But even if we admit that such an assumption affords some explanation, instead of being the renunciation of all attempts at explanation; if we admit that an organism, the characteristic peculiarities of which entirely depend upon adaptation, has been formed by an internal developmental force; we should still be unable to explain how it happens that such an organism, suited to certain conditions of life, and unable to exist under other conditions, appeared at that very place on the earth’s surface, and at that very time in the earth’s history, which offered the conditions appropriate for its existence. As I have previously argued, the believers in an internal developmental force are compelled to invent an auxiliary hypothesis, a kind of ‘pre-established harmony’ which explains how it is that changes in the organic world advance step by step, parallel with changes in the crust of the earth and in other conditions of life; just as, according to Leibnitz, body and soul, although independent of each other, proceed along parallel courses, like two chronometers which keep perfect time. And even this supposition would not be sufficient, because the place must be taken into account as well as the time: thus the whales could not have existed if they had first appeared upon dry land. We know of countless instances in which a species is exclusively and precisely adapted to a certain localized area, and could not thrive anywhere else. We have only to remember the cases of mimicry in which one insect gains protection by resembling another, the cases of protective resemblance to the bark or the leaves of a certain species of plant, or the numerous marvellous adaptations of parasitic animals to certain parts of certain species of hosts. A mimetic species cannot have appeared at any place other than that in which it exists: it cannot have arisen through an internal developmental force. But if single species, or even whole orders like the _Cetacea_, have arisen independently of any such force, then we may safely assert that the existence of the supposed force is neither required by reason nor necessity. Hence, abstaining from the invocation of unknown forces, we are justified in carrying on Darwin’s attempt to explain the transformation of organisms by the action of known forces and known phenomena. I say ‘carry on the attempt,’ because I do not believe that our knowledge in this direction has ended with Darwin, and it seems to me that we have already arrived at ideas which are incompatible with certain important points in his general theory, and which therefore necessitate some modification of the latter.