Origin of Species Variorum

CHAPTER XV.

RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION.

Recapitulation of the objections to the theory of Natural Selection— Recapitulation of the general and special circumstances in its favour— Causes of the general belief in the immutability of species— How far the theory of Natural Selection may be extended— Effects of its adoption on the study of Natural History— Concluding remarks. ↑

That many and serious objections may be advanced against the theory of descent with modification through variation and natural selection, I do not deny. I have endeavoured to give to them their full force. Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts .. have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely, that all parts of the organisation and instincts offer, at least, individual differences— that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of .. profitable deviations of structure or instinct— and, lastly, that gradations in the state of perfection of each organ may have existed, each good of its kind. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.

It is, no doubt, extremely difficult even to conjecture by what gradations many structures have been perfected, more especially amongst broken and failing groups of organic beings, which have suffered much extinction; but we see so many strange gradations in nature, ... that we ought to be extremely cautious in saying that any organ or instinct, or any whole structure, could not have arrived at its present state by many graduated steps. There are, it must be admitted, cases of special difficulty opposed to the theory of natural selection; and one of the most curious of these is