breeding will not be proved to be competent to all that is required if it produce natural species." In immediate connection with the above passage, there is another which throws a clear light on Professor Huxley's cosmical views. "The whole analogy of natural operations furnish so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are called secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations of man and the rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no reason for doubting that all are coördinate terms of nature's great progression, from formless to formed, from the inorganic to the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will." 2

1 Evidence of Man's Place in Nature. London, 1864, p. 107. 2 Since writing the above paragraph our eye fell on the following note on the 89th page of the Duke of Argyle's Reign of Law, which it gives us pleasure to quote. It seems that a writer in the Spectator had charged Professor Huxley with Atheism. In the number of that paper for February 10, 1866, the Professor replies: "I do not know that I care very much about popular odium, so there is no great merit in saying that if I really saw fit to deny the existence of a God I should certainly do so, for the sake of my own intellectual freedom, and be the honest atheist you are pleased to say I am. As it happens, however, I cannot take this

Ought not this to settle the matter? Are we to give up the Bible and all our hopes for the sake of an hypothesis that all living things, including man, on the face of the earth, are descended from a primordial animalcule, by natural selection, when such a man as Huxley, who (as Voltaire said of the prophet Habbakuk) is capable de tout, says that it has not been proved that any one species has thus originated?

But on the other hand, while he honestly admits that Darwin's doctrine is a mere hypothesis and not a theory, he has nevertheless written at least three essays or reviews in its exposition and vindication. He is freely referred to on the continent of Europe, at least, as an ardent advocate of the doctrine; and he quotes without protest such designations of himself. At any rate, as he assures his readers that he has no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, as he has devoted much time and attention to the subject, and as he is one of the most prom

position with honesty, inasmuch as it is, and always has been, a favorite tenet, that Atheism is as absurd, logically speaking, as Polytheism." In the same paper he says, "The denying the possibility of miracles seems to me quite as unjustifiable as speculative Atheism." How this can be reconciled with the passages quoted above, we are unable to see.

inent naturalists of the age, there can be no question as to his competency as a witness as to what Darwinism is.

His testimony that Mr. Darwin's doctrine excludes all teleology, or final causes, is explicit. In his review of the "Criticisms on the Origin of Species," he says, "that when he first read Mr. Darwin's book, that which struck him most forcibly was the conviction that teleology, as commonly understood, had received its death-blow at Mr. Darwin's hands. For the teleological argument runs thus: An organ is precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose; therefore, it was specially constructed to perform that function. In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of a watch to the function or purpose of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on the ground that the only cause we know of competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end." This, Mr. Huxley tells us, is precisely what Darwin denies with reference to the organs of plants and animals. The eye 1 Lay Sermons, etc., p. 330.

was not formed for the purpose of seeing, or the ear for hearing. It so happened that a nerve became sensitive to light; then in course of time, it happened that a transparent tissue came over it; and thus in "millions of years an eye, as we have seen above, happened to be formed. No such organ was ever intended or designed by God or man. " An apparatus," says Professor Huxley, "thoroughly adapted to a particular purpose, might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as by the application of means appropriate to the end by an intelligent agent." "For the notion that every organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something, which may fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them, and thrive; the many are unsuited, and become extinguished." "For the teleologist an organism exists, because it was made for the conditions in which it is found; for the Darwinian an organism exists, because, out of many of its kind, it is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in which

it is found."

"If we apprehend," Huxley further says, "the spirit of the 'Origin of Species' rightly, then, nothing can be more entirely and absolutely opposed to teleology, as it is commonly understood, than the Darwinian theory." (p. 303)

It has already been stated that Mr. Wallace does not apply the doctrine of evolution to man; neither does Mr. Mivart, a distinguished naturalist, who is a member of the Latin Church. The manner in which Professor Huxley speaks of these gentlemen shows how thoroughly, in his judgment, Mr. Darwin banishes God from his works: "Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart are as stout evolutionists as Mr. Darwin himself; but Mr. Wallace denies that man can have been evolved from a lower animal by that process of natural selection, which he, with Mr. Darwin, holds to be sufficient for the evolution of all animals below man; while Mr. Mivart, admitting that natural selection has been one of the conditions of the animals below man, maintains that natural selection must, even in their case, have been supplemented by some other cause, of the nature of which, unfortunately, he does not give us any idea. Thus Mr. Mivart is less of a Dar