426 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



cause, Professor Gray remarked that the question was mainly as to tlie 

 ■way in which we may suppose creative power to be exerted, and upon 

 what exerted, — whether always upon nothing to evoke something into 

 existence, and this repeatedly, when small alterations would make all 

 the difference between successive species. And enumerating the three, 

 and only three, general views of efficient causation which may claim to 

 be both theistic and philosophical ; — viz. : 1. that of its exertion at the 

 beginning of time, endowing created things with blind forces which pro- 

 duce the phenomena ; 2. the same view, with that of insulated interpo- 

 sitions, or occasional direct Divine action, engrafted upon it ; and 3. 

 that of the constant and orderly immediate action of an intelligent cre- 

 ative Cause ; — Professor Gray insisted that Professor Bowen, in adopt- 

 ing the latter view, was precluded from bringing the objections he did 

 against the new theory ; that the difference between Professor Bowen's 

 and Mr. Darwin's view was thereby reduced to this : the one asserts 

 that the origination of an individual, no less than that of a species, 

 requires and presupposes Divine power as its efficient cause ; the other, 

 that the origination of a species is natural, no less than the origination 

 of an individual ; — propositions which do not appear to contradict each 

 other. 



Professor Gray then entered upon various questions of fact and of 

 detail, and also insisted that, if psychologists w^ould scrutinize facts of 

 observation as they had those of consciousness, they would not confound 

 together all the psychical manifestations of the brute animals as one fac- 

 ulty, but would discriminate (as they largely might) between their in- 

 stinct, which prevails in the lower, and their intelligence, which is mani- 

 fest in the higher animals. In respect to the proper intelligence of the 

 latter, he adduced the very explicit and unqualified published testimony 

 of Agassiz ; and the fact of the heritability both of acquired habits and 

 aptitudes, and of certain modified structures, was supported by additional 

 examples. 



Professor Bowen replied at length, but furnishes no ab- 

 stract, and the discussion was continued by Professor Agassiz, 

 and others, in incidental remarks. Also in a written note, 

 contributed by Dr. Kneeland, as follows : — 



At the last meeting of the Academy I stated my impression that 

 Mr. Gordon Gumming, in the chapter referred to by Professor Bowen, 



