In no respect, moreover, have Darwin's followers more closely imitated their master than in the construction of such hypotheses, which would appear to constitute in the eyes of many the most important work of Science. Attention has very largely been diverted from Nature as actually existing, which seems to be studied more for the light it can be supposed to throw upon evolutionary history, than simply for itself, and it seems to be thought that to imagine the mode of an evolutionary process is equivalent to establishing the facts which that process supposes. By this method lengthy and learned papers are written concerning the transformation of one species into another, which in reality do no more than describe in minute detail all the changes which must have taken place, _if_ the said transformation really occurred. That Science is thus benefited, is not the opinion of some at least who are well entitled to speak on her behalf, for as the President of the Linnean Society recently observed,[220] as one grows older, it becomes more and more apparent that facts alone are of any serious interest, and that speculations however ingenious and attractive are best left to the constructive and destructive energies of the young. So too, a few years ago, the President of the Microscopical Society complained that interest in living creatures is largely supplanted by dead ones.[221] We read much [he said] of the animal's organs: we see plates showing that its bristles have been counted, and its muscular fibres traced to the last thread; we have the structure of its tissues analyzed to their very elements; we have long discussions on its title to rank with this group or that; and sometimes even disquisitions on the probable form and habits of some extremely remote, but quite hypothetical, ancestor, who is made to degrade in this way, or to advance in that, or who is credited with one organ or deprived of another, just as the ever-varying necessities of a desperate hypothesis require.... There is another aspect of the question which must by no means be overlooked. It has to be assumed that Natural Selection, or the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, necessarily tends to the benefit of the _race_ and moreover to its farther development on the upward grade, towards a more perfect and more specialized organization;--in Mr. Herbert Spencer's words, to progression from a relatively indefinite incoherent homogeneity, to a relatively definite, coherent heterogeneity. But here many questions occur.