has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or nat- ural." 1
In " Fraser's Magazine " for June and July, 1860, are two papers on the Darwinian theory, written by WilHam Hopkins, F. R. S. In the number for July it is said, " If we allow full weight to all our author's arguments in his chapter on hybridism, we only arrive at the conclusion that natural selection may possibly have produced changes of organization, which may have superinduced the sterihty of species ; and that, therefore, the above proposition may be true, though not a single positive fact be adduced in proof of it. And it must be recollected that this is no proposition of secondary importance — a mere turret, as it were, in our author's theoretical fabric, — but the chief coi*ner-stone which supports it. We confess that all the respect which we entertain for the author of these views, has inspired us with no corresponding feeling to- wards this may he philosophy, which is content to substitute the merely possible for the probable, and which, ignoring the responsi- bility of any approximation to rigorous demonstration in the establishment of its own theories, complacently assumes tliem to be right till they are rigorously proved to be wrong. When New- ton, in former times, put forth his theory of gravitation he did not call on philosophers to believe it, or else to show that it was wrong, but felt it incumbent on himself to prove that it was right." ^
Mr. Hopkins' review was written before Mr. Darwin had fully expressed his views as to the origin of man. He says, the great difficulty in any theory of development is " the transition in pass- ing up to man from the animals next beneath him, not to man con- sidered merely as a physical organism, but to man as an intellectual and moral being. Lamarck and the author of the ' Vestiges ' have not hesitated to expose themselves to a charge of gross materialism in deriving mind from matter, and in making all its properties and operations depend on our physical organization. .... We believe that man has an immortal soul, and that the beasts of the field have not. If any one deny this, w^e can have no common ground of argument with him. Now we would ask, at what point of his progressive improvement did man acquire this spiritual part of his being, endowed with the awful attribute of
1 Lay Sermons and Reviews, p. 323. It is admitted that varieties innumerable have been produced by natural causes, but Professor Huxley says it has not been proved that any one species has ever been thus formed. A fortiori, therefore, it has not been proved that all genera and species, with all their attributes of instinct and intelligence, have been thus formed.
3 Frazer's Magazine, July, 1860, p. 80.
22 PAET n. ch. l — origin of man.
immortality ? Was it an ' accidental variety,' seized upon by tlie power of ' natural selection,' and made permanent ? Is the step from the finite to the infinite to be regarded as one of the indefi- nitely small steps in man's continuous progress of development, and effected by the operation of ordinary natural causes ? " ^
The point now in hand, however, is that Mr. Darwin's theory is incapable of proof. From the nature of the case, wliat concerns the origin of things cannot be known except by a supernatural revelation. All else must be speculation and conjecture. And no man under the guidance of reason will renounce the teachings of a well-authenticated revelation, in obedience to human specula- tion, however ingenious. The uncertainty attending all pliilosoph- ical or scientific theories as to the origin of things, is sufficiently apparent from their number and inconsistencies. Science as soon as she gets past the actual and the extant, is in the region of spec- ulation, and is merged into philosophy, and is subject to all its hal- lucinations.
Theories of the Universe.
Thus we have, —
1. The purely atheistic theory ; which assumes that matter has existed forever, and that all the universe contains and reveals is due to material forces.
2. The theory which admits the creation of matter, but denies anv further intervention of God in the world, and refers the origin of life to physical causes. This was the doctrine of Lamarck, and of the author of the " Vestiges of Creation," and is the theory to which Professor Huxley, notwithstanding his denial of spontaneous generation in the existing state of things, seems strongly inclined. In his address as President of the British Association for the Pro- motion of Science, delivered in September, 1870, he said: "Look- ing back through the prodigious vista of the past, I find no record of the commencement of life, and therefore I am devoid of any means of forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong foundations. To say, therefore, in the admitted absence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the mode in which the existing forms of life have originated, would be using words in a wrong sense. But expectatidn is permissible, where belief is not ; and if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of genealogically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions,
1 Frazer's Magazine, July, 1860 p. 88.