248 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 



a large amount of analogical power exhibited ; but that basis 

 of tnith which correct observation can alone furnish, and that 

 ability of nicely distinguishing differences by which the fa- 

 culty of discerning similarity must be for ever regulated and 

 governed, are wanting, in what, in a mind of fine general 

 texture and quality, must be regarded as an extraordinary de- 

 gree. And hence an ingenious but very unsolid work, — full 

 of images transferred, not from the scientific field, but from 

 the field of scientific mind, and charged with glittering but 

 vague resemblances, stamped in the mint of fancy, which, 

 were they to be used as mere counters in some light literary 

 game of story-telling or character-sketching, would be in no 

 respect out of place, but which, when passed current as the 

 proper coin of philosophic argument, are really frauds on the 

 popular understanding. There are, however, not a few in- 

 stances in the " Vestiges" and its " Sequel," in which that 

 defect of reflective power to which I refer rather enhances 

 than diminishes the difficulty of reply, by presenting to the 

 controversialist mere intangible clouds with which to grapple j 

 that yet, through the existence of a certain superstition in 

 the popular mind, as predisposed to accept as true whatever 

 takes the form of science, as its predecessor the old supersti- 

 tion was inclined a century ago to reject science itself, are at 

 least suited to blind and bewilder. Of this kind of difliiculty 

 the following passage, in which the author of the work ca- 

 shiers the Creator as such, and substitutes, instead, a mere 

 animal-manufacturing piece of clock-work, which bears the 

 name of natural law,* furnishes us with a remarkable in- 

 stance. 



* We are supplied with a curious example of that ever-returning cycle 

 of speculation in which the human mind operates, by not only the intro- 

 duction of the principle of Epicurus into the " Vestiges," but also by the 

 unconscious employment of even his very arguments, slightly modified by 

 the floating semi-scientific notions of the time. The following pas- 

 sages, taken, the one from the modern work, the other from Fenelon's 



