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extends, and whether man is one of the many races derived from a remote ancestry of beastly structure or not. We should like to know precisely how he would span the gap between man and the other animals. Does he mean to merge the human race also, with the bears and the whales, in a primeval archetype? Or does he suppose a separate creation, a peculiar origin for this peculiar race? He has given us scarcely a hint upon this point, the most interesting, of course, to us; and we must wait for the further development of his theory in the complete work of which we have now only a sketch and outline, for any extended view of this part of the subject. In the mean time we will venture the confession that the speculations of Mr. Darwin and others upon the origin of species do not materially change our old-fashioned belief.

—North American Review (October 1860)

FRANCIS BOWEN

Mr. Darwin boldly traces out the genealogy of man, and affirms that the monkey is his brother, and the horse his cousin, and the oyster his remote ancestor. The human body, in his view, is only a slowly developed zoöphyte, out of which it has grown by a process as natural and uniform as that by which a calf becomes a cow; and, by a parallel advancement, the human mind has become what it is out of a developed instinct.

Even this is not all. Mr. Darwin openly and almost scornfully repudiates the whole doctrine of Final Causes. He finds no indication of design or purpose anywhere in the animate or organic world. Like Geoffrey St. Hilaire, he takes good care “not to attribute any intention to the Almighty.” The nicest and most complex adaptations do not to him prove design....

We admit all that has been claimed [in The Origin of Species] for the proper independence of true physical science,—that its conclusions are to be tested by their own evidence, and not by their agreement or want of agreement with the teachings of Scripture, with received doctrines in theology or philosophy, or with any foreign standard whatsoever. We are ready to call out with the loudest of the anti-Mosaic geologists, Fiat scienta, ruat cœlum [let science be done, though the heavens fall]. But these doctrines are expressly accepted, expounded, and defended by Mr. Darwin himself, who is both a candid and intrepid reasoner,—accepted, not so much as inferences from his theory, but as part and parcel of the theory itself. The case, therefore, is not one of intrusion by theologians, moralists, or philosophers upon the proper domain of physical science. The intrusion, if any, comes from the other side. It is now the naturalist, the pure physicist, who, quitting his own territory, but, as he professes, still relying exclusively on physical evidence, seeks to build up metaphysical conclusions. We have a right, then, not merely as naturalists, but as students of the moral sciences, to examine the connection between his premises and his conclusions, to test his modes of reasoning, and to see whether he has made a legitimate application of the principles of inductive science to matters of fact, or has been only indulging in speculative and metaphysical dreams.

—North American Review (April 1860)

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

We do not speak jestingly in saying that it is Mr. Darwin’s misfortune to know more about the question he has taken up than any man living. Personally and practically exercised in zoology, in minute anatomy, in geology; a student of geographical distribution, not on maps and in museums only, but by long voyages and laborious collection; having largely advanced each of these branches of science, and having spent many years in gathering and sifting materials for his present work, the store of accurately registered facts upon which the author of the “Origin of Species” is able to draw at will is prodigious.

But this very superabundance of matter must have been embarrassing to a writer who, for the present, can only put forward an abstract of his views; and thence it arises, perhaps, that notwithstanding the clearness of the style, those who attempt fairly to digest the book find much