202 POSTSCRIPT. 



by general laws. He is not blind to " the wonderful order and 

 harmony, the gradations and connexions, which run through 

 the forms of animal life." He admits that the organic world has 

 been created according to laws in the Creator's mind, though we 

 do not, he thinks, know those laws. With such beliefs, he at the 

 same time condemns the theory of a natural production of 

 the organic world, as " excluding all supernatural inter- 

 vention of creative power." Now, if science be obscure, as 

 he says, as to the laws which were in the creative mind, and 

 as to causation generally, one might suppose it to be unable 

 to pronounce, in this decisive manner, either for or against super- 

 natural interferences. Dr. Whewell, however, sees, in the adap- 

 tations of organic beings to external circumstances, clear proofs 

 of such supernatural procedure — that, indeed, while the Deity 

 acted according to a plan and fixed laws, the creation of each 

 animal was, nevertheless, a special act on his part. Here it is, 

 therefore, that we have indications of the Creator. Now it 

 appears to me, that Dr. Whewell has here placed the doctrine of 

 a Creator in a really unfavourable light, while the favourable 

 light in which I have placed it is misapprehended by him. He 

 rests his scientific means of belief, negatively, upon our not 

 knowing the mode of the organic creation, and speaks as if the 

 ascertainment of natural procedure were to be fatal to it. Sup- 

 pose this doctrine were to be received, the discovery of laws 

 establishing natural procedure would tend so far to leave science 

 in an atheistic state, which I have never thought to be necessary. 

 Positively, his means of such belief depend on our seeing a 

 supernatural event in each of the " adaptations" of organic beings. 

 But what if science should come to explain these adaptations 

 upon natural grounds ? Here, too, it would inflict a severe blow 

 upon the doctrine which Dr. Whewell seeks to uphold. Let us, 

 on the other hand, consider the theory of a natural origin of 

 species with all their peculiarities in regard to its bearing on 

 the doctrine of a deity. There is a bird called the pique-boeuf, 

 which lives upon larva; picked out the hides of living cattle, and 

 is found to be enabled to live in this manner by a beak resembling 



