PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE AYE-AYE. 91 
ages, is not the less clearly recognizable as the act of all-adaptive Mind, because we 
have abandoned the old error of supposing it.to be the result of a primary, direct, and 
sudden act of creational construction. 
So neither would the phenomena of the long succession of organized species justify 
the notion, nor do I believe they would suggest, that they were the result of blind 
chance, if it should be demonstrated that they, too, are the result of secondary 
influences operating through long ages. It may be true that many of the aims of 
derivative tendencies miss their end: but myriads of germs never reach perfection ; and 
the proportion of such short-coming is much greater in the phenomena of human life. 
These serve to exemplify abundantly in how small a degree the doings of the highest 
created agent here square with the ideal of the aim and end of his existence: yet he is not, 
therefore, argued to be a thing of chance. The succession of species by continuously 
operating law is not necessarily a ‘‘ blind operation.” Such law, however dimly discerned 
in the properties and successions of natural objects, intimates, nevertheless, a pre- 
conceived progress. Organisms may be evolved in orderly succession stage after stage, 
towards a foreseen goal; and the broad features of the course may still show the 
unmistakeable impress of divine volition. 
But the conception of the origin of species by a continuously operative secondary 
cause or law is one thing ; the knowledge of the nature and mode of operation of that 
cause is another thing. 
One physiologist may accept, another refute or reject, a transmutational or natural- 
selective hypothesis ; and both may equally hold the idea of the successive coming-in 
of species by law!. 
which was delivered at the Royal Institution in February last, and has since been published, brings all his 
profound scientific knowledge and demonstrative skill in support of what is called the ‘ Theory of Development.’ 
This theory, as our readers may know, assumes that God did not interpose to create one class of creatures after 
another, as a consequence of each geological revolution; but that, through long course of ages, one class of 
creatures was developed from another.’ The writer then quotes from the lecture to show that its author 
“concludes that God has not peopled the globe by successive creations, but by the operation of general laws.” 
(‘ Little Lectures on Great Topics,’ Manchester Spectator, December 8, 1849.) 
The true state of the case is simply this: my assailant has his own notions of the exterminating character 
“of each geological revolution,’ and of the way in which “God, thereupon, interposed to create one class of 
creatures after another.” But there are phenomena which God, in His unsearchable ways, permits to be 
known by His observant instruments; and these phenomena, faithfully interpreted, plainly indicate that He 
has been pleased to operate differently from what some prefer to believe. Thereupon the interpreter is charged 
with “blotting God out of creation.” But in such charge truly lies the impiety. Could the pride of the heart 
be reached whence such imputation came, there would be found, unuttered,—“ Unless every living thing has 
come to be in the way required by my system of theology, Deity shall have no share in its creation.’ 
No relaxation is more agreeable to the inductively drudging mind than an occasional release from the 
trammels of fact, to soar in the regions of conjecture, and indulge in easily feigned creative ways and means. 
Those who yield least to this enjoyment respect most the workers who refrain; whilst he who most hastily 
and clamorously welcomes each new phase of the hypothesis-inventing faculty is apt to bé least charitable 
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