170 EXPLANATIONS. 



views of physical cosmogony altogether discrepant 

 in appearance with that of Moses, apply hard names 

 to my book for suggesting a theory of organic 

 creation in the same way liable to inconsiderate 

 odium. I must firmly protest against this mode of 

 meeting speculations regarding nature. The ob- 

 ject of my book, whatever maybe said of the man- 

 ner in which it is treated, is purely scientific. The 

 views which I give of this history of organization, 

 stand exactly on the same ground upon which 

 the geological doctrines stood fifty years ago. I 

 am merely endeavouring to read aright another 

 chapter of the mystic book which God has 

 placed under the attention of his creatures. A 

 little liberality of judgment would enable even an 

 opponent of my particular hypothesis, to see that 

 questions as to reverence and irreverence, piety 

 and impiety, are practically determined very much 

 by special impressions upon particular minds. 

 He would see, for example, that the idea of at- 

 taching irreverence to a doctrine of natural law is 

 only likely to arise in a mind which has been 

 trained by habit, to regard the divine working as 

 more special in its nature ; — precisely as, finding 

 the Edinburgh reviewer speaking of the whole 

 works of the Deity as "vulgar nature" (p. 53), 

 I feel that the impiety which such an idea 



