EE VIEWS. 



465 



really sliells, and bones, and plants, or whether they were plastic forms, 

 modelled in the dark recesses of the ground. Even now a-days some literary 

 adventurers and crack-braiued sages — and we are sorry to say, some men, too, 

 of better note but mistaken views — now and then attempt to palm off this 

 long ago exploded whim under a specious guise upon an iutelligent world. 

 The danger from such productions is small, and few indeed of those worth caring 

 for would think a fossil bone or shell aught else than the treasured fragment 

 of some ancient living being. 



More dangerous, however, are the wHful pervertors wh.o argue with a 

 specious show of knowledge ; and such detractors Darwin's theory, like every 

 other, is sure to bring forward against itself. " Species have been constant," 

 says one, " ever since they first existed ; change the conditions, and the old 

 species would disappear. New species would come in and flourish. But how ? 

 by what causation ? By creation. What is meant by creation ? The opera- 

 tion of a power quite beyond the power of a pigeon-fancier, a cross-breeder, or 

 a hybridizer, in which one can believe by the legitimate conclusion of sound 

 reason drawn from the laws and harmonies of nature, and, believing, can have 

 no difficulty in the repetition of new species." 



Dickens, in one of his novels, very shrewdly remarks tbat the advice given to 

 street-boys about to fight " to go in and win" is very excellent if they only 

 knew how to follow it ; and when one naturally asks how new species which 

 geology shows us appearing from time to time first began, the answer, by crea- 

 tion is as easy to give and about as useless as the advice offered to the street- 

 boys. It is, after aU, a mere assertion, an evasion of the question, a cloak for 

 ignorance. We see different races from time to time leaving their relics en- 

 tombed in the solid rocks of the earth, we see the remaius, however, only of 

 the perished race ; we have no proof, no trace, no evidence whatever in those 

 great entombments of the origin or first appearance of the progenitors of those 

 races. Those races might have sprung from single paii's, or the primitive indi- 

 viduals might have been created m hundreds. Eew, we think, would iucline to 

 the opinion of the dii'ect creation of hundreds of the like animals or plants at 

 one time ; but if, on the other hand, we incline to the direct creation of a single 

 pair, we must admit that that pair must have been created ages before its race 

 could be useful or necessary on the face of the eartli ; must have been created 

 in fact in advance of those changes of physical conditions of our planet, which 

 all admit to have been brought about in the lapse of time by natural operations, 

 in order to provide for the necessary propagation of their descendants in sufii- 

 cient numbers at the period when they should usefully abound. We should 

 incline to think that a theory whicb proposed to view the development of the 

 required races or species as concurrent with the physical changes rendering 

 necessary their presence, — and as consequently necessarily developed by natural 

 laws, like we see everywhere else around us so wisely and immutably pre- 

 ordained, apparently from the beginning of aU things, by the Almighty Designer, 

 — would be preferable to the idea of direct creations, and affording a more 

 reasonable reply than the mere assertions of th.e miraculous agency with which, 

 our query is so commonly met. 



But " the assumption of the direct creation of species is an hypothesis," says 

 another, " which does not suspend or interrupt any establisbed law of nature. 

 It does not suppose the introduction of new phenomena unaccounted for by 

 the operation of any known law ; and it appears to be a power above established 

 laws, and yet acting in conformity with them." It may be due to the astute- 

 ness of our intellect, but we cannot see how a power can be above and not be 

 necessarily antagonistic to established laws, and consequently how it can be 

 possible for such a power to be in conformity with such established laws. 



"The pretended physic and philosophy of modern days," says a third, 



VOL. HI. 8 N 



