The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 36, October, 1860

Оглавление

Various. The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 36, October, 1860

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS

THE SUMMONS

DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS

A MODERN CINDERELLA:

THE OLD DAYS AND THE NEW

THE ICEBERG OF TORBAY

THEODORE PARKER

ICARUS

WALKER

THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER AND ITS EDITORS

SONNET

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY

THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

ART

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

Отрывок из книги

The origin of species, like all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as to how they began.

Two hypotheses divide the scientific world, very unequally, upon the origin of the existing diversity of the plants and animals which surround us. One assumes that the actual kinds are primordial; the other, that they are derivative. One, that all kinds originated supernaturally and directly as such, and have continued unchanged in the order of Nature; the other, that the present kinds appeared in some sort of genealogical connection with other and earlier kinds, that they became what they now are in the course of time and in the order of Nature.

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After an illustration from the vegetable creation, Darwin adds:—

All this, simply taken, is beyond cavil, unless the attempt to explain scientifically how any designed result is accomplished savors of impropriety.

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