much less improbable than before; that such a theory chimes in with the established doctrines of physical science, and is not unlikely to be largely accepted long before it can be proved.  Moreover, the various notions that prevail—­equally among the most and the least religious—­as to the relations between natural agencies or phenomena and efficient cause, are seemingly more crude, obscure, and discordant, than they need be.

It is not surprising that the doctrine of the book should be denounced as atheistical.  What does surprise and concern us is, that it should be so denounced by a scientific man, on the broad assumption that a material connection between the members of a series of organized beings is inconsistent with the idea of their being intellectually connected with one another through the Deity, i.e., as products of one mind, as indicating and realizing a preconceived plan.  An assumption the rebound of which is somewhat fearful to contemplate, but fortunately one which every natural birth protests against.

It would be more correct to say that the theory in itself is perfectly compatible with an atheistic view of the universe.  That is true; but it is equally true of physical theories generally.  Indeed, it is more true of the theory of gravitation, and of the nebular hypothesis, than of the hypothesis in question.  The latter merely takes up a particular, proximate cause, or set of such causes, from which, it is argued, the present diversity of species has or may have contingently resulted.  The author does not say necessarily resulted; that the actual results in mode and measure, and none other, must have taken place.  On the other hand, the theory of gravitation and its extension in the nebular hypothesis assume a universal and ultimate physical cause, from which the effects in Nature must necessarily have resulted.  Now, it is not thought, at least at the present day, that the establishment of the Newtonian theory was a step toward atheism or pantheism.  Yet the great achievement of Newton consisted in proving that certain forces (blind forces, so far as the theory is concerned), acting upon matter in certain directions, must necessarily produce planetary orbits of the exact measure and form in which observation shows them to exist—­a view which is just as consistent with eternal necessity, either in the atheistic or the pantheistic form, as it is with theism.

Nor is the theory of derivation particularly exposed to the charge of the atheism of fortuity; since it undertakes to assign real causes for harmonious and systematic results.  But, of this, a word at the close.