That it is also compatible with an atheistic or
pantheistic conception of the universe is an objection which, being
shared by all physical science, and some ethical or moral, cannot
specially be urged against Darwin's system. As he rejects spontaneous
generation, and admits of intervention at the beginning of organic
life, and probably in more than one instance, he is not wholly
excluded from adopting the middle view, although the interventions he
would allow are few and far back. Yet one interposition admits the
principle as well as more. Interposition presupposes particular
necessity or reason for it, and raises the question, When and how
often it may have been necessary. It would be the natural supposition,
if we had only one set of species to account for, or if the successive
inhabitants of the earth had no other connections or resemblances than
those which adaptation to similar conditions might explain. But if
this explanation of organic Nature requires one to "believe, that, at
innumerable periods in the earth's history, certain elemental atoms
have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues," and when
the results are seen to be all orderly, according to a few types, we
cannot wonder that such interventions should at length be considered,
not as interpositions or interferences, but rather as "exertions so
frequent and beneficent that we come to regard them as the ordinary
action of Him who laid the foundations of the earth, and without whom
not a sparrow falleth to the ground.
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