Reactions to On the Origin of Species Saturday Review: argument confined to Geology, but has given me some perfectly just & severe raps on knuckles." In the third edition published on 30 April 1861, Darwin cited the "Saturday Review" article as reason to remove his calculation altogether. The December 1859 review in the British Unitarian "National Review" was written by Darwin's old friend William Carpenter, who was clear that only a world of "order, continuity, and progress" befitted an Omnipotent Deity and that "any theological objection" to a species of slug or a breed of dog deriving from a previous one was "simply absurd" dogma. He touched
Reactions to On the Origin of Species those defending immutability of species, and in effect said that the book offered the best explanation "ever published of the manner of formation of species", though he did not agree with it in all respects. He still had the gravest doubts that transmutation would bestialise man. It appears that Darwin had assured Owen that he was looking at everything as resulting from designed laws, which Owen interpreted as showing a shared belief in "Creative Power". Darwin had already made his views clearer to others, telling Lyell that if each step in evolution was providentially planned, the whole procedure would be