Roy to reject Darwin as naturalist to H.M.S. "Beagle" ("Life and Letters,"
I., page 60).) By the selection of analogous and less differences fanciers
make almost generic differences in their pigeons; and can you see any good
reason why the Natural Selection of analogous individual differences should
not make new species? If you say that God ordained that at some time and
place a dozen slight variations should arise, and that one of them alone
should be preserved in the struggle for life and the other eleven should
perish in the first or few first generations, then the saying seems to me
mere verbiage. It comes to merely saying that everything that is, is
ordained.

Let me add another sentence. Why should you or I speak of variation as
having been ordained and guided, more than does an astronomer, in
discussing the fall of a meteoric stone? He would simply say that it was
drawn to our earth by the attraction of gravity, having been displaced in
its course by the action of some quite unknown laws. Would you have him
say that its fall at some particular place and time was "ordained and
guided without doubt by an intelligent cause on a preconceived and definite
plan"? Would you not call this theological pedantry or display? I believe
it is not pedantry in the case of species, simply because their formation
has hitherto been viewed as beyond law; in fact, this branch of science is
still with most people under its theological phase of development. The
conclusion which I always come to after thinking of such questions is that
they are beyond the human intellect; and the less one thinks on them the
better. You may say, Then why trouble me? But I should very much like to
know clearly what you think.


LETTER 133. TO HENRY FAWCETT.