Note p — Chapter II
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Were Paley now alive, he might plead the example of Mr. Darwin, whose practice it is to speak of any incidental chasm occasioned by the link sometimes missing from his premises, as "not a long step." "Mr. Darwin's argument," says a reviewer of his "Descent of Man," "is a continuous conjugation of the potential mood. It rings the changes on 'can have been,' 'might have been,' 'would have been,' 'should have been,' until it leaps with a wide bound into 'must have been.'" (Times, April 8, 1871.) Any similarity between the reasonings of the Archdeacon and the Naturalist may appear noteworthy. But the coincidence ends here. Paley, though reproved by a Lord Chancellor, had the good fortune to be excused by a Bishop. There is a short account of both censure and defence in the notes to Powell's "Connection of Natural and Divine Truth," pp. 287-9.