THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 59 
vidence, in these modern times, that science 
should make it the humble messenger of man, and 
we know that every flash that shimmers about 
the horizon on a summer’s evening is determined 
‘by ascertainable conditions, and that its direction 
and brightness might, if our knowledge of these 
were great enough, have been calculated. 
The solvency of great mercantile companies 
irests on the validity of the laws which have been 
‘ascertained to govern the seeming irregularity of 
that human life which the moralist bewails as the 
§ most uncertain of things; plague, pestilence, and 
§ famine are admitted, by all but fools, to be the 
natural result of causes for the most part fully 
within human control, and not the unavoidable 
tortures inflicted by wrathful Omnipotence upon 
His helpless handiwork. 
Harmonious order governing eternally continu- 
ous progress—the web and woof of matter and 
force interweaving by slow degrees, without a 
broken thread, that veil which lies between us 
and the Infinite—that universe which alone we 
know or can know; such is the picture which 
science draws of the world, and in proportion as 
any part of that picture is in unison with the rest, 
so may we feel sure that it is rightly painted. 
Shall Biology alone remain_out_of harmonywith 
her sister sciences ? 
Such arguments against the hypothesis of the 
direct creation of species as these are plainly 
