2. This same view, with the theory of insulated interpositions, or occasional direct action, engrafted upon it,—the view that events and operations in general go on in virtue simply of forces communicated at the first, but that now and then, and only now and then, the Deity puts his hand directly to the work.
3. The theory of the immediate, orderly, and constant, however infinitely diversified, action of the intelligent efficient Cause.
It must be allowed, that, while the third is preëminently the Christian view, all three are philosophically compatible with design in Nature. The second is probably the popular conception. Perhaps most thoughtful people oscillate from the middle view towards the first or the third,—adopting the first on some occasions, the third on others. Those philosophers who like and expect to settle all mooted questions will take one or the other extreme. The "Examiner" inclines towards, the "North American" reviewer fully adopts, the third view, to the logical extent of maintaining that "the origin of an individual, as well as the origin of a species or a genus, can be explained only by the direct action of an intelligent creative cause." This is the line for Mr. Darwin to take; for it at once and completely relieves his scientific theory from every theological objection which his reviewers have urged against it.
At present we suspect that our author prefers the first conception, though he might contend that his hypothesis is compatible with either of the three. That it is also compatible with an atheistic or pantheistic conception of the universe is an objection which, being shared by all physical science, and some ethical or moral, cannot specially be urged against Darwin's system. As he rejects spontaneous generation, and admits of intervention at the beginning of organic life, and probably in more than one instance, he is not wholly excluded from adopting the middle view, although the interventions he would allow are few and far back. Yet one interposition admits the principle as well as more. Interposition presupposes particular necessity or reason for it, and raises the question, When and how often it may have been necessary. It would be the natural supposition, if we had only one set of species to account for, or if the successive inhabitants of the earth had no other connections or resemblances than those which adaptation to similar conditions might explain. But if this explanation of organic Nature requires one to "believe, that, at innumerable periods in the earth's history, certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues," and when the results are seen to be all orderly, according to a few types, we cannot wonder that such interventions should at length be considered, not as interpositions or interferences, but rather as "exertions so frequent and beneficent that we come to regard them as the ordinary action of Him who laid the foundations of the earth, and without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground."[7]
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."[8] 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. "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."[9] A true and 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 it 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 such indefinite succession of ages is "virtually infinite," "lacks no characteristic of eternity except its name,"—at least, that "the difference between such a conception and that of the strictly infinite, if any, is not appreciable." But infinity belongs to metaphysics. Therefore, he concludes, Darwin supports his theory, not by scientific, but by metaphysical evidence; his theory is "essentially and completely metaphysical in character, resting altogether upon that idea of 'the infinite' which the human mind can neither put aside nor comprehend."[10] And so a theory which will be generally objected to as much too physical is transposed by a single syllogism to metaphysics.
Well, physical geology must go with it: for, even on the soberest view, it demands an indefinitely long time antecedent to the introduction of organic life upon our earth. A fortiori is physical astronomy a branch of metaphysics, demanding, as it does, still larger "instalments of infinity," as the reviewer calls them, both as to time and number. Moreover, far the greater part of physical inquiries now relate to molecular actions, which, a distinguished natural philosopher informs us, "we have to regard as the results of an infinite number of infinitely small material particles, acting on each other at infinitely small distances,"—a triad of infinites,—and so physics becomes the most metaphysical of sciences.
Verily, on this view,
"Thinking is but an idle waste of thought, And nought is everything, and everything is nought."