To accumulate the greatest amount of being upon a given
space, and to provide as much enjoyment of life as can be under the
conditions, seems to be aimed at, and this is effected by
diversification.
Finally, we advise nobody to accept Darwin's, or any other derivative
theory, as true. The time has not come for that, and perhaps never
will. We also advise against a similar credulity on the other side, in
a blind faith that species--that the manifold sorts and forms of
existing animals and vegetables--"have no secondary cause." The
contrary is already not unlikely, and we suppose will hereafter become
more and more probable. But we are confident, that, if a derivative
hypothesis ever is established, it will be so on a solid theistic
ground.
Meanwhile an inevitable and legitimate hypothesis is on trial,--an
hypothesis thus far not untenable,--a trial just now very useful to
science, and, we conclude, not harmful to religion, unless injudicious
assailants temporarily make it so.
One good effect is already manifest: its enabling the advocates of the
hypothesis of a multiplicity of human species to perceive the double
insecurity of their ground. When the races of men are admitted to be
of one species, the corollary, that they are of one origin, may be
expected to follow. Those who allow them to be of one species must
admit an actual diversification into strongly marked and persistent
varieties, and so admit the basis of fact upon which the Darwinian
hypothesis is built; while those, on the other hand, who recognize a
diversity of human species, will hardly be able to maintain that such
species were primordial and supernatural in the common sense of the
word.
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