9HMKJM - The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

BAEWm AND HIS REVIEWERS. 161
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 indi-
vidual, no less than the origination of a species, re-
quires 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." ' A wor-
thy 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 edgetool
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
1 North American Review, loc. cit., p. 504.