We have only to say that the Darwinian system, as we understand it, coincides well with the theistic view of Nature. It not only acknowledges purpose (in the Contemporary Reviewer's sense), but builds upon it; and if purpose in this sense does not of itself imply design, it is certainly compatible with it, and suggestive of it. Difficult as it may be to conceive and impossible to demonstrate design in a whole of which the series of parts appear to be contingent, the alternative may be yet more difficult and less satisfactory. If all Nature is of a piece—as modern physical philosophy insists— then it seems clear that design must in some way, and in some sense, pervade the system, or be wholly absent from it. Of the alternatives, the predication of design—special, general, or universal, as the case may be—is most natural to the mind; while the exclusion of it throughout, because some utilities may happen, many adaptations may be contingent results, and no organic maladaptations could continue, runs counter to such analogies as we have to guide us, and leads to a conclusion which few men ever rested in. It need not much trouble us that we are incapable of drawing clear lines of demarkation between mere utilities, contingent adaptations, and designed contrivances in Nature; for we are in much the same condition as respects human affairs and those of lower animals. What results are comprehended in a plan, and what are incidental, is often more than we can readily determine in matters open to observation. And in plans executed mediately or indirectly, and for ends comprehensive and far-reaching, many purposed steps must appear to us incidental or meaningless. But the higher the intelligence, the more fully will the incidents enter into the plan, and the more universal and interconnected may the ends be. Trite as the remark is, it would seem still needful to insist that the failure of a finite being to compass the designs of an infinite mind should not invalidate its conclusions respecting proximate ends which he can understand. It is just as in physical science, where, as our knowledge and grasp increase, and happy discoveries are made, wider generalizations are formed, which commonly comprehend, rather than destroy, the earlier and partial ones. So, too, the "sterility" of the old doctrine of final causes in science, and the presumptuous uses made of them, when it was supposed that every adapted arrangement or structure existed for this or that direct and special end, and for no other, can hardly be pressed to the conclusion that there are no final causes, i.e., ultimate reasons of things.[XIII-4] Design in Nature is distinguished from that in human affairs—as it fittingly should be—by all comprehensiveness and system. Its theological synonym is Providence. Its application in particular is surrounded by similar insoluble difficulties; nevertheless, both are bound up with theism.
Probably few at the present day will maintain that Darwinian evolution is incompatible with the principle of design; but some insist that the theory can dispense with, and in fact supersedes, this principle.
The Westminster Reviewer cleverly expounds how it does so. The exposition is too long to quote, and an abstract is unnecessary, for the argument adverse to design is, as usual, a mere summation or illustration of the facts and assumptions of the hypothesis itself, by us freely admitted. Simplest forms began; variations occurred among them; under the competition consequent upon the arithmetical or geometrical progression in numbers, only the fittest for the conditions survive and propagate, vary further, and are similarly selected; and so on.
"Progress having once begun by the establishment of species, the laws of atavism and variability will suffice to tell the remainder of the story. The colonies gifted with the faculty of forming others in their likeness will soon by their increase become sole masters of the field; but the common enemy being thus destroyed, the struggle for life will be renewed among the conquerors. The saying that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand,' receives in Nature its flattest contradiction. Civil war is here the very instrument of progress; it brings about the survival of the fittest. Original differences in the cell-colonies, however slight, will bring about differences of life and action; the latter, continued through successive generations, will widen the original differences of structure; innumerable species will thus spring up, branching forth in every direction from the original stock; and the competition of these species among each other for the ground they occupy, or the food they seek, will bring out and develop the powers of the rivals. One chief cause of superiority will lie in the division of labor instituted by each colony; or, in other words, in the localization of the colony's functions. In the primitive associations (as in the lowest organisms existing now), each cell performed much the same work as its neighbor, and the functions necessary to the existence of the whole (alimentation, digestion, respiration, etc.) were exercised by every colonist in his own behalf. Social life, however, acting upon the cells as it acts upon the members of a human family, soon created differences among them—differences ever deepened by continuance, and which, by narrowing the limits of each colonist's activity, and increasing his dependence on the rest, rendered him fitter for his special task. Each function was thus gradually monopolized; but it came to be the appanage of a single group of cells, or organ; and so excellent did this arrangement prove, so greatly were the powers of each commonwealth enhanced by the division of its labor, that the more organs a colony possessed, the more likely it was to succeed in its struggle for life. . . We shall go no further, for the reader will easily fill out the remainder of the picture for himself. Man is but an immense colony of cells, in which the division of labor, together with the centralization of the nervous system, has reached its highest limit. It is chiefly to this that his superiority is due; a superiority so great, as regards certain functions of the brain, that he may be excused for having denied his humbler relatives, and dreamed that, standing alone in the centre of the universe, sun, moon, and stars, were made for him."
Let us learn from the same writer how both eyes of the flounder get, quite unintentionally, on the same side of the head. The writer makes much of this case (see p. 306), and we are not disposed to pass it by:
"A similar application may be made to the Pleuronecta. Presumably, these fishes had adopted their peculiar mode of swimming long before the position of their eyes became adapted to it. A spontaneous variation occurred, consisting in the passage of one eye to the opposite side of the head; and this variation afforded its possessors such increased facilities of sight that in the course of time the exception became the rule. But the remarkable point is, that the law of heredity not only preserved the variation itself, but the date of its occurrence; and that, although for thousands of years the adult Pleuronecta have had both eyes on the same side, the young still continue during their earlier development to exhibit the contrary arrangement, just as if the variation still occurred spontaneously."
Here a wonderful and one would say unaccountable transference takes place in a short time. As Steenstrup showed, one eye actually passes through the head while the young fish is growing. We ask how this comes about; and we are told, truly enough, that it takes place in each generation because it did so in the parents and in the whole line of ancestors. Why offspring should be like parent is more than any one can explain; but so it is, in a manner so nearly fixed and settled that we can count on it; yet not from any absolute necessity that we know of, and, indeed, with sufficiently striking difference now and then to demonstrate that it might have been otherwise, or is so in a notable degree. This transference of one eye through the head, from the side where it would be nearly useless to that in which it may help the other, bears all the marks of purpose, and so carries the implication of design. The case is adduced as part of the evidence that Darwinian evolution supersedes design. But how? Not certainly in the way this goes on from generation to generation; therefore, doubtless in the way it began. So we look for the explanation of how it came about at the first unintentionally or accidentally; how, under known or supposed conditions, it must have happened, or at least was likely to happen. And we read, "A spontaneous variation occurred, consisting in the passage of one eye to the opposite side of the head." That is all; and we suppose there is nothing more to be said. In short, this surprising thing was undesigned because it took place, and has taken place ever since! The writer presumes, moreover (but this is an obiter dictum), that the peculiarity originated long after flounders had fixed the habit of swimming on one side (and in this particular case it is rather difficult to see how the two may have gone on pari passu), and so he cuts away all obvious occasion for the alteration through the summation of slight variations in one direction, each bringing some advantage.
This is a strongly-marked case; but its features, although unusually prominent, are like those of the general run of the considerations by which evolution is supposed to exclude design. Those of the penultimate citation and its context are all of the same stamp. The differences which begin as variations are said to be spontaneous—a metaphorical word of wide meanings—are inferred to be casual (whereas we only know them to be occult), or to be originated by surrounding agencies (which is not in a just sense true); they are legitimately inferred to be led on by natural selection, wholly new structures or organs appear, no one can say how, certainly no one can show that they are necessary outcomes of what preceded; and these two are through natural selection kept in harmony with the surroundings, adapted to different ones, diversified, and perfected; purposes are all along subserved through exquisite adaptations; and yet the whole is thought to be undesigned, not because of any assigned reason why this or that must have been thus or so, but simply because they all occurred in Nature! The Darwinian theory implies that the birth and development of a species are as natural as those of an individual, are facts of the same kind in a higher order. The alleged proof of the absence of design from it amounts to a simple reiteration of the statement, with particulars. Now, the marks of contrivance in the structure of animals used not to be questioned because of their coming in the way of birth and development. It is curious that a further extension of this birth and development should be held to disprove them. It appears to us that all this is begging the question against design in Nature, instead of proving that it may be dispensed with.
Two things have helped on this confusion. One is the notion of the direct and independent creation of species, with only an ideal connection between them, to question which was thought to question the principle of design. The other is a wrong idea of the nature and province of natural selection. In former papers we have over and over explained the Darwinian doctrine in this respect. It may be briefly illustrated thus: Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes the course. The rudder acts while the vessel is in motion, effects nothing when it is at rest. Variation answers to the wind: "Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell when it cometh and whither it goeth." Its course is controlled by natural selection, the action of which, at any given moment, is seemingly small or insensible; but the ultimate results are great. This proceeds mainly through outward influences. But we are more and more convinced that variation, and therefore the ground of adaptation, is not a product of, but a response to, the action of the environment. Variations, in other words, the differences between individual plants and animals, however originated, are evidently not from without but from within—not physical but physiological.
We cannot here assign particularly the reasons for this opinion. But we notice that the way in which varieties make their appearance strongly suggests it. The variations of plants which spring up in a seed-bed, for instance, seem to be in no assignable relation to the external conditions. They arise, as we say, spontaneously, and either with decided characters from the first, or with obvious tendencies in one or few directions. The occult power, whatever it be, does not seem in any given case to act vaguely, producing all sorts of variations from a common centre, to be reduced by the struggle for life to fewness and the appearance of order; there are, rather, orderly indications from the first. The variations of which we speak, as originating in no obvious casual relation to the external conditions, do not include dwarfed or starved, and gigantesque or luxuriant forms, and those drawn up or expanded on the one hand, or contracted and hardened on the other, by the direct difference in the supply of food and moisture, light and heat. Here the action of the environment is both obvious and direct. But such cases do not account for much in evolution.
Moreover, while we see how the mere struggle and interplay among occurring forms may improve them and lead them on, we cannot well imagine how the adaptations which arrest our attention are thereby secured. Our difficulty, let it be understood, is not about the natural origination of organs. To the triumphant outcry, "How can an organ, such as an eye, be formed under Nature?" we would respond with a parallel question, How can a complex and elaborate organ, such as a nettle-sting, be formed under Nature? But it is so formed. In the same species some individuals have these exquisitely-constructed organs and some have not. And so of other glands, the structure and adaptation of which, when looked into, appear to be as wonderful as anything in Nature. The impossibility lies in conceiving how the obvious purpose was effectuated under natural selection alone. This, under our view, any amount of gradation in a series of forms goes a small way in explaining. The transit of a young flounder's eye across the head is a capital instance of a wonderful thing done under Nature, and done unaccountably.
But simpler correlations are involved in similar difficulty. The superabundance of the pollen of pine-trees above referred to, and in oak-trees, is correlated with chance fertilization under the winds. In the analogous instance of willows a diminished amount of pollen is correlated with direct transportation by insects. Even in so simple a case as this it is not easy to see how this difference in the conveyance would reduce the quantity of pollen produced. It is, we know, in the very alphabet of Darwinism that if a male willow-tree should produce a smaller amount of pollen, and if this pollen communicated to the offspring of the female flowers it fertilized a similar tendency (as it might), this male progeny would secure whatever advantage might come from the saving of a certain amount of work and material; but why should it begin to produce less pollen? But this is as nothing compared with the arrangements in orchid-flowers, where new and peculiar structures are introduced—structures which, once originated and then set into variation, may thereupon be selected, and thereby led on to improvement and diversification. But the origination, and even the variation, still remains unexplained either by the action of insects or by any of the processes which collectively are personified by the term natural selection. We really believe that these exquisite adaptations have come to pass in the course of Nature, and under natural selection, but not that natural selection alone explains or in a just sense originates them. Or rather, if this term is to stand for sufficient cause and rational explanation, it must denote or include that inscrutable something which produces—as well as that which results in the survival of—"the fittest."
We have been considering this class of questions only as a naturalist might who sought for the proper or reasonable interpretation of the problem before him, unmingled with considerations from any other source. Weightier arguments in the last resort, drawn from the intellectual and moral constitution of man, lie on a higher plane, to which it was unnecessary for our particular purpose to rise, however indispensable this be to a full presentation of the evidence of mind in Nature. To us the evidence, judged as impartially as we are capable of judging, appears convincing. But, whatever view one unconvinced may take, it cannot remain doubtful what position a theist ought to occupy. If he cannot recognize design in Nature because of evolution, he may be ranked with those of whom it was said, "Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." How strange that a convinced theist should be so prone to associate design only with miracle!
All turns, however, upon what is meant by this Nature, to which it appears more and more probable that the being and becoming—no less than the well-being and succession—of species and genera, as well as of individuals, are committed. To us it means "the world of force and movement in time and space," as Aristotle defined it—the system and totality of things in the visible universe. What is generally called Nature Prof. Tyndall names matter—a peculiar nomenclature, requiring new definitions (as he avers), inviting misunderstanding, and leaving the questions we are concerned with just where they were. For it is still to ask: whence this rich endowment of matter? Whence comes that of which all we see and know is the outcome? That to which potency may in the last resort be ascribed, Prof. Tyndall, suspending further judgment, calls mystery—using the word in one of its senses, namely, something hidden from us which we are not to seek to know. But there are also mysteries proper to be inquired into and to be reasoned about; and, although it may not be given unto us to know the mystery of causation, there can hardly be a more legitimate subject of philosophical inquiry. Most scientific men have thought themselves intellectually authorized to have an opinion about it. "For, by the primitive and very ancient men, it has been handed down in the form of myths, and thus left to later generations, that the Divine it is which holds together all Nature;" and this tradition, of which Aristotle, both naturalist and philosopher, thus nobly speaks[XIII-5]—continued through succeeding ages, and illuminated by the Light which has come into the world—may still express the worthiest thoughts of the modern scientific investigator and reasoner.
I-1. "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or thePreservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life," by Charles Darwin,M.A., Fellow of the Royal, Geological, Linnaean, etc., Societies, Author of"Journal of Researches during H. M. S. Beagle's Voyage round the World."London: John Murray. 1859. 502 pp., post 8vo.
I-2. Article in this Journal, vol. xxiv., p. 305.
I-3. "Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum Ens; quae formae secundum generationis inditas leges, produxere plures, at sibi semper similes."—Linn. Phil. Bot., 99, 157.
I-4. Agassiz, "Essay on Classification; Contributions to Natural History," p. 132, et seq.
I-5. As to this, Darwin remarks that he can only hope to see the law hereafter proved true (p. 449); and p. 338: "Agassiz insists that ancient animals resemble to a certain extent the embryos of recent animals of the same classes; or that the geological succession of extinct forms is in some degree parallel to the embryological development of recent forms. I must follow Pictet and Huxley in thinking that the truth of this doctrine is very far from proved. Yet I fully expect to see it hereafter confirmed, at least in regard to subordinate groups, which have branched off from each other within comparatively recent times. For this doctrine of Agassiz accords well with the theory of natural selection."
I-6. Op. cit., p. 131.—One or two Bridgewater Treatises, and most modern works upon natural theology, should have rendered the evidences of thought in inorganic Nature not "unexpected."
I-7. Volume xvii. (2), 1854, p. 13.
I-8. We suspect that this is not an ultimate fact, but a natural consequence of inheritance—the inheritance of disease or of tendency to disease, which close interbreeding perpetuates and accumulates, but wide breeding may neutralize or eliminate.
I-9. The rules and processes of breeders of animals, and their results, are so familiar that they need not be particularized. Less is popularly known about the production of vegetable races. We refer our readers back to this Journal, vol. xxvii., pp. 440—442 (May, 1859), for an abstract of the papers of M. Vilmorin upon this subject.
I-10. Quadrupeds of America," vol. ii., p. 239.
I-11. "Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences," vol. iv., p. 178.
I-12. Owen adds a third, viz., vegetative repetition; but this, in the vegetable kingdom, is simply unity of type.
I-13. "Contributions to Natural History of America," vol. i., pp. 127—131.
I-14. Op. cit., p. 130.
II-1. To parry an adversary's thrust at a vulnerable part, or to show that it need not be fatal, is an incomplete defense. If the discussion had gone on, it might, perhaps, have been made to appear that the Darwinian hypothesis, so far from involving the idea of necessity (except in the sense that everything is of necessity), was based upon the opposite idea, that of contingency.
III-1. Vide "Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1859, and London Athenoeum, passim. It appears to be conceded that these "celts" or stone knives are artificial productions, and apparently of the age of the mammoth, the fossil rhinoceros, etc.
III-2. See "Correspondence of M. Nickles," in American Journal of Science and Arts, for March, 1860.
III-3. See Morlot, "Some General Views on Archaeology," in American Journal of Science and Arts, for January, 186o, translated from "Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise," 1859.
III-4. Page 484, English edition. In the new American edition (vide Supplement, pp. 431, 432) the principal analogies which suggest the extreme view are referred to, and the remark is appended: "But this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. The case is different with the members of each great class, as the Vertebrata or Articulata; for here we have in the laws of homology, embryology, etc., some distinct evidence that all have descended from a single primordial parent."
III-5. In Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, March, 1860.
III-6. This we learn from his very interesting article, "De la Question del'Homme Fossile," in the same (March) number of the BibliotequeUniverselle. (See, also, the same author's "Note sur la PeriodeQuaternaire ou Diluvienne, consideree dans ses Rapports avec l'EpoqueActuelle," in the number for August, 1860, of the same periodical.)
III-7. In Comptes Rendus, Academie des Sciences, February 2, 1857.
III-8. Whatever it may be, it is not "the homoeopathic form of the transmutative hypothesis," as Darwin's is said to be (p. 252, American reprint), so happily that the prescription is repeated in the second (p. 259) and third (p. 271) dilutions, no doubt, on Hahnemann's famous principle, of an increase of potency at each dilution. Probably the supposed transmutation is per saltus. "Homoeopathic doses of transmutation," indeed! Well, if we really must swallow transmutation in some form or other, as this reviewer intimates, we might prefer the mild homoeopathic doses of Darwin's formula to the allopathic bolus which the Edinburgh general practitioner appears to be compounding.
III-9. Vide North American Review, for April, 1860, p. 475, and ChristianExaminer, for May, p. 457.
III-10. Page 188, English edition.
III-11. In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, pp. 147—149.
III-12. In "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," vol. i., p.128, 129.
III-13. Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," vol. 1, p. 130; and American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.
III-14. North American Review for April 1860, p. 506.
III-15. Vide motto from Butler, prefixed to the second edition of Darwin's work.
III-16. North American Review, loc. cit., p. 504.
III-17. North American Review, loc. cit., p. 487, et passim.
III-18. In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.
III-19. Vide article by Mr. C. Wright, in the Mathematical Monthly for May last.
III-20. Vide Edinburgh Review for January, 1860, article on"Acclimatization," etc.
III-21. American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 146.
IV-1. A name which, at the close of his article, De Candolle proposes for the study of the succession of organized beings, to comprehend, therefore, palaeontology and all included under what is called geographical botany and zoology—the whole forming a science parallel to geology—the latter devoted to the history of unorganized bodies, the former, to that of organized beings, as respects origin, distribution, and succession. We are not satisfied with the word, notwithstanding the precedent of palaeontology; since ontology, the Science of being, has an established meaning as referring to mental existence—i.e., is a synonym for a department of metaphysics.
IV-2. Natural History Review, January, 1862
IV-3. What the Rev. Principal Tulloch remarks in respect to the philosophy of miracles has a pertinent application here. We quote at second hand:
"The stoutest advocates of interference can mean nothing more than that the Supreme Will has so moved the hidden springs of Nature that a new issue arises on given circumstances. The ordinary issue is supplanted by a higher issue. The essential facts before us are a certain set of phenomena, and a Higher Will moving them. How moving them? is a question for human definition; the answer to which does not and cannot affect the divine meaning of the change. Yet when we reflect that this Higher Will is every. where reason and wisdom, it seems a juster as well as a more comprehensive view to regard it as operating by subordination and evolution, rather than by interference or violation."
IV-4. Particularly citing Flourens: "La ressemblance n'est qu'une condition secondaire; la condition essentielle est la descendance: ce n'est pas la ressemblance, c'est la succession des individus, qui fait l'espece."
V-1. The phrase "Atlantic United States" is here used throughout in contradistinction to Pacific United States: to the former of course belong, botanically and geographically, the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries up to the eastern border of the great woodless plains, which constitute an intermediate region.
V-2. The tabulated list referred to was printed as an appendix to the official edition of this discourse, but is here omitted.
V-3. American Journal of Science, 1867, p. 402; "Proceedings of AmericanAcademy," vol. viii., p. 244.
V-4. "Memoirs of American Academy," vol. vi., pp. 377—458 (1859)
V-5. Die vegetation der erde nach ihrer kilmatischen Anordnung," 1871.
V-6. Reference should also be made to the extensive researches of Newberry upon the tertiary and cretaceous floras of the Western United States. See especially Prof. Newberry's paper in the Boston Journal of Natural History, vol. vii., No. 4, describing fossil plants of Vancouver's Island, etc.; his "Notes on the Later Extinct Floras of North America," etc., in "Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History," vol. ix., April, 1868; "Report on the Cretaceous and Tertiary Plants collected in Raynolds and Hayden's Yellowstone and Missouri Exploring Expedition, 1859—1860," published in 1869; and an interesting article entitled "The Ancient Lakes of Western America, their Deposits and Drainage," published in The American Naturalist, January, 1871.
The only document I was able to consult was Lesquereux's "Report on theFossil Plants," in Hayden's report of 1872.
V-7. There is, at least, one instance so opportune to the present argument that it should not pass unnoticed, although I had overlooked the record until now. Onoclea sensibilis is a fern peculiar to the Atlantic United States (where it is common and wide-spread) and to Japan. Prof. Newberry identified it several years ago in a collection, obtained by Dr. Hayden, of miocene fossil plants of Dakota Territory, which is far beyond its present habitat. He moreover regards it as probably identical with a fossil specimen "described by the late Prof. E. Forbes, under the name of Filicites Hebridicus, and obtained by the Duke of Argyll from the island of Mull."
V-8. "Darwinism in Morals," in Theological Review, April, 1871.
VI-1. "Histoire des Sciences et des Sevants depuis deux Siecles, suivied'autres etudes sur des sujets scientifiques, en particulier sur laSelection dans 1'Espèce Humaine, par Alphonse De Candolle." Geneve: H.Georg. 1873.
"Addresses of George Bentham, President, read at the anniversary meetings of the Linnaean Society, 1862—1873."
"Notes on the Classification, History, and Geographical Distribution ofCompositae. By George Bentham." Separate issue from the Journal of theLinnean Society. Vol. XIII. London. 1873.
"On Palaeontological Evidence of Gradual Modification of Animal Forms, read at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, April 25, 1873. By Prof. W.H. Flower." (Journal of the Royal Institution, pp. 11.)
"The Distribution and Migration of Birds. Memoir presented to the NationalAcademy of Sciences, January, 1865, abstracted in the American Journal ofScience and the Arts. 1866, etc. By Spencer F. Baird."
"The Story of the Earth and Man. By J.W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S.,Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, Montreal. London:Hodder & Stoughton; New York: Harper & Brothers. 1873. Pp. 403, 12mo.
VI-2. Since this article was in type, noteworthy examples of appreciative scientific judgment of the derivative hypothesis have come to hand: 1. In the opening address to the Geological Section of the British Association, at its recent meeting, by its president, the veteran Phillips, perhaps the oldest surviving geologist after Lyell; and, 2. That of Prof. Allman, President of the Biological Section. The first touches the subject briefly, but in the way of favorable suggestion; the second is a full and discriminating exposition of the reasons which seem to assure at least the provisional acceptance of the hypothesis, as a guide in all biological studies, "a key to the order and hidden forces of the world of life."
VII-1. "The Theory of Evolution of Living Things, and the Application of thePrinciples of Evolution to Religion, considered as illustrative of the'Wisdom and Beneficence of the Almighty.' By the Rev. George Henslow, M.A.,F.L.S., F.G.S., etc." New York: Macmillan & Co. 1873. 12mo, pp. 220.
"Systematic Theology. By Charles Hodge, D.D., Professor in the TheologicalSeminary, Princeton, New Jersey. Vol. ii. (Part II, Anthropology.") NewYork: Charles Scribner & Co. 1872.
"Religion and Science: A Series of Sunday Lectures on the Relation of Natural and Revealed Religion, or the Truths Revealed in Nature and Scripture. By Joseph Le Conte, Professor of Geology and Natural History in the University of California." New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1874. 12mo, pp. 324.
VII-2. "But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this— we can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated interpositions of divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws.—Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise.
"The only distinct meaning of the world 'natural' is stated, fixed, or settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so—i.e., to effect it continually or at stated times—as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once."—Butler's Analogy.
VIII-1. "What Is Darwinism? By Charles Hodge, Princeton, N.J." New York:
Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874."The Doctrine of Evolution. By Alexander Winchell, LL.D., etc. New York:Harper & Brothers. 1874.
"Darwinism and Design; or, Creation by Evolution. By George St. Clair."London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1873.
"Westminster Sermons. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley, F.L.S., F.G.S., Canon of Westminster, etc." London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1874.
VIII-2. These two postulate-mottoes are quoted in full in a previous article, in No. 446 of The Nation.
XI-1. "Insectivorous Plants. By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S." WithIllustrations. London: John Murray. 1875. Pp. 462. New York: D. Appleton &Co.
"The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants. By Charles Darwin, M.A.,F.R.S., etc." Second Edition, revised, with Illustrations. London: JohnMurray. 1875. Pp. 208. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
XI-2. The Nation, Nos. 457, 458, 1874. It was in these somewhat light and desultory, but substantially serious, articles that some account of Mr. Darwin's observations upon the digestive powers of Drosera and Dionaea first appeared; in fact, their leading motive was to make sufficient reference to his then unpublished discoveries to guard against expected or possible claims to priority. Dr. Burdon-Sanderson's lecture, and the report in Nature, which first made them known in England, appeared later.
A mistake on our part in the reading of a somewhat ambiguous sentence in a letter led to the remark, at the close of the first of those articles, that the leaf-trap of Dionaea had been paralyzed on one side in consequence of a dexterous puncture. What was communicated really related to Drosera.
XI-3. A. Gray, in "Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts andSciences," vol. iv., p. 98; and American Journal of Science and the Arts,March, 1859, p. 278.
XII-1. "Les Especes affines et la Theorie de l'Evolution," par Charles Naudin, Membre de l'Institut, in Bulletin de la Societe Botanique de France, tome xxi., pp. 240-272, 1874. See also Comptes Rendus, September 27 and October 4, 1875, reproduced in "Annales des Sciences Naturelles," 1876, pp. 73-81.
XII-2. In noticing M. Naudin's paper in the Comptes Rendus, now reprinted in the "Annales des Sciences Naturelles," entitled "Variation desordonnee des Plantes Hybrides et Deductions qu'on peut en tirer," we were at a loss to conceive why he attributed all present variation of species to atavism, i.e., to the reappearance of ancestral characters (American Journal of Science, February, 1876). His anterior paper was not then known to us; from which it now appears that this view comes in as a part of the hypothesis of extreme plasticity and variability at the first, subsiding at length into entire fixity and persistence of character. According to which, it is assumed that the species of our time have lost all power of original variation, but can still reproduce some old ones—some reminiscences, as it were, of youthful vagaries—in the way of atavism.
XIII-1. London, 1862.
XIII-2. Hume, in his "Essays," anticipated this argument. But he did not rest on it. His matured convictions appear to be expressed in statements such as the following, here cited at second hand from Jackson's "Philosophy of Natural Theology," a volume to which a friend has just called our attention:
"Though the stupidity of men," writes Hume, "barbarous and uninstructed, be so great that they may not see a sovereign author in the more obvious works of Nature, to which they are so much familiarized, yet it scarce seems possible that any one of good understanding should reject that idea, when once it is suggested to him. A purpose, an intention, a design, is evident in everything; and when our comprehension is so far enlarged as to contemplate the first rise of this visible system, we must adopt, with the strongest conviction, the idea of some intelligent cause or author. The uniform maxims, too, which prevail throughout the whole frame of the universe, naturally, if not necessarily, lead us to conceive this intelligence as single and undivided, where the prejudices of education oppose not so reasonable a theory. Even the contrarieties of Nature, by discovering themselves everywhere, become proofs of some consistent plan, and establish one single purpose or intention, however inexplicable and incomprehensible."—-("Natural History of Religion," xv.)
"In many views of the universe, and of its parts, particularly the latter, the beauty and fitness of final causes strike us with such irresistible force that all objections appear (what I believe they really are) mere cavils and sophisms."— ("Dialogues concerning Natural Religion," Part X.)
"The order and arrangement of Nature, the curious adjustment of final causes, the plain use and intention of every part and organ, all these bespeak in the clearest language an intelligent cause or author."—(Ibid., Part IV.)
XIII-3. See Section I, Chapter 12.
XIII-4. "No single and limited good can be assigned by us as the final cause of any contrivance in Nature. The real final cause . . . is the sum of all the uses to which it is ever to be put. Any use to which a contrivance of Nature is put, we may be sure, is a part of its final cause."—(G. F. Wright, in The New-Englander, October, 1871.)
XIII-5. "No single and limited good can be assigned by us as the final cause of any contrivance in Nature. The real final cause . . . is the sum of all the uses to which it is ever to be put. Any use to which a contrivance of Nature is put, we may be sure, is a part of its final cause."—(G. F. Wright, in The New-Englander, October, 1871.)