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58 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES Ir 
Or, lastly, let us ask ourselves whether any 
amount of evidence which the nature of our: 
faculties permits us to attain, can justify us_in 
_ asserting that any phenomenon is out of the reach 
of natural causation. To this end it is obviously 
necessary that we should know all the con-— 
sequences to which all possible combinations, 
continued through unlimited time, can give rise, 
If we knew these, and found none competent to 
originate species, we should have good ground for 
denying their origin by natural causation. Till 
we know them, any hypothesis is better than one 
which involves us in such miserable presumption, 
But the hypothesis of special creation is not 
only a mere specious mask for our ignorance ; its 
existence in Biology marks the youth and imper- 
fecti e science. For what is the history of 
(every science ut the history of the elimination 
of the notion of creative, or other interferences, 
with the natural order of the phenomena which 
are the subject-matter of that science? When 
Astronomy was young “the morning stars sang 
together for joy,’ and the planets were guided 
in their courses by celestial hands. Now, the 
harmony of the stars has resolved itself into 
gravitation according to the inverse squares of the 
distances, and the orbits of the planets are dedu- 
cible from the laws of the forces which allow a 
schoolboy’s stone to break a window. The light- 
ning was the angel of the Lord ; but it has pleased 
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