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Show 56 DARWINIAN A. form-was the attempt to prove that heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and even mechanical power, arc variations or transmutations of one force, atheistical in its tendency~ The supposed establishment. of this view is reckoned as one of the greatest scientific triumphs of this century.' Perhaps, however, the objection is brought, not so much against the speculation itself, as against the attempt to show how derivation might have been brought about. Then the same objection applies to a recent ingenious hypothesis made to account for the genesis of the chemical elements out of the ethereal medium, and to explain their several atomic weights and some other characteristics by their successive complexity- hydrogen consisting of so many atoms of ethereal substance united fn a particular order, and so on. The speculation interested the philosophers of the British Association, and was thought innocent, but unsupported by facts. Sm·ely Mr. Darwin's theory is none the worse, morally, for having some foundation in fact. In our opinion, then, it if:l far easier to vindicate a theistic character for the derivative theory, than to establish the theory itself upon adequate scientific evidence. Perhaps scarcely any philosophical objection can be urged against the former to which the nebular hypothesis is not equally exposed. Yet the nebular hypothesis finds general scientific acceptance, and is adopted as the basis of an extended and recondite illustration in Mr. Agassiz's great work.1 How the author of this book harmonizes his scientific theory with his philosophy and theology, -he has 1 "Contributions to Natural History of America," vol. i., pp. 127-131. THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 57 not informed us. Paley in his celebrated analogy with the watch, insists that if the timepiece were so constructed as to produce other similar watches, after a manner of generation in animals, the argument from design would be all the stronger. What is to hinder. Mr. Darwin from giving Paley's argument a further a-fortiori extension to ·the supposed case of a watch which sometimes produces better watches, and contrivances adapted to successive conditions, and so at length turns out .a chronometer, a town clock, or a series of organisms of the same type~ From certain incidental expressions at the close of the volume, ta.ken in connection with the motto adopted from Whewell, we judge it probab~e that our author regards the whole system of Nature as one which had received at its first formation the impress of the will of its Author, foreseeing the varied yet necessary laws · of its action throughout the whole of its existence, ordaining when and how each particular of the stupendous plan should be realized in effect, and-with Him to whom to will is to do-in ordaining doing it. Whether profoundly philosophical or not, a vi(SW maintained by eminent philosophical physicists and theologians, such as Babbage on the one band and Jowett on the other, will hardly be denounced as atheism. Perhaps Mr. Darwin would prefer to express his idea in a more general way, by adopting the thoughtful words of one of the most eminent naturalists of this or any age, substituting the word action Jor " thought," since it is the former (from which alone the latter can be inferred) that he has been considering. " Taking Nature as exhibiting thought for my guide, it appears to me that |
