a thousand ties of natural piety, is it probable, nay is it possible, that
they, and they alone, should have no order in their seeming disorder, no
unity in their seeming multiplicity, should suffer no explanation by the
discovery of some central and sublime law of mutual connection?

Questions of this kind have assuredly often arisen, but it might have been
long before they received such expression as would have commanded the
respect and attention of the scientific world, had it not been for the
publication of the work which prompted this article. Its author, Mr.
Darwin, inheritor of a once celebrated name, won his spurs in science when
most of those now distinguished were young men, and has for the last twenty
years held a place in the front ranks of British philosophers. After a
circumnavigatory voyage, undertaken solely for the love of his science, Mr.
Darwin published a series of researches which at once arrested the
attention of naturalists and geologists; his generalisations have since
received ample confirmation and now command universal assent, nor is it
questionable that they have had the most important influence on the
progress of science. More recently Mr. Darwin, with a versatility which is
among the rarest of gifts, turned his attention to a most difficult
question of zoology and minute anatomy; and no living naturalist and
anatomist has published a better monograph than that which resulted from
his labours. Such a man, at all events, has not entered the sanctuary with
unwashed hands, and when he lays before us the results of twenty years'
investigation and reflection we must listen even though we be disposed to
strike. But, in reading his work, it must be confessed that the attention
which might at first be dutifully, soon becomes willingly, given, so clear
is the author's thought, so outspoken his conviction, so honest and fair
the candid expression of his doubts. Those who would judge the book must
read it: we shall endeavour only to make its line of argument and its
philosophical position intelligible to the general reader in our own way.