It has been maintained by several
authors that it is as easy to believe in the creation of a million beings
as of one; but Maupertuis' philosophical axiom "of least action" leads the
mind more willingly to admit the smaller number; and certainly we ought not
to believe that innumerable beings within each great class have been
created with plain, but deceptive, marks of descent from a single parent.
As a record of a former state of things, I have retained in the foregoing
paragraphs, and elsewhere, several sentences which imply that naturalists
believe in the separate creation of each species; and I have been much
censured for having thus expressed myself. But undoubtedly this was the
general belief when the first edition of the present work appeared. I
formerly spoke to very many naturalists on the subject of evolution, and
never once met with any sympathetic agreement. It is probable that some
did then believe in evolution, but they were either silent or expressed
themselves so ambiguously that it was not easy to understand their meaning.
Now, things are wholly changed, and almost every naturalist admits the
great principle of evolution. There are, however, some who still think
that species have suddenly given birth, through quite unexplained means, to
new and totally different forms. But, as I have attempted to show, weighty
evidence can be opposed to the admission of great and abrupt modifications.
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