316 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



The very same may be said as to the special Darwinian 

 form of the theory of evolution. 



It is true Mr. Darwin writes sometimes as if he thought 

 that his theory militated against even derivative creation. 1 

 This, however, there is no doubt, was not really meant; 

 and indeed, in the passage before quoted and criticised, the 

 possibility of the Divine ordination of each variation is 

 spoken of as a tenable view. He says (" Origin of Species," 

 p. 569), " I see no good reason why the views given in this 

 volume should shock the religious feelings of any one ; " 

 and he speaks of life "having been originally breathed 

 by the Creator into a few forms or into one," which is 

 more than the dogma of creation actually requires. We 

 find then that 110 incompatibility is asserted (by any 



and regulated evolution. , The proofs of a pervading and developing intel- 

 ligence, and the proofs of a co-ordinating and combining intelligence, are 

 both untouched, nor can any conceivable progress of science in this direc- 

 tion destroy them. If the famous suggestion, that all animal and vegetable 

 life results from a single vital germ, and that all the different animals and 

 plants now existent were developed by a natural process of evolution from 

 that germ, were a demonstrated truth, we should still be able to point to 

 the evidences of intelligence displayed in the measured and progressive 

 development, in those exquisite forms so. different from what blind chance 

 could produce." .... "The argument from design would indeed be 

 changed ; it would require to be stated in a new form, but it would be 

 fully as cogent as before. Indeed it is, perhaps, not too much to say, 

 that the more fully this conception of universal evolution is grasped, the 

 more firmly a scientific doctrine of Providence will be established, and the 

 stronger will be the presumption of a future progress." LECKY'S History 

 of Rationalism, vol. i. p. 316. 



1 Dr. Asa Gray, e.g., has thus understood Mr. Darwin. The Doctor says 

 in his pamphlet, p. 38, "Mr. Darwin uses expressions which imply that 

 the natural forms which surround us, because they have a history or 

 natural sequence, could have been only generally, brat not particularly 

 designed, a view at once superficial and contradictory; whereas his true 

 line should be, that his hypothesis concerns the order and not the cause, 

 the how and not the why, of the phenomena, and so leaves the question of 

 design just where it was before. " 



