"Origin of Species". That work, I doubt not, many of you have read; for
I know the inquiring spirit which is rife among you. At any rate, all of
you will have heard of it,--some by one kind of report and some by
another kind of report; the attention of all and the curiosity of all
have been probably more or less excited on the subject of that work. All
I can do, and all I shall attempt to do, is to put before you that kind
of judgment which has been formed by a man, who, of course, is liable to
judge erroneously; but, at any rate, of one whose business and
profession it is to form judgments upon questions of this nature.

And here, as it will always happen when dealing with an extensive
subject, the greater part of my course--if, indeed, so small a number of
lectures can be properly called a course--must be devoted to preliminary
matters, or rather to a statement of those facts and of those principles
which the work itself dwells upon, and brings more or less directly
before us. I have no right to suppose that all or any of you are
naturalists; and even if you were, the misconceptions and
misunderstandings prevalent even among naturalists on these matters
would make it desirable that I should take the course I now propose to
take,--that I should start from the beginning,--that I should endeavour
to point out what is the existing state of the organic world,--that I
should point out its past condition,--that I should state what is the
precise nature of the undertaking which Mr. Darwin has taken in hand;
that I should endeavour to show you what are the only methods by which
that undertaking can be brought to an issue, and to point out to you how
far the author of the work in question has satisfied those conditions,
how far he has not satisfied them, how far they are satisfiable by man,
and how far they are not satisfiable by man.

To-night, in taking up the first part of this question, I shall