Darwinism and what it implies

摘要

The natural explanation of the numbers of different species foundamong animals and plants has probably been to all thinking men theidea that one species evolves in some manner from another species;but as very few persons are thinking persons this idea was lost sightof when people began to imagine that some kind of deity took thetrouble to make species by a differential creation. As if any deitywould take the trouble to create, let us say, some hundreds of differentspecies of grasshoppers. From the deity's point of view, a grasshopperwould always be a useless sort of creature; though, from the grass-hopper's point of view, grasshoppers might be very important. We cantherefore scarcely imagine a special creation of grasshoppers; but it iseasy to imagine their evolution from species to species by somenatural method.