and this he believes 
 to be one of the greatest oversights yet detected in his work. In other 
 words, the action of Natural Selection will not of itself sustain the theory of 
 the continuous evolution of all organised beings from inferior forms." 
 
 " That, at all events, is the practical result for all the purposes of life. 
 If, as seems to be admitted even by the most adavnced Evolutionists, 
 species be so permanently fixed that millions of years would be necessary to 
 transform them, it follows that for all human purposes they must be treated 
 as permanently independent." 
 
 " It is impossible to maintain unbroken gravity in discussing such a 
 dream. But let us turn to Mr. Darwin's investigation of the physical bases 
 of his conclusion, which appears to us scarcely less unsatisfactory than his 
 inquiry into its mental and moral bearings. He simply accumulates a 
 variety of points of similarity between the human frame and that of 
 animals." 
 
 " There is much reason to fear that loose philosophy stimulated by an 
 irrational religion, has done not a little to weaken the force of religious 
 principles in France, and that this is at all events one potent element in the 
 disorganization of French Society. A man incurs a grave responsibility, 
 who, with the authority of a well-earned reputation, advances at such a 
 time the disintegrating speculations of this book. He ought to be capable 
 
40 
 
 of supporting them by the most conclusive evidence of facts. To put them 
 forward on such incomplete evidence, such cursory investigation, such 
 hypothetical arguments as we have exposed, is more than unscientific it is 
 reckless." 
 
 "We wish we could think that these speculations were as innocuous as 
 they are unpractical and unscientific, but it is too probable that if 
 unchecked they might exert a very mischievous influence. We abstain 
 from noticing their bearings on religious thought, although it is hard to see 
 how, on Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, it is possible to ascribe to man any other 
 immortality or any other spiritual existence, than that possessed by the 
 brutes. But, apart from these considerations, if such views as he advances 
 on the nature of the moral senses were generally accepted, it seems evident 
 that morality would lose all elements of stable authority, and the ' ever 
 fixed marks ' around which the tempests of human passion now break 
 themselves, would cease to exert their guiding and controlling influence." 
 
 " It should be the work of science to reveal this difference, 
 not to construct theories on its mere apparent maguituude. But Mr. 
 Darwin urges that this hornological construction of the whole frame in the 
 members of the same class is intelligible if we admit their descent from a 
 common progenitor, together with their subsequent adaption to diversified 
 conditions. ' On any other view,' he says ' the similarity of pattern 
 between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a 
 seal, the wing of a bat, etc., is utterly inexplicable.' We fail to see the in- 
 exph'cability. What is there unreasonable in the supposition that they 
 have all been formed on the same general plan? Mr. Darwin's only 
 objection is that ' this is no scientific explanation,' but this is simply to beg 
 the question." 
 
 " We fear the truth is that the study of mental philosophy, under the 
 disastrous influence of one or two popular writers, has of late years become 
 extremely loose and superficial, and Mr. Darwin does but illustrate the 
 general vagueness of thought which prevails on such subjects." TIMES. 
 
 Here are a few more instances of the way in which these would-be 
 Philosophers have been set down by the London Press. The next is from 
 the " JOHN BULL." 
 
 " There is still, it seems, some uncertainty at one stage of the evolution : 
 No one can at present say by what line of descent the three higher and related 
 classes namely, mammals, birds, and reptiles were derived from either of the two 
 lower vertebrate classes, namely, amphibians and fishes. (Vol. I., p. 213.) 
 
 " The remaining steps, however, ' are not difficult to conceive.' Possibly 
 not, if you start as Mr. Darwin does, by assuming his principle of evolution 
 as the sole origin of species, and rejecting separate creation as 'un- 
 scientific.' In other words, you must first grant that man is descended 
 from a monkey, and then it is ' not difficult to conceive ' the intermediate 
 steps ; but if you decline to admit this petitio principii, you are wilfully 
 closing your eyes to what Mr. Darwin assures you is the fact. Such is the 
 entire circle of this gentleman's logic. The book is full of interesting 
 observations on natural history, exhibiting more or less relevancy to the 
 argument it seeks to sustain ; but the induction never advances a step 
 without a confession of logical defectiveness. We are treated to tendencies, 
 and probabilities, and conjectures, which derive all their force from a 
 previous assumption of the point to be proved. Take away this, and there 
 is hardly a proposition in the whole work which could pretend to the 
 character of a logical conclusion. 
 
 " The yobemouches who swallow for science all that comes from scientific 
 men were confounded to hear of this secret laboratory of imagination. The 
 Times protested against the notion that experimental philosophers ever 
 draw bills. But Tyndall and Darwin know better. 
 
41 
 
 " Mr. Darwin's present book is a conspicuous example of this utterly 
 unscientific process. It begins by assuming evolution in the exact sense 
 which Dr. Salmon justly called a scientific imagination, not a scientific 
 fact. From a plausible conjecture that some species may be modified 
 descendents of other species the very most that Darwinism can logically 
 pretend to its author quietly infers a universal law, and so sets himself to 
 inquire in the present book 'whether man, like every other species, is 
 descended from some pre-existing form ! ' Having by this good beginning 
 accomplished more than half his work, he proceeds in like manner to ' take 
 for granted' the high antiquity assigned to man by M. Boucher de Perthes, 
 Sir Charles Lyell, Sir John Lubbock, and others, together with Professor 
 Huxley's ' conclusive ' proof that ' man differs less from the higher apes 
 than these do from the lower members of the same order of primates.' 
 Now here are at least four unproved hypotheses to be accepted in the dark 
 before the new argument can see daylight. Of the first Mr. Darwin himself 
 confesses that ' of the older and honoured chiefs in natural science, many 
 unfortunately are still opposed to evolution in every form.' His greatest 
 authority only denies the independent creation of every species, though Mr. 
 Darwin, in quoting his words, enlarges them into an assertion that ' species 
 instead of " some species" are the modified descendents of other species. 
 From this universal proposition, the induction is at present ludicrously 
 scanty, while the acts and reasons on the contrary side are overpowering. 
 The battle, in short, has yet to be fought before Darwinism can make good 
 this first step in its hypothetical Sorites. The antiquity of man is another 
 battle ground where it has hardly set up its banners. Assuredly it can boast 
 no victory. On the existence of man before the Tertiary period all is yet 
 the merest conjecture, and that of so slender a structure that it may at any 
 moment vanish away. Sir John Lubbock's theory of a savage origin is a 
 third hypothesis more in want of proof for itself, than able to afford proof 
 of another. Not a single fact is established which is not quite as easily 
 reconciled with the opposite theory. Against it is the unbroken testimony 
 of history, that while in many nations civilization has decayed and died 
 out, in none has it sprung up and flourished without extraneous assistance. 
 If man were originally savage, and acquired civilization by his own 
 exertions, we ought occasionally to find him on the rise. There are 
 savages enough within the sphere of history, and even of present observa- 
 tion, to give full scope for the experiment. How is it that we never see 
 them improving themselves, till some one comes to improve them ? Why 
 did New Zealand remain in cannibalism till visited by missionaries within 
 our own recollection, and then spring almost at a bound to a level beyond 
 many parts of Europe ? That the New Zealander was capable of civili- 
 zation is proved by the result ; if it be a natural acquisition, why did he 
 never acquire it before we found him out ? On the other hand, if he 
 received the gift from the Briton, as the Briton from the Eoman, the 
 Koman from the Greek, and the Greek from the Egyptian, we are conducted 
 back to an original civilization from which the separated fragments fell, 
 and to which they return again when the long lost connection is restored, 
 as water remounts to its level when the intervening mass is pierced 
 without. Against this invariable testimony of history the most that is 
 offered is that all existing nations were originally barbarous ; but to 
 infer from this that all ancient races were barbarous also, is again to 
 beg the question. Our contention is that they were not, and we have 
 some evidence in our favour in the remains of ancient Egypt and Assyria ; 
 to assume without' evidence that these were in turn preceded by an 
 unknown period of barbarism, requires us to admit the very point to 
 be proved. If civilization (we repeat) did spring spontaneously out of 
 barbarism at the first, why has it never done so since ? To this question 
 there is no reply. But if the original savagery is still an improbable 
 
42 
 
 conjecture, instead of an established fact, the whole basis of Darwinism 
 is gone. 
 
 "Mr Huxley's doctrine is in the same category of assumtion with- 
 out proof and against evidence. He is not more logical than his 
 fellows, because he is more peremptory and scornful. Granting that in 
 physical structure man approximates nearer to the ape than the ape 
 to the lowest monkey, this is no argument for either being descended 
 from the other, till we have admitted the two previous unproved hy- 
 potheses, universal evolution, and the savage origin of man. Again, 
 physical structure is only one element in specific classification, and 
 in the case of man the least important. His moral and intellectual 
 nature is emphatically his specific difference from other mammals ; and 
 here it is easy to retort Mr Huxley's argument. The highest ape 
 is morally and intellectually more removed from the lowest savage than 
 the latter from the most eminent philosopher. The savage may become 
 a philosopher, but the ape never becomes even a savage. Neither 
 can we detect the slightest tendency to such moral or intellectual 
 evolution. Mr. Darwin does, indeed, collect some interesting anecdotes 
 of quasi-human reason and affections in the lower animals, but it 
 requires an enormous exercise of ' imagination ' to elevate them into 
 anything approaching to the nature of man. Of this he seems to be 
 aware when he asks with a ludicrous sentimentality, ' who can say 
 what cows feel when they surround and stare intently on a dying or 
 dead companion ? ' Yes, who indeed ? There is nothing novel or 
 scientific in this sort of stuff ; we have heard of dreaming dogs, and 
 reasoning elephants, and arithmetical pigs, and beavers' houses, and 
 the wonderful instincts of bees all our lives, and the common sense of 
 mankind, gentle and simple, has long ago repudiated their real com- 
 munity with the moral and intellectual nature of man. Does Mr Darwin 
 hope to overcome the verdict by telling us that : 
 
 If men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can 
 hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it 
 a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile 
 daughters, and no one would think of interfering. 
 
 " What would be said if any advocate of Revelation resorted to such 
 puerile trifling V In the case supposed, the creatures would not be 
 men, but bees, and act like other bees. But that bees ever think any- 
 thing a ' sacred duty ' is one of the thousand forms of begylny the question 
 artfully scattered up and down the book. Curiously enough, the best 
 examples are found, not among the apes, from whom we ought to 
 inherit, but among creatures so remote in physical structure as the 
 dog, the elephant, and the bee. 
 
 " Amid all this irrelevant gossip, Mr. Darwin notices, with the 
 feeblest attempt at refutation, the crucial arguments that man alone 
 is capable of progressive improvement, and that man alone fashions 
 implements for a special purpose. To the first he can only answer 
 that in the hunting countries foxes are more wary than in districts 
 where they are not disturbed ; and, to the second, that the chimpanzee 
 cracks nuts with a stone, and other apes build temporary platforms 
 (as birds build nests), which ' might readily grow into a voluntary 
 and conscious act.' Might! But does it? And could it, unless we 
 admit intellectual evolution, and so once more beg the question ? It 
 is astonishing how persistently this artifice is resorted to throughout. 
 It pervades every part of the book, till, by dint of repetition and 
 incessant assumption,- often veiled in the most subtle implications, 
 the reader is led to think a point demonstrated for which not a 
 shadow of evidence has been presented. Of the course of things, 
 when reason, language, and religion have been once ' acquired,' Mr. 
 
43 
 
 Darwin writes as coolly as if such ' acquisitions ' were of common 
 experience, instead of being- the wildest speculation, contrary to every 
 conviction of our nature, and never in a single instance confirmed or 
 indicated by experiment. It is really an abuse of language to call 
 such writing ' scientific : ' to mistake the ' Arabian Nights ' for history 
 would be far more excusable. 
 
 " Such being the character of the thesis, we need not spend much 
 time on the new hypothesis. The moment he attempts to draw any 
 conclusion, Mr. Darwin himself is sensible of the exceeding tenuity 
 of his premises. Showing us plainly enough what he is in quest of, 
 he writes of what he has found either in the optative or conditional 
 mood. In place of what is, we hear of what might, could, would, or 
 should be of what is probable or may be easily conceived and un- 
 happily the probability is often in inverse ratio to the importance of 
 the conjecture. Here again Darwinism failing to establish its point 
 by any kind of proof, is obliged to take refuge in imagination. 
 
 " Its author, meanwhile, with as much assurance as if he had com- 
 pleted a mathematical demonstration, blandly apologises for the shock 
 to our taste and our religion, by avowing that, for his own part, he 
 would rather be descended from a monkey than a Fuegian savage : 
 he adds that ' it is not more irreligious to explain (?) the origin of 
 man as a distinct species from some lower form, than to explain the 
 birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction.' 
 The first excuse overlooks the little fact that the simian ancestry 
 involves the savage also." 
 Again, 
 
 " DARWINISM AND ASTRONOMY. 
 
 " To the Editor of tlie Times. 
 
 " Sir, After the many solid arguments adduced in your late ad- 
 mirable and most welcome notices of Mr. Charles Darwin's recent 
 work, I should like to make only one suggestion. Mr. Darwin's theory 
 requires us to believe that animal life existed on this globe at a period 
 when, according to a theory much more plausible than his, the earth 
 and all the planets with the sun constituted but one diffused nebula. 
 Astronomers really have some data on which to found this theory 
 of theirs, since marked variations in the conformation of several 
 nebulas within historic times are now on record ; whereas all the 
 variations which Mr. Darwin has been able to point out in species, 
 and especially in man, within the same limits of time, are either zero 
 or of an extremely nebulous character. 
 
 " I remain, Sir, yours faithfully, 
 "April 10." "ASTRONOMICUS. 
 
 Thus much from the Times and John Hull, now from the Gloljc : 
 
 " The other point to note is Professor Huxley's speech. The learned 
 gentleman is not only abandoning himself to a bad habit of mischievous 
 talking ; he is becoming inane. What did he mean by entertaining a 
 company like that assembled around the board of the Royal Academy 
 with a wretched rechauffe of the old story that man is a cooking animal 
 with the obvious variation a propos of the occasion that he is distin- 
 guished by the power to ' draw ! ' Professor Huxley must either be 
 running rapidly to seed himself, or he has a very low opinion of his 
 contemporaries when he expects them to be amused, even after dinner, 
 with such feeble wit." 
 
44 
 
 " On Geology and Darwinism ' Dagentree ' holds decided opinions. 
 He regards the former as a science so completely in its infancy that to 
 attempt to reconstruct our theology in reference to it is simply absurd : 
 * Late researches have, I think, proved more clearly than ever it was 
 proved before first, that man is a very recent inhabitant of this planet ; 
 and, secondly, that man has not been produced by any process of selection 
 or development .... Darwin has left the origin of species, not where 
 he found it, but darker than ever ; for he has proved that there 
 ought to be no species at all ; and if his views were true, there 
 could have been no such thing.' This is admirably put, and not easily 
 answered, and the following reply to the scientists who object to the 
 argument from design is irrefragible. ' The professor who sees in nature 
 no traces of a Creator, will find in a wretched piece of flint, as he peers 
 enchanted through his spectacles, the long-lost proofs of pre- Adamite 
 man.' The truth is that neoteric science is ruined by the shallow sciolist, 
 the lecturing professor, who, the moment a new notion strikes him, airs 
 it to an audience of ladies at Albemarle-street or South Kensington. 
 ' Natural selection ' ' protoplasm ' ' air germs ' come into fashion and 
 go out again like paniers and chignons.'" GLOBE. 
 
 And lastly our friend " Punch" whose wit has always a good deal 
 of wisdom in it. 
 
 "Darwin's speculation 
 Is of another sort ; 
 
 'Tis one which demonstration 
 In nowise doth support. 
 
 Time, theory's dispeller, 
 Will out of mind remove it : 
 
 We say, as said old Weller, 
 ' Prove it.' And he can't prove it." PUNCH. 
 
 The following is Dr. Carpenter's opinion, the President of the British 
 Association : 
 
 " There is a great deal of what I cannot but regard as fallacious and 
 misleading philosophy ' oppositions of science falsely so called' abroad 
 in the world at the present time. And I hope to satisfy you that those 
 who set up their own conception* of the orderly sequence which they discern 
 in the phenomena of nature, as fixed and determinate lams by which those 
 phenomena not only are within all human experience, but always have 
 been, and always tmuit be, invariably governed, are really guilty of the 
 intellectual arrogance they condemn in the systems of the ancients, and 
 place themselves in diametrical antagonism to those real philosophers, 
 by whose comprehensive grasp and penetrating insight that order has 
 been so far disclosed." 
 And, another, 
 
 " It must not be supposed that there is much unity among these 
 ' philosophers,' But in this they all agree, that they argue d posteriori, 
 and they are all infallible." 
 
 Well wrote Canon Kingsley : "All we have to do is to wait. 
 Nominalism, and that Sensationalism which has sprung from Nominal- 
 ism, are running fast to seed. Comteism seems to me its supreme effort, 
 after which the whirligig of time may bring round its revenges, and 
 Kealism, and we who hold the Realist creed may have our turn. Only 
 wait the end of that Philosophy is very near." " The tide is setting 
 in against Darwinism." 
 
45 
 
 " LOOK ON THIS PICTURE " 
 
 WORDS OF THE WISE. 
 
 There is a path which no fowl know- 
 eth, and which the vulture's eye hath 
 not seen. 
 
 The lion's whelps have not trodden it, 
 nor the fierce lion passed it 
 
 He putteth forth his hand upon the 
 rock ; He overturneth the mountains 
 by the roots. 
 
 He cutteth out rivers among the 
 rocks ; and his eye seeth every precious 
 thing. 
 
 He bindeth the floods from overflow- 
 ing ; and the thing that is hid bringeth 
 he forth to light. 
 
 But where shall wisdom be found ? 
 and where is the place of understanding ? 
 
 Man knoweth not the price thereof ; 
 neither is it found in the land of the 
 living. 
 
 " It cannot be valued with the gold of 
 Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the 
 sapphire." 
 
 Tne gold and the crystal cannot equal 
 it ; and the exchange of it shall not be 
 for jewels of fine gold 
 
 The Topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal 
 it, neither shall it be valued with pure 
 gold. 
 
 "Whence then cometh wisdom ? and 
 where is the place of understanding ? 
 
 Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all 
 living, and kept close from the fowls of 
 the air. 
 
 Destruction and death say, We have 
 heard the fame thereof with our ears. 
 
 For He looketh to the ends of the 
 earth, and seeth under the whole 
 heaven ; 
 
 To make the weight for the winds ; j 
 and He weigheth the waters by measure. 
 
 When He made a decree for the rain, 
 and a way for the lightning and thunder. 
 
 And unto man He said, Behold, the 
 fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ; and to 
 depart from evil is understanding. 
 
 Canst thou by searching find out God ? 
 canst thou find out the Almighty unto 
 perfection ? 
 
 But ask now the beasts, and they shall 
 teach thee : and the fowls of the air, 
 and they shall tell thee. 
 
 Who knoweth not in all these that the 
 hand of the Lord hath wrought this ? 
 
 In whose hand is the soul of every 
 living thing, and the breath of all man- 
 kind. JOB. 
 
 " AND ON THAT." 
 
 WORDS OF THE UNWISE. 
 
 " What little I know about the matter 
 leads me to think that if M. Comte had 
 possessed the slightest acquaintance 
 with biological science, (Philosophers 
 disagree, it seems) he would have turned 
 his phraseology upside down, and have 
 found that we can have no knowledge of 
 the great laws of life, except that which 
 is based upon the study of natural living 
 beings." 
 
 "If there is one thing clear (clear ! ) 
 about the progress of modern science, it 
 is the tendency to reduce all scientific 
 problems except those which are purely 
 intellectual to questions of molecular 
 physics, that is to say, to the attractions, 
 repulsions, motions, and co-ordination of 
 the alternate particles of matter. Social 
 phenomena are the result of the inter- 
 action of the complements of society, or 
 men with one another in the surrounding 
 universe. But in the language of phy- 
 sical science, which by the nature of the 
 case is materialistic, the actions of men, 
 so far as they are recognisable by 
 science, are the results of molecular 
 changes in the matter of which they are 
 composed." 
 
 " To a certain extent indeed it may be 
 said, that imperfect ossification of the 
 vertebral column is of an embryonic 
 character, but on the other hand it 
 would be extremely incorrect to suppose 
 that the vertebral columns of the older 
 yertebrata are, in any sense, embryonic, 
 in their whole structure. " 
 
 " Matter and spirit are both names for 
 the imaginary substrata of groups of 
 natural phenomena." 
 
 " In itself it is but of little moment, 
 whether we express the phenomena of 
 matter in terms of spirit, or the pheno- 
 mena of spirit in teims of matter." 
 
 " The extension of the province of 
 what we call matter or caxisation, and 
 the concomitant gradual banishment 
 from all regions of human thought, of 
 what we call spirit and spontaneity.' 1 
 
 " Traced back to its earliest state, the 
 mntter arises as the man does, in a 
 particle of nucleated protoplasm." 
 
 Huxley. 
 
 Well did Sir Walter Scott declare of the Bible : 
 
 " Within this awful volume lies 
 The mystery of mysteries. 
 Happiest they of human race, 
 To whom their God has given grace 
 To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, 
 To lift the latch, to force the way, 
 And better had they ne'er been born, 
 Than read to doubt, or read to scorn." 
 
 The fool hath said in his heart there is no God:' PSALM xiv. 5. 
 "Answer a fool according to his folly" PROVERB& xxvi. 5. 
 
46 . 
 "WHICH STRAIN AT A GNAT AND SWALLOW A CAMEL." 
 
 ALL THE ARTICLES 
 
 OF 
 
 THE DARWIN FAITH, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. F. O. MORRIS, B.A., 
 
 Rector of Niinbiirnhohne, Yorkshire, 
 
 Author of^A History of British Birds," dedicated by permission to Her Most Gracious 
 Majesty the Queen, etc., etc. 
 
 ' ' Ridiculum acri fortius ac melitis plerioiiqne secat res" HORACE. 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING. 
 
 " An elegant and lively jeu d? esprit. Mr. Morris has in playful but 
 most convincing satire exposed the gross inconsistencies, the large asump- 
 tions, and the unscientific deductions contained in some well-known 
 works. This little brochure deserves a wide circulation. It will, perhaps, 
 accomplish mightier victories than the heavier artillery of a ponderously 
 learned treatise." Notes and Queries. 
 
 " A fair, though often ludicrous, exposition of the doctrines advanced 
 by Messrs. Darwin, Huxley, and others, who claim to be philosophers, but 
 who are by many considered and designated as philosophical atheists. The 
 extracts from the criticisms of the London press on the vagaries of Dar- 
 winism are not the least amusing portions of this lively pamphlet." 
 Bookseller. 
 
 " In a clever and amusing pamphlet, All the Articles of the Da twin 
 Faith, the Rev. F. 0. Morris, so celebrated for his ornithological researches, 
 exposes the many assumptions and manifest unsoundiiess of much of 
 modern philosophical statement. Not all is science that comes from 
 scientific men, and searchers after truth will do well not to accept any 
 assertion, however positive and dogmatic, as proven, till after close and 
 careful examination of the supposed grounds on which it rests. Mr. 
 Morris has done excellent service by showing that many ' scientific " men, 
 who on certain matters ' strain at a gnat,' are quite ready, nevertheless, 
 when it falls in with their own preconceived notions, to ' swallow a 
 camel.' " National Cliurch. 
 
 MESSRS. W. H. SMITH AND SON, 186, STRAND, LONDON, 
 Sold at their Bookstalls, and to be had of all Booksellers. 
 
47 
 
 Dedicated % Permission to tlte Right Hon. LOUD SELBORNE, 
 Lord Chancellor of England. 
 
 The Humanity Series of School Books, 
 
 FOR NATIONAL AND OTHER SCHOOLS, 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 THE REV. F. 0. MORRIS, B.A., 
 
 Rector of Niinlntrnholine, Yorkshire, 
 
 Author of u A History of British Birds," Dedicated by Permission to Her Most 
 Gracious Majesty the Queen, etc., etc., etc. 
 
 The child is father of the man.'" WOEDSWOETH. 
 
 SYLLABUS OF THE SERIES FOR THE Six STANDARDS. 
 
 BOOK I. 64 pages, cloth, fid. 
 BOOK II. 96 pages, cloth, 8d. 
 BOOK III. 128 pages, cloth, lOd. 
 
 BOOK IV. 144 pages, cloth, Is. 
 BOOK V. 208 pages, cloth, Is. 3d. 
 BOOK VI. 272 pages, cloth, Is. fid. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 ristian Knowlet. 
 ictuary, Westml 
 
 These Books are on the List of the London School Board. 
 
 The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 67, Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 The National Society, Sanctuary, Westminster, and all Booksellers. 
 
 " I have carefully looked over the Humanity Series of Heading Books 
 edited by the Rev. F. 0. Morris, B.A., of Nunburnholme, and I say sin- 
 cerely to such a work ' God speed.' Would that all our school books were 
 more devoted to teaching and training the minds of the young to acts of 
 kindness and mercy towards the brute creation. The various anecdotes, poet- 
 ical pieces, narratives, &c., are put together in such a way that while they 
 enlist the sympathies of the children on the side of right and mercy, they 
 are still interesting in a high degree. Every fair critique must admit 
 them to be a valuable collection, and every Christian will wish them 
 heartily God speed." WILLIAM W. F. KEELING, of University College, 
 Durham, Superintending Master of a group of Schools for the Right Hon. 
 the Baroness Burdett Coutts. 
 
 " We turn with a feeling of relief to the reading books of Mr. Morris. 
 We wish Mr. Morris all success in this praiseworthy effort, and we hope 
 that his books will find a welcome in all elementary schools. To teach 
 children to love animals will not only do away with a great deal of useless 
 suffering to the animals, but will also open a new source of happiness to 
 the children themselves. The child will surely be a happier child who 
 through long lonely days of out- door work can find ' friends in fur and 
 feather ' all around him, and who, like St. Francis, sees a little brother or 
 sister in every living thing that chance may bring across his path." 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 " PENDLETON, Manchester, May loth, 1875. 
 
 " I think they are admirably suited to inculcate kindness in children, 
 the anecdotes being so carefully selected." JOHN SUTTON, Inspector of 
 Board Schools. 
 
 " WAR OFFICE, April 2nd, 1874. 
 
 " They are excellent of their kind. They ought to be introduced into 
 every school in the country." THE REV. G. R. GLEIG, Chaplain General 
 to the Forces. 
 
A HISTORY OF BRITISH BIRDS, 
 
 In Six Volumes, Super Royal 8vo, price 6 6s., containing 365 Coloured EngraYings, 
 BY THE REV. F. 0. MORRIS, B.A., 
 
 Dedicated by permission to Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen. 
 
 " Mr. F. O. Morris is well known to our readers by numerous 
 letters in which he has vindicated the right of curious birds, occasional 
 visitors to our shores, not to be improved off the face of the earth simply 
 because they are rare, and of birds which are not curious not to be extir- 
 pated simply because, for the time, they happen to be numerous. Lovers 
 of Natural History and of Nature know him even better as a most diligent 
 and agreeable writer on almost every one of the provinces in this wide 
 subject, so far as they concern our own island. No doubt brother explorers 
 will by no means always accept his theories or conclusions, but his pre- 
 mises are manifestly his own, gathered by himself, and with the refreshing 
 air and tone of positive personal experience about them. He has carefully 
 studied the works of other labourers in the same field, but with the view 
 rather of ascertaining what light their researches throw on his own than 
 of appropriating their facts. 
 
 " Numerous highly-finished plates, drawn and coloured from the birds 
 and eggs themselves, make of these volumes, which would, if only for 
 the letterpress, have been necessary to the student of Natural History, 
 luxuries, though by no means dear ones, to what we are sorry to say is the 
 far larger class of persons who like pretty books irrespective of their 
 special subject matter. We hope some, at any rate, of such persons may 
 be converted, in spite of themselves, into students of the world in which 
 they have been hitherto living without taking the trouble to find out any- 
 thing about their neighbours in it. Mr. Morris's Library of Natural 
 History includes British moths and butterflies as well as birds, but we 
 confess to a preference for our old friends, the birds. We are quite ready 
 to accept still all the responsibility of the quotation from our columns 
 which Mr. Morris incorporates in his preface to this second edition : 
 
 ik ' The proper study of mankind is man : the favourite study of 
 mankind is certainly birds, beasts, and fishes Natural History, in short. 
 Above all, birds seem to exercise the greatest attraction over young and 
 old, rich and poor/ " TIMES. 
 
 " In this holiday season, when half the world is enjoying the 
 healthful breezes of seaside and country, mountain and moor, and the 
 other half ' in populous city pent " are vainly sighing for that enjoyment, 
 here is a book which will be as welcome to those who wander as to 
 those who stay at home. To the former it will be a congenial guide 
 and companion through the various pleasant scenes to which 
 their summer rambles may lead them ; to the latter it will, by its vivid 
 delineations of Nature, almost make up for the absence of the green fields 
 and shady woods, and blue tracts of ocean which are ever floating dimly 
 before their minds. 
 
 'The six goodly volumes of this work, which has already gained a 
 world- wide circle of readers, have recently appeared in a new and cheaper 
 edition, beautifully got up, handsomely printed, and lavishly adorned with 
 hundreds of coloured plates most admirably executed. Indeed every bird 
 which has established itself to be styled ' British ' has sat for its portrait, 
 and been called upon to give an account of its haunts and habits, the 
 place where it seeks its food or builds its nest, and every particular of its 
 little history, whether it be a dweller on land or the shore, or the ' great 
 and wide sea.' Consequently, these charming volumes carry us into all 
 the retired green nooks, and out-of-the-way corners of Old England, 
 its quiet meadows, country lanes, immemorial woods, breezy downs (lovely 
 meadows) and surf beaten cliffs. Wherever the voice of a bird is heard, 
 or the wing of a bird is seen, or the shadow of a bird falls lightly on 
 grass, or corn, or lake, or river, thither are we borne by the author in the 
 interesting descriptions and endless anecdotes which make Morris's 
 
4 British Birds ' not only an authority in natural history, but also, what it 
 was apparently designed to be, an eminently readable book. The sweet 
 breath of Nature comes to us from every page. Open the volumes where 
 we may, we are refreshed with a glimpse of uncontaminated country 
 >; Of lake or mountain, wood, or murmuring sea.'' 
 
 " The eye delights to rest on the coloured engravings of the birds as 
 they pass before it in rapid and ever- varying succession. Nay, without 
 opening the volumes, the pictures in gold, stamped on tiie green binding, 
 give ample promise of the rich variety inside, and seem to invite you to 
 look within. On one volume you see ' woodpeckers tapping the hollow 
 beech tree ; ' on another, water-ouzels preparing to dip into the cool 
 stream ; on a third, a heron waiting silently and solemnly until a fish 
 dimples the smooth pool ; on a fourth, wild- ducks floating on a reedy 
 lake ; on a fifth, guillemots resting on the edge of a cliff and meditating 
 a plunge into the sea. Then on turning from the pictures to the letter- 
 press you have at once a complete history of every bird that inhabits or 
 visits this country, and a collection of anecdotes from all sources to illus- 
 trate and enliven the scientific description. Natural history is necessarily 
 a log-book of observed facts an aggregation of details which have come 
 under the notice of hundreds of quick and loving eyes. One man can 
 add comparatively little to the stock from his own observation, though 
 every one may bring something if he has a mind willing to record the 
 facts which his eyes have seen, and that naturalist may be said to have 
 deserved best of the general public who presents the greatest number of 
 these interesting facts to the common store. One recommendation of the 
 study of Natural History in general, or of Ornithology in particular, is 
 that the youngest beginner may have the good fortune to observe some 
 trait, some phrase of Nature's face, which has escaped the notice of the 
 experienced Naturalist, and to excite some such love in the minds of all 
 his readers, young and old, seems to have been the object Mr. Morris had in 
 view when compiling his book, which is given to the public as the result 
 of long years of patient research and painstaking study. His idea will be 
 manifest by a quotation of a portion of the preface to the first edition. 
 
 " ' My object has been, first, to collect together, as far as I could, all 
 1 the known facts respecting the natural history of each and every British 
 ' bird, so that my work might contain a greater number of such facts than 
 ' any previous one ; secondly, to produce at the same time a readable book: 
 'thirdly, to give correct and life-like figures of the several species ; and 
 ' fourthly, to bring out the work at such a price as to place it within the 
 ' reach of every class, whose taste might happily lead them to the study of 
 ' Natural History. I have endeavoured also to impart a religious character 
 ' to this treatise on some of the most interesting works of the Creator, as 
 ' indicated from the very first page by the motto, Gloria in cxcclsis Deo, 
 1 prefixed to the account of the k birds of the air,' and subsequently by the 
 'kindred one DC j>rofnndls ad Dominum attached in like manner to that 
 ' of water birds, whose home is more or less on the ' great deep.' 
 
 4i Many passages in the book might be marked to show the author's 
 genuine love of Nature, his powers of description and illustration, and the 
 reverential spirit with which he imbues the study of Natural History, did 
 space allow of such quotation. It will be sufficient to say that the Rev. 
 F. 0. Morris's ' British Birds ' is a book worthy of every recommendation. 
 It will be alike an acquisition to the study and an ornament to the 
 drawing room. It will delight both old and young. The early possession 
 of such a work might well instil a love of Natural History into the mind 
 of the youthful reader, and thus supply a life long interest, a never-failing 
 resource, and an elevating pursuit, which may lead many 
 
 " 'To look through Nature, up to Nature's God.' " MORNING POST. 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE BELL AND SON, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 
 
The Rights and Wrongs of Women, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE EEV. F. 0. MORRIS, B.A., 
 
 Read before the Social Science Congress at Newcastle, 
 
 PRICE 6d, 
 LONDON: WILLIAM POOLE, 12, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 Double Dilemma in Darwinism, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. F. 0. MORRIS, B.A., 
 Read before the British Association at Glasgow, 1876, 
 
 "' Je vie. .s de recevoir de mon excellent ami, (Sir) Bernard Burke, votre 
 Double Dilemma in Danvinisme, : -e que j'ai lu avec un vif interet. Per- 
 mettez moi de profiter de cette circonstance de vous adresser le livre que 
 je vies. s des publier sur un sujet analogue. II est reellement haut temps 
 de faire justice, non pas des temerites, ir^is des stupidites, qui se 
 debitent ainsi sous le couvercle d'une fausse science.". Le DR. Cox- 
 STAXTIN JAMES (Ancien collaborates de Majendie, Chevalier de la Ley ion 
 (Tlionncur,et des Ordres de Leopold de Belgiquc, de Charles III. d' Espa gne , 
 du Christ du Portugal, de Frederic du Wurtembuig, d'Adolphe de Nassau, 
 de Saint Michael do Ifaviere, d' Ernest de Saxe, de Francois I. des Deux 
 Sidles, des SS. Maurice et Lazare de Sardaign-e ; Menibre de plusicrs 
 Academies ou Societes savantes, etc.) 
 
 PRICE 
 LONDON: WILLIAM POOLE. 12. PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
$ > 
 
 "