DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS. 145 



cation of animal and vegetable forms through the op- 

 eration of secondary causes does or does not exclude 

 design ; and whether the establishment by adequate 

 evidence of Darwin's particular theory of diversifica- 

 tion through variation and natural selection would es- 

 sentially alter the present scientific and philosophical 

 grounds for theistic views of Nature. The unqualified 

 affirmative judgment rendered by the two Boston re- 

 viewers, evidently able and practised reasoners, " must 

 give us pause." We hesitate to advance our conclu- 

 sions in opposition to theirs. But, after full and seri- 

 ous consideration, we are constrained to say that, in 

 our opinion, the adoption of a derivative hypothesis, 

 and of Darwin's particular hypothesis, if we under- 

 stand it, would leave the doctrines of final causes, 

 utility, and special design, just where they were before. 

 We do not pretend that the subject is not environed 

 with difficulties. Every view is so environed; and 

 every shifting of the view is likely, if it removes some 

 difficulties, to bring others into prominence. But we 

 cannot perceive that Darwin's theory brings in any 

 new kind of scientific difficulty, that is, any with which 

 philosophical naturalists were not already familiar. 



Since natural science deals only with secondary or 

 natural causes, the scientific terms of a theory of deri- 

 vation of species — no less than of a theory of dynam- 

 ics — must needs be the same to the theist as to the 

 atheist. The difference appears only when the inquiry 

 is carried up to the question of primary cause — a ques- 

 tion which belongs to philosophy. Wherefore, Dar- 

 win's reticence about efficient cause does not disturb 

 us. He considers only the scientific questions. As 



