attacked by Leibnitz 'as subversive of natural, and inferentially of
revealed, religion.' A celebrated author and divine has written to me that
he 'has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of
the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of
self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He
required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action
of His laws.'" On page 428, he speaks of the laws which God has impressed
on matter; and at the end of his work, on page 429, he says: "There is
grandeur in this {218} view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one." In his
"Descent of Man," he also protests against the reproach that his views are
irreligious, and says: "The birth both of the species and of the individual
are equally parts of that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse
to accept as the result of blind chance." In treating of the question as to
the development of the moral instincts, he says: "If he [man] breaks
through the fixed habits of his life, he will assuredly feel
dissatisfaction. He must likewise avoid the reprobation of _the one_ God or
gods in whom, _according to his knowledge_ or superstition, he may
believe." And furthermore he remarks: "The question whether there exists a
Creator and Ruler of the Universe, has been answered in the affirmative by
some of the highest intellects that have ever existed."

It is true, all these expressions about religion are very general; but
since in his works we do not find any utterance contrary to them and
hostile to religion, we have a right to rank the celebrated originator of
the whole agitation among those naturalists who are conscious of the limits
of the realms of the natural and the religious, and are convinced of the
possibility of a harmony between the two. For his casual utterances against
a "creation" of single species always combine with the word creation the
idea of that direct creation out of nothing, without intervening agencies,
which is entirely correct for the idea of the first, origin of the
universe, but which for the origin of the single formations within the
universe is neither asked for by the religious view of the world, nor
established by the Holy {219} Scriptures, nor by a cautiously reasoning
theology, although it very often controls the conceptions of naturalists as
well as of theolog