the fact, that we really know
nothing about the matter? A phenomenon is explained when it is shown
to be a case of some general law of Nature; but the supernatural
interposition of the Creator can, by the nature of the case, exemplify
no law, and if species have really arisen in this way, it is absurd to
attempt to discuss their origin.

Or, lastly, let us ask ourselves whether any amount of evidence which
the nature of our faculties permits us to attain, can justify us in
asserting that any phenomenon is out of the reach of natural causation.
To this end it is obviously necessary that we should know all the
consequences to which all possible combinations, continued through
unlimited time, can give rise. If we knew these, and found none
competent to originate species, we should have good ground for denying
their origin by natural causation. Till we know them, any hypothesis is
better than one which involves us in such miserable presumption.

But the hypothesis of special creation is not only a mere specious
mask for our ignorance; its existence in Biology marks the youth and
imperfection of the science. For what is the history of every science
but the history of the elimination of the notion of creative, or other
interferences, with the natural order of the phenomena which are the
subject-matter of that science? When Astronomy was young "the morning
stars sang together for joy," and the planets were guided in their
courses by celestial hands. Now, the harmony of the stars has resolved
itself into gravitation according to the inverse squares of the
distances, and the orbits of the planets are deducible from the laws
of the forces which allow a schoolboy's stone to break a window. The
lightning was the angel of the Lord; but it has pleased Providence, in
these modern times, that science should make it the humble messenger of
man, and we know that every flash that shimmers about the horizon on a
summer's evening is determined by ascertainable conditions, and that
its direction and brightness might, if our knowledge of these were great
enough, have been calculated.

The solvency of great mercantile companies rests on the validity of the
laws which have been ascertained to govern the seeming irregularity
of that human life which the moralist bewails as the most uncertain of
things; plague, pestilence, and famine are admitted, by all but fools,
to be the natural result of causes for the most part fully within
human contro