natural order of the phaenomena which are the subject-matter of that
science? When Astronomy was young "the morning stars sang together for
joy," and the planets were guided in their courses by celestial hands. Now,
the harmony of the stars has resolved itself into gravitation according to
the inverse squares of the distances, and the orbits of the planets are
deducible from the laws of the forces which allow a schoolboy's stone to
break a window. The lightning was the angel of the Lord; but it has pleased
Providence, in these modern times, that science should make it the humble
messenger of man, and we know that every flash that shimmers about the
horizon on a summer's evening is determined by ascertainable conditions,
and that its direction and brightness might, if our knowledge of these were
great enough, have been calculated.

The solvency of great mercantile companies rests on the validity of the
laws which have been ascertained to govern the seeming irregularity of that
human life which the moralist bewails as the most uncertain of things;
plague, pestilence, and famine are admitted, by all but fools, to be the
natural result of causes for the most part fully within human control, and
not the unavoidable tortures inflicted by wrathful Omnipotence upon His
helpless handiwork.

Harmonious order governing eternally continuous progress--the web and woof
of matter and force interweaving by slow degrees, without a broken thread,
that veil which lies between us and the Infinite--that universe which alone
we know or can know; such is the picture which science draws of the world,
and in proportion as any part of that picture is in unison with the rest,
so may we feel sure that it is rightly painted. Shall Biology alone remain
out of harmony with her sister sciences?

Such arguments against the hypothesis of the direct creation of species as