Review of Darwin on the origin of species : first published in the Christian examiner / by John Amory Lowell.

  • Lowell, John Amory.
Date:
1860
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Review of Darwin on the origin of species : first published in the Christian examiner / by John Amory Lowell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    [2 tion would thus be given to the pretension often advanced by themselves, that old maids live in clover! In the fourth place, we should demur to the word accidental as applied to any object in nature. The very question at issue is prejudged by the use of such a term. We well know that it is often said that chance only means a cause not within our knowledge, And so it sometimes does. If we cast a die, we say that it is a chance which face will turn up. When, how- ever, it is added, that, because God knows it beforehand, what is chance to man is design to God, there is a strange confusion of ideas between God's agency and his foreknowledge. In the matter we are considering, the explanation is certainly irrelevant; for the word is applied, not to anything as judged of by man, but to an act, original or secondary, of creation. That it was so intended is proved by the great care with which Mr. Darwin in many passages eschews—even, we regret to say, sneers at—the idea of any manifestation of design in the material universe:— If green woodpeckers alone had existed, and we did not know that there were many black and pied kinds, I dare say that we should have thought that the green color was a beautiful adaptation to hide this tree-frequenting bird from its enemies.—p. 176. If our reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in nature, this same reason tells us, though we easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owin- to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of°the insect, by tearing out its viscera? p. 180. This is just one of the cases that presents no difficulty to any one who believes that the assailant and the assaulted are alike the objects of God's paternal care, but is quite inexplicable upon the xdea of natural selection. Surely, a bee accidentally