Development_ rather
than by _the miracle of Creation_. It proceeds on the assumption, akin
to that of Epicurus, that atoms or monads alone existed in the first
instance; and that from these were derived, under the action of natural
law and by a process of gradual development, all existing substances and
beings, whether organic or inorganic, mineral, vegetable, or animal. "No
organism has been created," says Dr. Oken, "of larger size than an
infusorial point. No organism is, nor ever has one been created, which
is not microscopic. Whatever is larger has not been created, but
developed. Man has not been created, but developed." On this fundamental
assumption the whole theory is based. But we must carefully distinguish
between the Atomic Theory and the application which is here made of it.
The recent discoveries of Chemistry, by which all material compounds
have been decomposed into their constituent elements, amounting to
little more than fifty substances, which are either the primary or the
proximate bases of all existing bodies, and the marvellous
transformations which these elementary principles undergo, in respect
alike of form, of density, of solidity, and of magnitude, under the
action of natural laws,--may serve to make it credible that there is no
_a priori_ impossibility in the assumption on which the Atomic Theory
depends. Had it been the will of God to call into being the various
vegetable and animal races in the way of gradual evolution out of these
primary monads, no enlightened Theist will presume to say that it was
either impossible, or inconsistent with His wisdom to do so. It must be
observed, however, that the natural analogies which have sometimes been
appealed to in support of this hypothesis, labor under a grievous defect
when they are applied to account for the origin of the existing races,
and that they are extended far beyond their legitimate limits when they
are supposed to prove that these races might begin to be without any
direct interposition of creative power. For, while the oak may spring
from an acorn, and the largest animal from a microscopic monad, yet
within the whole range of our experience both in the vegetable and
animal kingdoms, _the seed is produced by the organism_, and necessarily
presupposes it; whence it follows, either that there must have been an
eternal succession of organisms producing seed, and thereby perpetuating
the race, or if this be inconceivable, still more if it can