And here, as it will always happen when dealing with an extensive
subject, the greater part of my course--if, indeed, so small a number
of lectures can be properly called a course--must be devoted to
preliminary matters, or rather to a statement of those facts and of
those principles which the work itself dwells upon, and brings more or
less directly before us. I have no right to suppose that all or any of
you are naturalists; and even if you were, the misconceptions and
misunderstandings prevalent even among naturalists on these matters
would make it desirable that I should take the course I now propose to
take,--that I should start from the beginning,--that I should endeavour
to point out what is the existing state of the organic world,--that I
should point out its past condition,--that I should state what is the
precise nature of the undertaking which Mr. Darwin has taken in hand;
that I should endeavour to show you what are the only methods by which
that undertaking can be brought to an issue, and to point out to you
how far the author of the work in question has satisfied those
conditions, how far he has not satisfied them, how far they are
satisfiable by man, and how far they are not satisfiable by man.
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