536 REVIEWS — TYPICAL EORMS AND 



which our authors give of the fact that nature is formed on certain 

 prevailing types or patterns — an explanation which makes the Order 

 of the uni rewe only a peculiar kind of adaptation. And this will shew 

 in what light we must regard a criticism that has been passed upon 

 the work before us in a contemporary review. " There is a difficulty," 

 it has been said, " lying at the very threshold of the discussion, which 

 the learned authors have not troubled themselves to engage with ; 

 viz : How is the existence of these antagonist principles (of order 

 and of special adaptation) compatible with the doctrine of the Divine 

 unity r If one Being is the author of order and law ; diversity and 

 multiplicity must be already given. If He is a designer, contriver, 

 adapter ; a primordial homogeneous material must be coexistent with 

 Him. Is the one God to be identified with the principle of order, or 

 with the principle of variety ? The forces are really antagonistic, void 

 against form, unity against multiplicity, the uniform against the 

 various, the homogeneous against the heterogeneous, and death 

 against life. Neither is victorious over the other. If form issues 

 from void, it sinks back into it ; if variety diversifies the uniform, it 

 is again overcome by it ; if life emerges from death, it is again ab- 

 sorbed into it. The professors have not, as it seems to us, precluded 

 a dualistic doctrine."* Now, upon these apparently profound, but 

 in truth, hazy and somewhat unmeaning sentences, we remark in the 

 first place that order and adaptation are not " antagonistic principles." 

 On the contrary, we believe with Drs. McCosh and Dickie, that the 

 order of nature is adaptation of the highest kind : it is the Creator 

 adapting his works to the capacities of the intelligent beings, by whom 

 they are to be studied. But in the second place, as it is affirmed that 

 the recognition of the principle of adaptation in nature would involve 

 the conclusion that there must have been two independent principia 

 rerum, what ground is there, we ask, for such an assertion ? Not the 

 slightest. We do not mean to attempt proving the Divine unity ; 

 but we deny that there is any thing incompatible with the Divine 

 unity, in the notion that the world exhibits design. Where is there 

 even the semblance of contradiction in our supposing that there is a 

 living G-od, the sole self-existent Being, who created the world, and 

 created it endowed, in its various parts, with those properties, and 

 standing in those mutual relations, which the terms Order and Adapt- 

 ation set forth ? Why, if He be a designer, contriver, adapter — does 

 it follow that a primordial homogeneous material must be coexistent 

 with Him ? When a human workman, indeed, fits together the parts 

 of a watch, he employs his skill upon existing materials ; but we must 



* Westminster Review, April, 1856. 



