"Origin of Species," Darwin speaks of the "brilliant and powerful
style" of the "Vestiges," and says that "it did excellent service
in this country in calling attention to the subject, in removing
prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of
analogous views." Darwin's idea of selection as the key to the
history of species does not occur in the "Vestiges," which belongs
to the Lamarckian school of unexamined belief in the hereditary
transmission of the effects of use and disuse.

_I.--The Reign of Universal Law_

The stars are suns, and we can trace amongst them the working of the
laws which govern our sun and his family. In these universal laws we
must perceive intelligence; something of which the laws are but as the
expressions of the will and power. The laws of Nature cannot be regarded
as primary or independent causes of the phenomena of the physical world.
We come, in short, to a Being beyond Nature--its author, its God;
infinite, inconceivable, it may be, and yet one whom these very laws
present to us with attributes showing that our nature is in some way a
faint and far-cast shadow of His, while all the gentlest and the most
beautiful of our emotions lead us to believe that we are as children in
His care and as vessels in His hand. Let it then be understood--and this
for the reader's special attention--that when natural law is spoken of
here, reference is made only to the mode in which the Divine Power is
exercised. It is but another phrase for the action of the ever-present
and sustaining God.

Viewing Nature in this light, the pursuit of science is but the seeking
of a deeper acquaintance with the Infinite. The endeavour to explain any
events in her history, however grand or mysterious these may be, is only
to sit like a child at a mother's knee, and fondly ask of the things
which passed before we were born; and in modesty and reverence we may
even inquire if there be any trace of the origin of that marvellous
arrangement of the universe which is presented to our notice. In this
inquiry we first perceive the universe to consist of a boundless
multitude of bodies with vast empty spaces between. We know of certain
motions among these bodies; of other and grander translations we are
beginning to get some knowledge. Besides this idea of locality and
movement, we have the equally certain one of a former soft and more
diffused state of the materials of these b