454 
The identification of Organic Evolution with Natural 
Selection can only be justified on one condition, viz., that 
there are only two possible explanations of the produc 
tion of the organic world ; the belief in the special 
creation of each species and its unchangeable fixity ; or 
the belief in Organic Evolution by means of Natural 
Selection alone. That is what Dr. Aveling asserts :— 
“ In the words of the great author of that work I would remind all 
that in the hypothesis of Natural Selection we have only an hypothesis ; 
there is at present on the main question only one other hypothesis 
before us—that of the numberless species on the earth having each 
and all originated from distinct acts of creation. It is the bounden 
duty of all wdrose minds are not in bondage to choose of the two 
theories the one that is in accordance with, links together, and makes 
comprehensible, the larger number of facts.”—( The Student’s Darwin, 
p. 263.) 
Dr. Weismann asserts that Natural Selection “is the 
only conceivable natural explanation of organisms re 
garded as adaptations to conditions.”* Those who believe 
that Natural Selection, in the strictest sense of that word, 
is the only cause of Organic Evolution, are perhaps justi 
fied in using this language. But even in that case it 
would add to the logical clearness of the discussion if the 
arguments for the process were kept apart from the argu 
ments for the law which dominates that process—as 
Mr. Wallace does in the following passage :— 
“What Mr. Darwin did was to prove, by an overwhelming array of 
evidence and a connected chain of irresistible argument, that, just as 
all horses and all asses have each descended from a few common 
ancestors, so have all asses, horses, quaggas, and zebras descended 
from a much more remote common ancestral form ; and that the 
same thing has occurred with every group of allied species. This is 
the ‘ origin of species, by descent with modification,’ or, in other 
words, by evolution ; while, ‘Natural Selection’ was the term applied 
The Contemporary Review, vol. Ixiv., p.328.