Herbert Spencer wrote this, several years before "On the Origin
of Species":
"Doubtless many will reply that they can more easily conceive ten
millions of special creations to have taken place, than they can
conceive that ten millions of varieties have been produced by the
process of perpetual modification. All such, however, will find, on
candid inquiry, that they are under an illusion. This is one of the
many cases in which men do not really believe, but rather _believe_they
_believe. It is not that they can truly conceive ten millions of special
creations to have taken place, but that they _think_they_can_do_so. A
little careful introspection will show them that they have never yet
realized to themselves the creation of even _one species. If they have
formed a definite conception of the process, they will be able to
answer such questions as How is a new species constructed? and How
does it make its appearance? Is it thrown down from the clouds? or
must we hold to the notion that it struggles up out of the ground? Do
its limbs and viscera rush together from all the points of the compass?
or must we receive some such old Hebrew notion as, that God goes into a
forest-cavern, and there takes clay and moulds a new creature? If they
say that a new creature is produced in none of these modes, which are
too absurd to be believed, then they are required to describe the mode
in which a new creature may be produced a mode which does not seem
absurd; and such a mode they will find that they neither have
conceived nor can conceive.
"Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus
to call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply,
that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the
development hypothesis. They are merely asked to point out a
_conceivable mode; on the other hand, they ask, not simply for a
_conceivable mode, but for the _actual mode. They do not say Show us
how this _may take place; but they say Show us how this _does take
place. So far from its being unreasonable to ask so much of them, it
would be reasonable to ask not only for a possible mode of special
creation, but for an ascertained mode; seeing that this is no greater a
demand than they make upon their opponents."
"The Development Hypothesis", in "The Leader", Mar. 20, 1852
