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Show 104 .DARWINIAN A. II. "I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained, namely, that each species has been independently created, is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some otlJOr and genernlly extinct species, in the same -manner as the acknow I edged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Select-ion has been the main, but not exclusive, means of modification." This is the kernel of the new theory, the Darwinian creed, as recited at the close of the introduction to the remarkable bo"ok under consideration. The questions, "What will he do with it?" and "I-Iow far will he carry it ? " the author answers at the close of the volume : "I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces·all the members of the same class." Furthermore, "I believe that all animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and pla~ts from an equal or lesser number." Seeing that analogy as strongly suggests a further step in the same direction, while he protests that " analogy may be a deceitful guide," yet he follows its inexorable leading to the inference that- "Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on · this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed." 1 1 Page 484, English edition. In the new American edition (vide Supplement, pp. 431, 432) the principal analogies which suggest the NATURAL SELECTION, ETC . 105 In the first extract we have the thin end of the wedge driven a little way; in the last, the wedge driven home. We have already sketched some of the reasons suggestive of such a theor~ ~f. derivation of species, reasons which gave it plaus1b1hty, and even no small probability, as applied to our actual w?rld an~ to changes occur1~ing since the latest tertiary perwd. We are well pleased at this moment to find that the conclusions we were arriving at in this respect are sustained by the very high authority and impartial judgment of Pictet, the Swiss pale~ntologist. In his review of Darwin's book 1-the fa1rest and most admirable opposinO' one. that has appeared-he freely accepts that ens~mble of natural operati?~s which Darwin impersonates under the now fam1har name of Natural Selection, allows that the exposition throughout the first chapters seems "d la fois prudent et fort," and is disposed to accept the whole argument in its foundations, that is, so far as it r_elates to what is now going on, or has taken place 1n the present geological period-which period he carries back through the diluvial epoch to the borders of the tertiary.t Pictet accordingly admits that the extreme view are referred to, and the remark is appended : "But this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. The case is different with the members of each great class, as the Vertebrata or Articulata ; for here we have in the laws of homology, embryology, etc., some distinct evidence that all have descended from a single primordial parent." t In Bibliotheq~~e Univm·selle de Geneve, March, 1860. ~ This we learn from his very interesting article, "De la Question |
