Dr. Taylor's reasons for believing that the appearance of fossil
horses with a diminishing number of toes is caused by the creation
at separate periods of a four-, a three-, a two-, and a one-toed
horse are, he says, "personal, philosophical, historical," and he
opposes them with the utmost apparent sincerity to Huxley's
assertion that "there can be no scientific evidence" of such
creation. The "personal reason" for believing in successive
creations of sets of horses with a varying number of toes can,
of course, only be the reason so often urged in ball-room
disputation--that "I _feel_ it must be so;" the "philosophic reason"
can only be the one with which those who have frequented the society
of metaphysicians are very familiar, namely, a deduction from some
eminent speculator's opinion about the nature of the Supreme Being,
the conclusion being apparently that if the Creator wished to
diminish the number of a horse's toes, it would not do for him to
let one drop into disuse and so gradually disappear, but he would
have to make a new horse, on a new design.
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