on all theories
and hypotheses.

I have already stated to you that the inquiry respecting the causes of
the phenomena of organic nature resolves itself into two problems--the
first being the question of the origination of living or organic beings;
and the second being the totally distinct problem of the modification
and perpetuation of organic beings when they have already come into
existence. The first question Mr. Darwin does not touch; he does
not deal with it at all; but he says--given the origin of organic
matter--supposing its creation to have already taken place, my object is
to show in consequence of what laws and what demonstrable properties of
organic matter, and of its environments, such states of organic nature
as those with which we are acquainted must have come about. This, you
will observe, is a perfectly legitimate proposition; every person has a
right to define the limits of the inquiry which he sets before himself;
and yet it is a most singular thing that in all the multifarious, and,
not unfrequently, ignorant attacks which have been made upon the 'Origin
of Species', there is nothing which has been more speciously criticised
than this particular limitation. If people have nothing else to urge
against the book, they say--"Well, after all, you see, Mr. Darwin's
explanation of the 'Origin of Species' is not good for much, because, in
the long run, he admits that he does not know how organic matter began
to exist. But if you admit any special creation for the first particle
of organic matter you may just as well admit it for all the rest; five
hundred or five thousand distinct creations are just as intelligible,
and just as little difficult to understand, as one." The answer to these
cavils is two-fold. In the first place, all human inquiry must stop
somewhere; all our knowledge and all our investigation cannot take us
beyond the limits set by the finite and restricted character of our
faculties, or destroy the endless unknown, which accompanies, like its
shadow, the endless procession of phenomena. So far as I can venture
to offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being
in existence, the highest object that human beings can set before
themselves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation
of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its
boundaries a little further from our little sphere of action.

I wonder if any historian would for a moment admit th