He says, "we cannot comprehend what the figures 60,000,000
really imply, and during this, or perhaps a longer roll of years, the
land and waters have everywhere teemed with living creatures, all
exposed to the struggle for life, and undergoing change." (p. 354). "Mr.
Croll," he tells us, "estimates that about sixty millions of years have
elapsed since the Cambrian period, but this, judging from the small
amount of organic change since the commencement of the glacial period,
seems a very short time for the many and the great mutations of life,
which have certainly occurred since the Cambrian formation; and the
previous one hundred and forty million years can hardly be considered as
sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which
certainly existed toward the close of the Cambrian period." (p. 379).
Years in this connection have no meaning. We might as well try to give
the distance of the fixed stars in inches. As astronomers are obliged to
take the diameter of the earth's orbit as the unit of space, so
Darwinians are obliged to take a geological cycle as their unit of
duration.
_Natural Selection._
As Natural Selection which works so slowly is a main element in Mr.
Darwin's theory, it is necessary to understand distinctly what he means
by it. On this point he leaves us no room for doubt. On p. 92, he says:
"This preservation of favorable variations, and the destruction of
injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or, the Survival of the
Fittest.
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