9HMKJM - The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 53
take is to make the most of gradation and adherence
to type as suggestive of derivation, and unaccountable
upon any other scientific view— deferring all attempts
to explain how such a metamorphosis was effected,
until naturalists have explained how the tadpole is
metamorphosed into a frog, or one sort of polyp into
another. As to why it is so, the philosophy of effi-
cient cause, and even the whole argument from design,
would stand, upon the admission of such a theory of
derivation, precisely where they
stand without it. At
least there is, or need be, no ground of difference here
between Darwin and Agassiz. The latter will admit,
with Owen and every rnorphologist, that hopeless is
the attempt to explain the
similarity of pattern in
members of the same class by utility or the doctrine
of final causes.
" On the ordinary view of the inde-
pendent creation of each being, we can only say that
so it is, that it has so pleased the Creator to construct
each animal and plant." Mr. Darwin, in proposing a
theory which suggests a how that harmonizes these facts
into a system, we trust implies that all was done wise-
ly, in the largest sense designedly, and gent
by an intelli-
first cause. The contemplation of the subject on
the intellectual side, the amplest exposition of the
unity of plan in creation, considered irrespective of
natural agencies, leads to no other conclusion.
We are thus, at last, brought to the question, "What
would happen if the derivation of species were to be
substantiated, either as a true physical theory, or as a
sufficient ? hypothesis What would come of it ? The
inquiry is a pertinent one, just now. For, of those who
that Darwin has not estab-
agree with us in thinking