The point I wish especially to urge is this. Before Darwin's work
appeared, the great majority of naturalists, and almost without
exception the whole literary and scientific world, held firmly to the
belief that _species_ were realities, and had not been derived from
other species by any process accessible to us; the different species of
crow and of violet they are now, and to have originated by some totally
unknown process so far removed from ordinary reproduction that it was
usually spoken of as "special creation." There was, then, no question of
the origin of families, orders, and classes, because the very first step
of all, the "origin of species," was believed to be an insoluble
problem. But now this is all changed. The whole scientific and literary
world, even the whole educated public, accepts, as a matter of common
knowledge, the origin of species from other allied species by the
ordinary process of natural birth. The idea of special creation or any
altogether exceptional mode of production is absolutely extinct! Yet
more: this is held also to apply to many higher groups as well as to the
species of a genus, and not even Mr.
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