The North American reviewer also has a world of his own—­just such a one as an idealizing philosopher would be apt to devise—­that is, full of sharp and absolute distinctions:  such, for instance, as the “absolute invariableness of instinct;” an absolute want of intelligence in any brute animal; and a complete monopoly of instinct by the brute animals, so that this “instinct is a great matter” for them only, since it sharply and perfectly distinguishes this portion of organic Nature from the vegetable kingdom on the one hand and from man on the other:  most convenient views for argumentative purposes, but we suppose not borne out in fact.

In their scientific objections the two reviewers take somewhat different lines; but their philosophical and theological arguments strikingly coincide.  They agree in emphatically asserting that Darwin’s hypothesis of the origination of species through variation and natural selection “repudiates the whole doctrine of final causes,” and “all indication of design or purpose in the organic world . . . is neither more nor less than a formal denial of any agency beyond that of a blind chance in the developing or perfecting of the organs or instincts of created beings. . . . It is in vain that the apologists of this hypothesis might say that it merely attributes a different mode and time to the Divine agency—­that all the qualities subsequently appearing in their descendants must have been implanted, and have remained latent in the original pair.”  Such a view, the Examiner declares, “is nowhere stated in this book, and would be, we are sure, disclaimed by the author.”

We should like to be informed of the grounds of this sureness.  The marked rejection of spontaneous generation—­the statement of a belief that all animals have descended from four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number, or, perhaps, if constrained to it by analogy, “from some one primordial form into which life was first breathed”—­coupled with the expression, “To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes,” than “that each species has been independently created”—­these and similar expressions lead us to suppose that the author probably does accept the kind of view which the Examiner is sure he would disclaim.  At least, we charitably see nothing in his scientific theory to hinder his adoption of Lord Bacon’s “Confession of Faith” in this regard—­ “That, notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating, yet, nevertheless, he doth accomplish and fulfill his divine will in all things, great and small, singular and general, as fully and exactly by providence as he could by miracle and new creation, though his working be not immediate and direct, but by compass; not violating Nature, which is his own law upon the creature.”