PART L
ON TH E
ORIGIN AND DISPERSION OF ORGANIZED BEINGS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRQDUCT.dltY REMARKS — OPINION AND ARGUMENT OF
LINNAEUS— MODE ©F INVESTIGATING $HE SUBJECT.'
T h e inquiry to whiclft-we have;;Dow to' direct pur attention is*
Whether, throughput tHe« organized world, includingboth of
its great departments,-it has been'the method of Nature, if
that expression:1-1 may be us'ed, to produce at first only one fa^-
mily in^eachr particular 'specfesy-or to call beings of the same
4pecific.'stmcture into existence simultaneously from different
beginnings, and to diffuse !ihem over ^ eW o r ld from many
distinct centres' of^lriginaLpoint&d in other words, whether
all;the? existing plants and .animals of each species can be referred
respectively, with a) degree of probable evidence that
•may ff&ldeemed satisfactory in such a question? to a common
stock ? '
It would be, in vain to look for a reply to this inquiry to
any arguments d priori, orf s|ipposed probabilities, founded
ons the nature and fi tness of th in g s or'on what it may appear
to philosophers?* advisable, and what inexpedient for Providence*;
>to have performed. . Discussions of this kind, though
often indulged in, a*re£ vEgUe and fluctuating, and incapable
of affording us any (Secure’ground. The human imagination
is almost bewildered, when if attempts to go back to that
period which gave -'origin to the organized world and its in