202 THE LA.W. 



accomplished by a thousand imperceptible stages is to our 

 apprehension as much a creative act as the aboriginal forma- 

 tion of the mollusc; and though nature acts largely through 

 the employment of secondary causes, science will ever most 

 safely appeal to the primal, till she has learned to determine 

 with precision the operations of the secondary returning, 

 like Noah's dove, from an ocean of inquiry that offers as yet 

 to the sole of her foot no sure and abiding resting-place. 

 Xo doubt plants and animals are endowed with a certain 

 amount of elasticity so as to adapt themselves to minor 

 changes of external conditions ; and acting upon this elas- 

 ticity, man has been enabled to produce all the varieties of 

 cultivated fruits and grains, and domesticated animals. 

 This limit of variation, however, is soon reached : the species 

 is never affected, and the varieties can only be maintained 

 by a continuation of the artificial stimulus.* In this case 

 man presents himself as a sub-creative centre, deputed with 

 a power of prescient design otherwise unknown in creation ; 

 and to argue from his operations, as Mr Darwin has done, 

 to those occurring in mere physical nature, is altogether to 

 misinterpret the functions that intellect and reason were 

 destined to subserve. As we have no other power in nature 

 akin to the human intellect, so we are not entitled, in the 

 spirit of induction, to argue from the results produced by 

 that intellect to the operations of the unreasoning material 

 agencies of nature. 



To appeal, in the next place, to embryology to state 

 that, in their embryonic stage, the higher animals always 

 pass through the successive phases of those that are lower, 



* That the individuals of a species should be capable of varying 

 within certain limits, so as to adapt themselves to minor variations in 

 their creative centres, seems part of a wise and beneficial arrangement ; 

 but that such variations partake of a progressive character is disproved 

 rather than supported by the well-known tendency of all artificial 

 varieties to revert to their original stocks. 



