The unqualified affirmative judgment
rendered by the two Boston reviewers--evidently able and practised
reasoners--"must give us pause." We hesitate to advance our
conclusions in opposition to theirs. But, after full and serious
consideration, we are constrained to say, that, in our opinion, the
adoption of a derivative hypothesis, and of Darwin's particular
hypothesis, if we understand it, would leave the doctrines of final
causes, utility, and special design just where they were before. We do
not pretend that the subject is not environed with difficulties. Every
view is so environed; and every shifting of the view is likely, if it
removes some difficulties, to bring others into prominence. But we
cannot perceive that Darwin's theory brings in any new kind of
scientific difficulty, that is, any with which philosophical
naturalists were not already familiar.
Since natural science deals only with secondary or natural causes, the
scientific terms of a theory of derivation of species--no less than of
a theory of dynamics--must needs be the same to the theist as to the
atheist. The difference appears only when the inquiry is carried up to
the question of primary cause--a question which belongs to philosophy.
Wherefore, Darwin's reticence about efficient cause does not disturb
us. He considers only the scientific questions. As already stated, we
think that a theistic view of Nature is implied in his book, and we
must charitably refrain from suggesting the contrary until the
contrary is logically deduced from his positions.
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