II. I demand also, in opposition to the development hypothesis, the perpetuity of specific characters, from the moment when the respective creatures were called into being, till they cease to be. I assume that each organism which the Creator educed was stamped with an indelible specific character, which made it what it was, and distinguished it from everything else, however near or like. I assume that such character has been, and is, indelible and immutable; that the characters which distinguish species from species now, were as definite at the first instant of their creation as now, and are as distinct now as they were then. If any choose to maintain, as many do, that species were gradually brought to their present maturity from humbler forms,—whether by the force of appetency in individuals, or by progressive development in generations—he is welcome to his hypothesis, but I have nothing to do with it. These pages will not touch him.
I believe, however, there is a large preponderance of the men of science,[52] at least in this country, who will be at one with me here. They acknowledge the almighty fiat of God, as the energy which produced being; and they maintain that the specific character which He then stamped on his organic creation remains unchangeable.
VI.
LAWS.
"——τον τροχον της γενεσεως."—James iii. 6.
The course of nature is a circle. I do not mean the plan of nature; I am not speaking of a circular arrangement of species, genera, families, and classes, as maintained by MacLeay, Swainson, and others. Their theories may be true, or they may be false; I decide nothing concerning them; I am not alluding to any plan of nature, but to its course, cursus,—the way in which it runs on. This is a circle.
Here is in my garden a scarlet runner. It is a slender twining stem some three feet long, beset with leaves, with a growing bud at one end, and with the other inserted in the earth. What was it a month ago? A tiny shoot protruding from between two thick fleshy leaves scarcely raised above the ground. A month before that? The thick fleshy leaves were two oval cotyledons, closely appressed face to face, with the minute plumule between them, the whole enclosed in an unbroken, tightly-fitting, spotted, leathery coat. It was a bean, a seed.
