62 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES n 



intelligence in the nineteenth century, just as 

 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. 



