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.