led to Polytheism, and to practices we hold to be superstitious. These are no doubt its natural outcomes, and not the pure Deism of the moderns, whose foregone conclusions are carried into it from another source.

Socrates did not answer Empedocles, whose philosophy anticipated to a certain extent the explanation of adaptation to purpose in the organic world by the "survival of the fittest; " nor did his teaching prevent Democritus, who was one of his hearers, from propounding his Atheistic atomic theory. Nor, on the other hand, did the latter, nor the Greek philosophy in general, succeed in delivering the people from the incubus of their ridiculous and debasing mythology. That was reserved for the theology of a people far inferior in culture to the Greeks; a fact which speaks at the outset for a very different source of that theology.

The anticipation by Socrates of the whole strength of the teleological argumentation from adaptation to purpose is proved complete by the admitted impossibility of going beyond it, even now, in the full light of both Revelation and Science.* It was, no doubt, fondly hoped and believed that the progress of scientific knowledge would multiply and expand the proofs so greatly, that we should finally be able, from nature alone, to demonstrate inductively the being and attributes of God. In this sense the numerous works on Natural Theology have been written, down to the famous Bridgwater Treatises. But, alas! for the vanity of human anticipations! The very contrary has proved to be the fact; and, since the publication of those works, three great discoveries have given quite an opposite direction to the current of thought, viz., the Conservation of Force, the Origin

"No stress whatever need be laid upon minute anatomy, as, for instance, of the eye it signifies not whether we do or do not understand its optical structure as a matter of science. If it had no optical structure at all, if it differed in no respect (that we could discover) from a piece of marble, except that it sees, this would not impair the reasons for believing that it is meant to see."-(J. Newman, The Soul, p. 33.)

of Species, and the Protoplasmic Theory. The tendency is now again to refer the undeniable fitness of things to the working of natural causes without the interference of a directing power. And, unquestionably, the deeper we see into the processes of nature the further all evidence of such interference is pushed back.

With regard to the sciences of Physics and Chemistry, it is of little consequence by what avenue you enter, but, if you only go deep enough, the evidence of design in any particular adaptation, so palpable on the surface, becomes less and less obvious as you come to perceive that the properties relied on as proofs of specific design become merged in far higher and wider relations, which ultimately transcend our planetary world altogether. One of the best illustrations with which I am acquainted is that given by Dr. Samuel Brown,* who shows the fallacy of the teleological argument resting on the law of diffusion of gases. Unquestionably, without that law the earth would be unfit for the habitation of man, or the greater part of the organised creation, for, among many other reasons, the surface of the earth would have been wrapped in the deadly folds of a stratum of carbonic acid. It is easily shown that this law results from the nature of the gaseous state of necessity, and has a scope and bearing infinitely wider than the purpose here chosen for special comment. In the same manner, the whole field of inorganic nature can be analysed, and every one of the exquisitely fit and beautiful adaptations to be found therein can be reduced to the blind interaction of the physical and chemical properties of the matter concerned. Let us take as proved, what Paley himself was inclined to admit, that, from the evidence of the inorganic kingdom alone, you cannot demonstrate that matter is not self-existent and eternal, with inherent properties

The Argument of Design equal to Nothing; or, Nieuentytt and Paley versus David Hume and St. Paul. Edinburgh, 1842.

But

sufficient to explain all inorganic phenomena. Still, the organic kingdoms of Nature remained the stronghold of the argument from design, replete as they are at every turn with innumerable examples of exquisite fitness to purpose, and displaying palpably, as was thought, the hand of an intelligent power fashioning pre-existing materials into species of plants or animals predetermined to fulfil that purpose. now that the theory of Evolution has arisen, we may conclude that the discovery of Darwin has deprived the adaptation to purpose displayed in the organic world of all special significance, and placed it on a level with the inorganic. And, in fact, that, for example, the wonderful adaptation of the human eye to vision is just as much the effect of the blind interaction of natural causes as the deposit of beds of coal or salt. Nay, even-and this is a hard thing to receive from the Evolution doctrine-there is no more evidence that the eye was directly fashioned from pre-existing materials for the purpose of vision, than that rivers were made for the purpose of grinding water-worn stones into their present shape. In fine, it seems to be now generally recognised that the universe is too vast and the mind of man too limited for us to infer the purpose of things, and thus pronounce the direct design of any adaptation to purpose. Hence, Natural Theology must be excluded from the sciences, properly so called. Perhaps happily, for should one wish to go beyond the quality of a skilful designer, after the manner of men, and desire to find in Nature the evidence of the benevolence of the Deity, put forward by the Optimistic natural theologians, from Socrates to the modern Deists, let him ponder well on the almost equally strong evidence that exists of malevolence in

*

* In Mr. Huxley's amusing and apposite illustration, a death watch is supposed to be shut up in a kitchen clock. "He, listening to the monotonous tick! tick!' so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick." So with us and the universe.

the order of Nature. Consider how, if the survival of the fittest is the law of Evolution, the whole of the sentient creation must have been from the beginning perpetually, and still is, in the groaning and travail of the birth of new species, through the cruel, pitiless, and selfish law of Natural Selection. "If," says Darwin, "it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection."*

Thus selfishness and the law of the strong prevail everywhere, and while the strong are occupied in preying on the weak and fighting among themselves, the weak keep their place by the limitless sacrifice of individuals through the excessive prolificness of the species, or their life is a daily escape from death in the guardianship of perpetual fear. They may be truly said to die the thousand deaths of the coward, and their fear is only too sure a presage of the death by violence which awaits them all. Consider, too, the same exquisite adaptation of the organs of the carnivora to the purpose of destroying and even torturing their victims; consider the whole race of parasites, so perfectly adapted for the purpose of devouring and tormenting creatures infinitely more noble than themselves. In view of all this, may we not rejoice that the fact that a particular tapeworm cannot exist without human beings to prey on, as the only creature adapted for its purpose, no more proves that man was made for food for tapeworms than that rivers were made to grind pebbles, nor that we are bound to conclude the world was designed by a malevolent being. If this carries also the giving up benevolence, and no other source is open of the knowledge of the attributes of the First Cause, we would perhaps willingly acquiesce in Hume's conclusion, that the

*Origin of Species, 6th Ed., p 162.

First Causes of the Universe "have neither goodness nor malice."

"Who trusted God was love indeed,

And love Creation's final law

Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw,

With ravine shrieked against the creed."

Are we, then, to banish Final Causes from Science ? Hardly. Bacon's epigrammatic comparison of Final Causes to vestal virgins, which are necessarily barren, can only apply to the error of putting final in the place of secondary or natural causes. For example: the effusion of organisable lymph round a wound in the intestines glues the parts together, and prevents the escape of noxious matters, thus saving the life of the individual. But if we saw here the operation of a Final Cause, viz., the preservation of life, even though not directly, through an imaginary power called vis medicatrix naturæ, we should be wrong; for the same effusion of lymph takes place from other irritants, and then often causes the death of the individual. Here we not only deny the direct power of a Final Cause, represented by a vis medicatrix, but also the existence of any such Final Cause at all. The Evolution theory extends this denial to all nature. Vision is generally said to be the Final Cause of the eye; but if the eye came into existence, and became adapted to the purpose of vision, through the blind operation of natural causes which had no special relation to vision, and if the same is true of all other adaptations, then there are no Final Causes, in the strict theological sense, to be discovered by induction as above said. But Bacon does not exclude the use of Final Causes in reasoning, nor deny their existence. The end or purpose of organs or apparatus in organised

According to Baden Powell, "Natural Theology confessedly proves too little, because it cannot rise to the metaphysical idea or scriptural representation of God."