It has been remarked as a somewhat significant circumstance that the title of that remarkable work The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, which has so deeply impressed the mind of our age, contains in itself the elements of the refutation of its own leading principle.

Of the origin of species the book tells us nothing. It merely discusses certain possible modes of ‘descent with modification’ whereby new species may be derived from those previously existing. Of species it tells us nothing, except that if its contentions be maintained there can be no permanent kinds of animals or plants, or true species, in the old sense of the term, but only an indefinite shading of forms into one another, and a perpetual flux, by which what may be called a species at one period will be something different at another. Natural selection again, if there is such a thing, can take place only after species already exist with numerous individuals to be selected from; and unless it is merely another name for chance, it implies also an intelligent selecting power or agency. Farther, though put forward by Darwin as an efficient cause, it is now admitted by many of the ablest of his followers to be merely a mode, and only one of several modes by which species may be modified.

This error in statement proceeds from a fundamental confusion in the mind of the author, who, though of transcendent gifts as an observer, was very defective as a reasoner.