accepted as his own doctrine. If both are
pure hypotheses, it is hardly fair or satisfactory to extinguish the
one by the other. If there is no real contradiction between them,
there is no use in making the attempt.

As to the dilemma propounded, suppose we try it upon that category of
thought which we call _chair_. This is a genus, comprising the common
chair, (_Sella vulgaris_,) the arm or easy chair, (_S. cathedra_,) the
rocking chair, (_S. oscillans_,) widely distributed in the United
States, and some others,--each of which has _sported_, as the
gardeners say, into many varieties. But now, as the genus and the
_species_ have no material existence, how can they vary? If
individuals alone exist, how can the differences which may be observed
among them prove the variability of the species? To which we reply by
asking, Which does the question refer to, the category of thought, or
the individual embodiment? If the former, then we would remark that
our categories of thought vary from time to time in the readiest
manner. And, although the Divine thoughts are eternal, yet they are
manifested in time and succession, and by their manifestation only can
we know them, how imperfectly! Allowing that what has no material
existence can have had no material connection and no material
variation, we should yet infer that what had intellectual existence
and connection might have intellectual variation; and, turning to the
individuals which represent the species, we do not see how all this
shows that they may not vary. Observation shows us that they do.
Wherefore, taught by fact that successive individuals do vary, we
safely infer that the idea or intention must have varied, and that
this variation of the individual representatives proves the
variability of the species, whether subjectively or objectively
regarded.

Each species or sort of chair, as we have said, has its varieties, and
one species shades off by gradations into another. And--note it
well--these numerous and successively slight variations and
gradations, far from suggesting an accidental origin to chairs and to
their forms, are very proofs of design.

Again, _edifice_ is a generic category of thought. Egyptian, Grecian,
Byzantine, and Gothic buildings are well-marked species, of which each
individual building of the sort is a material embodiment. Now the
question is, whether these categories of thought may not have been
evolved, one from another, in succession, or fr