ted 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
s