At present we suspect that our author prefers the first conception, though he might contend that his hypothesis is compatible with either of the three.  That it is also compatible with an atheistic or pantheistic conception of the universe is an objection which, being shared by all physical science, and some ethical or moral, cannot specially be urged against Darwin’s system.  As he rejects spontaneous generation, and admits of intervention at the beginning of organic life, and probably in more than one instance, he is not wholly excluded from adopting the middle view, although the interventions he would allow are few and far back.  Yet one interposition admits the principle as well as more.  Interposition presupposes particular necessity or reason for it, and raises the question, When and how often it may have been necessary.  It would be the natural supposition, if we had only one set of species to account for, or if the successive inhabitants of the earth had no other connections or resemblances than those which adaptation to similar conditions might explain.  But if this explanation of organic Nature requires one to “believe, that, at innumerable periods in the earth’s history, certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues,” and when the results are seen to be all orderly, according to a few types, we cannot wonder that such interventions should at length be considered, not as interpositions or interferences, but rather as “exertions so frequent and beneficent that we come to regard them as the ordinary action of Him who laid the foundations of the earth, and without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground."[7]

What does the difference between Mr. Darwin and his reviewer now amount to?  If we say that according to one view the origination of species is natural, according to the other miraculous, Mr. Darwin agrees that “what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent mind to render it so,—­that is, to effect it continually or at stated times,—­as what is supernatural does to effect it for once."[8] He merely inquires into the form of the miracle, may remind us that all recorded miracles (except the primal creation of matter) were transformations or actions in and upon natural things, and will ask how many times and how frequently may the origination of successive species be repeated before the supernatural merges in the natural.

In short, Darwin maintains that the origination of a species, no less than that of an individual, is natural.  The reviewer, that the natural origination of an individual, no less than the origination of a species, requires and presupposes Divine power. A fortiori, then, the origination of a variety requires and presupposes Divine power.  And so between the scientific hypothesis of the one and the philosophical conception of the other no contrariety remains.  “A proper view of the nature of causation.... places the vital doctrine of the being and the providence