WHAT IS DARWimSM? 269 



pressed on matter by the Creator," etc. If that does 

 not refer the efficiency of physical causes to the First 

 Cause, what form of words could do so ? The posi- 

 tive charge appears to be equally gratuitous. In both 

 Dr. Hodge must have overlooked the begiuning as 

 well as the end of the volume which he judges so hard- 

 ly. Just as mathematicians and physicists, in their 

 systems, are wont to postulate the fundamental and 

 undeniable truths they are concerned with, or what 

 they take for such and require to be taken for granted, 

 so Mr. Darwin postulates, upon the first page of his 

 notable work, and in the words of Whewell and Bish- 

 op Butler : 1. The establishment by divine power of 

 general laws, according to which, rather than by insu- 

 lated interpositions in each particular case, events are 

 brought about in the material world ; and 2. That by 

 the word " natural " is meant " stated, fixed, or settled," 

 by this same power, " since what is natural as much 

 requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to ren- 

 der it so — ^i. e., to effect it continually or at stated 

 times — as what is supernatm'al or miraculous does to 

 effect it for once." ^ So when Mr. Darwin makes such 

 large and free use of " natural as antithetical to super- 

 natural" causes, we are left in no doubt as to the ul- 

 timate source which he refers them to. Rather let us 

 say there ought to be no doubt, unless there are other 

 grounds for it to rest upon. 



Such ground there must be, or seem to be, to jus- 

 tify or excuse a veteran divine and scholar like Dr. 

 Hodge in his deduction of pure atheism from a system 



^ These two postulate-mottoes are quoted in full in a previous article, 

 in No. 446 of the Nation (page 259 of the present volume). 



