some which we often hear against the Bible, holding that book
responsible as if it originated certain facts on the shady side of
human nature or the apparently darker lines of Providential dealing,
though the facts are facts of common observation and have to be
confronted upon any theory.

The "North American" reviewer also has a world of his own,--just such
a one as an idealizing philosopher would be apt to devise,--that is,
full of sharp and absolute distinctions: such, for instance, as the
"absolute invariableness of instinct"; an absolute want of
intelligence in any brute animal; and a complete monopoly of instinct
by the brute animals, so that this "instinct is a great matter" for
them only, since it sharply and perfectly distinguishes this portion
of organic Nature from the vegetable kingdom on the one hand and from
man on the other: most convenient views for argumentative purposes,
but we suppose not borne out in fact.

In their scientific objections the two reviewers take somewhat
different lines; but their philosophical and theological arguments
strikingly coincide. They agree in emphatically asserting that
Darwin's hypothesis of the origination of species through variation
and natural selection "repudiates the whole doctrine of final causes,"
and "all indication of design or purpose in the organic world,"--"is
neither more nor less than a formal denial of any agency beyond that
of a blind chance in the developing or perfecting of the organs or
instincts of created beings." "It is in vain that the apologists of
this hypothesis might say that it merely attributes a different mode
and time to the Divine agency,--that all the qualities subsequently
appearing in their descendants must have been implanted, and remained
latent in the original pair." Such a view, the Examiner declares, "is