REVIEWS. 1 1 



Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation. By Rev. James 

 M'Cosh, LL.D., and George Dickie, M.D. One Volume 8vo. Edin- 

 burgh : Constable and Co. 1856. 



The aim of the authors of this treatise is to prove by examples and reason- 

 ing that the world is made after a General Plan, to which every object is 

 made to a certain extent conformable ; and that there is, at the same time, 

 " a principle of Special Adaptation, by which each object, while constructed 

 after a general model, is accommodated to the situation which it has to 

 occupy, and a purpose which it is intended to serve." 



For many years British writers on Natural Theology were in the habit 

 of drawing their arguments chiefly from the indications in nature of special 

 adaptations of parts or organs to particular purposes. But when, at a 

 more recent period, the evidences began to be discerned of a certain rela- 

 tion to some general type or types of structure, which has constantly per- 

 vaded all organized nature, controlling the kind and extent of those altera- 

 tions which the individual parts and organs undergo in order to adapt 

 them to their particular functions and conditions ; there were not wanting 

 writers who seized upon this discovery as a weapon to overturn the proof 

 of intelligence and design, derived from the instances of special adaptation, 

 and stoutly maintained that the utmost which a philosophic eye can re- 

 cognise in nature is a general harmony of structure, without any evidence 

 of such designed relation to the wants and welfare of particular organized 

 beings. In opposition to their views, the authors argue that the preva- 

 lence of such a general order is, in itself, a distinct proof of the wisdom 

 and design of some creative agent ; nay, further, that if the instances of 

 special adaptation be more obvious and striking arguments to common un- 

 derstandings, yet the evidence of a more comprehensive, or an universal 

 plan, affords the most unanswerable demonstration of the attributes of 

 the Creator, who conceived and has carried out that plan, throughout the 

 immensity of Universal Space, and through all the incalculable Ages of the 

 World's unwritten history. 



And while Adaptation and Uniformity are both alike adverse to the 

 opinion that those objects can be the works of chance, the special adapta- 

 tions show that the order is not the result of an unreasoning Necessity. 

 Taken together, as mutual complements, " they exhibit to us an enlarged 

 wisdom, which prosecutes its plans methodically, combined with a minute 

 care which provides for every object and every part of that object. They 

 disclose to our faith a God who sees the end from the beginning, and who 



