ON THE LATEST FORM OF THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 109 
a far more obvious analogy in the adaptation of means to ends? Mr. Darwin and 
Professor Baden Powell answer this question in the affirmative; and it is for them to 
defend their consistency as they may. | 
The purpose of the Development Theory, in any of its forms, is to exclude the 
necessity of believing in any special creative act, or any exertion of intelligence and 
will and to refer all physical phenomena, the first appearance of new and distinct 
races included, to the continuous and uninterrupted action of what are called secondary 
causes or natural laws. In pursuance of this purpose, even the primitive act of 
creation, by which the universe was first evolved out of nothingness or out of a 
chaotic mass, is either denied, or, what is the same thing, is removed to an infinite dis- 
tance. An absolute beginning, either of the universe, or of any Species of animal or 
vegetable life in the universe, is, on this Theory, an impossible or inadmissible concep- 
tion. Alluding to the opponents of this doctrine, Mr. Darwin observes (p. 418), “ These 
authors seem no more startled at a miraculous act of creation than at an ordinary birth. 
But do they really believe that, at innumerable periods in the earth’s history, certain 
elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues?” And 
Professor Powell still more distinctly remarks, ** that strict science offers no evidence of 
the commencement of the existing order of the universe. It exhibits, indeed, a wonderful 
succession of changes, but however far back continued, and of however vast extent, 
and almost ittconceivable modes of operation, still only changes ; occuring in recondite 
order, however little as yet disclosed, and in obedience to physical laws and causes, how- . 
ever as yet obscure and hidden from us. Yet in all this there is no beginning properly 
so called: no commencement of existence when nothing existed before: no creation in 
the sense of origination out of non-existence, or formation out of nothing. Even with- 
out referring to that metaphysical conception, or more properly metaphysical contradic- 
tion, to imagine anything which can be strictly called a beginning, or first formation, 
or endowment of matter with new attributes, or in whatever other form of expression 
we may choose to convey any such idea, is altogether beyond the domain of science, 
as it is an idea beyond the province of human intelligence." * 
Still it might be maintained that, although science gives 00,29 glimpse of a Creator, 
it does point to an Architect of the universe, in so far as it discovers and analyzes the 
innumerable and marvellous adaptations of means to ends by which p earth is ren- 
dered a fitting and convenient habitation for all the tribes that tenant it, and by which 
* Rev. Baden Powell’s “Order of Nature,” (London, Longmans, 1859,) pp. 250, 251. In this quotation 
the words are italicized as in the original. 
