53 
act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His 
laws.” But this subject is so important, and such a use has 
been made of Mr. Darwiffis theory in the endeavour to evade 
the idea that the commencement of life, animal or vegetable, 
must be an act of the Creator, that I may be permitted to 
examine what Mr. Darwin himself puts forth as the limits of 
his own theory. “ These authors,” he says, “seem no more 
startled at a miraculous act of creation than at an ordinary 
birth. But do they really believe that at innumerable periods 
m the earths history certain elemental atoms have been com- 
manded into living tissues ? Do they believe that at each 
supposed act of creation one individual or many were pro- 
duced? Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals 
and plants created as eggs, or seed, or as full grown ? And in 
the case of mammals, were they created bearing the false marks 
of nourishment from the mother's womb ? Undoubtedly these 
same questions cannot be answered by those who, under the 
present state of science, believe in the creation of a few abo- 
riginal forms, or of some one form of life. It has been 
asserted by . several authors that it is as easy to believe 
m tha creation of a hundred million beings as of one: but 
Maupertius's philosophical axiom ' of least action ' leads 
the mind more willingly to admit the smaller number; and 
certainly we ought not to believe that innumerable beings 
within, each great class have been created with plain, but 
deceptive, marks of descent from a single parent. It may be 
asked how far I extend the doctrine of the modification of 
species. The question is difficult to answer, because the more 
distinct the forms are which we may consider, by so much the 
arguments fall away in force. But some arguments of the 
greatest weight extend very far. All the members of whole 
classes can be connected together by chains of affinities, and 
all can be classified on the same principle in groups subordi- 
nate to groups. Dossil remains sometimes tend to fill up very 
wide intervals between existing orders. Organs in a rudimen- 
tary condition plainly show that an early progenitor had the 
organ in a fully developed state ; and this in some instances 
necessarily implies an enormous amount of modification in 
the descendants. Throughout whole classes various struc- 
tures are formed on the same pattern, and at an embryonic 
age the species closely resemble each other. Therefore I 
cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification 
embraces all the members of the same class. I believe 
that animals have descended from at most only four or five 
progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. 
“ Analogy would lead me one step farther, namely, to the 
