ich we now see
producing only such comparatively meagre and insufficient results,
actually caused animalcules to be produced from pure sand, and fishes to
be created out of oysters, and birds to be generated by slimy and
grovelling reptiles, and men to be born from monkeys;--if he should tell
us all this, certainly we could offer no direct confutation of the
wonderful tale. In regard to alleged facts of this character, the wisest
of men are, and always must be, mere children. But it would be monstrous
to say, that this wild assertion derived any support from their admitted
bewilderment and incapacity. This would be to attempt to found knowledge
upon ignorance. The dim analogies resting on questionable facts, the
bold assumptions and slippery arguments on which such daring hypotheses
must be based, can be refuted, for the most part, only by reasoning in
kind,--by arguments nearly as uncertain, it may be, as those which they
are brought to answer. We cannot _prove_ a negative; we can only show
the insufficiency of the ground on which the opposite assumption is made
to rest; and enough is done for this end, when it is made to appear,
that the whole scheme is a _mere_ hypothesis.

We make these general remarks only to relieve some readers of this
volume from the doubt and perplexity which its perusal may have caused,
solely because they were unable to detect any one glaring fallacy or
inconsistency in the writer's theory. It appears plausible enough; for,
though there is very little in its favor, it seems at first sight as if
there was little or nothing to say against it. On closer scrutiny, it
will be found, perhaps, that it is disproved by a multitude of
considerations, any one of which would be fatal to it; as the hypothesis
is of such a character, that, when a single breach is made in it, the
whole edifice must tumble. If the intervention of an extraneous cause be
absolutely necessary at any one stage or process in the creation, it may
as well be admitted in all; the principle must be given up, and the
whole purpose of the theist is answered. We shall endeavour to show that
this hypothetical history of creation is not only faulty in every point,
when viewed from the author's own ground, but, when examined in the
proper direction, is absolutely unintelligible, or is in fact no history
at all.

Let us look first at the nebular hypothesis. Certain spots and tracts in
the heavens, of a whitish color, appearing to the naked