the "North American" reviewer fully adopts, the third view, to the
logical extent of maintaining that "_the origin of an individual_, as
well as the origin of a species or a genus, can be explained only by
the _direct_ action of an intelligent creative cause." This is the
line for Mr. Darwin to take; for it at once and completely relieves
his scientific theory from every theological objection which his
reviewers have urged against it.

At present we suspect that our author prefers the first conception,
though he might contend that his hypothesis is compatible with either
of the three. That it is also compatible with an atheistic or
pantheistic conception of the universe is an objection which, being
shared by all physical science, and some ethical or moral, cannot
specially be urged against Darwin's system. As he rejects spontaneous
generation, and admits of intervention at the beginning of organic
life, and probably in more than one instance, he is not wholly
excluded from adopting the middle view, although the interventions he
would allow are few and far back. Yet one interposition admits the
principle as well as more. Interposition presupposes particular
necessity or reason for it, and raises the question, When and how
often it may have been necessary. It would be the natural supposition,
if we had only one set of species to account for, or if the successive
inhabitants of the earth had no other connections or resemblances than
those which adaptation to similar conditions might explain. But if
this explanation of organic Nature requires one to "believe, that, at
innumerable periods in the earth's history, certain elemental atoms
have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues," and when
the results are seen to be all orderly, according to a few types, we
cannot wonder that such interventions should at length be considered,
not as interpositions or interferences, but rather as "exertions so
frequent and beneficent that we come to regard them as the ordinary
action of Him who laid the foundations of the earth, and without whom
not a sparrow falleth to the ground."[7]

What does the difference between Mr. Darwin and his reviewer now
amount to? If we say that according to one view the origination of
species is _natural_, according to the other _miraculous_, Mr. Darwin
agrees that "what is natural as much requires and presupposes an
intelligent mind to render it so,--that is, to effect it continually
or at sta