" A celebrated author and divine has written to me that
"he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of
the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-
development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a
fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His
laws."
Why, it may be asked, until recently did nearly all the most eminent living
naturalists and geologists disbelieve in the mutability of species? It
cannot be asserted that organic beings in a state of nature are subject to
no variation; it cannot be proved that the amount of variation in the
course of long ages is a limited quantity; no clear distinction has been,
or can be, drawn between species and well-marked varieties. It cannot be
maintained that species when intercrossed are invariably sterile and
varieties invariably fertile; or that sterility is a special endowment and
sign of creation. The belief that species were immutable productions was
almost unavoidable as long as the history of the world was thought to be of
short duration; and now that we have acquired some idea of the lapse of
time, we are too apt to assume, without proof, that the geological record
is so perfect that it would have afforded us plain evidence of the mutation
of species, if they had undergone mutation.
But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species
has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we are always slow
in admitting any great changes of which we do not see the steps.
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