·

ditions may determine its sudden and definite manifestation, is maintained more strongly than ever by some men of science, and amongst them Dr. Bastian. There is one expression of Mr. Wright's which it will be well to notice; he says: It is not impossible that vital phenomena themselves include orders of forces as distinct as the lowest vital are from chemical phenomena. May not the contrast of merely vital or vegetative phenomena with those of sensibility be of such order?' I notice with pleasure this hopeful expression. It is most true that there are these differences of order, but there is one more yet. The intellectual or rational order is as distinct from the merely sensible as is the sensible from the vegetative, or this last from the chemical. Here we touch the one great and fatal error of so many of our leading naturalists. The confusion of intellect with sensation, of reason with the association of sensible images is, I am persuaded, the fundamental speculative vice of the day. Before concluding this reply there are a few more objections which Mr. Wright does me the honour to make, that must be noticed one after the other.

"I am represented as passing an unfair judgment because I say that, though feeling myself incompetent to verbal critiadvance an opinion as to the correctness of Sir cisms. William Thomson's astronomical calculations, I yet assert 'that the fact that they have not been refuted pleads strongly in their favour, when we consider how much they tell against the theory of Mr. Darwin.' For my part I am unable to see how an incompetence for judging astronomical calculations necessarily carries with it an incompetence for judging of the probability of their truth, resulting from their non-refutation by those whose interest would lead them to refute, and who possess the knowledge and ability to enable them ably to handle the requisite questions and calculations.

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Again, Mr. Wright does not see how, with such uncertain "fortuitous, occasional, and intermitting" elements,' I 'could have succeeded in making any calculations at all.' I venture to think, however, that an inability to determine the

positive time required for the occurrence of certain phenomena in no way involves an inability to fix a minimum period for their development.

"Again, in criticising the use of the words 'contrivance' and purpose,' Mr. Wright tells us, 'the relations of a machine to its uses may be considered in good sound English as contrivances and purposes without thinking of what the inventor intended. Now I deny that we can so speak without implicit reference of the kind, though we need not make direct or explicit reference. We are also told that the proper meaning of the word "intention" is concentration, and the not intending of something else.' I should be glad of some reference to authorities as regards this assertion. As a fact the word is used in the sense I have assigned to it. Finally Mr. Wright gives us the application of these new definitions. He affirms that Mr. Darwin is not irrational in asking whether the Creator intentionally ordered' certain phenomena because we cannot reasonably make use of the term intention' in reference to the Creator at all.

It is evident, however, that in Mr. Darwin's opinion we can speak of Divine intention in some things, otherwise he would not ask whether we could do so or not even in these. It would be quite superfluous for any one who believed we could do so in no case to ask the question with regard to certain special cases. The criticism merely amounts to saying that both Mr. Darwin and I, instead of using the word 'intention,' should employ some other word, possibly ‘advertence.' This leaves the substance of my remarks and my criticism of Mr. Darwin quite unimpaired and in full

force.

Conclusion.

"Thus I venture to urge, in opposition to my critic, that far from misinterpreting Mr. Darwin, I have been enabled to bring out more clearly what are his exact position and teaching now, by defining more exactly what was his original theory of the origin of species.

"Also, that though by no means necessarily involving irreligious or anti-teleological conceptions, there is no slight

danger of the strengthening of these errors by a certain use of the Darwinian theory.

"My little book was directed to two objects-one to show that Natural Selection is not the origin of species; the other, that evolution is perfectly compatible with the strictest Christian orthodoxy: and, in spite of my esteem for Mr. Chauncey Wright, and a careful and respectful consideration of all that he has urged, I cannot at present see my way to retracting or even modifying, in deference to his criticism, even a single passage of my work on 'The Genesis of Species.'"

"Truths vouched for by the intellect as positively necessary truths, compel our acceptance of a First Cause with power, knowledge, wisdom and goodness, and therefore prove the existence of final causes alsothe existence of a personal God being the ultimate lesson taught by Nature, that as to its own cause."

The axiom of

AT the end of the tenth chapter it was said that the task of considering what, if anything, can be learned from Causation. Nature as to its own Causes yet remained. This great question has (unavoidably as it seems) been already incidentally adverted to and briefly noticed, but it is now time to consider it deliberately and expressly.

In the second chapter it was sought to establish the proposition that what the mind positively declares to be absolutely, necessarily, and universally true, is true. One such proposition is that respecting causation, as any one can test by an act of introspection. The proposition referred to, is the axiom that "every new existence and every change must have a cause," and another, equally evident, is that everything must either be absolute or caused.

The natural world displays before our eyes an indefinitely continuous series of phenomenal changes, all of which we know have their appropriate physical causes-causes very generally capable of discovery by the physical sciences. Science reveals to us an apparently endless series beginning. of passed phenomenal changes and indicates an indefinite series to come, but it does not distinctly and unequivocally point to any beginning. It is quite con

Science

points to no

ceivable that the stellar universe may in æons of time unceasingly pulsate alternately to and fro from a condition of scattered suns, planets, and satellites, such as we are fragmentarily acquainted with now, to the condition of an universally diffused nebular mist. It is also conceivable that a similar change may eternally creep over the Cosmos of suns and worlds, so that each part in its turn, but never the whole simultaneously, may undergo such transformation. Reason certainly does not affirm that such changes may not have proceeded in cycles from all eternity, owing to an eternal collocation of causal factors. If such collocation But either to and factors be the absolute, then the universe and First Cause, its cause are one-in a word we have Pantheism.

a Pantheistic

The consideration of Pantheism cannot be entered on here; that Protean form of error, as I believe, requires consideration in a separate work. It may however be at once remarked that, apart from other à priori considerations of reason, by which I believe that it can be adequately refuted, it can be so by the positive declarations of our reason in the matter of morality. Introspection has shown us that there is an absolute distinction between good and evil; but Pantheism necessarily denies that, with every other absolute distinction. Therefore unless the positive declarations of our intellect as to necessary truth deceive us (in which case we are driven into scepticism and can argue no longer, nor even conclude that we cannot conclude), Pantheism must be false.

If we accept the other alternative, if, that is, we say that such collocation and factors are not the absolute, then they, like everything else, must be caused. That they can be really fortuitous, is what no modern philosopher would assert, chance being now everywhere recognised as a mere term denoting our ignorance of causes and conditions.

tinct from the

But if such collocation and factors (which lie as it were at the base of the phenomenal universe) be caused, or one disthey cannot be caused by all that series of phe- universe. nomena of which they are the condition, still less by any part of that series. They must therefore be caused