The 'Vestiges of Creation' may be succinctly described as Lamarck and water, the watery element being due in part to the unnecessary obtrusion (_more Scotico_) of a metaphysical and theological principle into the physical universe. Chambers himself, in his latest edition (before the book was finally killed by the advent of Darwinism), thus briefly describes his main concepts: 'The several series of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, under the providence of God, the results, _first_, of an impulse which has been imparted to the forms of life, advancing them, in definite times, by generation, through grades of organisation, terminating in the highest dicotyledons and vertebrata, these grades being few in number, and generally marked by intervals of organic character, which we find to be a practical difficulty in ascertaining affinities; _second_, of another impulse connected with the vital forces, tending, in the course of generations, to modify organic structures in accordance with external circumstances, as food, the nature of the habitat, and the meteoric agencies.' Now it is clear at once that these two supposed 'impulses' are really quite miraculous in their essence. They do not help us at all to a distinct physical and realisable conception of any natural agency whereby species became differentiated one from the other. They lay the whole burden of species-making upon a single primordial supernatural impetus, imparted to the first living germ by the will of the Creator, and acting ever since continuously it is true, but none the less miraculously for all that. For many creations Chambers substitutes one single long creative nisus: where Darwin saw natural selection, his Scotch predecessor saw a _deus ex machina_, helping on the course of organic development by a constant but unseen interference from above. He supposed evolution to be predetermined by some intrinsic and externally implanted proclivity. In short, Chambers's theory is Lamarck's theologised, and spoilt in the process.