Prof. Owen on Life and Species. 53 
itself, should be a purpose in creation, it would be absolutely 
fatal to it as a hypothesis 
‘Natural Selection’ sees grandeur in the “ view of life, with 
its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Cre- 
ator into a few forms or intoone :”* ‘ Derivation’ sees, there- 
in, a narrow invocation of a special miracle and an unworthy ° 
limitation of creative power, the grandeur of which is mani- 
fested daily, hourly, in calling into life many forms, by conver- 
sion of physical and chemical into vital modes of force, under x... 
as many diversified conditions of the requisite elements to be ..4 5) 
so combined. 
‘Natural Selection’ leaves the subsequent origin and suc- 
cession of species to the fortuitous concurrence of outward 
and preordained course, due to innate capacity or power of 
change, by which nomogenously-created protozoa have risen fo 
the higher forms of plants and animals. ; 
The hypothesis of ‘ derivation’ rests upon conclusions from 
four great series of inductively established facts, together with : 
a probable result of facts of a fifth class: the hypothesis of 
‘natural selection’ totters on the extension of a conjectural con- 
dition, explanatory of extinction to the origination of species, 
inapplicable in that extension to the majority of organisms, 
_ and not known or observed to apply to the origin of any spe-— 
cie 
§ 427. Epigenesis or Evolution ?—The derivative, origin of 
ecies, then, being at present the most admissible one, and 
result to which the suggested train of thought inevitably leads 
is very analogous in each instance. If to Kosmos or the mun- 
ciple guiding the : : 
The ‘evolutionists’ contended that the new being pre-exis- 
ted in a complete state of formation needing only to be vivi- 
d by impregnation in order to commence the series of ex- 
oeettey or disencasings, culminating in the independent m- 
vidual. Be Bo 
The ‘epigenesists’ held that both the germ and its. subse- 
quent organs were built up of juxtaposed molecules a 3 
* coxmm’’, Ed, 1860, p.490. : PE 
