We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this controversy of "Law _versus_ Miracle," a good illustration of the tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask one of our leading geologists or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. Either he rejects the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague nonnatural sense. Yet one part of it he unconsciously adopts; and that, too, literally. For whence has he got this notion of "special creations," which he thinks so reasonable, and fights for so vigorously? Evidently he can trace it back to no other source than this myth which he repudiates. He has not a single fact in nature to cite in proof of it; nor is he prepared with any chain of reasoning by which it may be established. Catechize him, and he will be forced to confess that the notion was put into his mind in childhood as part of a story which he now thinks absurd. And why, after rejecting all the rest of the story, he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it, as though he had received it on valid authority, he would be puzzled to say. FOOTNOTE: [Footnote 1: Carpenter, _Principles of Comparative Physiology_, p. 474.] PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE. [_First published in_ The Westminster Review _for April,_ 1857. _Though the ideas and illustrations contained in this essay were eventually incorporated in_ First Principles, _yet I think it well here to reproduce it as exhibiting the form under which the General Doctrine of Evolution made its first appearance._]