DARWIN AND HIS EEVIEWERS. I55 



ist's view. He believes that the earth's surface has 

 been very gradually prepared for man and the existing 

 animal races, that vegetable matter has through a long 

 series of generations imparted fertility to the soil in 

 order that it may support its present occupants, that 

 even beds of coal have been stored up for man's bene- 

 fit. Yet what is more accidental, and more simply the 

 consequence of physical agencies, than the accumula- 

 tion of vegetable matter in a peat-bog, and its trans- 

 formation into coal ? Is^o scientific person at this day 

 doubts that our solar system is a progressive develop- 

 ment, whether in his conception he begins with molten 

 masses, or aeriform or nebulous masses, or with a fluid 

 revolving mass of vast extent, from which the specific 

 existing worlds have been developed one by one. 

 What theist doubts that the actual results of the de- 

 velopment in the inorganic worlds are not merely 

 compatible with design, but are in the truest sense 

 designed results? Not Mr. Agassiz, certainly, who 

 adopts a remarkable illustration of design directly 

 founded on the nebular hypothesis, drawing from the 

 position and times of the revolution of the world, so 

 originated, "direct evidence that the physical world 

 has been ordained in conformity with laws which ob- 

 tam also among living beings." But the reader of the 

 interesting exposition^ will notice that the designed 

 result has been brought to pass through what, speak- 

 ing after the manner of men, might be called a chapter 

 of accidents. 



A natural corollary of this demonstration would 



» In " Contributions to the Natural History of the United States, " 

 vol. i., pp. 128, 129. 



