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Show 160 DARWINIAN A. far back. Yet one interposition admits the principle as well as more. Interposition presupposes particular necessity or reason for it, and raises the question, ~hen and how often it may have been necessary. It rmght be the natural supposition, if we had _onl~ one ~et of species to account for, or if the successwe mhabitants f the earth had no other connections or resemblances ~han those which adaptation to similar co~ditions, which final causes in the narrower sense, might explain. But if this explanation o~ organic N atur~ requires one to "believe that, at mnumerable penods in the earth's history, certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues," and this when the results are seen to be strictly connected and systematic, we cannot wonder that such interventions should at length be considered, not as interpositions or interferences, but rather-to use the reviewer's own language-as" exertions so frequent and beneficent that we come to regard them as the ordinary action of Him who laid the foundation of the earth, and without whom nqt a sparrow falleth to the ground." 1 • What does the difference between Mr. Darwm and his reviewer now amount to ~ If we say that according to one view the origination of species is .natural, accordinO' to the ot11er miraculous, Mr. Darwm agrees that "what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent mind to ren~er it so-that ~s, to effect it continually or at stated times-as what IS su-pernatural does to ef f ect 1· t f or once. '' ~ He merely 1 Nort7t Ame·rican Review for .April, 1860, p. 506. . ~ Vide motto from Butler, prefixed to the second edition of Darwm's work. DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS. 161 inquires into the form of the miracle, may remind us that all recorded miracles (except the primal creation of matter) were transformations or actions in and upon natural things, and will ask how many times and how frequently may the origination of successive species be repeated before the supernatural merges in the natural. In short, Darwin maintains that the origination of a species, no less than that of an individual, is natural; the reviewer, that the natural origination of an individual, no less than the origination of a species, requires and presupposes Divine power. A fortiori, then, the origination of a variety requires· and presupposes Divine power. And so between the scientific hypothesis of the one and the philosophical conception of the other no contrariety remains. And so, concludes the North American reviewer, " a proper view of the nature of causation . . .. places the vital doctrine of the being and the providence of a God on ground that can never be shaken." 1 A worthy conclusion, and a sufficient answer to the denunciations and arguments of the rest of the article, so far as philosophy and natural theology are concerned. If a writer muElt ·needs use his own favorite dogma as a weapon with which to give coup de grace to a pernicious theory, he should be careful to ·seize his edgetool by the handle, and not by the blade. We can barely glance at a subsidiary philosophical objection of the North Ame~J'ican reviewer, which the Examiner also raises, though less explicitly. Like all geologists, Mr. Darwin draws upon time in the 1 North American Review, Zoe. cit., p. 504. |