56 DARWIN'IAAU.^ 



form — was tlie attempt to prove that heat, light, elec- 

 tricity, magnetism, and even mechanical power, are 

 variations or transmutations of one force, atheistical 

 in its tendency ? The supj^osed establishment of this 

 view is reckoned as one of the greatest scientific tri- 

 Tunphs of this centmy. 



Perhaps, however, the objection is brought, not so 

 much against the speculation itself, as against the 

 attempt to show how derivation might have been 

 brought about. Then the same objection applies to a 

 recent ingenious h}^3othesis made to account for. the 

 genesis of the chemical elements out of the ethereal 

 medium,^ and to explain their several atomic weights 

 and some other characteristics by their successive com- 

 plexity — hydrogen consisting of so many atoms of ethe- 

 real substance united in a particular order, and so on. 

 The speculation interested the philosophers of the Brit- 

 ish Association, and was thought innocent, but unsup- 

 ported by facts. Sm-ely Mr. Darwin's theory is none 

 the worse, morally, for having some foundation in fact. 



In our opinion, then, it is far easier to vindicate 

 a theistic character for the derivative theory, than to 

 establish the theory itself upon adequate scientific evi- 

 dence. Perhaps scarcely any philosophical objection 

 can be urged against the former to which the nebular 

 hypothesis is not equally exposed. Yet the nebular 

 hypothesis fi.nds general scientific acceptance, and is 

 adopted as the basis of an extended and recondite illus- 

 tration in Mr. Agassiz's great work.^ 



How the author of this book harmonizes his scien- 

 tific theory with his philosophy and theology, he has 



^ " Contributions to Natural History of America," vol. i., pp. 127-131. 



