The obstruction which Mr. Darwin has created to the progress of his opinions by the exaggerated shape in which some of them have been presented is, however, as nothing in comparison with the injury he does to his theory by obstinately rejecting certain materials indispensable for its satisfactory completion. What an admirable theory it is so far as it goes! How nicely it fits into all the facts it comes in contact with, even into those which it is, of itself and unassisted, incompetent to explain! How elevating too and ennobling, when rightly conceived! for who can fail to rejoice in the view it presents of 'Natural selection working solely by and for the good of each being' that it spares, and causing 'all corporal and mental endowments to tend towards perfection'? or who need mind suspecting himself to be descended, through an ape, from a triton or a hydra, if he may compensate himself by hoping to have a distant posterity of angels? How well, moreover, would it, if permitted, chime in with any rational religion, besides being, as already hinted, absolutely essential to that part of the Mosaic creed which represents all the variously coloured and variously featured races of men as springing from one single couple. By what perversity then is it that Mr. Darwin takes such pains, if not to render his theory irreligious, at least to exclude from it the assistance which religion alone can afford, and which it so greatly needs, that whoever, without that assistance, attempts to apply the theory to the complete elucidation of phenomena, will be found inevitably committing himself to the most astounding hypotheses? Here I picture to myself a curl on the lip of some advanced Darwinian who, having accompanied me so far, cannot altogether suppress his compassionate scorn at the proposed recurrence now-a-days to a mode of thought so obsolete in the treatment of scientific subjects as the theological. 'Positive biology,' he will perhaps superbly exclaim, repeating the words of Mr. G. H. Lewes, 'declines theological explanations altogether.' Yes, but positive biology is therein very unwise, for as, if the same reader will accompany me a little further, I pledge myself to show, it is the untheological or atheistical, not the theistical, mode of treatment which is here utterly out of place and flagrantly unscientific. Be it, without the slightest reserve, admitted that the formation of almost all, and probably of quite all, existing species is due, and cannot be otherwise than due, to survival of the fittest, the superior fitness of these, moreover, being due to the gradual accumulation of innumerable and, for the most part, exceedingly slight divergencies from the parent stock. But whence and why these divergencies? It cannot be without a cause that even one more feather than the parent possessed appears in the offspring's wing, or a novel tint on its coat, or that the curve of beak or talons is not precisely the same in each. What then is the