518 * OEIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOEA ' 
I believe we are all of us entirely at one about miracle, we 
all think variation miracle in the sense you accept (or pro- 
pose), and we none of us think N.S. miracle in that or any other 
sense. I think I told Darwin over and over again that I 
thought his title a mistake and would mislead ; his book by 
no means carries out his title. I think still, however, that you 
mistake his expressions and give an unfair interpretation of 
his expression ' efficient cause.' Most people would say that 
moisture was the efficient cause of luxuriant foliage, without 
atheism being suspected, and in the present condition of 
English thought and language I see no objection whatever 
to the statement ; at the same time, in another higher and 
the only true sense, moisture is not the efficient cause, nor is 
even the property imparted to the plant of being affected 
that way by moisture, but the will, or law, or call it what 
you will, of the supreme Governor of the universe of mind 
and matter. 
I see now that your objections are widely different from 
what I supposed. I think they are peculiar to yourself 
amongst naturalists ; and if you will kindly tell me how far 
you think I am right in my interpretation of your objection, 
i will re-read Darwin with the sole view of seeing how it may 
be remedied. 
I doubt if any book that has discussed such questions is 
free from this real or supposed objection, and of what may 
be made out to be far worse. Throughout A. De Candolle's 
Geog. Bot., Physical causes are treated as efficient causes in 
the same sense ; and I have always been taught to regard 
them as such, hut limited in their actio7i to varieties I a view 
which, if logically carried out, always seemed to me irreligious 
and nonsensical in the abstract. 
I did not, I assure you, interpret the Gooseberry season to 
mean contempt. T wish I could join you, but have examina- 
tions all July and August. 
Geol. Eecord meo sensu =iii 0. I have turned it, heavily 
enough, against Darwin, as you will see. Pray do not accept 
Siluria as the beginning of creation yet. 
Truly no, we are not obliged to accept either view to the 
exclusion of any other, nor do I do so ; I only avow a prefer- 
ence for, not a behef in, Darwin's, and expressly state I am 
ready to lay it down for a better. There is a middle way, 
