" {177a} It would be satisfactory to know where an accessory touch
is supposed to begin and end.
And again:--
"The essential characteristics of every animal have been conserved
without alteration in their most important parts. . . . The
individuals of each genus still represent the same forms as they did
in the earliest ages, especially in the case of the larger animals"
(so that the generic forms even of the larger animals prove not to be
the same, but only "especially" the same as in the earliest ages).
{177b}
This transparently illogical position is maintained ostensibly from first
to last, much in the same spirit as in the two foregoing passages,
written at intervals of thirteen years. But they are to be read by the
light of the earlier one--placed as a lantern to the wary upon the
threshold of his work in 1753--to the effect that a single,
well-substantiated case of degeneration would make it conceivable that
all living beings were descended from but one common ancestor. If after
having led up to this by a remorseless logic, a man is found five-and-
twenty years later still substantiating cases of degeneration, as he has
been substantiating them unceasingly in thirty quartos during the whole
interval, there should be little question how seriously we are to take
him when he wishes us to stop short of the conclusions he has told us we
ought to draw from the premises that he has made it the business of his
life to establish--especially when we know that he has a Sorbonne to keep
a sharp eye upon him.
Pages:
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206