1. The existence of matter, although he says little on the subject. Its
existence however, as a real entity, is everywhere taken for granted.

2. He assumes the efficiency of physical causes, showing no disposition
to resolve them into mind-force, or into the efficiency of the First
Cause.

3. He assumes also the existence of life in the form of one or more
primordial germs. He does not adopt the theory of spontaneous
generation. What life is he does not attempt to explain, further than to
quote (p. 326), with approbation, the definition of Herbert Spencer, who
says, "Life depends on, or consists in, the incessant action and
reaction of various forces,"--which conveys no very definite idea.

4. To account for the existence of matter and life, Mr. Darwin admits a
Creator. This is done explicitly and repeatedly. Nothing, however, is
said of the nature of the Creator and of his relation to the world,
further than is implied in the meaning of the word.

5. From the primordial germ or germs (Mr. Darwin seems to have settled
down to the assumption of only one primordial germ), all living
organisms, vegetable and animal, including man, on our globe, through
all the stages of its history, have descended.

6. As growth, organization, and reproduction are the functions of
physical life, as soon as the primordial germ began to live, it began
to grow, to fashion organs however simple, for its nourishment and
increase, and for the reproduction, in some way, of living forms like
itself. How all living things on earth, including the endless variety of
plants, and all the diversity of animals--insects, fishes, birds, the
ichthyosaurus, the mastodon, the mammoth, and man--have descended from
the primordial animalcule, he thinks, may be accounted for by the
operation of the following natural laws, viz.:--

First, the law of Heredity, or that by which like begets like. The
offspring are like the parent.

Second, the law of Variation, that is, while the offspring are, in all
essential characteristics, like their immediate progenitor, they
nevertheless vary more or less within narrow limits, from their parent
and from each other. Some of these variations are indifferent, some
deteriorations, some improvements, that is, they are such as enable the
plant or animal to exercise its functions to greater advantage.

Third, the law of Over Production. All plants and animals tend to
increase in a geometrical ratio; and therefore tend to ove