variation) in time, their position and uses in the world having been
preordained by the Creator."[49] Professor Owen says he has taught the
doctrine of derivation (evolution) for thirty years, but it attracted
little attention. As soon, however, as Darwin leaves out design, we have
a prairie-fire. A prairie-fire, happily, does not continue very long;
and while it lasts, it burns up little else than stubble.

4. All the evidence we have in favor of the fixedness of species is, of
course, evidence not only against Darwinism, but against evolution in
all its forms. It would seem idle to discuss the question of the
mutability of species, until satisfied what species is. This, unhappily,
is a question which it is exceedingly difficult to answer. Not only do
the definitions given by scientific men differ almost indefinitely, but
there is endless diversity in classification. Think of four hundred and
eighty species of humming-birds. Haeckel says that one naturalist makes
ten, another forty, another two hundred, and another one, species of a
certain fossil; and we have just heard that Agassiz had collected eight
hundred species of the same fossil animal. Haeckel also says (p. 246),
that there are no two zooelogists or any two botanists who agree
altogether in their classification. Mr. Darwin says, "No clear line of
demarcation has yet been drawn between species and sub-species, and
varieties." (p. 61) It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that a
distinction should be made between artificial and natural species. No
man asserts the immutability of all those varieties of plants and
animals, which naturalists, for the convenience of classification, may
call distinct species. Haeckel, for example, gives a list of twelve
species of man. So any one may make fifty species of dogs, or of horses.
This is a mere artificial distinction, which amounts to nothing. There
is far greater difference between a pouter and a carrier pigeon, than
between a Caucasian and a Mongolian. To call the former varieties of the
same species, and the latter distinct species, is altogether arbitrary.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding the arbitrary classifications of
naturalists, it remains true that there are what Professor Dana calls
"units" of the organic world. "When individuals multiply from generation
to generation, it is but a repetition of the primordial type-idea, and
the true notion of the species is not in the resulting group, but in
the idea or potenti