His whole
endeavor has been to push the Creator farther and farther back out of
view. The most laborious part of Darwin's attempt at reasoning,--for it
is not true reasoning,--the most laborious part of his logic and
reasoning, is intended to eliminate, as perfectly as any of the
atheistical authors have endeavored to do, the idea of design. Now,
setting revelation aside, the manner in which the unknown author of the
'Vestiges of Creation' treated this subject, satisfactorily showed that
the doctrine of evolution was not in itself an atheistical doctrine, nor
did it deny the existence of design. So far as I could understand and
make out, having carefully read the book at the time it came out and
afterwards, and having carefully analyzed and compared it and Mr.
Darwin's book with each other, so far as I could understand it, the
doctrine of the author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' was simply, that
God created all things, and that when He created matter He impressed on
it certain laws; that matter, being evolved according to those laws,
should produce beings and organs mutually adapted to one another and to
the world; and that every successive development which should be
produced was essentially foreseen, foreknown, and predetermined by the
Deity. His idea, for instance, of the evolution of an eye from a more
simple organ was that the ultimate eye--man's eye, for instance--was to
be a perfect optical instrument, and that its perfection depended on the
previous design by the Creator, that at a certain period it should
appear in a body quite adapted for its purposes.
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