506 DOMINION OF MINI) OVER MATTER. CHAP. xxiv. 



a genus, can be exj)lained only by the direct action of the 

 creative cause, may retain their favorite theory compatibly 

 with the doctrine of transmutation. 



Professor Agassiz having observed that, "while human 

 thought is consecutive, divine thought is simultaneous," Dr. 

 Asa Gray has replied that, "if divine thought is simultaneous, 

 we have no right to affirm the same of divine action." 



The whole course of nature may be the material embodi- 

 ment of a preconcerted arrangement; and if the succession 

 of events be exjilained by transmutation, the perj)etual 

 adaptation of the organic world to new conditions leaves the 

 argument in favor of design, and therefore of a designer, 

 as valid as ever; ''for to do any work by an instn.iment must 

 require, and therefore presuppose, the exei'tion rather of 

 more than of less power, than to do it directly."* 



As to the charge of materialism brought ag-aiust all forms 

 of the development theory, Dr. Gray has done well to re- 

 mind us that " of the two great minds of the seventeenth 

 century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as 

 well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, 

 the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of 

 natural religion."f 



It may be said that, so far from having a materialistic 

 tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at succes- 

 sive geological periods of life, — sensation, — instinct, — the 

 intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering on reason, — 

 and, lastly, the improvable reason of Man himself, presents 

 us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind 

 over matter. 



» Asa Gray, ibid. p. 55. f Ibid. p. 31. 



