176 DARWINIANA. 



trial just now very useful to science, and, we conclude, 

 not harmful to religion, unless injudicious assailants 

 temporarily make it so. 



One good effect is already manifest ; its enabling 

 the advocates of the hypothesis of a multiplicity of 

 human species to perceive the double insecurity of their 

 ground. When the races of men are admitted to be of 

 one species^ the corollary, that they are of one origin, 

 may be expected to follow. Those who allow them to 

 be of one species must admit an actual diversification 

 into strongly-marked and persistent varieties, and so 

 admit the basis of fact upon which the Darwinian 

 hypothesis is built ; while those, on the other hand, 

 who recognize several or numerous human species, will 

 hardly be able to maintain that such species were pri- 

 mordial and supernatural in the ordinary sense of 

 the word. 



The English mind is prone to positivism and kin- 

 dred forms of materialistic philosophy, and we must 

 expect the derivative theory to be taken up in that in- 

 terest. "We have no predilection for that school, but 

 the contrary. If we had, we might have looked com- 

 placently upon a line of criticism which would indi- 

 rectly, but effectively, j)lay into the hands of positivists 

 and materialistic atheists generally. The wiser and 

 stronger ground to take is, that the derivative hypothe- 

 sis leaves the argument for design, and therefore for a 

 designer, as valid as it ever was ; that to do any work 

 by an instrument must require, and therefore presup- 

 pose, the exertion rather of more than of less power 

 than to do it directly ; that whoever would be a con- 

 sistent theist should believe that Design in the natural 



