of these two disconnected principles of relation, to wit, vigor of life and coherence in a system, is not apparent, and cannot be conceded without a sufficient reason. So far, therefore, as the organic kingdoms do offer in their classification coherent results, these results are unexplained by evolution, as they have arisen under a selection that has had no reference to them. Varieties might have appeared confusedly in a thousand directions, and so confusedly that no linear relations would give them their present order. The method imposing the relations is not a scientific one, while the relations themselves disclose the framework of a scientific system.

(2) Nor can natural selection be relied on to do its work with sufficient decision and rapidity to turn into order the confused agencies acting under it. If we were to take even ten forms of life in the animal kingdom, and suppose these capable of indefinite variations under changing circumstances, without limit either in direction or in time, and that each resultant form carried with it the same liability, it is evident that natural selection must act with the promptness of a person to prevent immediate confusion. Image one of these ten forms as a centre from which radii pass out in all directions, indicating its possible lines of variation. Successive forms may take up at random these radii, and each form in each radius may become a second centre with its radii, and each form in each of these a third centre with third radii. Innumerable and inextricable relations would immediately follow, unless, without