62 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 
intelligence in the nineteenth century, just ag 
we amuse ourselves with the phraseology about 
Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum, wherewith 
| Torricellis compatriots were satisfied to explain 
. the rise of water in a pump. And be it recol- 
lected that this sort of satisfaction works not only 
negative but positive ill, by discouraging inquiry, 
and so depriving man of the usufruct of one of the 
most fertile fields of his great patrimony, Nature, 
The objections to the doctrine of the origin of 
species by special creation which have been 
detailed, must have occurred, with more or less 
force, to the mind of every one who has seriously 
and independently considered the subject. It is 
therefore no wonder that, from time to time, this 
hypothesis should have been met by counter 
hypotheses, all as well, and some better founded 
than itself; and it is curious to remark that the 
inventors of the opposing views seem to have been 
led into them as much by their knowledge of 
geology, as by their acquaintance with biology. 
In fact, when the mind has once admitted the 
conception of the gradual production of the present 
physical state of our globe, by natural causes 
operating through long ages of time, it will be 
little disposed to allow that living beings have 
made their appearance in another way, and the 
speculations of De Maillet and his successors are 
the natural complement of Scilla’s demonstration 
of the true nature of fossils. 
