chanical cause, he observes (147), 'If the arrangements alluded to could be shown to be the results of still higher mechanical causes, it would but furnish a still higher proof of Intelligence, instead of being antagonistic to it; mechanism is the very exponent of mind,' and yet he objects to any inference of design or purpose-' for the structure of the universe we can infer no final design or purpose whatever, which is perpetual in its adjustments, offering no evidence of beginning or end' (237); though he adds these remarkable words, however, the limited evidence in some of its parts, of adjustment of means to ends, may warrant the conjecture of other higher unknown purposes.'

In the notes appended to "The Order of Nature,' the Professor very plainly takes his place in the School of Transmutation, objecting to the idea of creation,* as derived from religion, and therefore having no place in science.' That all Species were derived from older ones seems to him a necessity by the universal Law of Continuity; and if there is an absence of evidence to prove this by geological records, it is because the evidence has not yet been found (467). This point he takes up with some asperity, calling ita trite objection,' which he thinks he has disposed of ' in some previous publication.

He then quotes Professor Brown of Heidelberg, who

* It has been already shown that Creation is not necessarily connected with any religious idea, and that Lucretius, of all writers most adverse to religious impressions, freely uses the term; take this instance, in which he says that things may be created without the intervention of the Deity:Quas ob res, ubi viderimus nihil posse creari

De nihilo, tum, quod sequimur, jam rectius inde
Perspiciemus; et unde queat res quæque creari,

Et quo quæque modo fiant operâ sine Divûm.—(i. 155.)

Lucretius more than once gives the title of creatrix to Nature :—
Donicùm ad extremum crescendi perfica finem

Omnia perduxit rerum Natura creatrix.-(ii. 1115.)

lays down two laws by which, as he avers, the sequence of organic beings has been regulated.

1. By an independent productive power constantly advancing in an intensive as well as extensive direction or degree.

2. By the nature and change of the outward condition of existence under which the organic beings to be called forth were to live. Both these laws are in the closest connection with each other, although we cannot understand the productive power.*

Here, again, the Transmutationist brings up his system to a blank wall in the labyrinth of error. We have here 'an independent productive power which we cannot understand.' This by the ancients would be termed Nature, or God; and all indeed that we seem to gain by the various teachers of this school is a choice of new words. We say that a supreme Mind, whose actions are inscrutable, performed the acts of creation which we do not even hope to explain; the new school, after preaching against creation, presents us with an independent productive power which they cannot understand,'-' or an abnormal tendency not yet understood.' What have we gained by these new terms ? what has been proved or advanced by them? are not the old words as good? and are they not far more respectable?

There is one peculiarity in Professor Powell's views-that he speaks with a sort of magisterial certainty of our ultimately understanding all these mysteries; that we shall, in

* It is remarkable that though these laws are quoted by Powell with approbation, Brown himself does not seem to have been a Transmutationist, for he distinctly says, ' no experience proves that any one species or genus, or even an order or a class, has really been transformed into another' (465): and for this Professor Powell reproves him, as not having sufficiently considered the subject.

due time, be able to interpret this unknown power; and that, if 'life is unknown, it only remains to be made known.' He seems to think that the day is not far distant when the mysteries of life and generation will be as thoroughly understood as any chemical problem that science has mastered. We shall see some persons, however, will doubt this.

As Professor Powell wisely abstained from entering into any details, contenting himself with advocating the general principle, he has escaped the ridicule which must be the lot of all those who undertake to furnish us with the pedigree of animals, evolving from one another. Thus he is able, not having committed himself, to speak slightingly of Lamarck, and to call the Vestiges of Creation a philosophical romance' (173). An unkind cut at a fellow-labourer and associate in that school of which both are teachers.

Mr Darwin has, in The Historical Sketch of the recent Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species,' which is a sort of preface to his book, given a brief notice of writers whom he considers, either directly or indirectly, as favourable to the theory of Transmutation.

Most of those names have been mentioned in this chapter, but he also reckons as his coadjutor the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, Dean of Manchester, who, in a work on Amaryllidaceæ, 1837, advanced the proposition that botanical species are only a higher and more permanent class of varieties' the precise language used by Mr Darwin. He also believed that the single Species of each animal was created in an originally highly plastic condition (i. e. with capacities for metamorphose), and that these have produced by intercrossing, all our existing Species. This statement we take

from Mr Darwin, having never met with any of the publications of the Reverend Author.

In this Historical Sketch,' Mr Darwin says of the Vestiges: The work, from its powerful and brilliant style, though displaying in the earlier editions little accurate knowledge, and a great want of scientific caution, immediately had a very wide circulation. In my opinion it has done excellent service in calling, in this country, attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for analogous views.'

Thus Mr Darwin considers the author of Vestiges as his pioneer, and the husbandman who has prepared the soil for the Darwinian harvest. But it is open to suspicion, and by some persons asserted that we owe 'The Origin of Species' to the influence which the Vestiges exercised on Mr Darwin's mind and that in the general argument of that publication, Mr Darwin found suggestions for a more perfect system of Transmutation, which it has been his business to elaborate.

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CHAPTER IX.

M. TRÉMAUX'S THEORY.

M. TRÉMAUX, the last who has entered the lists as the champion of Transmutation, has made his appearance even after Mr Darwin. His work 'Origine et Transformations de l'homme et des autres êtres,' was published in 1865.

As his system is carefully considered, and differs, in its main principle, from the other writers of this school, with whom indeed he finds much fault for not having discovered the great secret of the sect, a separate chapter may be assigned to an analysis of his Theory. Unlike his predecessors, who trace the Origin of Life to the waters, M. Trémaux assures us that the soil has created or produced all animals, and has been the cause of their various transmutations. He commences at once with a sentence which enunciates his leading principle:

'La perfection des êtres est ou devient proportionelle au degré d'élaboration du sol sur lequel ils vivent; et, le sol est en général d'autant plus élaboré, qu'il appartient à une formation géologique plus récente' (17).

This is printed in capital letters in the text. This he calls his grand simple law,' though many supplementary clauses are appended to it in the progress of his inquiry. To the action of the soil he adds also, though apparently with reluctance, the difference of temperature of different