“That this most ingenious hypothesis enables us to give a reason for many apparent anomalies in the distribution of living beings in time and space, and that it is not contradicted by the main phenomena of life and organisation appear to us to be unquestionable; and, so far, it must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin’s views at the present stage of the enquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls “Thätige Skepsis”--active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students of species, with respect to Mr. Darwin’s or any other hypothesis as to their origin. The combined investigations of another twenty years may, perhaps, enable naturalists to say whether the modifying causes and the selective power, which Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily shewn to exist in Nature, are competent to produce all the effects he ascribes to them; or whether, on the other hand, he has been led to over-estimate the value of the principle of natural selection, as greatly as Lamarck over-estimated his _vera causa_ of modification by exercise.” Of all the statements about natural selection made by Huxley, this one seems to me the nearest to the spirit of the two speeches he made in 1894, in which it became evident that the intervening thirty-five years had not brought the increased confidence he had hoped for. Furthermore, in the Preface to “Darwiniana” (1893) he expressly stated that he had not changed his mind as regards this article and the next which will be considered (see p. 137, where the passage is quoted). In 1860 Huxley wrote the article on “The Origin of Species” which appeared in the _Westminster Review_ for April, and is reprinted in “Darwiniana.” He here states the reasons for his doubts about natural selection in considerable detail. At the beginning of the essay (“Darwiniana,” p. 23) he asserts that-- “... all competent naturalists and physiologists, whatever their opinions as to the ultimate fate of the doctrines put forth, acknowledge that the work in which they are embodied is a solid contribution to knowledge and inaugurates a new epoch in natural history.” Towards the end of the essay, after vindicating the logical method followed by Darwin, he continues (pp. 73–75):--