DESIGN. 241 



same way lie against all other, so-called, evolutionary 

 doctrines. Philosophy itself must be allowed to amount 

 at last to no more than, in a certain way, an evolutionary 

 doctrine. 



In 1859, it appears that the Kev. Charles Kingsley 

 was one of those favoured jurymen to whom Mr. Darwin 

 sent his new book. One of Mr. Kingsley 'a paragraphs 

 in thanks runs thus : " I have gradually learnt to see 

 that it is just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe 

 that He created primal forms capable of self -development 

 into all forms needful pro tempore and pro loco, as to believe 

 that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply 

 the lacunas which He Himself had made. I question 

 whether the former may not be the loftier thought." 

 This view of Mr. Kingsley 's in fact falls under the 

 general statement in Hume to which, as I refer (Lectures, p. 

 272), 1 Erasmus Darwin assented, but from which it proved 

 convenient for the moment to David himself, elsewhere 

 in his own writing, to seem to dissent, namely, that it 

 argues " more wisdom in the Deity " to contrive a 

 creation on general principles from the first, and " more 

 power " to delegate authority to these principles, " than 

 to operate everything by His own immediate volition." 

 Kant's celebrated Theory of the Heavens, in which he is 

 supposed to have anticipated both Herschel and Laplace 

 in regard to what is called the nebular hypothesis, has 

 much of these same ideas ; and as in Hume and the 

 others, so in him, it all comes to the single thought that 

 the antedating of the Divine interference neither removes 

 nor lessens it. Now, as it is simply in the light and 

 heat of that thought that Mr. Kingsley, further, exult- 

 ingly exclaims, " Darwin is conquering everywhere, and 

 rushing in like a flood, by the mere force of truth and 

 fact," so it is pretty well with the same preparation of 



1 Above at p. 54 also. 

 16 



