However that may be, it is undeniable that Mr. Darwin has purposely been silent upon the philosophical and theological applications of his theory.  This reticence, under the circumstances, argues design, and raises inquiry as to the final cause or reason why.  Here, as in higher instances, confident as we are that there is a final cause, we must not be overconfident that we can infer the particular or true one.  Perhaps the author is more familiar with natural-historical than with philosophical inquiries, and, not having decided which particular theory about efficient cause is best founded, he meanwhile argues the scientific questions concerned—­all that relates to secondary causes—­upon purely scientific grounds, as he must do in any case.  Perhaps, confident, as he evidently is, that his view will finally be adopted, he may enjoy a sort of satisfaction in hearing it denounced as sheer atheism by the inconsiderate, and afterward, when it takes its place with the nebular hypothesis and the like, see this judgment reversed, as we suppose it would be in such event.

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