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THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
bat little surprise, — but they are also, it 
seems to me, rather one-sided. His 
argument, as I understand it, is this: 
there is in all Nature a tendency to vary, 
of the limits of which we know nothing, 
and of its causes very little; and varia- 
tion of all kinds has a tendency to be 
hereditary: there is also a tendency to 
inordinate increase, which is constantly 
kept in check by forces of which we are, 
for the most part, profoundly ignorant: 
the result of these two tendencies is to 
render permanent and to increase any 
variation that may be of advantage to 
the variety; thus giving rise to per- 
manent varieties, species, geneia, 
classes. 
The most direct way in which an 
argument like this may be met is by 
disproving one or more of the premises; 
of this I have not met with an example ; 
it is true that Mr. Bree says that a really 
good naturalist will always detect the 
species in the variety, and if this were 
so it would well nigh close the question, 
for it would go far to prove as many 
limits to the possibility of variation as 
there are species; but he gives no proof, 
and what his authority for making such 
an assertion can be I am at a loss to 
imagine: my own impression is that in 
the whole range of Natural History there 
are not two authors on any subject who 
are agreed with regard to varieties, spe- 
cies and genera, unless they have studied 
together, or copied the one from the 
other. And yet it seems to me that 
there are at least two breaks in the line 
of argument — two limits to the possibility 
of modification ; these are the distinction 
between plants and animals, and between 
animals and man : in animals we find a 
power which we call memory, the ground- 
work of all mental operations, and of 
which there is not the slightest trace in 
the vegetable* world ; and in man we 
find a power of abstraction, a power of 
conceiving and of setting before himself 
something higher than what is supplied 
by his memory ; this is the source of all 
science and of all religion, and of it we 
find absolutely nothing elsewhere. 
Another mode oflreaiing the argument 
is by showing that it goes loo far, and 
proves something which we know to be 
false on other grounds : this is a most 
difficult and dangerous one, as we may 
see from the manner in which it has 
been used by Mr. Bree. He argues that 
if Mr. Darwin’s theory be true £it de- 
molishes the groundwork of our faith in 
a Great First and Final Cause, and 
proves all the beautiful instances of har- 
mony, adaptation and design that we 
fancy we see around us to be but a 
dream. Now this I entirely dissent from ; 
it seems to me a deduction of the old, 
yet never-dying error that a law is a 
something, an entity, a force having an 
existence of its own, and acting by its 
own inherent power ; whereas a law is 
merely a constant mode of action adopted 
by a being ; a law without a lawgiver to 
originate it, and a law-enforcer to give it 
permanence, is an impossibility — an ab- 
surdity ; and if there be in Nature, as 
Mr Darwin asserts, a law of indefinite 
variation, capable of producing all the 
forms of life we see around us, the 
existence of a Creator and of an ever- 
present Governor of the world is left un- 
touched : each species is as truly and 
undeniably his work, whether produced 
at once by bis fiat, or gradually by his 
law — the adaptation of each to the cir- 
cumstances of its existence as truly a 
proof of His forethought when brought 
about by a multitude of smaller changes 
as when formed at once: the two lines 
of argument have nothing whatever in 
