270 NATURAL HISTORY. 



relates only to the mode in which the Deity has been 

 pleased to manifest his power in the external world. It 

 leaves the absolute fact of his authorship of and supremacy 

 over nature precisely where it was ; only telling us that, 

 instead of dealing with the natural world as a human 

 being traffics with his own affairs, adjusting each circum- 

 stance to a relation with other circumstances as they 

 emerge, in the mode befitting his finite capacity, the 

 Creator has originally conceived, and since sustained, 

 arrangements fitted to serve in a general sufficiency for all 

 contingencies ; himself, of course, necessarily living in all 

 such arrangements, as the only means by which they 

 could be, even for a moment, upheld. Were the question 

 to be settled upon a consideration of the respective moral 

 merits of the two theories, I would say that the latter is 

 greatly the preferable, as it implies a far grander view of 

 the divine power and dignity than the other.' 



So much for the supposed 'irreligious' tendencies of 

 the ' Vestiges'! The question, after all, is, however, a 

 purely scientific one, and must be settled by scientific 

 men, upon scientific evidence, and wholly apart from its 

 supposed bearings upon theological problems. From this 

 merely scientific point of view, it may be said that the 

 principal merit of the ' Vestiges ' lay in the vigorous and 

 successful attack which it made upon the doctrine of the 

 1 special creation ' of species. 



When we turn, on the other hand, to the constructive 

 side of the 'Vestiges/ we meet with few propositions 

 peculiar to its author which would find an assured place 

 among the generally accepted doctrines of modern zoology. 

 It is, however, unnecessary to enter here into any further 



