distinguishes man from the whole of the brute world? I say that this
functional difference is vast, unfathomable, and truly infinite in
its consequences; and I say at the same time, that it may depend upon
structural differences which shall be absolutely inappreciable to us
with our present means of investigation. What is this very speech that
we are talking about? I am speaking to you at this moment, but if you
were to alter, in the minutest degree, the proportion of the nervous
forces now active in the two nerves which supply the muscles of my
glottis, I should become suddenly dumb. The voice is produced only so
long as the vocal chords are parallel; and these are parallel only so
long as certain muscles contract with exact equality; and that again
depends on the equality of action of those two nerves I spoke of. So
that a change of the minutest kind in the structure of one of these
nerves, or in the structure of the part in which it originates, or of
the supply of blood to that part, or of one of the muscles to which it
is distributed, might render all of us dumb. But a race of dumb men,
deprived of all communication with those who could speak, would be
little indeed removed from the brutes. And the moral and intellectual
difference between them and ourselves would be practically infinite,
though the naturalist should not be able to find a single shadow of even
specific structural difference.

But let me dismiss this question now, and, in conclusion, let me say
that you may go away with it as my mature conviction, that Mr. Darwin's
work is the greatest contribution which has been made to biological
science since the publication of the 'Regne Animal' of Cuvier, and since
that of the 'History of Development' of Von Baer. I believe that if you
strip it of its theoretical part it still remains one of the greatest
encyclopaedias of biological doctrine that any one man ever brought
forth; and I believe that, if you take it as the embodiment of
an hypothesis, it is destined to be the guide of biological and
psychological speculation for the next three or four generations.

End of A Critical Examination of "On The Origin of Species".

THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS.*

([Footnote] *'Times', December 26th, 1850.)

DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

There is a growing immensity in the speculations of science to which no
human thing or thought at this day is comparable. Apart from the
results which science brings us h