1859.] SEDGWICK. 249 



of philosophical induction ? As to your grand principle 

 natural selection what is it but a secondary consequence of 

 supposed, or known, primary facts ? Development is a better 

 word, because more close to the cause of the fact ? For you 

 do not deny causation. I call (in the abstract) causation the 

 will of God ; and I can prove that He acts for the good of 

 His creatures. He also acts by laws which we can study 

 and comprehend. Acting by law, and under what is called 

 final causes, comprehends, I think, your whole principle. 

 You write of " natural selection " as if it were done consciously 

 by the selecting agent. 'Tis but a consequence of the pre- 

 supposed development, and the subsequent battle for life. 

 This view of nature you have stated admirably, though 

 admitted by all naturalists and denied by no one of common 

 sense. We all admit development as a fact of history : but 

 how came it about ? Here, in language, and still more in 

 logic, we are point-blank at issue. There is a moral or meta- 

 physical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who 

 denies this is deep in the mire of folly. 'Tis the crown and 

 glory of organic science that it does through final cause, link 

 material and moral ; and yet does not allow us to mingle 

 them in our first conception of laws, and our classification 

 of such laws, whether we consider one side of nature or the 

 other. You have ignored this link ; and, if I do not mistake 

 your meaning, you have done your best in one or two preg- 

 nant cases to break it. Were it possible (which, thank God, it is 

 not) to break it, humanity, in my mind, would suffer a damage 

 that might brutalize it, and sink the human race into a lower 

 grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since 

 its written records tell us of its history. Take the case of the 

 bee-cells. If your development produced the successive 

 modification of the bee and its cells (which no mortal can 

 prove), final cause would stand good as the directing cause 

 under which the successive generations acted and gradually 

 improved. Passages in your book, like that to which I have 



