Whatever Mr. Darwin’s philosophy may be, or whether he has any, is a matter of no consequence at all, compared with the important questions, whether a theory to account for the origination and diversification of animal and vegetable forms through the operation of secondary causes does or does not exclude design; and whether the establishment by adequate evidence of Darwin’s particular theory of diversification through variation and natural selection would essentially alter the present scientific and philosophical grounds for theistic views of Nature.  The unqualified affirmative judgment rendered by the two Boston reviewers—­evidently able and practised reasoners—­“must give us pause.”  We hesitate to advance our conclusions in opposition to theirs.  But, after full and serious consideration, we are constrained to say, that, in our opinion, the adoption of a derivative hypothesis, and of Darwin’s particular hypothesis, if we understand it, would leave the doctrines of final causes, utility, and special design just where they were before.  We do not pretend that the subject is not environed with difficulties.  Every view is so environed; and every shifting of the view is likely, if it removes some difficulties, to bring others into prominence.  But we cannot perceive that Darwin’s theory brings in any new kind of scientific difficulty, that is, any with which philosophical naturalists were not already familiar.

Since natural science deals only with secondary or natural causes, the scientific terms of a theory of derivation of species—­no less than of a theory of dynamics—­must needs be the same to the theist as to the atheist.  The difference appears only when the inquiry is carried up to the question of primary cause—­a question which belongs to philosophy.  Wherefore, Darwin’s reticence about efficient cause does not disturb us.  He considers only the scientific questions.  As already stated, we think that a theistic view of Nature is implied in his book, and we must charitably refrain from suggesting the contrary until the contrary is logically deduced from his positions.  If, however, he anywhere maintains that the natural causes through which species are diversified operate without an ordaining and directing intelligence, and that the orderly arrangements and admirable adaptations we see all around us are fortuitous or blind, undesigned results,—­that the eye, though it came to see, was not designed for seeing, nor the hand for handling,—­then, we suppose, he is justly chargeable with denying, and very needlessly denying, all design in organic Nature; otherwise we suppose not.  Why, if Darwin’s well-known passage about the eye[3]—­equivocal or unfortunate though some of the language be—­does not imply ordaining and directing intelligence, then he refutes his own theory as effectually as any of his opponents are likely to do.  He asks,—­