ulous is progressively banished from the field of
explanation by the advance of scientific discovery; and the places where
it is left longest in occupation are those where the natural causes are
most intricate or obscure, and thus present the greatest difficulty to
the advancing explanations of science. Now, in our own day there are but
very few of these strongholds of the miraculous left. Nearly the whole
field of explanation is occupied by naturalism, so that no one ever
thinks of resorting to supernaturalism except in the comparatively few
cases where science has not yet been able to explore the most obscure
regions of causation. One of these cases is the origin of life; and,
until quite recently, another of these cases was the origin of species.
But now that a very reasonable explanation of the origin of species has
been offered by science, it is but in accordance with all previous
historical analogies that many minds should prove themselves unable all
at once to adjust themselves to the new ideas, and thus still linger
about the more venerable ideas of supernaturalism. But we are now in
possession of so many of these historical analogies, that all minds with
any instincts of science in their composition have grown to distrust, on
merely antecedent grounds, any explanation which embodies a miraculous
element. Such minds have grown to regard all these explanations as mere
expressions of our own ignorance of natural causation; or, in other
words, they have come to regard it as an _a priori_ truth that nature is
everywhere uniform in respect of method or causation; that the reign of
law universal; the principle of continuity ubiquitous.

Now, it must be obvious to any mind which has adopted this attitude of
thought, that the scientific theory of natural descent is recommended by
an overwhelming weight of antecedent presumption, as against the
dogmatic theory of supernatural design.

To begin with, we must remember that the fact of evolution--or, which is
the same thing, the fact of continuity in natural causation--has now
been unquestionably proved in so many other and analogous departments of
nature, that to suppose any interruption of this method as between
species and species becomes, on grounds of such analogy alone, well-nigh
incredible. For example, it is now a matter of demonstrated fact that
throughout the range of _inorganic_ nature the principles of evolution
have obtained. It is no longer possible for any on