8. Religious and scientific faith: the case of Charles Darwin
Religious and scientific faith: the case of Charles Darwin
My own scientific career began in the physical sciences and gradually moved towards the life sciences. In the mid 1970s, while I was working on the biophysics of cell membranes in Oxford University’s Department of Biochemistry, it became clear that questions arising from evolutionary biology were becoming of increasing cultural interest. I had read widely in the field as background to my own research project, although at that stage the evolution of biological cells was poorly understood.1 It was obvious that some important potential debates about science and religion lay latent within the research trends of the day.
Two books caused particular interest in the wider philosophical, religious and cultural implications of evolutionary biology around that time. Jacques Monod’s Chance and Necessity (1971) sparked off a small-scale discussion about whether biology was the ultimate foundation of ethics.2 It didn’t really get off the ground in Oxford, partly because of Monod’s ponderous style but mainly because at this time it was seen as overinterpretation of evolutionary biology.
Much more interesting was Richard Dawkins’s Selfish Gene (1976), which was an outstanding example of scientific popularization, given added interest in Oxford circles because of Dawkins’s local connections (at this time he was a lecturer in Oxford’s Department of Zoology).3 Dawkins’s basic idea of the selfish gene – though not without its problems – opened up some fundamental questions that resonated with the cultural mood of the day. This book was widely and respectfully discussed within the Oxford scientific community.
Like many others, I have noticed that much of the discussion of the relation of science and theology within the science and religion community has focused on the physical sciences, particularly cosmology, quantum theory and the theory of relativity.4 Some might reasonably wonder whether the biological sciences have been marginalized in this discussion. In this chapter, I shall try to address this imbalance by considering some aspects of the interplay of science and theology in the thought of Charles Darwin (1809–82), particularly his theory of natural selection.
More specifically, I want to explore a theme that was clearly important to Darwin himself: the role of faith – both in the general sense of fiduciary judgements and in the sense of religious commitment – in relation to the scientific enterprise. Darwin is an excellent case study, partly because of the importance of his ideas but mainly because of his explicit engagement with issues of faith – in both senses of the term – in relation to his own thinking. The best place to begin this discussion is with the development of Darwin’s ideas, starting with the famous voyage of the Beagle.
Darwin’s rival: the theory of William Paley
We cannot really hope to understand the young Darwin without seeing his approach in the context of the ideas of the religious apologist William Paley (1743–1805), best known for his image of God as the watchmaker.5 Paley’s view is essentially that the world was created in a way that displays God’s wisdom in both its design and execution – a notion Paley expresses using the word ‘contrivance’ and illustrates with the famous image of God as the divine watchmaker. For Paley, the analogy of a watch expressed these ideas of both design and skilful fabrication. Perhaps the most significant aspect of Paley’s argument was that the mechanical intricacy and apparent design of the human eye paralleled that of a watch – and thus pointed to someone who had designed and created this remarkable piece of equipment. Darwin believed that his ‘doctrine’ of natural selection offered a more plausible account of things. His concern was not to modify Paley’s theory but to displace it, by showing that his was able to offer a better explanation of the biological data.
Paley’s approach, of course, was not the only rival Darwin had to engage. Recognition of the phenomenon of evolution was integral to the ‘transformist’ theories of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844), Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) and the Comte de Buffon (1707–88). There are good reasons for thinking that Darwin may have encountered these approaches during his period at Edinburgh, mediated through his mentor Robert Edmond Grant (1793–1874) or perhaps through Henry H. Cheek (1807–33), a contemporary of Darwin’s at the university.6
Although Darwin’s name has become virtually synonymous with the theory of evolution by natural selection, a fuller account of the historical development of this theory would have to pay due attention and respect to Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), who is often overlooked or treated as unimportant. It must be recalled that Darwin and Wallace co-presented their theory at the Linnaean Society, London, on 1 July 1858. This paper was published the following month with supporting documents7 but attracted little attention. Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 meant that public discussion of the ideas now focused solely on Darwin, Wallace’s contribution being generally ignored.
Darwin and the logic of discovery
By the 1850s several explanations of the complexity of the biological world had been proposed. How do we decide which explanation is ‘best’? The obvious answer is to compare their capacity to accommodate and colligate observational data. So what were the alternative theories Darwin had to consider? As we have already hinted, there were two significant contenders in circulation in the 1850s:
Darwin’s task was to show that his theory explained the phenomena better than those of Paley or transformists such as Lamarck.
With these issues in mind, let us turn to consider Darwin’s analysis of his scientific observations in On the Origin of Species. Philosophers of science draw an important distinction between a ‘logic of discovery’ and a ‘logic of confirmation’. To simplify what is rather a complex discussion, we might suggest that a logic of discovery is about how someone arrives at a scientific hypothesis, and a logic of confirmation about how that hypothesis is shown to be reliable and realistic.9 Sometimes hypotheses arise from a long period of reflection on observation; sometimes they come about in a flash of inspiration – as in Kekulé’s famous vision of a snake, which led him to propose a cyclical structure for the chemical benzene (see p. 102).
Yet if the logic of discovery can often be more inspirational than rational, the same is clearly not true of the logic of justification. Here any theory or hypothesis – however it is derived – is rigorously and thoroughly checked against what may be observed, to determine the degree of empirical fit between theory and observation. There is no reason to suggest that Darwin’s notion of natural selection came about in such a moment of inspiration, on the Galápagos or anywhere else. His theory began taking shape in 1837 and 1838. In Darwin’s case, the logics of both discovery and justification seem to have been based primarily on extensive reflection on often puzzling observations.10
Darwin’s own account makes it clear that it was later reflection on observations subsequent to the five-year voyage of the Beagle that gave rise to his theory of natural selection. His approach could be described as either inductive or abductive, to use categories we considered in Chapter 6. As Darwin reflected on his own observations arising from his voyage on the Beagle (December 1831 to October 1836), and later supplemented them with those of others, a number of points emerged as of particular significance. None of these could be regarded as ‘proofs’ of natural selection; nevertheless, they possessed a cumulative force in suggesting it was the best explanation of what was actually observed. In a letter praising the perspicuity of the naturalist F. W. Hutton (1836–1905), Darwin singled out this point for special comment.
He is one of the very few who see that the change of species cannot be directly proved, and that the doctrine must sink or swim according as it groups and explains phenomena. It is really curious how few judge it in this way, which is clearly the right way.11
Natural selection was an interpretation of biological history which, in that it lay in the distant past, could not be totally accessible to scientific inquiry. Darwin’s problem was that he had only indirect access to the past and had to infer the best explanation of present indications of that past – such as the fossil record.12
We need to linger over Darwin’s telling phrase, ‘the doctrine must sink or swim according as it groups and explains phenomena’. For Darwin, four phenomena were of especial importance. Could his theory of natural selection ‘group and explain’ them? These four features of the natural world seemed to highlight problems and shortcomings with existing explanations, especially the idea of ‘special creation’ offered by religious apologists such as Paley. While Paley’s theory of special creation offered explanations of these observations, it seemed increasingly cumbersome and forced. There had to be a better explanation, Darwin believed, which was somehow intimated by these four observations:
The point to appreciate here is that a number of explanations could be offered for what Darwin observed in nature. The debate concerned which of these explanations was the best. Now the word ‘best’ is notoriously difficult to define in this context. Do we mean the simplest theory? The most elegant? The most natural? These criteria are not predetermined but emerge during the process of reflection and analysis. Could a single theory be developed that would adequately account for all four of Darwin’s puzzling observations? Or were they essentially unrelated, calling out for separate explanation?
Darwin was quite clear that his theory of natural selection was not the only explanation of the biological data that could be adduced; as we have seen, there were two rivals, one based on a static, the other on a developmental model of the natural world. Nevertheless, Darwin believed he could offer a coherent and comprehensive explanation of the biological observations that possessed greater explanatory power than its rivals, such as the doctrine of independent acts of special creation, as set out in the writings of William Paley. His single theory could, he believed, offer a coherent explanation of what otherwise had to be seen as disconnected and independent observations – such as the four noted above. In the light of his theory, Darwin remarked that ‘light has been shown on several facts, which on the belief of independent acts of creation are utterly obscure’.13
The impossibility of proof: Darwin’s theory of natural selection
Let us pause at this point and consider an aspect of Darwin’s scientific method that is often glossed over. We noted above his insistence that a ‘change of species cannot be directly proved’ (see p. 136). So on what grounds did he commend his theory to the scientific public, when it could not be proved? Darwin was confronted with a series of observations about the natural world, which he had himself extended through his accumulation of observations and specimens on the voyage on the Beagle and subsequently in England. The challenge was to find a theoretical framework that could accommodate these observations as simply, elegantly and persuasively as possible. Darwin’s method is now generally regarded as a textbook case of the method of ‘inference to the best explanation’ that lies at the core of the scientific method.14
Most popular accounts of the scientific method emphasize the importance of prediction. If a theory does not predict, it is not scientific. Yet Darwin was quite clear that his theory did not predict; more than that, it could not predict. That was just the nature of things.15 The nature of the biological phenomena was such that prediction was not possible for Darwin, in that he was obliged to offer an account of what had happened in biological history. This point, of course, led some philosophers of science, most notably Karl Popper, to suggest that Darwin’s theory of natural selection was not really scientific16 – a criticism Popper later wisely retracted.
Yet more recent studies, especially in the philosophy of biology, have raised fundamental questions about whether prediction really is essential to the scientific method. This issue emerged as important in the nineteenth-century debate between William Whewell and John Stuart Mill over the role of induction as a scientific method.17 Whewell emphasized the importance of predictive novelty as a core element of the scientific method; Mill argued that the difference between prediction of novel observations and theoretical accommodation of existing observations was purely psychological and had no ultimate epistemological significance. The debate, of course, continues. In their recent discussion of the issue,18 leading philosophers of biology Christopher Hitchcock and Elliott Sober argue that while prediction can occasionally be superior to accommodation, this is not always the case. Situations can easily be envisaged where accommodation is superior to prediction. Prediction is neither intrinsically nor invariably to be preferred to accommodation. The relevance of this point to the scientific character of Darwin’s approach as portrayed here will be obvious. Yet it also raises some significant doubts about the reliability of popular accounts of the scientific method.
The psychologist William James (1842–1910) argued that human beings need what he termed ‘working hypotheses’ to make sense of our experience of the world. These working hypotheses often lie beyond total proof yet are accepted and acted upon because they are found to offer reliable and satisfying standpoints from which to engage the real world. For James, faith is a particular form of belief that is pervasive in everyday life. He defined faith as follows: ‘Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible.’ This leads him to declare that: ‘Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.’ Although James is sometimes accused of lending intellectual weight to what is merely wishful thinking (a charge, for example, made by the pragmatist philosopher Charles Peirce), James himself did not see things this way. As Gerald E. Myers observed in his study of James: ‘He always advocated a faith sensitive to reason, experimental in nature, and therefore susceptible to revision.’19 Indeed, since he emphasized the status of faith as a ‘working hypothesis’, James rejected the very notion of dogmatic faith as essentially a contradiction in terms.
James’s emphasis on the importance of such working hypotheses finds ample exemplification in On the Origin of Species. Darwin’s theory had many weaknesses and loose ends. Nevertheless, he was convinced that these were difficulties that could be tolerated on account of the clear explanatory superiority of his approach. His working hypothesis, he believed, was sufficiently robust to resist the many difficulties that it faced. So what difficulties are we talking about?
Darwin’s faith in his theory: his response to criticisms
On the Origin of Species went through six editions, and Darwin worked continually to improve his text, adding new material, amending old and, above all, responding to criticisms in what can only be described as a remarkably open manner. Those who concern themselves with such details have shown that of the 4,000 sentences in the first edition, Darwin had rewritten three in four by the time of the sixth and final edition of 1872. Interestingly, some 60 per cent of these modifications took place in the last two editions, which introduced some ‘improvements’ that now seem unwise – for example, his incorporation of Herbert Spencer’s potentially misleading phrase, ‘the survival of the fittest’.20
The reception of a scientific theory is a communal affair in which a tipping point is gradually reached through a process of debate and reflection, often linked with additional research programmes. The contents of the six editions of On the Origin of Species make it clear that Darwin’s new theory faced considerable opposition on many fronts. There is no doubt – for the historical evidence is clear – that some traditional Christian thinkers saw it as a threat to the way they had interpreted their faith. Yet there can also be no doubt – for the historical evidence is equally clear – that other Christians saw Darwin’s theory as offering new ways of understanding and parsing traditional Christian ideas.21
More importantly, however, if the successive editions of On the Origin of Species are anything to go by, Darwin’s theory provoked far greater scientific controversy, many scientists of his day raising concerns about the scientific foundations of ‘natural selection’. Indeed, Darwin’s theory appears to have met more sustained opposition from the scientific community than from the religious, especially on account of its failure to offer a convincing account of how innovations were transmitted to future generations. Yet historians of science would suggest that this is the norm, not the exception, in scientific advance. Criticism of a theory is the means by which – to use a Darwinian way of speaking – we discover whether it has survival potential.
A good example of such scientific criticism is found in the concerns of Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85) about ‘blending inheritance’.22 Jenkin was a Scottish engineer, heavily involved in the business of developing underwater telephone cables, who became the first Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh in 1868. He identified what he believed to be a potentially fatal flaw in Darwin’s theory. Jenkin pointed out that on the basis of existing understandings of hereditary transmission, any novelties would be diluted in subsequent generations. Yet Darwin’s theory depended on the transmission, not dilution, of such characteristics. In other words, Darwin’s theory lacked a viable understanding of genetics.23 Darwin responded to Jenkin in the fifth edition. The reply is generally thought to be weak and unsatisfactory. But how could it be otherwise? Darwin did not have an answer, because the science of his day had not developed one – or at least one that Darwin knew about.
The answer, of course, lay in the writings of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel (1822–84). Yet while Mendel certainly knew about Darwin, Darwin does not appear to have known about Mendel’s three principles of inheritance describing the transmission of genetic traits. Mendel possessed a copy of the German translation of the third edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and marked the following passage with double lines in the margin, indicating its importance. In Darwin’s original English, this reads: ‘The slight degree of variability in hybrids from the first cross or in the first generation, in contrast with their extreme variability in the succeeding generations, is a curious fact and deserves attention.’24
This observation would not remain mysterious for much longer, and Mendel might well have taken some pleasure from the thought that his theory was able to explain this ‘curious’ fact.25 Yet the ‘neo-Darwinian synthesis’ of Mendel’s theory of genetics and Darwin’s theory of natural selection still lay some years in the future.
Another problem was that the earth did not appear to be old enough to allow for the extensive evolutionary developments Darwin’s theory required. As we noted earlier (see pp. 106–7), Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) famously argued that the earth was about 100 million years old. This did not allow a sufficient amount of time for the slow, gradual process of biological evolution Darwin envisaged. Kelvin’s calculations, however, were based on inaccurate assumptions; the earth was much older than he suggested, thus creating chronological space for the slow process of biological development required by Darwin’s approach.
Yet even though Darwin did not believe he had adequately dealt with all the problems that required resolution, he was confident his explanation was the best available. While recognizing that it lacked rigorous proof, he clearly believed his theory could be defended on the basis of criteria of acceptance and justification already widely used in the natural sciences, and that its explanatory capacity was itself a reliable guide to its truth. As Darwin noted, we often find ourselves trusting a way of thinking, believing it to be true but not being able to offer the decisive proof that some – such as William K. Clifford (see p. 98) – seem to think is essential for an opinion to be held with integrity.
Darwin was aware that his scientific explanation lacked the logical rigour of mathematical proofs, and that any theoretical account of what was observed would always be provisional. That is no criticism of Darwin and it is no criticism of science. As I have stressed throughout, that’s just the way things are. I have scientific colleagues who believe passionately in the multiverse and others who believe with equal passion, integrity and intellectual excellence in a single universe. The evidence is not unequivocal and both positions can be maintained. But both, I would suggest, cannot be right. What some scientists today believe to be true will one day be shown to be wrong. But that’s how science develops. And William James’s idea of faith as a working hypothesis fits both the theory and practice of science surprisingly well.
As historians and philosophers of science keep telling us, the positivist notion of science proving its theories stands at some considerable distance from the reality of scientific practice, and certainly does not apply to Darwin’s scientific method. The great theories of classical physics, widely regarded as settled and stable towards the end of Darwin’s life, underwent complete revision in the twentieth century through the rise of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. But nobody is going to stop doing science because our successors may show our present theories to be wrong. In any case, we can at least find some consolation in knowing that future theories tend to incorporate, rather than reject, what is best in older ones.
Darwin, religious faith and science
So what of Darwin’s religious faith? Did his theory of evolution turn him into an atheist crusader against religious belief, as some enthusiastic atheist evangelists seem to think? Sadly, Darwin’s authority and example are continually invoked to justify metaphysical and theological claims that go far beyond anything he himself expressed in, or associated with, his evolutionary biology. Happily, the fundamentally historical question of Darwin’s religious views is relatively easy to answer, thanks to the intensive scholarly study of Darwin and his Victorian context in the past few decades.26 The excellent online Darwin Project has a section that brings together the most important historical evidence in a way that seems to me objective and trustworthy.27 Let me try simply and accurately to summarize this vast body of literature.
First, it seems clear that Darwin’s religious faith changed as he became older. I certainly see a change in its content; and also feel justified in seeing a decline in its fervency. But let me concentrate on the contents of that faith, looking first at Darwin’s religious views as a young man, which appear to have been similar to those set out in Paley’s Natural Theology (1802). Paley’s approach to nature is optimistic and positive. Nature exudes evidence of divine wisdom. So what then of evil? Or suffering? Charles Kingsley certainly held that these could be incorporated within Paley’s approach to natural theology.28 In the 1830s, however, Darwin began to develop doubts.
During his travels on the Beagle he witnessed events that called into question his early belief in divine providence. For example, while in South America Darwin witnessed at first hand the terrible struggle for existence faced by the natives of the Tierra del Fuego; he saw the devastating effects of an earthquake; and he began to grasp the magnitude of the staggering numbers of species that had become extinct – each of which, according to Paley, was providentially created and valued by God. We can see here the beginnings of the erosion of any belief in divine providence that would become characteristic of the later Darwin. The death of his daughter Annie in 1851, at the age of ten, is seen by some biographers as marking a watershed in his religious convictions.29 Yet the historical evidence for this bereavement causing Darwin to abandon any remaining religious faith is weak;30 Darwin’s move away from orthodox Christianity dates from an earlier period.
This brings us to our second point. In his later period, Darwin’s religious beliefs unquestionably veered away from what we might loosely call ‘Christian orthodoxy’. Yet we do not find anything remotely resembling the aggressive and ridiculing form of atheism we unfortunately find in some of those who have presented themselves as Darwin’s champions in more recent times. Many have praised the prescience and cool neutrality of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, noting its Olympian social and political detachment and scrupulous religious neutrality. It is to Darwin’s letters that we must turn for illumination of both the fluctuations of his religious beliefs over time, as well as his reluctance to comment on religious matters, including his own personal beliefs. Yet when the context demanded, he seems to have been willing not merely to go on record concerning the consilience of religious faith and the theory of natural selection, but also to emphasize it.
A representative example can be found in his reference to ‘laws impressed on matter by the Creator’, which is given a higher profile in the second edition than in the first.31 This certainly points to a deistic rather than a Trinitarian God, but there is not even the whiff of a personal atheism here. While some might argue that Darwin may have made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, Darwin did not himself draw that conclusion.
I find it difficult to believe that his references to a creator in On the Origin of Species were simply contrived to sweeten or mislead his audience, as if they were some kind of crude deception aimed at masking a private atheism Darwin feared might discredit his theory in the eyes of the religious public. My own reading of the evidence is that Darwin regarded his religious beliefs as a private matter and was reluctant to talk about them. Yet the needs of the situation regularly obliged him to say something on this matter. The evidence, I believe, points to reluctant, painful and diplomatic self-disclosure of Darwin’s beliefs, not their fabrication or manipulation for tactical purposes.
Yet there is a third point I wish to make, too easily overlooked. It is natural for us to focus on Darwin’s own religious views and their relation to his developing theory of natural selection. But the most important question is this: what did Darwin think orthodox Christians might make of his theories, irrespective of his own religious views? We know the answer to this question, precisely because Darwin recognized it was so important and that it needed proper engagement. He declared that he could see no reason why an orthodox religious believer should experience mental discomfort at his ideas. Even Thomas Huxley, who was inclined to emphasize the anti-religious aspects of Darwin’s thought, was quite clear that ‘the doctrine of Evolution is neither Anti-theistic nor Theistic’.32
Faith, science and God
In this chapter, we have explored Darwin’s scientific belief that his theory of natural selection offered the best explanation of what could be observed in the living natural world, and noted how this belief was sustained in the face of both lack of absolute proof and a series of scientific difficulties that seemed to subvert its explanatory power.
Darwin’s analysis helps us to see that it is simply not true to suggest that science believes only what has been empirically proven. At points, inference is necessary, in which an hypothesis – for example a ‘missing link’ or an unobserved entity such as ‘natural selection’ or ‘dark matter’ – is postulated as the ‘best explanation’ of known facts or established observations. This is an accepted form of scientific reasoning and is not controversial.
Yet it is important to note that the same process can be seen in religious thinking, which also aims to give the best explanation of what it observes. As noted in Chapter 6, William James once pointed out that religious faith is basically ‘faith in the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found and explained’.33 Although some persist in portraying religious belief as irrational, the fact is that its proponents regard it as eminently reasonable. Classical philosophical theism or a natural theology would propose God as the best explanation of the way things are.
Both the natural sciences and religions offer what they believe to be warranted, coherent and reliable explanations of the world. Darwin, as we have seen, believed firmly that the explanatory power of his theory was such that it could coexist with anomalies and potential threats. This is a reminder that both scientific and religious theories find themselves confronted with mysteries, puzzles and anomalies that may give rise to intellectual or existential tensions but do not require their abandonment. In the case of Christianity, I would judge that the greatest such anomaly is the existence of pain and suffering.34 Yet I believe that the theory is big enough ultimately to be able to embrace and accommodate this anomaly, even though at present the manner of its resolution seems less than clear. Neither Darwin’s theory nor Christian theology can really be said to ‘predict’; they do, however, accommodate what is known about the world, even though both experience points of tension.
To bring out the theological importance of this parallel, let us consider two scenarios. As we have seen, Darwin held that the ideas set out in On the Origin of Species offer an excellent and deeply compelling account of the diversity of life forms on the earth. There are many difficulties in its path. How could change be transmitted from one generation to another? Darwin offered an explanation of how different species come into existence. Yet speciation – the formation of a new species by the accumulation of mutations – had never been demonstrated in real life or under laboratory conditions. All the same, Darwin held on to the theory, believing that its explanatory ability and coherence were sufficient to justify it and that the difficulty would one day be resolved.
Consider now the case of a Christian who holds that a theistic world view, especially one that takes full account of the doctrine of the incarnation, offers a compelling and attractive understanding of things. The issue of pain and suffering in the world remains something of a puzzle and at times troubles her considerably. Yet she holds on to her faith, believing that its explanatory ability and coherence are sufficient to justify it and that the difficulty will one day be resolved. In each case, there is a common structure of an explanation with anomalies, which are not regarded as endangering the theory by its proponents but are seen as puzzles that will be resolved at a later stage. Neither theory predicts; both accommodate what can be observed. The example of Darwin illuminates how it is possible to believe in a theory or a way of making sense of things or a working hypothesis that is not finally confirmed and may not ultimately be capable of final confirmation – yet is found to be reliable.
The point here is that a theory of sufficient explanatory power has earned the right to be allowed to coexist with observations that do not accord and may at times even seem in conflict with it. In the end, some theories die because of their incapacity to deal with such anomalies. Darwin knew this; he also believed his theory would be shown capable of coping with them, even if the final vindication of it lay in the future. Surely the same is true for Christianity, which affirms that currently we see things through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13.12) but rejoices that we shall one day see them with the clarity found only within the New Jerusalem.
Let me draw this chapter to a close by citing some words from the first edition of On the Origin of Species that are retained throughout subsequent editions. As Darwin pauses to allow his readers to catch up with him, he lays the groundwork for his argument that his new theory can coexist with anomalies and apparent contradictions. I believe these words apply with equal force to the Christian vision of reality, and to the life of faith.
A crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered; but, to the best of my judgement, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory.35