talent de l'auteur. Mais que d'idees obscures, que d'idees fausses!
Quel jargon metaphysique jete mal a propos dans l'histoire naturelle,
qui tombe dans le galimatias des qu'elle sort des idees claires, des
idees justes! Quel langage pretentieux et vide! Quelles
personifications pueriles et surannees! O lucidite! O solidite de
l'esprit Francais, que devenez-vous?"

"Obscure ideas," "metaphysical jargon," "pretentious and empty
language," "puerile and superannuated personifications." Mr. Darwin
has many and hot opponents on this side of the Channel and in Germany,
but we do not recollect to have found precisely these sins in the long
catalogue of those hitherto laid to his charge. It is worth while,
therefore, to examine into these discoveries effected solely by the
aid of the "lucidity and solidity" of the mind of M. Flourens.

According to M. Flourens, Mr. Darwin's great error is that he has
personified Nature (p. 10), and further that he has

"imagined a natural selection: he imagines afterwards that this power
of selection (pouvoir d'_lire) which he gives to Nature is similar to
the power of man. These two suppositions admitted, nothing stops him:
he plays with Nature as he likes, and makes her do all he pleases."
(P. 6.)

And this is the way M. Flourens extinguishes natural selection:

"Voyons donc encore une fois, ce qu'il peut y avoir de fonde dans ce
qu'on nomme election naturelle.

"L'election naturelle n'est sous un autre nom que la nature. Pour un