The author of the “Vestiges” is evidently a practised and tasteful writer, and his work abounds in ingenious combinations of thought; but those powers of abstract reflection on whose vigorous exercise the origination of argument depends, nature seems to have denied him. There are two things in especial which his work wants,—_original observation_ and _abstract thought_,—the power of _seeing_ for himself and of _reasoning_ for himself; and what we find instead is simply a vivid appreciation of the _images_ of things, as these images exist in other minds, and a vigorous perception of the various shades of resemblance which obtain among them. There is a large amount of analogical power exhibited; but that basis of truth which correct observation can alone furnish, and that ability of nicely distinguishing differences by which the faculty of discerning similarity must be forever regulated and governed, are wanting, in what, in a mind of fine general texture and quality, must be regarded as an extraordinary degree. And hence an ingenious but very unsolid work,—full of images transferred, not from the scientific field, but from the field of _scientific mind_, and charged with glittering but vague resemblances, stamped in the mint of fancy; which, were they to be used as mere counters in some light literary game of story-telling or character-sketching, would be in no respect out of place, but which, when passed current as the proper coin of philosophic argument, are really frauds on the popular understanding. There are, however, not a few instances in the “Vestiges” and its “Sequel,” in which that defect of reflective power to which I refer rather enhances than diminishes the difficulty of reply, by presenting to the controversialist mere intangible clouds with which to grapple; that yet, through the existence of a certain superstition in the popular mind, as predisposed to accept as true whatever takes the form of science, as its predecessor the old superstition was inclined a century ago to reject science itself, are at least suited to blind and bewilder. Of this kind of difficulty, the following passage, in which the author of the work cashiers the Creator as such, and substitutes, instead, a mere animal-manufacturing piece of clock-work, which bears the name of natural law,[38] furnishes us with a remarkable instance.