TRANSMUTABLE. 17 



Now let me ask any candid inquirer, in what 

 does this theory differ from that of the "Vestiges?" 

 Why, in reality, I answer, nothing, except in 

 less plausibility. The author of the " Vestiges" says, 

 development is arrested or altered, and that thus 

 forms are changed by what he calls natural law. 

 Mr. Darwin merely re-states, the fact without 

 offering any explanation. He says that there 

 is a law of variation throughout nature. What 

 can this be except a law of development? The 

 two ideas are in fact precisely the same, although 

 expressed in different language; the one shewing 

 how his law of development produces varieties, 

 the other merely shewing in the most ingenious 

 way imaginable, how these varieties ultimately 

 become different species. The one believes his 

 law of development has been brought into ope- 

 ration by Creative Will at different periods of 

 the earth's history. The other that that law is 

 a principle acting inequally, irregularly, or for- 

 tuitously. 



Again, in what does Mr. Darwin differ from 

 Lamarck? They both believe in the same results; 

 but while the latter has given a means by which 

 he thinks his changes were brought about, the 

 former simply takes those changes, that is to 

 say, variations, and endeavours to shew how 

 they produced, by progression through endless 

 ages, all the classes of living things in the world ! 



The theories of Lamarck, and the "Vestiges," 

 have been long since condemned as unsound, by 

 all the leading naturalists of the age. But Mr. 



