things one, then. Either this
matter must, whether under superior direction or not, have organised
itself, or it must have been organised by some other agency. Mr. Darwin,
together with all thorough-going Darwinians, inclines, I suspect, to the
opinion that matter organised itself; but if so, it cannot possibly have
been inert or lifeless, but must have been active and animate, and
capable of volition; and on that condition, there is no great stretch of
fancy in imagining it to have spontaneously adopted the series of
arrangements indicated. If, on the other hand, we are content to admit
that some external superior intelligence may have performed, or
conducted, or presided over operations, all room for wonder vanishes.

In regard to the character of the structural prototype, that, of course,
would depend in part on surrounding physical conditions, and if these
have ever been the same in all parts of the globe, there is no apparent
reason why any number of specimens of the prototype may not anywhere
have been independently elaborated. It is not possible, however, that,
since the earth began to revolve round the sun, physical conditions can
have been _simultaneously_ the same in all latitudes; while, on the
other hand, it seems probable that, although the same set of conditions
might perhaps admit of the production of only one organic type, there
might be other sets of conditions favourable to the production of other
types. On the whole, then, it seems more probable that inorganic matter
combined (or _was_ combined) in the first instance in several modes,
than in one single mode, in order to become organic. But whatever may
have been the organic form or forms it first took, to assume that only a
single individual of each form was independently elaborated, and that
all other individuals, both of the same form and of all the more complex
forms, gradually evolved from that one--are descendants from the same
first individual, the same first parent--surely very gratuitously
increases the difficulties of the subject. Especially it complicates the
problem of the distribution of the same plants and animals over
countries immemorially separated by gulfs apparently impassable by
natural means.

The obstruction which Mr. Darwin has created to the progress of his
opinions by the exaggerated shape in which some of them have been
presented is, however, as nothing in comparison with the injury he does
to his theory by obstinately reje