being. Every organ, every character, every feeling is individual; that is to say, varies from the same organ, character, or feeling in every other individual.
- The Law of unceasing Change of Physical Conditions upon the Surface of the Earth.—Geology shows us that this change has always gone on in times past, and we also know that it is now everywhere going on.
- The Equilibrium or Harmony of Nature.—When a species is well adapted to the conditions which environ it, it flourishes; when imperfectly adapted it decays; when ill-adapted it becomes extinct. If all the conditions which determine an organism’s well-being are taken into consideration, this statement can hardly be disputed.
This series of facts or laws, are mere statements of what is the condition of nature. They are facts or inferences which are generally known, generally admitted—but in discussing the subject of the “Origin of Species”—as generally forgotten. It is from these universally admitted facts, that the origin of all the varied forms of nature may be deduced by a logical chain of reasoning, which, however, is at every step verified and shown to be in strict accord with facts; and, at the same time, many curious phenomena which can by no other means be understood, are explained and accounted for. It is probable, that these primary facts or laws are but results of the very nature of life, and of the essential properties of organized and unorganized matter. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his “First Principles” and his “Biology” has, I think, made us able to understand how this may be; but at present we may accept these simple laws without going further back, and the question then is—whether the variety, the harmony, the contrivance, and the beauty we perceive in organic beings, can have been produced by the action of these laws alone, or whether we are required to believe in the incessant interference and