176 DARWINIAN A. 



trial just now very useful to science, and, we conclude, 

 not harmful to religion, unless injudicious assailants 

 temporarily make it so. 



One good effect is already manifest ; its enabling 

 the advocates of the hypothesis of a multiplicity of 

 human species to perceive the double insecurity of their 

 ground. When the races of men are admitted to be of 

 one species, the corollary, that they are of one origin, 

 may be expected to follow. Those who allow them to 

 be of one species must admit an actual diversification 

 into strongly-marked and persistent varieties, and so 

 admit the basis of fact upon which the Darwinian 

 hypothesis is built ; while those, on the other hand, 

 who recognize several or numerous human species, will 

 hardly be able to maintain that such species were pri- 

 mordial and supernatural in the ordinary sense of 

 the word. 



The English mind is prone to positivism and kin- 

 dred forms of materialistic philosophy, and we must 

 expect the derivative theory to be taken up in that in- 

 terest. We have no predilection for that school, but 

 the contrary. If we had, we might have looked com- 

 placently upon a line of criticism which would indi- 

 rectly, but effectively, play into the hands of positivists 

 and materialistic atheists generally. The wiser and 

 stronger ground to take is, that the derivative hypothe- 

 sis leaves the argument for design, and therefore for a 

 designer, as valid as it ever was ; that to do any work 

 by an instrument must require, and therefore presup- 

 pose, the exertion rather of more than of less power 

 than to do it directly ; that whoever would be a con- 

 sistent theist should believe that Design in the natural 



