These in time would restrict themselves to the

sify their former habits, so as to accommodate God of Nature and the God of Revelation, themselves to the various incunabula which na- cannot believe it to be possible that his ture had prepared for them' [natural selection, voice in either, rightly understood, can differ, that is to say, in our more modern phraseology, or deceive his creatures. To oppose facts in would now be busily at work]. Upon this view of things it seems highly probable that the the natural world because they seem to opfirst efforts of nature terminated in the produc- pose revelation, or to humor them so as to tion of vegetables, and that these, being aban- compel them to speak its voice, is, he knows, doned to their own energies' [or to the struggle but another form of the ever-ready feeblefor life], 'by degrees detached themselves from minded dishonesty of lying for God, and the surface of the earth, and supplied themselves trying by fraud or falsehood to do the work with wings and feet, according as their different of the God of truth. It is with another and propensities determined them in favor of aërial a nobler spirit that the true believer walks and terrestrial existence; and thus, by an in- amongst the works of nature. The words herent disposition to society and civilization, graven on the everlasting rocks are the words and by a stronger effort of volition, became men. of God, and they are graven by his hand. use of their hind feet: their tails would gradually No more can they contradict his word writrub off by sitting in their caves and huts as soon ten in his book, than could the words of the as they arrived at a domesticated state." old covenant graven by his hand on the stony tables contradict the writings of his Mr. Darwin would relieve them of their tails hand in the volume of the new dispensation. by the simple expedient of disuse, but he There may be to man difficulty in reconcilwould eminently agree with the next sug-ing all the utterances of the two voices. gestion of the Antijacobin writers who sug- But what of that? He has learned already gest that," Meanwhile the Fuci and Alge, that here he knows only in part, and that with the Corallines and Madrepores, would the day of reconciling all apparent contratransform themselves into fish, and would dictions between what must agree is nigh at gradually populate all the submarine por- hand. He rests his mind in perfect quiettion of the globe." ness on this assurance, and rejoices in the gift of light without a misgiving as to what it may discover :

Our readers will not have failed to notice that we have objected to the views with which we have been dealing solely on scientific grounds. We have done so from our fixed conviction that it is thus that the truth or falsehood of such arguments should be tried. We have no sympathy with those who object to any facts or alleged facts in nature, or to any inference logically deduced from them, because they believe them to contradict what it appears to them is taught by Revelation. We think that all such objections savor of a timidity which is really inconsistent with a firm and well-instructed faith:

"Let us for a moment," profoundly remarks Professor Sedgwick, " suppose that there are some religious difficulties in the conclusions of geology. How, then, are we to solve them? Not by making a world after a pattern of our own-not by shifting and shuffling the solid strata of the earth, and then dealing them out in such a way as to play the game of an ignorant or dishonered hypothesis-not by shutting our eyes to facts, or denying the evidence of our senses but by patient investigation, carried on in the sincere love of truth, and by learning to reject every consequence not warranted by physical evidence." t

'A man of deep thought and great practical wisdom," says Sedgwick," one whose piety and benevolence have for many years been shining before the world, and of whose sincerity no scoffer (of whatever school) will dare to start a doubt, recorded his opinion in the great assembly of the men of science who during the past year were gathered from every corner of the Christianity had every thing to hope and nothempire within the walls of this university, 'that ing to fear from the advancement of philosophy."'t

This is as truly the spirit of Christianity as it is that of philosophy. Few things have more deeply injured the cause of religion than the busy fussy energy with which men, narrow and feeble alike in faith and in science, have bustled forth to reconcile all new discoveries in physics with the word of inspiration. For it continually happens that some larger collection of facts, or some wider view of the phenomena of nature, alter the whole philosophic scheme; whilst revelation has been committed to declare an absolute agreement with what turns out after all to have been a misconception or an error. We cannot, therefore, consent to test the

He who is as sure as he is of his own exist-truth of natural science by the word of revence that the God of Truth is at once the

"Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin," p. 110. "A Discourse on the Studies of the University," p. 149.

*"A Discourse on the Studies of the University," p. 153.

British Association for the Advancement of Sci† Speech of Dr. Chalmers at the meeting of the ence, June, 1833.

DARWIN'S ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

tion, thus bears witness in his own frame to
the law of order which pervades the universe.
In like manner could we answer every
other question as to which Mr. Darwin
thinks all oracles are dumb unless they
speak his speculation. He is, for instance,
more than once troubled by what he con-
If,"
siders imperfections in nature's work.
he says,
our reason leads us to admire
with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable
contrivances in nature, this same reason tells
us that some other contrivances are less per-
fect."

66

66

"Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect; and if some of them be abhorrent to our idea of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such vast numbers for one single act, with the great majority slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidæ feeding within the live bodies of caterpillars; and at other such cases: The wonder indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the want of absolute perfection have not been

observed."-P. 472.

be

We think that the real temper of this whole speculation as to nature itself may It is a dishonoring read in these few lines. view of nature.

imals."-P. 490. But we can give him a
simpler solution still for the presence of these
strange forms of imperfection and suffering
amongst the works of God.

We can tell him of the strong shudder
which ran through all this world when its
Head and Ruler fell. When he asks concern-
ing the infinite variety of these multiplied
works which are set in such an orderly unity,
and run up into man as their reasonable
head, we can tell him of the exuberance of
God's goodness and remind him of the deep
philosophy which lies in those simple words

"All thy works praise Thee, O God, and thy saints give thanks unto thee." For it is one office of redeemed man to collect the inarticulate praises of the material creation, and pay them with conscious homage into the treasury of the supreme Lord. Surely the philosophy which penned the following glorious words is just as much truer to nature as it is to revelation than all these speculations of the transmutationist. Having shown, from a careful osteological examination of his structure, from his geographical distribution, from the differences and agreements of the several specimens of the human family, and from the changes which step by step we can trace wrought by domestication and variation in the lower animals, that man is not and cannot be an improved ape, Pro

fessor Owen adds:

:

"The unity of the human species is demonThat reverence for the work of God's hands strated by the constancy of those osteological with which a true belief in the All-wise and dental characters to which the attention is Worker fills the believer's heart is at the more particularly directed in the investigation root of all great physical discovery; it is the of the corresponding characters of the higher basis of philosophy. He who would see the quadrumana. Man is the sole species of his subclass. Thus I trust has been furnished the venerable features of nature must not seek genius, the sole representative of his order and with the rudeness of a licensed roysterer confutation of the notion of a transformation of violently to unmask her countenance; but the ape into the man, which appears from a famust wait as a learner for her willing unveil-vorite old author to have been entertaned by ing. There was more of the true temper of some in his day "And of a truth, vile epicurism and sensuphilosophy in the poetic fiction of the Pan-ic shriek, than in the atheistic speculations of ality will make the soul of man so degenerate Lucretius. But this temper must beset those and blind, that he will not only be content to who do in effect banish God from nature. slide into brutish immorality, but please himself And so Mr. Darwin not only finds in it these in this very opinion that he is a real brute already, an ape, satyr, or baboon; and that the bungling contrivances which his own greater best of men are no better, saving that civilizing skill could amend, but he stands aghast be- of them and industrious education has made fore its mightier phenomena. The presence them appear in a more refined shape, and long of death and famine seems to him inconceiva- inculcated precepts have been mistaken for conble on the ordinary idea of creation; and he nate principles of honesty and natural knowllooks almost aghast at them until reconciled edge; otherwise there be no indispensable grounds to their presence by his own theory that "a of religion and virtue but what has happened to ratio of increase so high as to lead to a strug- be taken up by over-ruling custom, which things, gle for life, and as a consequence to natural I dare say, are as easily confutable as any conselection entailing divergence of character clusion in mathematics is demonstrable. But and the extinction of less improved forms, is as many as are thus sottish, let them enjoy their a good man that he is conscious unto himself decidedly followed by the most exalted ob- own wildness and ignorance; it is sufficient for ject which we are capable of conceiving, that he is more nobly descended, better bred and namely, the production of the higher an-born, and more skilfully taught by the purged

faculties of his own mind.'"*-Owen's Classification of Mammals, p. 153.

And he draws these truly philosophical views to this noble conclusion.

"Such are the denominating powers with which we, and we alone, are gifted! I say gifted, for the surpassing organization was no work of ours. It is He that hath made us, not we ourselves. This frame is a temporary trust, for the use of which we are responsible to the Maker. O! you who possess it in all the supple vigor of lusty youth, think well what it is that He has committed to your keeping. Waste not its energies; dull them not by sloth; spoil them not by pleasures!

"As to the successions or coming in of new species, one might speculate on the gradual of certain varieties to survive local changes, and modifiability of the individual; on the tendency thus progressively diverge from an older type; on the production and fertility of monstrous offspring; on the possibility, e.g. of a variety of auk being occasionally hatched with a somewhat longer winglet and a dwarfed stature; on the probability of such a variety better adapting itself to the changing climate or other conditions than the old type; of such an origin of Alca torda, e.g.;-but to what purpose? Past experience of the chance-aims of human fancy, unchecked and unguided by observed facts, shows how widely they have ever glanced away from the gold centre of truth."-Öwen on the Classifi cation of Mammalia, p. 58.

"The supreme work of creation has been accomplished that you might possess a body-the sole erect-of all animal bodies the most free- "Turning from a retrospect into past time for and for what? for the service of the soul. the prospect of time to come I may crave "Strive to realize the conditions of this won-indulgence for a few words. . . . There seems drous structure. Think what it may become-to have been a time when life was not; there the Temple of the Holy Spirit! may, therefore, be a period when it will cease to "Defile it not. Seck rather to adorn it with be. . . . The end of the world has been preall meet and becoming gifts, with that fair fur-sented to man's mind under diverse aspects;niture, moral and intellectual, which it is your as a general conflagration; as the same, preinestimable privilege to acquire through the ceded by a millennial exaltation of the world to teachings and examples and ministrations of a paradisiacal state, the abode of a higher and this seat of sound learning and religious educa- blessed state of intelligences. If the guidepost of paleontology may seem to point to a course ascending to the condition of the latter speculation, it points but a very short way, and on leaving it we find ourselves in a wilderness of conjecture, where to try to advance is to find ourselves in wandering mazes lost.""-P. 61.

tion."-P. 50.

Equally startling is the contrast between the flighty anticipations of the future in which Mr. Darwin indulges, and the sober philosophy with which Owen restrains the flight of his own more soaring imagination::

It is by putting such a restraint upon fancy that science is made the true trainer of our intellect :

"In the distant future I see," says Darwin, "open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation "A study of the Newtonian philosophy," says -that of the necessary acquirement of each Sedgwick, "as affecting our moral powers and mental power and capacity by gradation. Light capacities, does not terminate in mere negations. will be thrown on the origin of man and his his-It teaches us to see the finger of God in all things tory."-Pp. 488, 489. animate and inanimate, and gives us an exalted "Judging from the past, we may safely infer conception of His attributes, placing before us that not one living species will transmit its un- the clearest proof of their reality; and so prealtered likeness to a distant futurity, and of the pare, or ought to prepare, the mind for the respecies now living very few will transmit pro-ception of that higher illumination which brings geny to a far-distant futurity. . . . We may the rebellious faculties into the obedience to the look with some confidence to a secure future of Divine will.”—Studies of the University, p. 14. equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of cach being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection." -P. 489.

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, and having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity;

from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved!"-P. 490.

It is by our deep conviction of the truth and importance of this view for the scientific mind of England that we have been led to treat at so much length Mr. Darwin's speculation. The contrast between the sober, patient, philosophical courage of our home philosophy, and the writings of Lamarck and his followers and predecessors, of MM. Demailet, Bory de Saint Vincent, Virey, and Oken, is indeed most wonderful: and it is

It may be worth while to exhibit to our reada few of Dr. Oken's postulates or arguments as specimens of his views :"I wrote the first edition of 1810 in a kind of inspiration.

Surely there is a far grander tone of vatic-ers ination about these words of caution from a far greater philosopher :

*Henry More's "Conjectura Cabbalistica," fol. (1662), p. 175.

4. Spirit is the motion of mathematical ideas.. "10. Physio-philosophy has to... portray the

"4. The entire variation from the original type... may usually be effected in a brief period of time, after which no further deviation can be obtained.

5. The intermixing distinct species is guarded against by the sterility of the mule offspring. "6. It appears that species have a real existence in nature, and that each was endowed at the time of its creation with the attributes and organization by which it is now distinguished.” *

greatly owing to the noble tone which has "1. That there is a capacity in all species to been given by those great men whose words accommodate themselves to a certain extent to we have quoted to the school of British sci-a change of external circumstances. ence. That Mr. Darwin should have wandered from this broad highway of nature's works into the jungle of fanciful assumption is no small evil. We trust that he is mistaken in believing that he may count Sir C. Lyell as one of his converts. We know indeed the strength of the temptations which he can bring to bear upon his geological brother. The Lyellian hypothesis, itself not free from some of Mr. Darwin's faults, stands eminently in need for its own support of some new scheme of physical life as that propounded here. Yet no man has been more distinct and more logical in the denial of the transmutation of species than Sir C. Lyell, and that not in the infancy of his scientific life, but in its full vigor and maturity.

Sir C. Lyell devotes the 33d to the 36th chapter of his " Principles of Geology" to an examination of this question. He gives a clear account of the mode in which Lamarck supported his belief of the transmutation of species; he "interrupts the author's argument to observe that no positive fact is cited to exemplify the substitution of some entirely new sense, faculty, or organ-because no examples were to be found; and remarks that when Lamarck talks " of "the effects of internal sentiments," ect., as causes whereby animals and plants may acquire new organs, he substitutes names for things, and with a disregard to the strict rules of induction resorts to fictions.

We trust that Sir C. Lyell abides still by these truly philosophical principles; and that with his help and with that of his brethren this flimsy speculation may be as completely put down as was what in spite of all denials we must venture to call its twin though less instructed brother, the "Vestiges of Creation." In so doing they will assuredly provide for the strength and continually growing progress of British science.

Indeed, not only do all laws for the study of nature vanish when the great principle of order pervading and regulating all her processes is given up, but all that imparts the deepest interest in the investigation of her wonders will have departed too. Under such influences man soon goes back to the marvelling stare of childhood at the centaurs and hippogriffs of fancy, or if he is of a philosophic turn he comes like Oken to write a scheme of creation under a "sort of inspiration; " but it is the frenzied inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas. The whole world of nature is laid for such a man under a fantastic law of glamour, and he becomes capable of believing any thing: to him it is just as probable that Dr. Livingstone will find the next tribe of negroes with their heads growing under their arms as fixed on the summit of the cervical vertebræ ; and he first period of the world's development from noth- is able, with a continually growing neglect of ing; how the elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by self-evolution into all the facts around him, with equal confihigher and manifold forms they separated in min-dence and equal delusion, to look back to erals, became finally organic, and in man attained any past and to look on to any future.

He shows the fallacy of Lamarck's reasoning, and by anticipation confutes the whole theory of Mr. Darwin, when gathering clearly up into a few heads the recapitulation of the whole argument in favor of the reality of species in nature. He urges :

self-consciousness.

42. The mathematical monad is eternal. "43. The enteral is one and the same with the zero of mathematics."

*"Principles of Geology," edit. 1858.

LATIN PUZZLE.-The boys at the school I was at were fond of the following, which I do not recollect having seen in any book :

"Sæpe cepi cepe sub sepe,”

which spoken quick, appears as one word repeated four times. Also,

"Mus currit in agro sine pedibus suis." -Notes and Queries.

J. L. P.