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 

 uiimistakeable 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 deHvered 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 DeTelopment.' 

 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 ; hut 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 diiferently from what some prefer to beheve. 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 enjovment 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 be least charitable 



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