DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS. 149 



we must consider pliilosoptiically untenable. "We must 

 also regard it as highly unwise and dangerous, in the 

 present state and present prospects of physical and 

 physiological science. We should expect the philo- 

 sophical atheist or skeptic to take this ground ; also, 

 until better informed, the unlearned and unphilosoph- 

 ical believer ; but we should think that the thought- 

 ful theistic philosopher would take the other side. 

 JSTot to do so seems to concede that only supernatural 

 events can be shown to be designed, which no theist 

 can admit — seems also to misconceive the scope and 

 meaning of all ordinary arguments for design in Na- 

 ture. This misconception is shared both by the re- 

 viewers and the reviewed. At least, Mr. Darwin uses 

 expressions which imply that the natural forms which 

 surround us, because they have a history or natural 

 sequence, could have been only generally, but not par- 

 ticularly designed — a view at once superficial and con- 

 tradictory ; whereas his true line should be, that his 

 hypothesis concerns the ordei' and not the cause^ the 

 how and not the why of the phenomena, and so leaves 

 the question of design just where it was before. 



To illustrate this from the theist's point of view : 

 Transfer the question for a moment from the origina- 

 tiuii of species to the origination of individuals, which 

 occurs, as we say, naturally. Because natural, that is, 

 " stated, fixed, or settled," is it any the less designed 

 on that account 1 We acknowledge that God is our 

 maker — not merely the originator of the race, but our 

 maker as individuals — and none the less so because it 

 pleased him to make us in the way of ordinary gener- 

 ation. If any of us were born unlike our parents and 



