58 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



II 



Or, lastly, let us ask ourselves whether any 

 amount of evidence which the nature of our 

 faculties permits us to attain, can justify us in 

 asserting that any phenomenon is out of the reach 

 of natural causation. To this end it is obviously 

 necessary that we should know all the con- 

 sequences to which all possible combinations, 

 continued through unlimited time, can give rise. 

 If we knew these, and found none competent to 

 originate species, we should have good ground for 

 denying their origin by natural causation. Till 

 we know them, any hypothesis is better than one 

 which involves us in such miserable presumption. 



But the hypothesis of special creation is not 

 only a mere specious mask for our ignorance ; its 

 existence in Biology marks the youth and imper- 

 fection of the science. For what is the history of 

 every science but the history of the elimination 

 of the notion of creative, or other interferences, 

 with the natural order of the phenomena which 

 are the subject-matter of that science ? When 

 Astronomy was young " the morning stars sang 

 together for joy," and the planets were guided 

 in their courses by celestial hands. Now, the 

 harmony of the stars has resolved itself into 

 gravitation according to the inverse squares of the 

 distances, and the orbits of the planets are dedu- 

 cible from the laws of the forces which allow a 

 schoolboy's stone to break a window. The light- 

 ning was the angel of the Lord ; but it has pleased 



