inter-breeding from different natural species.  And accordingly, though every fact as to the canine race is parallel to the facts which have been used before to establish the common parentage of the pigeons in Columba livia, all these are thrown over in a moment, and Mr. Darwin, first assuming, without the shadow of proof, that our domestic breeds are descended from different species, proceeds calmly to argue from this, as though it were a demonstrated certainty.

  It seems to me unlikely in the case of the dog-genus, which is
  distributed in a wild state throughout the world, that since man first
  appeared one species alone should have been domesticated.—­p. 18.

  In some cases I do not doubt that the intercrossing of species
  aboriginally distinct has played an important part in the origin of
  our domestic productions.—­p. 43.

What new words are these for a loyal disciple of the true Baconian philosophy?—­“I can conceive”—­“It is not incredible”—­“I do not doubt” —­“It is conceivable.”

For myself, I venture confidently to look back thousands on thousands of generations, and I see an animal striped like a zebra, but perhaps otherwise very differently constructed, the common parent of our domestic horse, whether or not it be descended from one or more wild stocks of the ass, hemionous, quagga, or zebra.—­p. 167.

In the name of all true philosophy we protest against such a mode of dealing with nature, as utterly dishonourable to all natural science, as reducing it from its present lofty level of being one of the noblest trainers of man’s intellect and instructors of his mind, to being a mere idle play of the fancy, without the basis of fact or the discipline of observation.  In the “Arabian Nights” we are not offended as at an impossibility when Amina sprinkles her husband with water and transforms him into a dog, but we cannot open the august doors of the venerable temple of scientific truth to the genii and magicians of romance.  We plead guilty to Mr. Darwin’s imputation that

the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct species is that we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps.—­p. 481.

In this tardiness to admit great changes suggested by the imagination, but the steps of which we cannot see, is the true spirit of philosophy.

Analysis, says Professor Sedgwick, consists in making experiments and observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by induction, and admitting of no objections against the conclusions but such as are taken from experiments or other certain truths; for hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental philosophy.[1]

[1] “A Discourse on the Studies of the University,” by A. Sedgwick, p.
    102.