an infinitesimal amount of fluid, conveyed by filtration through two filters, each infinitely close in texture. Yet it distinctly modifies the form, coloring, size, and hardihood, of the organization that springs from the germ; and in the case of the animal determines, sometimes completely, the mental and moral character of the offspring. These effects can scarcely be imagined as the result of any merely physical properties in that minute drop of filtered liquid. The life of the body does not depend on the organization, but the organization on the life. The building of the body is the work of thought, which was originally conscious thought, even if now exercised by an unconscious soul.

But we are sometimes warned from teleological arguments, on very different grounds. We are told that if we argue divine benevolence and wisdom from natural adaptations, we should also argue malevolence and folly when things go amiss. We are warned that the moment a scientific man speaks of the purposes of creation, he has stepped out of his sphere, and is no longer to be trusted. These warnings come from a mistaken view of the subject. When an anatomist, convinced by the irresistible logic of facts, believes that the eye was made for seeing, he does not assume any knowledge of the divine purposes above what is revealed equally to all observers. He does not, therefore, by his religious inference, betray any self-conceit, or any bias that would bend facts to his fancy; he merely takes the position of Galen, of Cuvier, and of Agassiz. These men were aided to their great scientific discoveries by their theistic postulates; and the belief in theism cannot, therefore, be fatal to scientific accuracy and research. And as for arguing the divine malevolence from suffering, as readily as the divine benevolence from happiness, the assertion will not bear a moment's examination; the only logical inference on the teleologic ground would be that suffering is appointed by Infinite Love and Wisdom as a means to some higher good.

Persons of strong religious faith very often object to hearing any argument from final causes, because they deem it

derogatory to the dignity of faith, to suppose that she needs the aid of sight or logic; they also speak of the argument from design as implying that the Deity found difficulties, and contrived ways to evade them. The argument is thus trebly offensive to them; affronting faith, likening God to man, and forgetting his infinity. To which we would reply: that no teleologic argument is intended to verify, much less to supplant, the intuitions of faith, but as an independent source of religious knowledge, greatly strengthening and comforting souls deficient in those intuitions; nor does the argument liken the Deity to man, any more than any ascription of wisdom and love to him. All devout recognition of the being. of God calls him wise and good. But what can I mean by calling him wise, if I am not permitted to recognize his wisdom in the perfect adaptation, throughout the universe, of means to ends; if I am not permitted to trace, in the countless evolutions of nature, the development of ideas? What can I mean by calling him good, if I am not permitted to recognize his beneficent purposes, and show to myself how marvellously all things unite in contributing to the welfare, the happiness, the instruction, the improvement of mankind? If some men find their adoration of the Infinite God grow more humble and more devout as they thus enjoy what they regard the highest privilege of their intellectual nature, in tracing the thoughts and purposes of God, then it ought not to be called an irreligious or irreverent work.

To say that the teleologic argument degrades the Infinite by assigning to it finite thoughts and purposes, is simply to fall into the vice of arguing from the Infinite. We are told that to say that he made the car for hearing, the eye for seeing, is limiting the action of the Infinite in space and time; whereas the Infinite can act only throughout all space and all eternity at once. Now this objection does the very thing it falsely accuses the teleologic argument of doing it limits and debars the Infinite from a possible mode of action; and from a mode which does not imply finitude in the actor. It is the objectors mere assumption that the teleologic argument

limits the action of the Infinite to the particular case before us. The inference that eyes were made for seeing does not involve the inference that eyes were made by a special or finite action. It only implies that if eyes were made by general laws, the Author of those laws foresaw and intended eyes to result; which is far from inconsistent with faith in the omniscience of the Deity.

If we were going to argue from infinity at all, a sounder line of argument would tend rather to justify teleologic arguments under one grand conception of predestination. For a law of nature is a thought, in conformity to which a multitude of particulars have been created and arranged; and it thus implies, not only a knowledge of the whole, but of each particular result of the general law. There is, therefore, no a priori reason why we should attempt to resist the strong presumption, the certainty, arising from morphological and teleological arguments. The human face is, perhaps, the most familiar object of sight that greets our eyes. For this reason we see suggestions of it in every object of varied outline, rocky cliffs, summer clouds, double flowers, coals upon the hearth, shadows from the firelight, etc. Yet if the suggestion merges into a faithful and spirited copy; if the anatomical detail of every part becomes approximately perfect, and the expression strongly human, we have a certainty that art has interfered, and that we are not looking at the creation of chance. When a piece of Grecian statuary is recovered from the bed of the Tiber there is no suspicion that it is a stalagmite from Antiparos. And if there be any doubt about this argument, arising from the fact that the statue is a copy of a work of nature, consider instead, a sonata or a symphony. This is not a copy of nature; but the perfection of its rhythmic symmetry and its aesthetic expression stamp it as infallibly the work of mind.

A French atheist is reported to have said: "Chance can do anything, if you only give it chances enough;" and added that, "with an infinite number of throws he could throw the Greek alphabet into the Iliad." For, he seemed to imply,

from an infinite number of throws, there results an infinite number of positions; therefore all positions; therefore the position in which the letters stand in the Iliad. But the first axiom is wrong; an infinite number of throws will not give an infinite number of positions; and the inferences are wrong; the infinite number of positions would not give all positions. Give Diderot a selection of only those particular letters which are in the Iliad, and let him throw with inconceivable rapidity to all eternity, each throw would produce only a confused jumble of letters, without ever producing orderly sentences. Now in the book of the Cosmos, there are not only orderly and intelligible sentences, but it is all in order, there is no jumble; and it is more impossible to imagine it springing from chance, than to imagine the Iliad thrown from a dice box; or Beethoven's Christus am Oehlberg produced by a dance of cats upon the keyboard.

The teleologic argument in its narrower sense is equally strong. When in the excavations at Pompeii, or at Jerusalem or on the Euphrates, a house is uncovered filled with conveniences and tools of various kinds, it is absolutely impossible for a sane mind to entertain the question whether this is the work of intelligent skill; we know it as we know our own existence. There is no simply intellectual or logical reason why our certainty should not be as great at finding ourselves in this house of the world, filled as it is with every conceivable convenience for us, and furnished with admirable tools wherewith to accomplish our work. Run rapidly, with the minds eye, over some of these materials; the metals, minerals, stones, rock-oil, coals, water, air, gases, all adapted to our needs; sand, lime, clay, marbles, granites, sandstones, with various utilities; the sun's light, heat, and actinic power, in his rays, and stored in the beds of coal and petroleum; oceans, rivers, rains, and dews; the plants and animals in their relation to us; the human frame and its capacities for delicate operations; consider all this adaptation; not a thing out of place, not a thing ill adapted; all, as far as we can discover, fitted perfectly for some end with infinite wisdom.

How can we resist the conclusion that it was by infinite wisdom? How can we resist the conclusion that the wonderfully complicated adaptation of so many means to these varied ends, keeping up the beautiful rhythmic succession of forms in plants and animals from generation to generation, is from the presence and guidance of Intelligent Thought?

The only reasons for dissatisfaction with the argument are moral, not intellectual. Logically the teleologic argument, like the morphologic, is impregnable; it is one of those cases, as satisfactory as any demonstration, in which the induction converges so rapidly towards certainty, as to produce justly the sense of certainty. The convergence in this case is manifold; the argument is drawn from an uncounted number of cases, each offering adaptations of great complexity and great perfection. The cases are also indefinitely varied in character; some referring to mechanical, some to chemical, to physiological, some even to intellectual and to moral ends, such as the education and refinement of man, and all these varied ends accomplished by a complex arrangement of welladapted means. Such a convergence of numerous lines of the highest possible inductive proof can be brought for no other truth. Nor must we forget that, in regard to mechanical ends, the mathematician can frequently give a priori demonstrations that the means are the best possible. Thus it may be demonstrated that a division of the circumference in extreme and mean ratio, gives to the leaves of plants the fairest possible law of access to air and light; and gives to the planets the fairest possible chance of revolving around the sun undisturbed by their neighbors.

Logically the arguments from the external world are unassailable, and the being of an intelligent God is proved by an induction far stronger than that which sustains the law of gravitation or the correlation of forces. The lack of earnest conviction arises from moral causes, which may, perhaps, be classed under three heads: First, there is an illusion arising from the absence of any chaos to contrast with the Cosmos. The universal prevalence everywhere of this perfect harmony