the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a
secure future of great length. And as natural selection works slowly by
and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will
tend to progress towards perfection."

For his own part, Darwin could see no good reason why the views
propounded in the two volumes comprising the "Origin of Species" should
shock the religious feelings of any one. Touching the likelihood of
such a result, he reassured himself by recalling the fact that the
greatest discovery ever made by man--namely, the law of the attraction
of gravitation--was attacked by Leibnitz "as subversive of natural, and
inferentially, of revealed, religion." Darwin was confident that, if any
such impressions were made by his theory, they would prove but
transient, and that ultimately men would come to see that it is just as
noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few
original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms
as to believe that it required the fresh act of creation to supply the
voids caused by the action of His laws.

IV.

It was, as we have said, in 1868 that Darwin published the two volumes
collectively entitled "Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication." It is the second and largely corrected edition brought
out in 1875 which we have under our eye. It is the outcome of the views
maintained by the author in this work and elsewhere that not only the
various domestic races but the most distinct genera and orders within
the same great class--for instance, mammals, birds, reptiles, and
fishes--are all the descendants of one common progenitor, and the whole
vast amount of difference between these forms has primarily arisen from
simple variability. Darwin recognized that he who for the first time
should consider the subject under this point of view would be struck
dumb with amazement. He submits, however, that the amazement ought to be
lessened when we reflect that beings almost infinite in number during an
almost infinite lapse of time have often had their whole organization
rendered in some degree plastic, and that each slight modification of
structure which was in any way beneficial under excessively complex
conditions of life has been preserved, whilst each which was in any way
injurious has been rigorously destroyed. The long-continued accumulation
of beneficial variations will infallibly have led to structures as
divers