Review of Darwin’s Theory on the Origin of Species. 181 
hand the theory of gravitation, and its extension in the nebular 
hypothesis, assume a universal and ultimate physical cause, from 
which the effects in nature must necessarily have resulted. Now 
it is not thought, at least at the present day, that the establish- 
ment of the Newtonian theory was a step towards atheism or 
pantheism. Yet the great achievement of Newton consisted in 
proving that certain forces, (blind forces, so far as the theory is 
concerned,) acting upo matter in certain directions, must necessa- 
rly produce planetary orbits of the exact measure and form in 
which observation shows them to exist;—a view which is just 
as consistent with eternal necessity, either in the atheistic or 
the pantheistic form, as it is with theism 
or is the theory of derivation particularly exposed to the 
charge of the atheism of fortuity; since it undertakes to assign 
causes for harmonious and systematic results. But of this, 
word at the close. 
The value of such objections to the theory of derivation may 
y one or two analogous cases. ‘The common scientific 
as well as popular belief is that of the original, independent crea- 
tion of oxygen and hydrogen, iron, gold, and the like. Is the 
speculative opinion, now increasingly held, that some or all of the 
Supposed elementary bodies are derivative or compound, devel- 
a from some preceding forms of matter, irreligious? Were 
old alchemists atheists as well as dreamers in their attempts 
‘otransmute earth into gold? Or, to take an instance from 
force (power),—which stands one step nearer to efficient cause 
than form—-was the attempt to prove that heat, light, electricity, 
magnetism, and even mebahinaien! power are variations or trans- 
Mutations of one force, atheistical in its tendency? The sup- 
Posed establishment of this view is reckoned as one of the great- 
penlifo triumphs of this century. 
‘erhaps, however, the objection is brought, not so much 
Fata € speculation itself, as against the attempt to show how 
ation might have been brought about. Then the same ob- 
Ea applies to a recent ingenious hypothesis made to account 
dun, eenesis of the chemical elements out of the etherial me- 
other = to explain their several atomic weights and some 
itself for the derivative theory, than to establish the theory 
ear adequate scientific evidence. Perhaps scarcely any 
Phical objection can be urged against the former to which 
