which life was first breathed," and its descendants, have been gradually and variously developed, and differentiated, through all intervening species, into the monkey, and thence, by an easy transition, into Man!

The above is a fair statement of Darwin's theory. Condensed, it may be thus stated: Variations, or improvements, or slight, successive advances from simplicity to greater complexity of structure, have, owing to an "innate tendency to vary," occurred with animals. and plants, under domestication. Similar, inexplicable modifications may have occurred (and some warrant for this assumption is furnished) with animals and plants, in the state of nature. Under domestication, Man's Selection has so accumulated, and directed these variations or improvements, that, at the same rate of progression from simplicity to complexity of structure, the higher species may continue to improve indefinitely, and each of the lower species may continue to improve into other species, genera, families and orders, as high as the highest in the existing scale of development. By analogy with domestication, the same progression, or evolution, may be said to have occurred in the past under nature; and it is possible, if not probable, that man, and all other animals, have evolved, by means of these inexplicable variations, and with the aid of the process of Natural Selection, from the lowest type of organic structure.

There is-dove-tailed within this theory of the evolution of the species-another theory with which Darwin supplements his main argument. It is, that, besides an advance in development, by means of the

slight successive, positive variation, there has been a prodigious amount of degeneration, during the past, under nature. Natural Selection has very frequently simplified and degraded the structure of animals and plants.

So widespread, Darwin says, has been this degeneration, under nature, that there exists now scarcely a single species which has not lost some organs or features.

From changed habits of life, and from the hard conditions of the Struggle for Existence--which needs must be excessively vigorous to give play to Natural Selection-organs, he says, have become of less and less use, and ultimately superfluous; and disuse, and Natural Extinction, acting on the individuals, have gone on reducing the organs, until, finally, they have either become wholly suppressed, leaving not a vestige of their existence (save the power of reappearing which, he says, they are ever competent to do, even after having lain latent for millions of generations); or, they have become only greatly reduced, having the character of rudiments.

With respect to this power of Reversion, in the many long-lost characters; he says, that characters, proper to both sexes, to both the right and left side of the body, and to a long line of male and female ancestors, separated by hundreds, or even thousands of generations from the present time, frequently lie latent in many individuals, without our being able to detect any signs of their presence; yet that "these characters, like those written on paper with invisible ink, all lie"

ever "ready to be evolved, under certain known, or unknown conditions;" and, of the many variations which he adduces, fully nine-tenths are by him explicitly referred to the mere re-appearance of these long lost characters. Of the cause of the appearance of the other tithe, he says that he is in "profound ignorance."

CHAPTER II.

DARWIN'S IGNORANCE OF THE LAW OF VARIATIONS; AND HIS FALSE ASSUMPTION OF NO LIMIT TO IMPROVEMENTS.

After Darwin had adduced his facts, of the improvements among animals and plants, the next step which it behooved him to take, before he assumed that there was no-limit to such improvements, was to generalize those facts; to develop their cause; to discover the law, governing the appearance of the variations; and to ascertain, whether such law fixed a limit to such variations, or was silent on the subject. If, when discovered, the law assigned a limit to the improvements in each species, then, manifestly, no theory of the indefinite accumulation of such variations, would be possible. If, however, the law, when resolved, were to imply that such variations were possible to be carried on to an unlimited extent; or, even if the law were silent on the subject; no exception to the principal postulate of Darwinism (viz., unlimited improvement) could be taken.

But, while the cause, or law, of the improvements, remained unresolved, it was evident, that any theory, based upon such improvements, must needs be illegitimate; not necessarily false, but illegitimate, inasmuch as the assumption of a limit, or the assumption of

no-limit, in any theory, would be not only gratuitous, but also in plain derogation of that canon of the inductive philosophy, which enjoins that no principle whatever shall be reasoned from, until it first shall have been reasoned to.

The question, therefore, of the cause, or law of the improvements, is the point where Darwin's claim to the title of a Baconian philosopher should have been made good. A theory, which is to illustrate the signal triumph which "modern thought" has achieved over the ignorance of nineteen centuries, should stand upon a principle, which is as a buttress of adamant, against every assault,—not upon a gratuitous assumption formulated in the teeth of the fact that the law of its data, is yet unresolved; and despite the circumstance (which we shall develop most clearly), that those data conclusively negative such assumption.

What is the law of Variation? What is the cause of the improvements?

Darwin says, the reason that animals and plants vary, and improve, is because they possess "an innate tendency" to vary and improve!

This assumption of his, is a barren, metaphysical entity, which, by the concurring testimony of every inductive philosopher, from the time of Bacon down to the present, suffices to vitiate, and wholly invalidate every hypothesis in which it is present. In his "Animals and Plants under Domestication," and in his “Origin of Species," he generalizes, and explains (!) the facts of variation, by ascribing them to "an innate, tendency," to "spontaneous or accidental variability,”