te of reproduction would soon fill any
country it could live in, but does not, being checked by some other
species or some other condition,--so it may be surmised that Variation
and Natural Selection have their Struggle and consequent Check, or are
limited by something inherent in the constitution of organic beings.
We are disposed to rank the derivative hypothesis in its fulness with
the nebular hypothesis, and to regard both as allowable, as not
unlikely to prove tenable in spite of some strong objections, but as
not therefore demonstrably true. Those, if any there be, who regard
the derivative hypothesis as satisfactorily proved must have loose
notions as to what proof is. Those who imagine it can be easily
refuted and cast aside must, we think, have imperfect or very
prejudiced conceptions of the facts concerned and of the questions at
issue.

We are not disposed nor prepared to take sides for or against the new
hypothesis, and so, perhaps, occupy a good position from which to
watch the discussion, and criticize those objections which are
seemingly inconclusive. On surveying the arguments urged by those who
have undertaken to demolish the theory, we have been most impressed
with a sense of their great inequality. Some strike us as excellent
and perhaps unanswerable; some, as incongruous with other views of the
same writers; others, when carried out, as incompatible with general
experience or general beliefs, and therefore as proving too much;
still others, as proving nothing at all: so that, on the whole, the
effect is rather confusing and disappointing. We certainly expected a
stronger adverse case than any which the thorough-going opposers of
Darwin appear to have made out. Wherefore, if it be found that the new
hypothesis has grown upon our favor as we proceeded, this must be
attributed not so much to the force of the arguments of the book
itself as to the want of force of several of those by which it has
been assailed. Darwin's arguments we might resist or adjourn; but some
of the refutations of it give us more concern than the book itself
did.

These remarks apply mainly to the philosophical and theological
objections which have been elaborately urged, almost exclusively by
the American reviewers. The "North British" reviewer, indeed, roundly
denounces the book as atheistical, but evidently deems the case too
clear for argument. The Edinburgh reviewer, on the contrary, scouts
all such objections,--as well he