s that we are always
slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the
intermediate steps.--p. 481.

In this tardiness to admit great changes suggested by the imagination,
but the steps of which we cannot see, is the true spirit of philosophy.

Analysis, says Professor Sedgwick, consists in making experiments and
observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by
induction, and admitting of no objections against the conclusions but
such as are taken from experiments or other certain truths; for
_hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental philosophy._[1]

[1] "A Discourse on the Studies of the University," by A. Sedgwick, p.
102.

The other solvent which Mr. Darwin most freely and, we think,
unphilosophically employs to get rid of difficulties, is his use of
time. This he shortens or prolongs at will by the mere wave of his
magician's rod. Thus the duration of whole epochs, during which certain
forms of animal life prevailed, is gathered up into a point, whilst an
unlimited expanse of years, "impressing his mind with a sense of
eternity," is suddenly interposed between that and the next series,
though geology proclaims the transition to have been one of gentle and,
it may be, swift accomplishment. All this too is made the more startling
because it is used to meet the objections drawn from facts. "We see none
of your works," says the observer of nature; "we see no beginnings of
the portentous change; we see plainly beings of another order in
creation, but we find amongst them no tendencies to these altered
organisms." "True," says the great magician, with a calmness no
difficulty derived from the obstinacy of facts can disturb; "true, but
remember the effect of time. Throw in a few hundreds of millions of
years more or less, and why should not all these changes be possible,
and, if possible, why may I not assume them to be real?"

Together with this large licence of assumption we notice in this book
several instances of receiving as facts whatever seems to bear out the
theory upon the slightest evidence, and rejecting summarily others,
merely because they are fatal to it. We grieve to charge upon Mr. Darwin
this freedom in handling facts, but truth extorts it from us. That the
loose statements and unfounded speculations of this book should come
from the author of the monograms on Cirripedes, and the writer, in the
natural history of the Voyage of the "Beagle," of the pa