Page - 521 - in The Origin of Species

RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION 521 mind cannot possil)ly grasp the full meaning of the term of even a million years ; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations. Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no m.eans expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the "plan of creation," "unity of design," &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only re-state a fact. Any one whose disposition leadr him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt the immu- tability of species, may be influenced by this volume ; but I look with confidence to the future,—to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the ques- tion with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously express- ing his conviction; for thus only can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed. Several eminent naturalists have of late published their be- lief that a multitude of reputed species in each genus are not real species; but that other species are real, that is, have been independently created. This seems to me a strange con- clusion to arrive at. They admit that a multitude of forms, which till lately they themselves thought were special crea- tions, and which are still thus looked at by the majority of naturalists, and which consequently have all the external characteristic features of true species,—they admit that these have been produced by variation, but they refuse to extend the same view to other and slightly dift'crent forms. Never- theless they do not pretend that they can define, or even con- jecture, which are the created forms of life, and which are those produced by secondary laws. They admit variation as a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two cases. The day