52 
When we ask for proof, we are referred to Mr. Darwin s 
“ Origin of Species by the Law of Natural Selection. Nowl will 
venture to assert that no one can say, after a careful study o 
Mr. Darwin’s work, that he has even claimed to have mcontro- 
vertibly proved the existence of his law. At the best it is but 
an hypothesis, not an established law. Confessedly the majority 
of known facts in nature are irreconcilable with it. VV hen 
Mr. Darwin is asked for the proofs of the first steps of his 
process of animal improvement and transmutation, he refers 
us to the undiscovered strata of unknown geolopcal penods 
Even then he carries his improved law only up to some thiee 
or four forms of animal and vegetable life as the points from 
whence animated nature has sprung, not m an e “^® ss ’ 
a finite chain of causation. He gives no law for 'the appear- 
ance of vitality amid inorganic life, and shirks the origin 
Darwin wafan^dmher of Mr. Powell, and, doubtless 
would willingly follow him as far as he could in his theoiy ol 
no creation. 8 In the historical sketch prefixed to the third 
edition of his “ Origin of Species, he asserts that the phi- 
losophy of creation has been treated m a masterly manner by 
ZVv. Baden Powell,” and attributes to Mn Powpll the 
anticipation of much of his own theories. , 0 
says, “ can be more striking than the manner in wh 
shows that the introduction of new species is a regular, not a 
casual, phenomenon; or, as Sir John Herschel expresse ^ 
natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process. the ^law 
of endless causation, which, in Mr. Baden Powell s 
to bring about such an entire revolution of opinion, the 
law which is to substitute the self-evolving powers of ^nature 
for the power of an omnipotent Creator,— is no other than the 
“law of the origination of new species by natural causes; 
those natural causes being the destruction of weaker races 
by the stronger in the battle of hfe. Now T P 
has only to be stated in naked terms to carr y ’ with it its own 
manifest contradiction. The destruction of life m the battle 
of life necessarily takes for granted the previous ^tence of 
life. Therefore this law,— even granting it proved, w ^h 
not been — does not carry us back to the self-evolving p 
natu7e e for the first production of life Mr. D™ himself 
would seem to repudiate any such deduction from ^ ^own 
law. “A celebrated author and divine, he states has 
written to me that he has gradually learm, to see that 
just as noble a conception of the Deity to beheve that He 
created a few original forms capable of se ^-development into 
other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh 
