made to lead to such conclusions. By the side of the bane we have placed the antidote, in the little volume by Professor Whewell, in which, under the title of "Indications of the Creator," he has given extracts from his History and his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, bearing upon such points in theology as the indications of design in the Creator, and of a supernatural origin of the world, and, as connected with this latter point, the consistency of the revealed with the inductive history of the world. The author expresses a hope that it will be some recommendation of these indications of a Creator, that they are the results of researches and reasonings undertaken not with the object of bringing such indications into view, but with that of narrating the history of science, and of analyzing the processes by which the sciences have been formed. Allowing to this remark its due weight, we cannot help regretting, since the publication of these extracts in their present form has evidently been occasioned by the appearance of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," that the author had not embodied the substance of these extracts into a continuous and popular treatise, addressed to the same class of readers as those on whom that work is likely to exercise an injurious influence.

The "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" is without either preface or introduction; but the office of these is performed by a "note conclusory," which announces it to have been written in solitude, almost without the cognizance of a single human being, for the sole purpose of improving the knowledge of mankind, and, through that medium, their happiness. It is described by the author as the first attempt of which he is aware to connect the natural sciences with the history of creation.

"My sincere desire," he says, "has been to give the true history of nature, with as little disturbance as possible to existing beliefs, whether philosophic (the italics are ours) or religious. I have made little reference to any doctrines of the latter kind, which may be thought inconsistent with mine, because to do so would have been to enter upon questions, for the settlement of which our knowledge is not yet ripe. Let the reconciliation of what is true in other systems come in the fulness of calm and careful inquiry. I cannot but here remind the reader of what Dr. Wiseman has shown in his lectures, how different new philosophic doctrines are apt to appear after we have become familiar with them. Geology at first seems inconsistent with the authority of the Mosaic record. A storm of unreasoning indignation arises against its teachers. In time its truths, being quite irresistible, are admitted, and mankind continue to regard the Scriptures with the same reverence as before. So also with several other sciences. Now the only objection that can be made, on such grounds, to this book, is, that it brings forward some new hypotheses, at first sight, like geology,

not in perfect harmony with that record, and arranges all the rest into a system which partakes of the same character. But may not the sacred text on a liberal interpretation, with the benefit of new light reflected from nature or derived from learning, be shown to be as much in harmony with the novelties of this volume, as it has been with geology and natural philosophy? What is there in the laws of organic creation more startling to the candid theologian than the Copernican system, or the natural formation of strata? And if the whole series of facts be true, why should we shrink from the inferences legitimately flowing from them? Is it not a much wiser course, since reconciliation has come in so many instances, still to hope for it, still to go on with our new truths, trusting that they also will in time be found harmonious with all others? Thus we avoid the damage which the very appearance of opposition to natural truth is calculated to inflict on any system presumed to require such support. Thus we give, as is meet, a respectful reception to what is revealed through the medium of nature, at the same time that we fully reserve our reverence for all that we have been accustomed to hold sacred, not one tittle of which it may ultimately be found necessary to alter."

These being the author's views, we put it to him whether it would not have been a more philosophic, as well as in one seeking the happiness of mankind, a more prudent course, to have first obtained the concurrence of a decided majority of philosophers to his new truths, instead of propounding them in the first instance in a popular form-and this book is addressed, not to men of science, but to the multitude-in order to prepare the public mind for the reception of doctrines which are admitted to disturb existing philosophic, quite as much as existing religious beliefs. He labours to unsettle the minds of the people on religious truths, by doctrines which have at present mere hypotheses for their foundation, lest if hereafter these should be firmly established, religious truth should suffer from having been placed in opposition to them.

The work commences with an outline of the modern discoveries of astronomy respecting the fixed stars, which show that the laws of gravitation are not confined to the bodies of the solar system, but extend to the remotest orbs discernible by man; and then proceeds to detail the speculations-for as yet they deserve no higher name-to which the discovery of nebulous matter, apparently in different stages of condensation, has given rise. In the next section the history of the earth is taken up at that point at which the cultivators of inductive geology are content to commence the investigations of their science, namely, at a period when it existed as a solid globe, surrounded by an atmosphere, and partially covered with water. The organic and inorganic changes which have since taken place

upon its surface are then treated of to the 144th page. Thus far we read with pleasure, occasionally startled by some bold assumptions, and by a few mis-statements of geological facts, which are for the most part clearly and fairly enunciated. At p. 145 the author enters on the consideration of the origin of the animal tribes; and in this section is promulgated the grand new truth, which is to have so important an influence on the happiness of mankind, and which is neither more nor less than this, that they are descended from an ourang outang!

This doctrine has its origin in the dissecting room, and is not the offspring either of astronomy or geology, though both have been pressed into its service, and placed in the front of the battle, and though the facts of the latter science have been perverted to give it countenance. Neither does it possess all the novelty claimed for it, since, as the author admits, something very similar was put forth long ago by Lord Monboddo, and more recently by Lamarck. The former supposed that mankind once had tails, which they had lost, while the author of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," imagines that, in the os coccygis of the human subject, he has found the rudiments of an undeveloped tail. The hypothesis of Lamarck is declared, in the work which asserts the descent of the human race from the quadrumana, to have deservedly incurred much ridicule, although it contained "a glimmer of the truth;" and it is also declared to be so inadequate to account for the rise of the organic kingdom, that it can only be placed with pity among the follies of the wise.

The difference between the hypothesis of Lamarck and that propounded in the work before us, is this. The former surmised, and with much ingenuity attempted to prove, that one being advanced in the course of generations to another, in consequence merely of its experience of wants, calling for the exercise of faculties in a particular direction, by which exercise new developments of organs took place, ending in variations sufficient to constitute new species. This it seems was but a glimmer of the truth-the truth being, that the simplest and most primitive type under a law, a higher generative law, to which that of like production is subordinate, gave birth to the type next above it; that this produced the next higher, and so on to the very highest; "the stages of advance being in all cases only from one species to another, so that the phenomenon has always been of a very simple and modest character."

The hypothesis of Lamarck was decidedly atheistical. The author of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" takes great credit to himself for admitting the intervention of Deity in his

scheme, by considering all the various species supposed to have arisen in this manner to have been conceptions of the Divine mind, and the higher generative law, under which they were produced, to have been the means employed in creating those diversities of organic life, existing and extinct, which now people and at former periods have peopled the earth; and he expatiates at some length on the more dignified and exalted notions which such views convey of the Creator, working by foreseen and contrived laws, than are conveyed by the idea of supernatural intervention every time a new species was introduced into the world. If we feel any thing degrading in the thought, that the inferior animals have been concerned, in any way, in the origin of man, we are offered this consolation: "It has pleased Providence to arrange, that one species should give birth to another, until the second highest gave birth to man, who is the very highest,-be it so,-it is our part to admire and submit." In another part of the work, in treating of the varieties of the human race, he inclines to the opinion, though he considers it still an open question, that they had all a common origin; and he arrives at this conclusion, by tracing upwards the different streams of emigration and language, and finding them all to converge on the southern parts of Asia; on which he remarks, that this was precisely that which his hypothesis would lead us to expect, since that is the region in which the higher orders of quadrumana abound!

This modified doctrine of the transmutation of species is not, however, quite so original as the author imagines; since Geoffroy de Saint Hilaire, led by what Professor Phillips has called a poetical conjecture which cannot be proved, proposed some time ago the speculation, which does not go quite so far as that of our author, that the recent crocodiles are really the offspring of the older forms of crocodilian reptiles, the difference between them being merely the effect of physical conditions, operating, during long geological periods, upon an original race. He had also contended that the sivatherium, an extinct mammal found in the tertiary strata on the flanks of the Himalayan chain, was the primæval type, which time had fined down into the giraffe. "Anatomical proofs," it is remarked by Capt. Cautley and Dr. Falconer, in a paper recently read before the Geological Society," are against this inference; but if a shadow of doubt remained, it must yield to the fact, that in the fauna of the Sewalik hills the sivatherium and the giraffe were contemporaries." More recently, M. Saint Hilaire has published a paper, in which he contends that the human race are an advanced development of Simia troglodytes, or the chimpanasee, and that the negroes are degenerating towards that type again. Whether this notion originated with

him, or with the author of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," we do not pretend to decide. We envy neither of them the merit of it.

The arguments adduced in that work in support of the descent of the higher orders of animals from the lower are the following: The calculating machine of Mr. Babbage produces a series of numbers increasing by unity up to one hundred millions and one, when the law of increase changes, and the five succeeding terms are respectively greater by ten thousand, thirty thousand, sixty thousand, one hundred thousand, and one hundred and fifty thousand, than previous observations would have led us to ex pect; and this is a foreseen consequence of the law under which the machine was constructed. It is therefore argued that similar changes may take place in the machinery of the organic world. During the whole time, it is said, which we call the historic era, the limits of species have been, to ordinary observation, rigidly adhered to. But the historical era is only a small portion of the entire age of the globe; we do not know what may have happened in ages which preceded its commencement, as we do not know what may happen in ages yet in the distant future. All, therefore, that we can properly infer from the apparently invariable production of like by like, is, that such is the ordinary proceeding of nature in the time immediately before our eyes; and this ordinary procedure may be subordinate to a higher law, which only permits it for a time, and, in proper season, interrupts and changes it.

These are the arguments offered in support of the possibility of such changes having taken place. Those by which it is sought to prove that they have happened are the following:

In the reproduction of the higher animals, the new being passes through a variety of stages, in which it successively becomes fishlike and reptile-like; not resembling the adult fish or the adult reptile, but the fish and the reptile at a certain stage of their fœtal progress. To protract the gestation over a small space- and from species to species the space would be small indeed is all that is required to enable one of the lower animals to produce one of the higher. This might be done by the force of certain conditions operating upon the system of the mother. Give good conditions, and the young she produces will advance in development; give bad conditions, and it will recede. Cases of monstrous births in the human species are appealed to, in which the most important organs have been left imperfectly developed; the heart, for instance, having sometimes advanced no further than thethree chambered, or reptile form, while there are instances of that organ being left in the two chambered, or fish-like, form.