THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 509 



laws, which are in like manner the expression of his Will ? . . . The fact of the 

 cosmical arrangements being an effect of natural law, is a powerful argument 

 for the organic arrangements being so likewise; for how can we suppose that 

 the august Being who brought all these countless worlds into form by the simple 

 establishment of a natural principle flowing from his mind, was to interfere 

 personally whenever a new shell-fish or reptile was to be introduced in one of 

 these worlds ? Surely this idea is too ridiculous to be for a moment entertained. 

 This would certainly be to take a very mean view of the Creative Power — in 

 short to anthropomorphize it. 



In his " Explanations/' 15 1846, he puts the considerations urged by 



Eomanes far more tellingly than Eomanes put them forty years later. 



Chambers wrote : 



The whole question stands thus : For the theory of universal order — that is, 

 order as presiding both in the origin and administration of the world — we have 

 the testimony of a vast number of facts in nature, and this one in addition — 

 that whatever is reft from the domain of ignorance and made undoubted matter 

 of science, forms a new support to the same doctrine. The opposite view, once 

 predominant, has been shrinking for ages into lesser space, and now maintains 

 a footing only in a few departments of nature which happen to be less liable 

 than others to a clear investigation. The chief of these, if not the only one, is 

 the origin of the organic kingdoms. So long as that remains obscure the 

 supernatural will have a certain hold upon enlightened persons. . . . One after 

 another the phenomena of nature, like so many revolted principalities, have 

 fallen under the dominion of order and law; but here is one little province still 

 faithful to the Boeotian government; and as it is nearly the last, no wonder it 

 is so vigorously defended. As in the political world, however, men do not trust 

 in the endurance of a dynasty which is reduced to a single city or nook of its 

 dominions, so we may expect a speedy extinction to a doctrine which has been 

 driven from every portion of nature but one or two limited fields. 



Huxley, it is true, seems in his pre-Darwinian period to have dis- 

 approved of this type of argument ; creation being " perfectly conceiv- 

 able . . . the so-called a priori arguments against the possibility of 

 creative acts " appeared to him " to be devoid of reasonable foundation." 

 This, of course, was a perverse misapprehension of the issue. It was 

 not a question of conceivability, but of the relative probability of the 

 only two available hypotheses. And the first criterion of probability in 

 such a case must be the agreeement of any proposed hypothesis with 

 the general type of hypothetical explanations which the whole previous 

 experience of men of science has found to be capable of fruitful appli- 

 cation, and of the sort of verification which comes through fruitful 

 application. By such a criterion, no hesitation between the two 

 hypotheses was admissible. " Special acts of creative volition " had 

 never been found by science to be a vera causa at all ; the hypothesis was 

 vague, sterile, impossible of verification, contrary to all the principles 

 of method by the use of which the past successes of science had been 

 achieved ; " gradual development through natural descent " was, as a 



"This supplement to the "Vestiges" seems to be little known; it is in 

 many respects superior to the original volume. 



