lii PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. 



lay it down that the Divine Creator acts in the manner of law in the 

 organic, as in every other department of nature. And to this Pro- 

 fessor Sedgwick replies, " He who excludes the idea of an intelligent 

 God of nature must believe that matter works itself into life." It 

 is as if we were to remonstrate with a friend on his habit of sitting 

 too late at dinner, and he were to answer, " If you believe that, you 

 must conclude that I never contribute to a single charitable subscrip- 

 tion." Or any other non sequitur. Professor Sedgwick, perhaps, 

 does not consider us as one who denies an intelligent God ; indeed, 

 he elsewhere is so handsome as to defend us from this vulgar charge. 

 But such is merely his way of answering a philosophical heresy, to 

 which he has elsewhere given his own adhesion. At the same time 

 Professor Sedgwick indulges in a large amount of scolding regarding 

 material causes, as leading to cold, infidel doctrine things with 

 which the question has nothing to do. Holding him, however, to 

 have admitted that the organic world originated in the manner of 

 law, and that he is justly chargeable as much as ourselves with all 

 the moral consequences of this belief, the real distinction between 

 him and us is, that, feeling ourselves at that point, we have a hypo- 

 thesis to offer as to a mode liow a mode which has much in actual 

 science harmonising with it while he, though equally constrained 

 to pronounce on the subject, has no mode to suggest, starts back, 

 indeed, from the very idea of such a thing, and in very confusion of 

 mind contradicts his own proposition on the general question. ' He 

 does, indeed, try to get out of the false position in which his reason- 

 ing lands him a necessity for miracle by speaking of different 

 characters of laws, mysteries not to be meddled with, and so forth. 

 But the childishness of his dialectics on these points is so palpable, 

 that we decline taking the trouble of any particular effort to expose 

 it. The youngest commoner he addresses must see its worthlessness. 



Mr. Sedgwick has spoken of the author of the present work as, in 

 his view, " not only unacquainted with the severe lessons of induc- 

 tive knowledge," but possessing a mind " apparently incapable of 

 comprehending them." As an illustration of the remark, the Pro- 

 fessor adds : " speaking of specific transmutations, he [the author 

 of the Vestiges] has told us that, though there never may have been 

 an instance of it since the beginning of the human race, ' yet the 

 doctrine may be shown on grounds altogether apart, to have strong 

 probability on its side.' The author seems never to have learnt that 

 there are not, and never can be, any probabilities in nature that are 

 not suggested by experience." 



It may be suspected that when a person who feels a real loyalty 

 to the inductive philosophy comes into contact with one who does 

 riot, he will be very apt to appear to that person in the opposite 

 predicament. He would apparently have no chance of justice from 

 the Woodwardian professor. What was referred to in the above 

 passage quoted from the Sequel to the Vestiges, was that, our ex- 

 perience showing that the world was conducted by its Divine Author 

 under law, the origin of the organic world must have been of the 



