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Show 128 IJAR WINIANA. which, nevertheless, appears better fitted than any other that has been broached to explain, if it be possible to explain, somewhat of the manner in which organized beings may have arisen and succeeded each other. In this dilemma we might take advantage of Mr. Darwin's candid admission, that he by no means expects to convince old and experienced people, whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all regarded during a lo~g course of years from the old point of view. This is nearly our case. So, owning no call to a larger faith than is expect.ed of us, but not prepared to pronounce the whole hypothesis untenable, under such construction as we should put upon it, we naturally sought to attain a settled conviction through a perusal of several proffered refutations of the theory. At least, this course seemed to offer the readiest way of bringing to a head the various objections to which the theory is exposed. On several accounts some of these opposed reviews especially invite examination. We propose, accordingly, to conclude our task with an article upon "Darwin and his Reviewers." III. THE origin of species, like all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as to how they began. Two hypotheses divide the scientific world, very unequally, upon the origin of the existing diversity of the plants and animals which surround us. One assumes that the actual kinds are primordial; the other, that they are derivative. One, that all kinds originated supernaturally and directly as such, and have continued unchanged in the order of Nature; the 1 other that the present kinds appeared in some sort of gene~logical connection with other and earlier kinds, that they became what they now are in the course of time and in the order of Nature. Or bringinO' in the word species, which is well ' 0 defined as "the perennial successi.O n of m. d1' v1' du a1 s , " commonly of very like individuals-as a cl?se c?rporation of individuals perpetuated by generatiOn, mstead of election-and reducing the question to mathematical simplicity of statement: species are lines of individuals coming down from the past and running . on ~o the future · lines receding, therefore, from our VIew 1n either direc' tion. Within our limited observati. on t h ey |