XIL] THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 245 



structure of animals or plants, unless we suppose they were 

 contrived for special ends ; we cannot understand the structure 

 of the eye, except by supposing it to have been made to see with ; 

 we cannot understand instincts, unless we suppose animals to 

 have been miraculously endowed with them. 



As a question of dialectics, it must be admitted that this sort 

 of reasoning is not very formidable to those who are not to be 

 frightened by consequences. It is an argumentum ad ignoran- 

 tiam take this explanation or be ignorant. But suppose we 

 prefer to admit our ignorance rather than adopt a hypothesis at 

 variance with all the teachings of Nature ? Or, suppose for a 

 moment we admit the explanation, and then seriously ask our 

 selves how much the wiser are we ; what does the explanation 

 explain ? Is it any more than a grandiloquent way of announc 

 ing the fact, that we really know nothing about the matter ? A 

 phenomenon is explained when it is shown to be a case of some 

 general law of Nature ; but the supernatural interposition of the 

 Creator can, by the nature of the case, exemplify no law, and if 

 species have really arisen in this way, it is absurd to attempt to 

 discuss their origin. 



Or, lastly, let us ask ourselves whether any amount of evidence 

 which the nature of our faculties permits us to attain, can justify 

 us in asserting that any phenomenon is out of the reach of 

 natural causation. To this end it is obviously necessary that we 

 should know all the consequences to which all possible com 

 binations, continued through unlimited time, can give rise. If 

 we knew these, and found none competent to originate species, 

 we should have good ground for denying their origin by natural 

 causation. Till we know them, any hypothesis is better than 

 one which involves us in such miserable presumption. 



But the hypothesis of special creation is not only a mere 

 specious mask for our ignorance ; its existence in Biology marks 

 the youth and imperfection of the science. For what is the 

 history of every science, but the history of the elimination of 

 the notion of creative, or other interferences, with the natural 

 order of the phenomena which are the subject-matter of that 



