he
aims to apply it not only to the extinction but to the origin of
species.

Although I fail to recognise proof of the latter bearing of the battle
of life, the concurrence of so much evidence in favour of extinction by
law is, in like measure, corroborative of the truth of the ascription of
the origin of species to a secondary cause.

What spectacle can be more beautiful than that of the inhabitants of the
calm expanse of water of an atoll encircled by its ring of coral rock!
Leaving locomotive frequenters of the calcarious basin out of the
question, we may ask, Was direct creation after the dying out of its
result as a "rugose coral" repeated to constitute the succeeding and
superseding "tabulate coral"? Must we also invoke the miraculous power
to initiate every distinct species of both rugosa and tabulata? These
grand old groups have had their day and are utterly gone. When we
endeavour to conceive or realise such mode of origin, not of them only
but of their manifold successors, the miracle, by the very
multiplication of its manifestations, becomes incredible--inconsistent
with any worthy conception of an all-seeing, all-provident Omnipotence.

Being unable to accept the volitional hypothesis (of Lamarck) or the
selective force exerted by outward circumstances (Darwin), I deem an
innate tendency to deviate from parental type, operating through periods
of adequate duration, to be the most probable way of operation of the
secondary law whereby species have been derived one from another.

According to my derivative hypothesis a change takes place first in the
structure of the animal, and this, when sufficiently advanced, may lead
to modifications of habits. But species owe as little to the accidental
concurrence of environing circumstances as kosmos depends upon a
fortuitous concourse of atoms. A purposive route of development and
change of correlation and inter-dependence, manifesting intelligent
will, is as determinable in the succession of races as in the
development and organisation of the individual.

Derivation holds that every species changes in time, by virtue of
inherent tendencies thereto. Natural selection holds that no such change
can take place without the influence of altered external circumstances
educing or eliciting such change.

Derivation sees among the effects of the innate tendency to change,
irrespective of altered surrounding circumstances, a manifestation of
creative power in the variet