272 DARWINIANA. 



Hodge takes to be the denial of any such thing as final 

 causes) ; and that the interactions and processes going 

 on which constitute natural selection may suffice to ac- 

 count for the present diversity of animals and plants 

 (primordial organisms being postulated and time 

 enough given) with all their structures and adapta- 

 tions — that is, to account for them scientifically, as 

 science accounts for other things. 



A good deal may be made of this, but does it sus- 

 tain the indictment? Moreover, the counts of the in- 

 dictment may be demurred to. It seems to us that 

 only one of the three points which Darwin is said to 

 deny is really opposed to the fourth, which he is said 

 to maintain, except as concerns the perhaps ambigu- 

 ous word unintended. Otherwise, the origin of spe- 

 cies through the gradual accumulation of variations — 

 i. e., by the addition of a series of small differences — 

 is surely not incongruous with their origin through 

 " the original intention of the divine mind " or 

 through " the constant and everywhere operative ef- 

 ficiency of God." One or both of these Mr. Darwin 

 (being, as Dr. Hodge says, a theist) must needs hold to 

 in some form or other ; wherefore he may be presumed 

 to hold the fourth proposition in such wise as not 

 really to contradict the first or the third. The proper 

 antithesis is with the second proposition only, and the 

 issue comes to this : Have the multitudinous forms 

 of living creatures, past and present, been produced 

 by as many special and independent acts of creation at 

 very numerous epochs ? Or have they originated un- 

 der causes as natural as reproduction and birth, and 



