tissues,” and this when the results are seen to be strictly connected and systematic, we cannot wonder that such interventions should at length be considered, not as interpositions or interferences, but rather—­to use the reviewer’s own language—­as “exertions so frequent and beneficent that we come to regard them as the ordinary action of Him who laid the foundation of the earth, and without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground."[III-14] 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."[III-15] 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.  And so, concludes the North American reviewer, “a proper view of the nature of causation places the vital doctrine of the being and the providence of a God on ground that can never be shaken."[III-16] A worthy conclusion, and a sufficient answer to the denunciations and arguments of the rest of the article, so far as philosophy and natural theology are concerned.  If a writer must needs use his own favorite dogma as a weapon with which to give coup de grace to a pernicious theory, he should be careful to seize his edge-tool by the handle, and not by the blade.

We can barely glance at a subsidiary philosophical objection of the North American reviewer, which the Examiner also raises, though less explicitly.  Like all geologists, Mr. Darwin draws upon time in the most unlimited manner.  He is not peculiar in this regard.  Mr. Agassiz tells us that the conviction is “now universal, among well-informed naturalists, that this globe has been in existence for innumerable ages, and that the length of time elapsed since it first became inhabited cannot be counted in years;” Pictet, that the imagination refuses to calculate the immense number of years and of ages during which the faunas of thirty or more epochs have succeeded one another, and developed their long succession of generations.  Now, the reviewer declares that