Now this was not so to any one of the other evolutionists whom we have already seen named. That was not so to Charles Kingsley. He believed in a majestic involution at the will of God, which, necessarily of design, was followed in turn by a no less majestic evolution at the will of God. Nay, is there not reason to surmise that this may be the position of the greater number of evolutionists, even of those that believe themselves Darwinians? Mr. Darwin, in the Historical Sketch that begins the Origin, refers to no less than twentyeight names of naturalists whom it is understood that we shall assume to be less or more in sympathy with himself. The less or more is a less or more, however, of a very considerable latitude. Buffon may have been-less or more-inclined to mere nature both for Design and Divinity; but what of his (Darwin's) own grandfather

-what of Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, Wells, Herbert, Chambers, V. Baer, Owen-what of these, not to name the others, though I fancy even of them, even of the whole list, as regards Design and Deity, one or other, or both, we may with perfect security put the same question. Why, Mr. Darwin seeks to claim Aristotle as all for necessity-him who was the deepest and most comprehensive thinker that ever lived-and he, Aristotle,? was the purest theist of the whole of Pagandom, while of him, Aristotle, Design was absolutely the principle !

But there were evolutionists, even before Lamarck, even before Dr. Erasmus Darwin. There was the celebrated Newtonian, Maupertius, 1697-1759: transmutation by breeding or even selection may be read into his "Venus Physique:" but he was a teleologist, and "stood firm by the necessary assumption of a First Originator of all things a supramundane and extramundane God." There was Bonnet, 1720-1793. Bonnet was opposed to successive acts of creation; he believed simply in evolution

from a creation completed at first. Bonnet, too, so far as nerves are concerned, was materialistic in his tendencies. Nevertheless, he still connected all with religious conviction. He even produced so admirable a demonstration of the truth of Christianity, that when Lavater was bent on converting the Jew Mendelssohn, it was his translation of Bonnet's book he sent to him as irresistible. There was Robinet, too, 1735-1820. He was an evolutionist, and believed in a génération uniforme des étres. It is a German who even says this of him: "In fact, in a certain way this French writer is much more complete than either his English or German successors; the marvels of generative evolution he will not confine as they do to vital tissue only; he will extend it to all dead particles as well, metals, water, the air," etc. To him the loveliness of the female voice, its refinement, in connection with the pleasure it gives us men, is but a Darwinian result of woman's love of talk! Yet to Robinet also, there is only one cause. There is a God, he exclaims, a cause of the phenomena of that whole which we name nature.

But of remarkable anticipations of later evolutionviews, perhaps the most remarkable (see Zöckler) is the work, Conversations (Entretiens) of an Indian Philosopher with a French Missionary, that was published, in 1748, under the pseudonym Telliamed (an anagram for de Maillet). "The present plants and animals," it is said there," under influence of external conditions combined with co-operating efforts at perfection on the part of the organisms themselves, have gradually developed themselves in the course of many thousand years." This author seems to make the sea the original fount of life, very much as did Dr. Erasmus Darwin after him. Aquatic plants, perfecting themselves, are transferred to the land; flying-fish become birds; marine animals,

through amphibia, change into mammalia-"but all the present inhabitants of land and air descend from animals of the sea."

In short, it is plain, in the presence of these facts and those named by Mr. Darwin himself, that it is not by any means necessary that an evolutionist should be also a Darwinian, and so, consequently, likewise, both nonteleological and non-theological. We have seen names of excellent evolutionists that were not only excellent theists, but admirable Christians as well.

After all, it is just possible that the essential conclusion here may be Mr. Darwin's own. We know already that, speaking to his friend Hooker of the mutability of species, he says (ii. 39) this: "Lamarck in his absurd though clever work has done the subject harm, as has Mr. Vestiges, and, as (some future loose naturalist will perhaps say) has Mr. D. !”

CHAPTER IX.

NATURAL SELECTION CRITICISED.

WE have approached, in the foregoing, the main interest, natural selection, from a variety of directions, and are now more or less prepared, presumably, for a final appraisement of the theory. We shall take the successive steps in it, and examine them in their order; referring always to the account (i. 82) to his own children, which, on the part of Mr. Darwin, we have so far seen already.

Mr. Darwin starts, as is natural, with the voyage of the Beagle and what suggestions it had led him to, specially so far as it concerned (1) The Pampean fossils, (2) The succession southwards of the South American Forms, and (3) The peculiar aspect of the Galapagos productions.

1. "Formerly the American continent must have swarmed with great monsters: now we find mere pigmies." These words of the Journal (p. 173) refer to the extinct Megatherium, Megalonyx, Scelidotherium, Mylodon, Glyptodon, Macrauchenia, Toxodon, etc., as " the great monsters," and to the existent armadillos as "the mere pigmies." In number, the former seem to be inexhaustible; "the whole area of the Pampas," we are told (p. 155), “is one wide sepulchre" of their remains; and in size they are gigantic. Especially is it the Glyptodon that is in place

ù propos of the armadillos. "The little armour-plated

Armadillos," says Nicholson in his Manual (p. 672), “are represented by the colossal Glyptodon." The enormous disproportion between the past and the present may be understood from this, that, while the last-named monster measured "more than nine feet from the tip of the snout to the end of the tail," it is rare at the present day to meet with any armadillo over two or three feet in length," and there actually exists one (p. 587), the Chlamyphorus truncatus, "the total length of which is only about six inches!" Notwithstanding the disproportion between the past and the present, still it was the obvious resemblance common to both that irresistibly convinced Mr. Darwin of the indubitable descent of the one from the other.

2. The point here is that, in the range southwards of South America, the different habitats have indeed different animals as occupants; but, nevertheless, all these different animals are still "closely allied." Closely allied the one to the other, they seem only "to replace" each other. And in this way, here, too, a common descent irresistibly suggested itself to Mr. Darwin.

3. "The South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and more especially the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group."

Under all three numbers, then,-and we simply assume the truth of the facts,- we have the conclusion to community of origin from similarity in difference, at least as a problem suggested. But the strange thing is that, let the similarity point to what identity it may, the idea origin is, accurately, no constituent of suggestion under any one. of the three numbers. 1. Certain extinct fossils resemble certain living animals; 2. successive habitats in latitude have closely allied occupants; 3. in a certain given