Were the peasantry of Europe improved by the wars of the French Revolution?
On the contrary, though the fittest survived, France was obliged to lower the recruiting standard three inches.

In all cases the struggle for life injures all concerned.
And yet upon these two fundamental assumptions the theory is built; of which that of the indefinite accumulation of small profitable variations is outrageously impossible and absurd; and the other, of the improvement of breeds by starvation and hardships, is contrary to all observation and experience! Take away these two assumptions, and the whole theory of the gradual improvement of plants and animals by such agency vanishes.
There is no such power of indefinite improvement by Natural Selection, as Mr.Darwin asserts.

The utmost it can do is to keep breeds up to the natural standard, or near to it, by destroying the weakest; but at the same time it weakens the strongest also.

Were there no other objection, this one would be fatal, that Mr.Darwin assigns an elevating power to a depressing agency, and asserts war, famine, hardship, and disease as his holy angels perfecting progress.
Mr.Darwin presents the most preposterous assumptions with such coolness and apparent unconsciousness of their utter improbability to his readers, and with such an entire ignoring of the necessity of any further attestation than his own _ipse dixit_, as to warrant serious suspicions of his sanity.

Take, for instance, his bear and whale story.
Hearne reports having seen in the Arctic regions a bear swimming in the water for hours, with his mouth wide open, catching flies; and Mr.
Darwin says if the supply of flies were constant (where the winter lasts eight months of the year 40 deg.