animals may rise into greater, varieties into species. Given differences and an internal tendency to differ more, i.e., given variation as an inexhaustible factor, and natural selection should suffice for the preservation and increase of the select few as a consequence of the destruction of the intermediate many. Surely there is nothing either improbable or irreligious in the idea that lines of individuals or races, once in existence, should be subject to the conditions of Nature, and that the fittest for particular conditions should thereby be preserved. As to variation, that really occurs as a fact, though we know not how; and, if we frame explanations of the mode and get conceptions of the causes of the variation of living things, still we proba bly shall never be able to carry our knowledge very much further back; for in each variation lies hidden the mystery of a beginning. We cannot tell why offspring should be like unto parent; how then should we know why it should sometimes be different?

So then Darwinism has real causes at its foundation, viz., the fact of variation and the inevitable operation of natural selection, determining the survival only of the fittest forms for the time and place. It is therefore a good hypothe

sis, so far. But is it a sufficient and a complete hypothesis? Does it furnish scientific explanation of (ie., assign natural causes for) the rise of living forms from low to high, from simple to complex, from protoplasm to simple plant and animal, from fish to flesh, from lower animal to higher animal, from brute to man? Does it scientifically account for the formation of any organ, show that under given conditions sensitive eye-spot, initial hand or brain, or even a different hue or texture, must then and there . be developed as the consequence of assignable conditions? Does it explain how and why so much, or any, sensitiveness, faculty of response by movement, perception, consciousness, intellect, is correlated with such and such an organism? I answer, Not at all! The hypothesis does none of these things. For my own part I can hardly conceive that any one should think that natural selection scientifically accounts for these phenomena.

Let us here discriminate. To account scientifically for phenomena, or for complex series of phenomena, by assigning real and sufficient natural causes, is one thing. To believe that the phenomena have occurred in the course of nature, and have natural causal connection,

is another. It is not natural selection which has led Mr. Darwin and many others to believe that life was "originally breathed by the Creatorinto a few forms or into one," and "that the. production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world has been due to secondary causes; " but it is the observed fact of likenesses and that of gradation from form to form which suggested the idea of an actual evolution from form to form having somehow taken place. Variation and natural selection are now assigned as causes or reasons of the evolution. Variation originates all the differences. Natural selection, determining which forms shall survive, reduces their number and intensifies their character. But Darwin may likewise consistently speak of his favorite principle as a cause of the evolution, it being that in the absence of which the evolution could not take effect. A cause of variation it certainly is not, but it is a necessary occasion of it, or of its progress. Because without natural selection to pave the way, the wheels of variation would at once be clogged and all progress be arrested. Variation provides that upon which natural selection operates; the operation of natural selection makes room for further varia

tion, gives opportunity for variability to change its fashions and display its novelties; and so the two go on, hand in hand. But, although thus conjoined, there is always this difference between the two, that natural selection works externally, with known natural agencies, and in the light of common day; variation works internally, in darkness, and its agencies and ways are recondite and past finding out. Or, when we find out something, -as we may hope to do, - we only resolve a before unexplained phenomenon into two factors, one of them a now ascertained natural process, the other a something which still eludes our search. But we suppose it to be natural, although as yet unknown. Surely we are not to suppose that natural agencies cease just where we fail to make them out.

To proceed: what Darwinism maintains is that variation, which is the origination of small differences, and species-production, which represents somewhat larger differences, and genusproduction, which represents still greater differences, are parts of a series and differ only in degree, and therefore have common natural causes whatever these may be; and that natural selection gives a clear conception