subject is overwhelmed," without troubling myself as to whether the
priests of orthodox science will reckon me amongst dreamers and children
in knowledge of the laws of nature.


CHAPTER 2. THE SPECIES OF MELITA.

A false supposition, when the consequences proceeding from it are
followed further and further, will sooner or later lead to absurdities
and palpable contradictions. During the period of tormenting doubt--and
this was by no means a short one--when the pointer of the scales
oscillated before me in perfect uncertainty between the pro and the con,
and when any fact leading to a quick decision would have been most
welcome to me, I took no small pains to detect some such contradictions
among the inferences as to the class of Crustacea furnished by the
Darwinian theory. But I found none, either then, or subsequently. Those
which I thought I had found were dispelled on closer consideration, or
actually became converted into supports for Darwin's theory.

Nor, so far as I am aware, have any of the NECESSARY consequences of
Darwin's hypotheses been proved by any one else, to stand in clear and
irreconcilable contradiction. And yet, as the most profound students of
the animal kingdom are amongst Darwin's opponents, it would seem that it
ought to have been an easy matter for them to crush him long since
beneath a mass of absurd and contradictory inferences, if any such were
to be drawn from his theory. To this want of demonstrated contradictions
I think we may ascribe just the same importance in Darwin's favour, that
his opponents have attributed to the absence of demonstrated
intermediate forms between the species of the various strata of the
earth. Independently of the reasons which Darwin gives for the