intelligent designer; and second, that beauty
not being an advantage to its possessor in the
struggle for life, cannot be accounted for on the
principle of the survival of the fittest. The
Duke, he says, maintains that contrivance and
beauty indicate "the constant supervision and
interference of the Creator, and cannot possi-
bly be explained by the unassisted action of
any combination of laws. Now, Mr. Darwin's
work," he adds, "has for its main object to
show that all the phenomena of living things
- all their wonderful organs and complicated
structures, their infinite variety of form, size,
and color, their intricate and involved relations
to each other may have been produced by
the action of a few general laws of the simplest
kind, laws which are in most cases mere state-
ments of admitted facts." (p. 265) Those laws
are those with which we are familiar: Hered-
ity, Variations, Over Production, Struggle for
Life, Survival of the Fittest. "It is probable,"
he says,
"that these primary facts or laws are
but results of the very nature of life, and of
the essential properties of organized and unor-
ganized matter. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his
'First Principles' and in his Biology,' has, I
think, made us able to understand how this may

6

be; but at present we may accept these simple laws, without going further back, and the question then is, Whether the variety, the harmony, the contrivance, and the beauty we perceive, can have been produced by the action of these laws alone, or whether we are required to believe in the incessant interference and direct action of the mind and will of the Creator." (p. 267)1 Mr. Wallace says, that the Duke of Argyll maintains that God "has personally applied general laws to produce effects which those laws are not in themselves capable of producing; that the universe alone with all its laws intact, would be a sort of chaos, without variety, without harmony, without design, without beauty; that there is not (and therefore we may presume that there could not be) any self-developing power in the universe. I believe, on the contrary, that the universe is so constituted as to be self-regulating; that as long it contains life, the forms under which

1 The question is not, as Mr. Wallace says, "How has the Creator worked?" but it is, as he himself states, whether the essential properties of matter have alone worked out all the wonders of creation; or, whether they are to be referred to the mind and will of God. It is worthy of remark how Messrs. Darwin and Wallace refer to Mr. Spencer as their philosopher. We have seen what Spencer's philosophy is.

that life is manifested have an inherent power
of adjustment to each other and to their sur-
roundings; and that this adjustment necessarily
leads to the greatest amount of variety and
beauty and enjoyment, because it does depend
on general laws, and not on a continual super-
vision and rearrangement of details." (p. 268)
"The strange springs and traps and pitfalls
found in the flowers of Orchids, cannot," he
says, "be necessary per se, since exactly the
same end is gained in ten thousand other flowers
which do not possess them. Is it not then an
extraordinary idea, to imagine the Creator of
the universe contriving the various complicated
parts of these flowers, as a mechanic might
contrive an ingenious toy or a difficult puzzle?
Is it not a more worthy conception, that they
are the results of those general laws which were
so coördinated at the first introduction of life
upon the earth as to result necessarily in the
utmost possible development of varied forms."
(p. 270) "I for one," he says, "cannot believe
that the world would come to chaos if left to
law alone.
If any modification of struc-
ture could be the result of law, why not all ?
If some self-adaptations should arise, why not
others? If any varieties of color, why not all

:

6

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the varieties we see? No attempt is made to explain this except by reference to the fact that purpose' and 'contrivance' are everywhere visible, and by an illogical deduction they could only have arisen by the direct action of some mind, because the direct action of our minds produce similar contrivances; but it is forgotten that adaptation, however produced, must have the appearance of design." (p. 280)1 After referring to the fact that florists and breeders can produce varieties in plants and animals, so that, "whether they wanted a bull-dog to torture another animal, a greyhound to catch a hare, or a bloodhound to hunt down their oppressed fellow-creatures, the required variations have always appeared," he adds: "To be consistent, our opponents must maintain that every one of the variations that have rendered possible the changes produced by man, have been determined at the right time and place by the Creator. Every race produced by the florist or breeder, the dog or the pigeon fancier, the rat-catcher, the sporting man, or the slave-hunter, must have been provided for by varieties occurring when

1 It is, therefore, clear that design is what Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace repudiate.

wanted; and as these variations were never withheld, it would prove that the sanction of an all-wise and all powerful Being has been given to that which the highest human minds consider to be trivial, mean, or debasing." (p. 290)1

1

The Nebular Hypothesis, as propounded by La Place, proposed to account for the origin of the universe, by a process of evolution under the control of mere physical forces. That hypothesis has, so far as evolution is concerned, been adopted by men who sincerely believe in God and in the Bible. But they hold not only that God created matter and endowed it with its properties, but that He designed the universe, and so controlled the operation of physical laws that they accomplished his purpose. So there are Christian men who believe in the evolution of one kind of plants and animals out of earlier and simpler forms; but they believe that everything was designed by God, and that it is due to his purpose and power that all the forms of vegetable and animal life are what they are. But this is not the question. What Darwin and the ad

1 That God permits men in the use of the laws of nature to distil alcohol and brew poisons, does not prove that He approves of drunkenness or murder.