PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. Ixiii 



The x publication by Mr. Darwin of a philosophical work on "the 

 Origin of Species," strongly marks the change which has for some 

 time been silently going on. Its reception equally marks the new 

 temper of the public on this important subject. It is no insignifi- 

 cant fact that the Edinburgh Review, which fifteen years ago gave 

 forth the Rev. Mr. Sedgwick's diatribes against creation under natural 

 law, now proclaims itself as having " no sympathy with the sacer- 

 dotal revilers of those who would explain such law," and adding such 

 a passage as the following: "Literal scripturalism in the time of 

 Lactantius opposed and reviled the demonstrations of the shape of 

 the earth ; in the time of Galileo it reviled and persecuted the demon- 

 strations of the movements of the eaith ; in the time of Dean Cock- 

 burn of York, it anathematised the demonstrations of the antiquity 

 of the earth ; and the eminent geologist who then personified the 

 alleged scriptural heresy, has been hardly less emphatic than his 

 theological assailant in liis denunciations of some of the upholders of 

 the ' becoming and succession of species by natural law,' or ' by a 

 continuously operating creative force.' ' 



Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of the becoming of new species is founded 

 on the modifiability of which animals are seen to be capable under 

 breeding, and mainly consists in the suggestion that, in the struggle 

 for existence among the multitudes of animals, any variety which 

 was better adapted for the circumstances than its neighbours would 

 be sure to survive while the others declined. Thus, he thinks, all 

 existing animals may have descended from four or five primitive 

 types. He sees an advance or improvement in their progress, but 

 rejects the idea of any law of development. 



It is to be lamented that this ingenious and most industrious 

 naturalist should have read the present work nearly as much amiss as 

 if, like its declared opponents, he had had an interest in misunder- 

 standing it. He says: " The author of the Vestiges of Creation would, 

 I presume, say that, after a certain unknown number of generations, 

 some bird had given birth to a woodpecker and some plant to a 

 misseltoe, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see 

 them; but this assumption seems to me no^ explanation, for it leaves 

 the ca'se of the co-adaptations of organic beings to each other and to 

 their physical conditions of life, untouched and unexplained." The 

 fact being that the hypothesis of this work, besides accounting for 

 grades of organization on a principle of development observant of 

 time, involves " another impulse, connected with the vital forces, 

 tending in the course of generations to modify organic structures in 

 accordance with external circumstances, as food, the nature of the 

 habitat and the meteoric agencies, these being the adaptations of the 

 natural theologian." Mr. Darwin might, indeed, find in these pages 

 and the companion work quoted below,* views founded on the re- 

 lationships of animals and the grades of their organization, showing 

 how natatorial genera may have been converted into others fitted for 



* Explanations : a Sequel to Vestiges, &c. 1846. 



