while that of the catastrophist is like the daylaborer whose family lives from hand to mouth. It is the inability of our imaginations to cross the cycles of time and its secondary causes, which makes it so difficult for us to recognize the similarity of contrivance from eternity with that which is originated to-day. There is convincing force in the remarks of Whewell when applied to the subject in hand, as well as to that upon which he was writing.

"The adaptation of the bones of the skeleton to the muscles, the provision of fulcrums, projecting processes, channels, so that the motions and forces shall be such as the needs of life require, cannot possibly become less striking and convincing from any discovery of general analogies of one animal frame with another, or of laws connecting the development of different parts.. Whenever such laws are discovered we can only consider them as the means of producing that adaptation which we so much admire. Our conviction that the artist works intelligently is not destroyed, though it may be modified and transferred when we obtain a sight of his tools. Our discovery of laws cannot contradict our persuasion of ends; our morphology cannot prejudice our teleology. ..... The assertion appears to be quite unfounded that as science advances from point to point final causes recede before it, and disappear one after the other. The principle

of design changes its mode of application, indeed, but it loses none of its force. We no longer consider particular facts as produced by special interpositions; but we consider design as exhibited in the establishment and adjustment of the laws by which particular facts are produced. We do not look upon each particular cloud as brought near us that it may drop fatness on our fields; but the general adaptation of the laws of heat and air and moisture to the promotion of vegetation does not become doubtful. We do not consider the sun as less intended to warm and vivify the tribes of plants and animals because we find that, instead of revolving round the earth as an attendant, the earth, along with other planets, revolves round him. We are rather, by the discovery of the general laws of nature, led into a scene of wider design, of deeper contrivance, of more comprehensive adjustments. Final causes, if they appear driven further from us by such an extension of our views, embrace us only with a vaster and more majestic circuit. Instead of a few threads connecting some detached objects, they become a stupendous network, which is wound round and round the universal frame of things." 1

1 The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Vol. ii. pp. 88, 89, 93, 94. London, 1840.

IV. Difficulties in the way of an Exhaustive Interpretation of God's Designs in Nature.

66

It may be well to recur to our opening illustration of types possessed in some way of the capacity of sticking together according to an intelligible plan. Suppose, now, that after the amount of shaking, more or less, which brought out the story of Moses we should find a large quantity of" types," leads," "spaces," and "quads" still jumbled together according to no discernible order: would that disprove the positive testimony we already had of intelligent design? We will not insult our readers by answering so plain a question for them, but may bring to their attention a pertinent remark of Paley on the point: "True fortitude of understanding consists in not suffering what we know to be disturbed by what we do not know. If we perceive a useful end, and means adapted to that end, we perceive enough for our conclusion. If these things be clear, no matter what is obscure. The argument is finished. ..... A just reasoner removes from his consideration not only what he knows, but what he does not know, touching matters not strictly connected with his argument, that is, not forming the very steps of his deduction. Beyond these, his knowledge and his ignorance are alike relative."1 [That is to say are irrelative to the matter in hand.]

1 Natural Theology, chap. v. sec. 7.

But by the seeming waste and the apparent failures and imperfections of nature, we are brought to face a difficulty regarding the power, wisdom, and goodness of its Designer. We come now to the more important and difficult question of interpreting the designs of the Creator. The position which we defend is, that—though his ways are as much higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts, as the heavens are higher than the earth, his name is something better than the "Unknowable." We do know something about the heavens. The heavenly bodies arc set for the dividing of times and seasons. The fugitive and the sailor know something, though far less than the astronomer, about the north star. "We may

find God, though we can never find him out." One may endeavor to point out the means of rescuing the doctrine of final causes from the general disrepute into which it has fallen in some quarters; and from certain objections, supposed to be new, arising in connection with Darwinism.

There are, indeed, few subjects upon which there has been so much loose speculation as upon that of the interpretation of the reasons which have actuated the Divine Mind in the creation of particular things. The arrogance of our shortsighted wisdom in pronouncing upon the ultimate reason why certain things are brought into existence has often been so manifest and so offensive,

that it is not surprising that some phuosopners have gone to the other extreme, and pronounced the ways of God absolutely unknowable. But it is surprising and somewhat discouraging that authors of the calibre and breadth of Hamilton and Mansel should have landed in such a suicidal and self-stultifying position. The error has been in failing to consider the universe as a whole. We have cut nature up into parts, and discussed the meaning of these in their isolation. We have brought an atom within the field of the microscope, and reasoned about it as if it were the centre of the universe, as it is of our vision. Whatever thing was useful it has been assumed was made for that special purpose, with no farther thought of its relation to other objects. The bill of a mosquito is doubtless useful to its possessor, but it is a torment to the rest of the animal creation. The tail of the cow is of advantage to the cow chiefly as it is a terror to the mosquito.

There is no disguising the fact dwelt upon in a former chapter at some length, namely, that a constant state of warfare exists among the members of the animal kingdom, in which the weakest go to the wall.1 Carnivorous animals live by depredations upon the herbivorous, and the more favored of the herbivorous live by snatching the food from the mouths of their less favored breth

1 See pp. 83-89.