But, first of all, the question needs to be more specifically stated. There

are varieties and varieties. They may, some of them, disappear or

deteriorate, but yet not wear out--not come to an end from any inherent

cause. One might even say, the younger they are the less the chance of

survival unless well cared for. They may be smothered out by the adverse

force of superior numbers; they are even more likely to be bred out of

existence by unprevented cross-fertilization, or to disappear from mere

change of fashion. The question, however, is not so much about reversion to

an ancestral state, or the falling off of a high-bred stock into an

inferior condition. Of such cases it is enough to say that, when a variety

or strain, of animal or vegetable, is led up to unusual fecundity or of

size or product of any organ, for our good, and not for the good of the

plant or animal itself, it can be kept so only by high feeding and

exceptional care; and that with high feeding and artificial appliances

comes vastly increased liability to disease, which may practically

annihilate the race. But then the race, like the bursted boiler, could not

be said to wear out, while if left to ordinary conditions, and allowed to

degenerate back into a more natural if less useful state, its hold on life

would evidently be increased rather than diminished.

As to natural varieties or races under normal conditions, sexually

propagated, it could readily be shown that they are neither more nor less

likely to disappear from any inherent cause than the species from which

they originated. Whether species wear out, i.e., have their rise,

culmination, and decline, from any inherent cause, is wholly a geological

and very speculative problem, upon which, indeed, only vague conjectures can

be offered. The matter actually under discussion concerns cultivated

domesticated varieties only, and, as to plants, is covered by two

questions.

First, Will races propagated by seed, being so fixed that they come true to

seed, and purely bred (not crossed with any other sort), continue so

indefinitely, or will they run out in time--not die out, perhaps, but lose

their distinguishing characters? Upon this, all we are able to say is that

we know no reason why they should wear out or deteriorate from any inherent

cause. The transient existence or the deterioration and disappearance of

many such races are sufficiently accounted for otherwise; as in the case of

extraordinarily exuberant varieties, such as mammoth fruits or roots, by

increased liability to disease, already adverted to, or by the failure of

the high feeding they demand. A common cause, in ordinary cases, is

cross-breeding, through the agency of wind or insects, which is difficult

to guard against. Or they go out of fashion and are superseded by others

thought to be better, and so the old ones disappear.

Or, finally, they may revert to an ancestral form. As offspring tend to

resemble grandparents almost as much as parents, and as a line of

close-bred ancestry is generally prepotent, so newly-originated varieties

have always a tendency to reversion. This is pretty sure to show itself in

some of the progeny of the earlier generations, and the breeder has to

guard against it by rigid selection. But the older the variety is--that is,

the longer the series of generations in which it has come true from

seed--the less the chance of reversion: for now, to be like the immediate

parents, is also to be like a long line of ancestry; and so all the

influences concerned--- that is, both parental and ancestral

heritability--act in one and the same direction. So, since the older a race

is the more reason it has to continue true, the presumption of the

unlimited permanence of old races is very strong.

Of course the race itself may give off new varieties; but that is no

interference with the vitality of the original stock. If some of the new

varieties supplant the old, that will not be because the unvaried stock is

worn out or decrepit with age, but because in wild Nature the newer forms

are better adapted to the surroundings, or, under man's care, better

adapted to his wants or fancies.

The second question, and one upon which the discussion about the wearing

out of varieties generally turns, is, Will varieties propagated from buds,

i.e., by division, grafts, bulbs, tubers, and the like, necessarily

deteriorate and die out? First, Do they die out as a matter of fact? Upon

this, the testimony has all along been conflicting. Andrew Knight was sure

that they do, and there could hardly be a more trustworthy witness.

"The fact," he says, fifty years ago, "that certain varieties of some

species of fruit which have been long cultivated cannot now be made to grow

in the same soils and under the same mode of management, which was a

century ago so perfectly successful, is placed beyond the reach of

controversy. Every experiment which seemed to afford the slightest prospect

of success was tried by myself and others to propagate the old varieties of

the apple and pear which formerly constituted the orchards of Herefordshire,

without a single healthy or efficient tree having been obtained; and I

believe all attempts to propagate these varieties have, during some years,

wholly ceased to be made."

To this it was replied, in that and the next generation, that cultivated

vines have been transmitted by perpetual division from the time of the

Romans, and that several of the sorts, still prized and prolific, are well

identified, among them the ancient Graecula, considered to be the modern

Corinth or currant grape, which has immemorially been seedless; that the

old nonpareil apple was known in the time of Queen Elizabeth; that the

white beurre pears of France have been propagated from the earliest times;

and that golden pippins, St. Michael pears, and others said to have run

out, were still to be had in good condition.

Coming down to the present year, a glance through the proceedings of

pomological societies, and the debates of farmers' clubs, brings out the

same difference of opinion. The testimony is nearly equally divided.

Perhaps the larger number speak of the deterioration and failure of

particular old sorts; but when the question turns on "wearing out," the

positive evidence of vigorous trees and sound fruits is most telling. A

little positive testimony outweighs a good deal of negative. This cannot

readily be explained away, while the failures may be, by exhaustion of

soil, incoming of disease, or alteration of climate or circumstances. On

the other hand, it may be urged that, if a variety of this sort is fated to

become decrepit and die out, it is not bound to die out all at once, and

everywhere at the same time. It would be expected first to give way

wherever it is weakest, from whatever cause. This consideration has an

important bearing upon the final question, Are old varieties of this kind

on the way to die out on account of their age or any inherent limit of

vitality?

Here, again, Mr. Knight took an extreme view. In his essay in the

"Philosophical Transactions," published in the year 1810, he propounded the

theory, not merely of a natural limit to varieties from grafts and

cuttings, but even that they would not survive the natural term of the life

of the seedling trees from which they were originally taken. Whatever may

have been his view of the natural term of the life of a tree, and of a

cutting being merely a part of the individual that produced it, there is no

doubt that he laid himself open to the effective replies which were made

from all sides at the time, and have lost none of their force since.

Weeping-willows, bread-fruits, bananas, sugar-cane, tiger-lilies, Jerusalem

artichokes, and the like, have been propagated for a long while in this

way, without evident decadence. Moreover, the analogy upon which his

hypothesis is founded will not hold. Whether or not one adopts the present

writer's conception, that individuality is not actually reached or

maintained in the vegetable world, it is clear enough that a common plant

or tree is not an individual in the sense that a horse or man, or any one

of the higher animals, is--that it is an individual only in the sense that

a branching zoophyte or mass of coral is. Solvitur crescendo: the tree and

the branch equally demonstrate that they are not individuals, by being

divided with impunity and advantage, with no loss of life, but much

increase. It looks odd enough to see a writer like Mr. Sisley reproducing

the old hypothesis in so bare a form as this: "I am prepared to maintain

that varieties are individuals, and that as they are born they must die,

like other individuals . . . We know that oaks, Sequoias, and other trees,

live several centuries, but how many we do not exactly know. But that they

must die, no one in his senses will dispute." Now, what people in their

senses do dispute is, not that the tree will die, but that other trees,

established from its cuttings, will die with it.

But does it follow from this that non-sexually-propagated varieties are

endowed with the same power of unlimited duration that is possessed by

varieties and species propagated sexually--i.e., by seed? Those who think

so jump too soon at their conclusion. For, as to the facts, it is not

enough to point out the diseases or the trouble in the soil or the

atmosphere to which certain old fruits are succumbing, nor to prove that a

parasitic fungus (Peronospora infestans) is what is the matter with

potatoes. For how else would constitutional debility, if such there be,

more naturally manifest itself than in such increased liability or

diminished resistance to such attacks? And if you say that, anyhow, such

varieties do not die of old age--meaning that each individual attacked does

not die of old age, but of manifest disease--it may be asked in return, what

individual man ever dies of old age in any other sense than of a similar

inability to resist invasions which in earlier years would have produced no

noticeable effect? Aged people die of a slight cold or a slight accident,

but the inevitable weakness that attends old age is what makes these slight

attacks fatal.

Finally, there is a philosophical argument which tells strongly for some

limitation of the duration of non-sexually propagated forms, one that

probably Knight never thought of, but which we should not have expected

recent writers to overlook. When Mr. Darwin announced the principle that

cross-fertilization between the individuals of a species is the plan of

Nature, and is practically so universal that it fairly sustains his

inference that no hermaphrodite species continually self-fertilized would

continue to exist, he made it clear to all who apprehend and receive the

principle that a series of plants propagated by buds only must have weaker

hold of life than a series reproduced by seed. For the former is the

closest possible kind of close breeding. Upon this ground such varieties

may be expected ultimately to die out; but "the mills of the gods grind so

exceeding slow" that we cannot say that any particular grist has been

actually ground out under human observation.

If it be asked how the asserted principle is proved or made probable, we

can here merely say that the proof is wholly inferential. But the inference

is drawn from such a vast array of facts that it is wellnigh irresistible.

It is the legitimate explanation of those arrangements in Nature to secure

cross-fertilization in the species, either constantly or occasionally,

which are so general, so varied and diverse, and, we may add, so exquisite

and wonderful, that, once propounded, we see that it must be true.* What

else, indeed, is the meaning and

* Here an article would be in place, explaining the arrangements in Nature

for cross-fertilization, or wide-breeding, in plants, through the agency,

sometimes of the winds, but more commonly of insects; the more so, since

the development of the principle, the appreciation of its importance, and

its confirmation by abundant facts, are mainly due to Mr. Darwin. But our

reviews and notices of his early work "On the Contrivances in Nature for

the Fertilization of Orchids by Means of Insects, in 1862, and his various

subsequent papers upon other parts of this subject, are either too technical

or too fragmentary or special to be here reproduced. Indeed, a popular

essay is now hardly needed, since the topic has been fully presented, of

late years, in the current popular and scientific journals, and in common

educational works and text-books, so that it is in the way of becoming a

part--and a most inviting part--of ordinary botanical instruction. use of

sexual reproduction? Not simply increase of numbers; for that is otherwise

effectually provided for by budding propagation in plants and many of the

lower animals. There are plants, indeed, of the lower sort (such as

diatoms), in which the whole multiplication takes place in this way, and

with great rapidity. These also have sexual reproduction; but in it two old

individuals are always destroyed to make a single new one! Here propagation

diminishes the number of individuals fifty per cent. Who can suppose that

such a costly process as this, and that all the exquisite arrangements for

cross-fertilization in hermaphrodite plants, do not subserve some most

important purpose? How and why the union of two organisms, or generally of

two very minute portions of them, should reenforce vitality, we do not

know, and can hardly conjecture. But this must be the meaning of sexual

reproduction.

The conclusion of the matter, from the scientific point of view, is, that

sexually-propagated varieties or races, although liable to disappear through

change, need not be expected to wear out, and there is no proof that they

do; but, that non-sexually propagated varieties, though not especially

liable to change, may theoretically be expected to wear out, but to be a

very long time about it.

II

Do Species wear out? and if not, why not?

The question we have just been considering was merely whether races are, or

may be, as enduring as species. As to the inherently unlimited existence of

species themselves, or the contrary, this, as we have said, is a geological

and very speculative problem. Not a few geologists and naturalists,

however, have concluded, or taken for granted, that species have a natural

term of existence--that they culminate, decline, and disappear through

exhaustion of specific vitality, or some equivalent internal cause. As

might be expected from the nature of the inquiry, the facts which bear upon

the question are far from decisive. If the fact that species in general

have not been interminable, but that one after another in long succession

has become extinct, would seem to warrant this conclusion, the persistence

through immense periods of no inconsiderable number of the lower forms of

vegetable and animal life, and of a few of the higher plants from the

Tertiary period to the present, tells even more directly for the limitless

existence of species. The disappearance is quite compatible with the latter

view; while the persistence of any species is hardly explicable upon any

other. So that, even under the common belief of the entire stability and

essential inflexibility of species, extinction is more likely to have been

accidental than predetermined, and the doctrine of inherent limitation is

unsupported by positive evidence.

On the other hand, it is an implication of the Darwinian doctrine that

species are essentially unlimited in existence. When they die out--as

sooner or later any species may--the verdict must be accidental death,

under stress of adverse circumstances, not exhaustion of vitality; and,

commonly, when the species seems to die out, it will rather have suffered

change. For the stock of vitality which enables it to vary and. survive in

changed forms under changed circumstances must be deemed sufficient for a

continued unchanged existence under unaltered conditions. And, indeed, the

advancement from simpler to more complex, which upon the theory must have

attended the diversification, would warrant or require the supposition of

increase instead of diminution of power from age to age.

The only case we call to mind which, under the Darwinian view, might be

interpreted as a dying out from inherent causes, is that of a species which

refuses to vary, and thus lacks the capacity of adaptation to altering

conditions. Under altering conditions, this lack would be fatal. But this

would be the fatality of some species or form in particular, not of species

or forms generally, which, for the most part, may and do vary sufficiently,

and in varying survive, seemingly none the worse, but rather the better,

for their long tenure of life.

The opposite idea, however, is maintained by M. Naudin,[XII-1] in a

detailed exposition of his own views of evolution, which differ widely from

those of Darwin in most respects, and notably in excluding that which, in

our day, gives to the subject its first claim to scientific (as

distinguished from purely speculative) attention; namely, natural

selection. Instead of the causes or operations collectively personified

under this term, and which are capable of exact or probable appreciation,

M. Naudin invokes "the two principles of rhythm and of the decrease of

forces in Nature." He is a thorough evolutionist, starting from essentially

the same point with Darwin; for he conceives of all the forms or species of

animals and plants "comme tire tout entier d'un protoplasma primordial,

uniform, instable, eminemment plastique." Also in "l'integration croissante

de la force evolutive a mesure qu'elle se partage dans les formes produites,

et la decroissance proportionelle de la plasticite de ces formes a mesure

qu'elles s'eloignent davantage de leur origine, et qu'elles sont mieux

arretees." As they get older, they gain in fixity through the operation of

the fundamental law of inheritance; but the species, like the individual,

loses plasticity and vital force. To continue in the language of the

original:

"C'est dire qu'il y a eu, pour l'ensemble du monde organique, une periode

de formation ou tout etait changeant et mobile, une phase analogue a la vie

embryonnaire et a la jeunesse de chaque etre particulier; et qu'a cet age

de mobilite et de croissance a succede une periode de stabilite, au moins

relative, une sorte d'age adulte, ou la force evolutive, ayant acheve son

oeuvre, n'est plus occupee qu'a la maintenir, sans pouvoir produire

d'organismes nouveaux. Limitee en quantite, comme toutes les forces en jeu

dans une planete ou dans un systeme sideral tout entier, cette force n'a pu

accomplir qu'un travail limite; et du meme qu'un organisme, animal ou

vegetal, ne croit pas indefiniment et qu'il s'arrete a des proportions que

rien ne peut faire depasser, de meme aussi l'organisme total de la nature

s'est arrete a un etat d'equilibre, dont la duree, selon toutes

vraisemblances, doit etre beaucoup plus longue que celle de la phase de

developpement et de croissance.

A fixed amount of "evolutive force" is given, to begin with. At first

enormous, because none has been used up in work, it is necessarily

enfeebled in the currents into which the stream divides, and the narrower

and narrower channels in which it flows with slowly-diminishing power.

Hence the limited although very unequal duration of all individuals, of all

species, and of all types of organization. A multitude of forms have

disappeared already, and the number of species, far from increasing, as some

have believed, must, on the contrary, be diminishing. Some species, no

doubt, have suffered death by violence or accident, by geological changes,

local alteration of the conditions, or the direct or indirect attacks of

other species; but these have only anticipated their fate, for M. Naudin

contends that most of the extinct species have died a natural death from

exhaustion of force, and that all the survivors are on the way to it. The

great timepiece of Nature was wound up at the beginning, and is running

down. In the earlier stages of great plasticity and exuberant power,

diversification took place freely, but only in definite lines, and species

and types multiplied. As the power of survival is inherently limited, still

more the power of change: this diminishes in time, if we rightly apprehend

the idea, partly through the waning of vital force, partly through the

fixity acquired by heredity--like producing like, the more certainly in

proportion to the length and continuity of the ancestral chain And so the

small variations of species which we behold are the feeble remnants of the

pristine plasticity and an exhausted force.[XII-2] This force of variation

or origination of forms has acted rhythmically or intermittently, because

each movement was the result of the rupture of an equilibrium, the

liberation of a force which till then was retained in a potential state by

some opposing force or obstacle, overcoming which it passes to a new

equilibrium and so on Hence alternations of dynamic activity and static

repose, of origination of species and types, alternated with periods of

stability or fixity. The timepiece does not run down regularly, but "la

force procede par saccades; et . . . par pulsations d'autant plus

energiques que la nature etait plus pres de son commencement."

Such is the hypothesis. For a theory of evolution, this is singularly

unlike Darwin's in most respects, and particularly in the kind of causes

invoked and speculations indulged in. But we are not here to comment upon

it beyond the particular point under consideration, namely, its doctrine of

the inherently limited duration of species. This comes, it will be noticed,

as a deduction from the modern physical doctrine of the equivalence of

force. The reasoning is ingenious, but, if we mistake not, fallacious.

To call that "evolutive force" which produces the change of one kind of

plant or animal into another, is simple and easy, but of little help by way

of explanation. To homologize it with physical force, as M. Naudin's

argument requires, is indeed a step, and a hardy one; but it quite

invalidates the argument. For, if the "evolutive force" is a part of the

physical force of the universe, of which, as he reminds us, the sum is

fixed and the tendency is toward a stable equilibrium in which all change is

to end, then this evolutive was derived from the physical force; and why

not still derivable from it? What is to prevent its replenishment in

vegetation, pari passu with that great operation in which physical force is

stored up in vegetable organisms, and by the expenditure or transformation

of which their work, and that of all animals, is carried on? Whatever be

the cause (if any there be) which determines the decadence and death of

species, one cannot well believe that it is a consequence of a diminution

of their proper force by plant-development and division; for instance, that

the sum of what is called vital force in a full-grown tree is not greater,

instead of less, than that in the seeding, and in the grove greater than in

the single parental tree. This power, if it be properly a force, is

doubtless as truly derived from the sunbeam as is the power which the plant

and animal expend in work. Here, then, is a source of replenishment as

lasting as the sun itself, and a ground--so far as a supply of force is

concerned--for indefinite duration. For all that any one can mean by the

indefinite existence of species is, that they may (for all that yet

appears) continue while the external conditions of their being or

well-being continue.

Perhaps, however, M. Naudin does not mean that "evolutive force," or the

force of vitality, is really homologous with common physical force, but

only something which may be likened to it. In that case the parallel has

only a metaphorical value, and the reason why variation must cease and

species die out is still to seek. In short, if that which continues the

series of individuals in propagation, whether like or unlike the parents,

be a force in the physical sense of the term, then there is abundant

provision in Nature for its indefinite replenishment. If, rather, it be a

part or phase of that something which directs and determines the

expenditure of force, then it is not subject to the laws of the latter, and

there is no ground for inferring its exhaustibility. The limited vitality

is an unproved and unprovable conjecture. The evolutive force, dying out in

the using, is either the same conjecture repeated, or a misapplied analogy.

After all--apart from speculative analogies--the only evidences we possess

which indicate a tendency in species to die out, are those to which Mr.

Darwin has called attention. These are, first, the observed deterioration

which results, at least in animals, from continued breeding in and in,

which may possibly be resolvable into cumulative heritable disease; and,

secondly, as already stated (p. 285), what may be termed the sedulous and

elaborate pains everywhere taken in Nature to prevent close

breeding--arrangements which are particularly prominent in plants, the

greater number of which bear hermaphrodite blossoms. The importance of this

may be inferred from the universality, variety, and practical perfection of

the arrangements which secure the end; and the inference may fairly be

drawn that this is the physiological import of sexes.

It follows from this that there is a tendency, seemingly inherent, in

species as in individuals, to die out; but that this tendency is

counteracted or checked by sexual wider breeding, which is, on the whole,

amply secured in Nature, and which in some way or other reenforces vitality

to such an extent as to warrant Darwin's inference that "some unknown great

good is derived from the union of individuals which have been kept distinct

for many generations." Whether this reenforcement is a complete preventive

of decrepitude in species, or only a palliative, is more than we can

determine. If the latter, then existing species and their derivatives must

perish in time, and the earth may be growing poorer in species, as M.

Naudin supposes, through mere senility. If the former, then the earth, if

not even growing richer, may be expected to hold its own, and extant species

or their derivatives should last as long as the physical world lasts and

affords favorable conditions. General analogies seem to favor the former

view. Such facts as we possess, and the Darwinian hypothesis, favor the

latter.

XIII

EVOLUTIONARY TELEOLOGY

When Cuvier spoke of the "combination of organs in such order that they may

be in consistence with the part which the animal has to play in Nature,"

his opponent, Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, rejoined, "I know nothing of animals

which have to play a part in Nature." The discussion was a notable one in

its day. From that time to this, the reaction of morphology against "final

causes" has not rarely gone to the extent of denying the need and the

propriety of assuming ends in the study of animal and vegetable

organizations. Especially in our day, when it became apparent that the

actual use of an organ might not be the fundamental reason of its

existence-- that one and the same organ, morphologically considered, was

modified in different cases to the most diverse uses, while intrinsically

different organs subserved identical functions, and consequently that use

was a fallacious and homology the surer guide to correct classification--it

was not surprising that teleological ideas nearly disappeared from natural

history. Probably it is still generally thought that the school of Cuvier

and that of St.-Hilaire have neither common ground nor capability of

reconcilement.

In a review of Darwin's volume on the "Fertilization of Orchids" * (too

technical and too detailed for reproduction here), and later in a brief

sketch of the character of his scientific work (art. IX, p. 234), we

expressed our sense of the great gain to science from his having brought

back teleology to natural history. In Darwinism, usefulness and purpose

come to the front again as working principles of the first order; upon

them, indeed, the whole system rests.

To most, this restoration of teleology has come from an unexpected quarter,

and in an unwonted guise; so that the first look of it is by no means

reassuring to the minds of those who cherish theistic views of Nature.

Adaptations irresistibly suggesting purpose had their supreme application

in natural theology. Being manifold, particular, and exquisite, and

evidently inwrought into the whole system of the organic world, they were

held to furnish irrefragable as well as independent proof of a personal

designer, a divine originator of Nature. By a confusion of thought, now

obvious, but at the time not unnatural, they were also regarded as proof of

a direct execution of the contriver's purpose in the creation of each organ

and organism, as it were, in the manner man contrives and puts together a

machine--an idea which has been set up as the orthodox doctrine, but which

to St. Augustine and other learned Christian fathers would have savored of

heterodoxy.

In the doctrine of the origination of species through natural selection,

these adaptations appear as the outcome rather than as the motive, as final

results rather than final causes. Adaptation to use, although the very

essence of Darwinism, is not a fixed and inflexible adaptation, realized

once for all at the outset; it includes a long progression and succession

of modifications, adjusting themselves to changing circumstances, under

which they may be more and more diversified, specialized, and in a just

sense perfected. Now, the question is, Does this involve the destruction or

only the reconstruction of our consecrated ideas of teleology? Is it

compatible with our seemingly inbore conception of Nature as an ordered

system? Furthermore, and above all, can the Darwinian theory itself

dispense with the idea of purpose, in the ordinary sense of the word, as

tantamount to design?

From two opposing sides we hear the first two questions answered in the

negative. And an affirmative response to the third is directly implied in

the following citation:

"The word purpose has been used in a sense to which it is, perhaps, worth

while to call attention. Adaptation of means to an end may be provided in

two ways that we at present know of: by processes of natural selection, and

by the agency of an intelligence in which an image or idea of the end

preceded the use of the means. In both cases the existence of the

adaptation is accounted for by the necessity or utility of the end. It

seems to me convenient to use the word purpose as meaning generally the end

to which certain means are adapted, both in these two cases and in any

other that may hereafter become known, provided only that the adaptation is

accounted for by the necessity or utility of the end. And there seems no

objection to the use of the phrase 'final cause' in this wider sense, if it

is to be kept at all. The word 'design' might then be kept for the special

case of adaptation by an intelligence. And we may then say that, since the

process of natural selection has been understood, purpose has ceased to

suggest design to instructed people, except in cases where the agency of

man is independently probable."--P.C.W., in the Contemporary Review for

September, 1875, p. 657.

The distinction made by this anonymous writer is convenient and useful, and

his statement clear. We propose to adopt this use of the terms purpose and

design, and to examine the allegation. The latter comes to this: "Processes

of natural selection" exclude "the agency of an intelligence in which the

image or idea of the end precedes the use of the means;" and since the

former have been understood "purpose has ceased to suggest design to

instructed people, except in cases where the agency of man is independently

probable." The maxim "L'homme propose, Dieu dispose," under this reading

means that the former has the monopoly of design, while the latter

accomplishes without designing. Man's works alone suggest design.

But it is clear to us that this monopoly is shared with certain beings of

inferior grade. Granting that quite possibly the capture of flies for food

by Dionaea and the sundews may be attributed to purpose apart from design

(if it be practicable in the last resort to maintain this now convenient

distinction), still their capture by a spider's-web, and by a swallow on

the wing, can hardly "cease to suggest design to instructed people." And

surely, in coming at his master's call, the dog fulfills his own design as

well as that of his master; and so of other actions and constructions of

brute animals.

Without doubt so acute a writer has a clear and sensible meaning; so we

conclude that he regards brutes as automata, and was thinking of design as

coextensive merely with general conceptions. Not concerning ourselves with

the difficulty he may have in drawing a line between the simpler judgments

and affections of man and those of the highest-endowed brutes, we subserve

our immediate ends by remarking that the automatic theory would seem to be

one which can least of all dispense with design, since, either in the

literal or current sense of the word, undesigned automatism is, as near as

may be, a contradiction in terms. As the automaton man constructs manifests

the designs of its maker and mover, so the more efficient automata which

man did not construct would not legitimately suggest less than human

intelligence. And so all adaptations in the animal and vegetable world

which irresistibly suggest purpose (in the sense now accepted) would also

suggest design, and, under the law of parsimony, claim to be thus

interpreted, unless some other hypothesis will better account for the

facts. We will consider, presently, if any other does so.

We here claim only that some beings other than men design, and that the

adaptations of means to ends in the structure of animals and plants, in so

far as they carry the marks of purpose, carry also the implication of

having been designed. Also, that the idea or hypothesis of a designing

mind, as the author of Nature--however we came by it--having possession of

the field, and being one which man, himself a designer, seemingly must

needs form, cannot be rivaled except by some other equally adequate for

explanation, or displaced except by showing the illegitimacy of the

inference. As to the latter, is the common apprehension and sense of

mankind in this regard well grounded? Can we rightly reason from our own

intelligence and powers to a higher or a supreme intelligence ordering and

shaping the system of Nature?

A very able and ingenious writer upon "The Evidences of Design in Nature,"

in the Westminster Review for July, 1875, maintains the negative. His

article may be taken as the argument in support of the position assumed by

"P.C.W.," in the Contemporary Review above cited. It opens with the

admission that the orthodox view is the most simple and apparently

convincing, has had for centuries the unhesitating assent of an immense

majority of thinkers, and that the latest master-writer upon the subject

disposed to reject it, namely, Mill, comes to the conclusion that, "in the

present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large

balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence." It proceeds

to attack not so much the evidence in favor of design as the foundation

upon which the whole doctrine rests, and closes with the prediction that

sooner or later the superstructure must fall. And, truly, if his reasonings

are legitimate, and his conclusions just, "Science has laid the axe to the

tree."

"Given a set of marks which we look upon in human productions as unfailing

indications of design," he asks, "is not the inference equally legitimate

when we recognize these marks in Nature? To gaze on such a universe as

this, to feel our hearts exult within us in the fullness of existence, and

to offer in explanation of such beneficent provision no other word but

Chance, seems as unthankful and iniquitous as it seems absurd. Chance

produces nothing in the human sphere; nothing, at least, that can be relied

upon for good. Design alone engenders harmony, consistency; and Chance not

only never is the parent, but is constantly the enemy of these. How, then,

can we suppose Chance to be the author of a system in which everything is

as regular as clockwork? . . . The hypothesis of Chance is inadmissible."

There is, then, in Nature, an order; and, in "P.C.W.'s" sense of the word,

a manifest purpose. Some sort of conception as to the cause of it is

inevitable, that of design first and foremost. "Why"--the Westminster

Reviewer repeats the question--"why, if the marks of utility and adaptation

are conclusive in the works of man, should they not be considered equally

conclusive in the works of Nature?" His answer appears to us more ingenious

than sound. Because, referring to Paley's watch,--

"The watch-finder is not guided solely in his inference by marks of

adaptation and utility; he would recognize design in half a watch, in a

mere fragment of a watch, just as surely as in a whole time-keeper . . .

Two cog-wheels, grasping each other, will be thought conclusive evidence of

design, quite independently of any use attaching to them. And the

inference, indeed, is perfectly correct; only it is an inference, not from

a mark of design, properly so called, but from a mark of human workmanship .

. . No more is needed for the watch-finder, since all the works of man are,

at the same time, products of design; but a great deal more is requisite

for us, who are called upon by Paley to recognize design in works in which

this stamp, this label of human workmanship, is wanting. The mental

operation required in the one case is radically different from that

performed in the other; there is no parallel, and Paley's demonstration is

totally irrelevant."[XIII-2] But, surely, all human doings are not

"products of design;" many are contingent or accidental. And why not

suppose that the finder of the watch, or of the watch-wheel, infers both

design and human workmanship? The two are mutually exclusive only on the

supposition that man alone is a designer, which is simply begging the

question in discussion. If the watch-finder's attention had been arrested by

a different object, such as a spider's web, he would have inferred both

design and non-human workmanship. Of some objects he might be uncertain

whether they were of human origin or not, with-out ever doubting they were

designed, while of others this might remain doubtful. Nor is man's

recognition of human workmanship, or of any other, dependent upon his

comprehending how it was done, or what particular ends it subserves. Such

considerations make it clear that "the label of human workmanship" is not

the generic stamp from which man infers design. It seems equally clear that

"the mental operation required in the one case" is not so radically or

materially "different from that performed in the other" as this writer

would have us suppose. The judgment respecting a spider's web, or a

trap-door spider's dwelling, would be the very same in this regard if it

preceded, as it occasionally might, all knowledge of whether the object met

with were of human or animal origin. A dam across a stream, and the

appearance of the stumps of trees which entered into its formation, would

suggest design quite irrespective of and antecedent to the considerable

knowledge or experience which would enable the beholder to decide whether

this was the work of men or of beavers. Why, then, should the judgment that

any particular structure is a designed work be thought illegitimate when

attributed to a higher instead of a lower intelligence than that of man? It

might, indeed, be so if the supposed observer had no conception of a power

and intelligence superior to his own. But it would then be more than

"irrelevant;" it would be impossible, except on the supposition that the

phenomena would of themselves give rise to such an inference. That it is

now possible to make the inference, and, indeed, hardly possible not to make

it, is sufficient warrant of its relevancy.

It may, of course, be rejoined that, if this important factor is given, the

inference yields no independent argument of a divine creator; and it may

also be reasonably urged that the difference between things that are made

under our observation and comprehension, and things that grow, but have

originated beyond our comprehension, is too wide for a sure inference from

the one to the other. But the present question involves neither of these.

It is simply whether the argument for design from adaptations in Nature is

relevant, not whether it is independent or sure. It is conceded that the

argument is analogical, and the parallel incomplete. But the gist is in the

points that are parallel or similar. Pulleys, valves, and suchlike

elaborate mechanical adaptations, cannot differ greatly in meaning,

wherever met with.

The opposing argument is repeated and passed in another form:

"The evidence of design afforded by the marks of adaptation in works of

human competence is null and void in the case of creation itself . . .

Nature is full of adaptations; but these are valueless to us as traces of

design, unless we know something of the rival adaptations among which an

intelligent being might have chosen. To assert that in Nature no such rival

adaptations existed, and that in every case the useful function in question

could be established by no other instrument but one, is simply to reason in

a circle, since it is solely from what we find existing that our notions of

possibility and impossibility are drawn. . . . We cannot imagine ourselves

in the position of the Creator before his work began, nor examine the

materials among which he had to choose, nor count the laws which limited

his operations. Here all is dark, and the inference we draw from the

seeming perfections of the existing instruments or means is a measure of

nothing but our ignorance."

But the question is not about the perfection of these adaptations, or

whether others might have been instituted in their place. It is simply

whether observed adaptations of intricate sorts, admirably subserving uses,

do or do not legitimately suggest to one designing mind that they are the

product of some other. If so, no amount of ignorance, or even

inconceivability, of the conditions and mode of production could affect the

validity of the inference, nor could it be affected by any misunderstanding

on our part as to what the particular use or function was; a statement

which would have been deemed superfluous, except for the following:

"There is not an organ in our bodies but what has passed, and is still

passing, through a series of different and often contradictory

interpretations. Our lungs, for instance, were anciently conceived to be a

kind of cooling apparatus, a refrigerator; at the close of the last century

they were supposed to be a centre of combustion; and nowadays both these

theories have been abandoned for a third . . . Have these changes modified

in the slightest degree the supposed evidence of design?"

We have not the least idea why they should. So, also, of complicated

processes, such as human digestion, being replaced by other and simpler

ones in lower animals, or even in certain plants. If "we argue the

necessity of every adaptation solely from the fact that it exists," and

that "we cannot mutilate it grossly without injury to the function," we do

not "announce triumphantly that digestion is impossible in any way but

this," etc., but see equal wisdom and no impugnment of design in any number

of simpler adaptations accomplishing equivalent purposes in lower animals.

Finally, adaptation and utility being the only marks of design in Nature

which we possess, and adaptation only as subservient to usefulness, the

Westminster Reviewer shows us how:

"The argument from utility may be equally refuted another way. We found in

our discussion of the mark of adaptation that the positive evidence of

design afforded by the mechanisms of the human frame was never accompanied

by the possibility of negative evidence. We regarded this as a suspicious

circumstance, just as the fox, invited to attend the lion in his den, was

deterred from his visit by observing that all the foottracks lay in one

direction. The same suspicious circumstance warns us now. If positive

evidence of design be afforded by the presence of a faculty, negative

evidence of design ought to be afforded by the absence of a faculty. This,

however, is not the case." [Then follows the account of a butterfly, which,

from the wonderful power of the males to find the females at a great

distance, is conceived to possess a sixth sense.] "Do we consider the

deficiency of this sixth sense in man as the slightest evidence against

design? Should we be less apt to infer creative wisdom if we had only four

senses instead of five, or three instead of four? No, the case would stand

precisely as it does now. We value our senses simply because we have them,

and because our conception of life as we desire it is drawn from them. But

to reason from such value to the origin of our endowment, to argue that our

senses must have been given to us by a deity because we prize them, is

evidently to move round and round in a vicious circle.

"The same rejoinder is easily applicable to the argument from beauty, which

indeed is only a particular aspect of the argument from utility. It is

certainly improbable that a random daubing of colors on a canvas will

produce a tolerable painting, even should the experiment be continued for

thousands of years. Our conception of beauty being given, it is utterly

improbable that chance should select, out of the infinity of combinations

which form and color may afford, the precise combination which that

conception will approve. But the universe is not posterior to our sense of

beauty, but antecedent to it: our sense of beauty grows out of what we see;

and hence the conformance of our world to our aesthetical conceptions is

evidence, not of the world's origin, but of our own."

We are accustomed to hear design doubted on account of certain failures of

provision, waste of resources, or functionless condition of organs; but it

is refreshingly new to have the very harmony itself of man with his

surroundings, and the completeness of provision for his wants and desires,

brought up as a refutation of the validity of the argument for design. It

is hard, indeed, if man must be out of harmony with Nature in order to

judge anything respecting it, or his relations with it; if he must have

experience of chaos before he can predicate anything of order.

But is it true that man has all that he conceives of, or thinks would be

useful, and has no "negative evidence of design afforded by the absence of

a faculty" to set against the positive evidence afforded by its presence?

He notes that he lacks the faculty of flight, sometimes wants it, and in

dreams imagines that he has it, yet as thoroughly believes that he was

designed not to have it as that he was designed to have the faculties and

organs which he possesses. He notes that some animals lack sight, and so,

with this negative side of the testimony to the value of vision, he is "apt

to infer creative wisdom" both in what he enjoys and in what the lower

animal neither needs nor wants. That man does not miss that which he has no

conception of, and is by this limitation disqualified from judging rightly

of what he can conceive and know, is what the Westminster Reviewer comes

to, as follows:

"We value the constitution of our world because we live by it, and because

we cannot conceive ourselves as living otherwise. Our conceptions of

possibility, of law, of regularity, of logic, are all derived from the same

source; and as we are constantly compelled to work with these conceptions,

as in our increasing endeavors to better our condition and increase our

provision we are constantly compelled to guide ourselves by Nature's

regulations, we accustom ourselves to look upon these regularities and

conceptions as antecedent to all work, even to a Creator's, and to judge of

the origin of Nature as we judge of the origin of inventions and utilities

ascribable to man. This explains why the argument of design has enjoyed

such universal popularity. But that such popularity is no criterion of the

argument's worth, and that, indeed, it is no evidence of anything save of

an unhappy weakness in man's mental constitution, is abundantly proved by

the explanation itself." Well, the constitution and condition of man being

such that he always does infer design in Nature, what stronger presumption

could there possibly be of the relevancy of the inference? We do not say of

its correctness: that is another thing, and is not the present point. At

the last, as has well been said, the whole question resolves itself into

one respecting the ultimate veracity of Nature, or of the author of Nature,

if there be any.

Passing from these attempts to undermine the foundation of the

doctrine--which we judge to be unsuccessful--we turn to the consideration

of those aimed at the superstructure. Evidences of design may be relevant,

but not cogent. They may, as Mill thought, preponderate, or the wavering

balance may incline the other way. There are two lines of argument: one

against the sufficiency, the other against the necessity, of the principle

of design. Design has been denied on the ground that it squares with only

one part of the facts, and fails to explain others; it may be superseded by

showing that all the facts are in the way of being explained without it.

The things which the principle of design does not explain are many and

serious. Some are in their nature inexplicable, at least are beyond the

power and province of science. Others are of matters which scientific

students have to consider, and upon which they may form opinions, more or

less well grounded. As to biological science--with which alone we are

concerned--it is getting to be generally thought that this principle, as

commonly understood, is weighted with much more than it can carry.

This statement will not be thought exaggerated by those most familiar with

the facts and the ideas of the age, and accustomed to look them in the

face. Design is held to, no doubt, by most, and by a sure instinct; not,

however, as always offering an explanation of the facts, but in spite of

the failure to do so. The stumbling-blocks are various, and they lie in

every path: we can allude only to one or two as specimens.

Adaptation and utility are the marks of design. What, then, are organs not

adapted to use marks of? Functionless organs of some sort are the heritage

of almost every species. We have ways of seeming to account for them--and

of late one which may really account for them--but they are unaccountable

on the principle of design. Some, shutting their eyes to the difficulty,

deny that we know them to be functionless, and prefer to believe they must

have a use because they exist, and are more or less connected with organs

which are correlated to obvious use; but only blindfolded persons care to

tread the round of so narrow a circle. Of late some such abortive organs in

flowers and fruits are found to have a use, though not the use of their

kind. But unwavering believers in design should not trust too much to

instances of this sort. There is an old adage that, if anything be kept

long enough, a use will be found for it. If the following up of this line,

when it comes in our way, should bring us round again to a teleological

principle, it will not be one which conforms to the prevalent ideas now

attacked.

It is commonly said that abortive and useless organs exist for the sake of

symmetry, or as parts of a plan. To say this, and stop there, is a fine

instance of mere seeming to say something. For, under the principle of

design, what is the sense of introducing useless parts into a useful

organism, and what shadow of explanation does "symmetry" give? To go

further and explain the cause of the symmetry and how abortive organs came

to be, is more to the purpose, but it introduces quite another principle

than that of design. The difficulty recurs in a somewhat different form

when an organ is useful and of exquisite perfection in some species, but

functionless in another. An organ, such as an eye, strikes us by its

exquisite and, as we may, perfect adaptation and utility in some animal; it

is found repeated, still useful but destitute of many of its adaptations,

in some animal of lower grade; in some one lower still it is rudimentary and

useless. It is asked, If the first was so created for its obvious and actual

use, and the second for such use as it has, what was the design of the

third? One more case, in which use after all is well subserved, we cite

from the article already much quoted from:

"It is well known that certain fishes (Pleuronecta) display the singularity

of having both eyes on the same side of their head, one eye being placed a

little higher than the other. This arrangement has its utility; for the

Pleuronecta, swimming on their side quite near the bottom of the sea, have

little occasion for their eyesight except to observe what is going on above

them. But the detail to which we would call notice is, that the original

position of the eyes is symmetrical in these fishes, and that it is only at

a certain point of their development that the anomaly is manifested, one of

the eyes passing to the other side of the head. It is almost inconceivable

that an intelligent being should have selected such an arrangement; and

that, intending the eyes to be used only on one side of the head, he should

have placed them originally on different sides."

Then the waste of being is enormous, far beyond the common apprehension.

Seeds, eggs, and other germs, are designed to be plants and animals, but

not one of a thousand or of a million achieves its destiny. Those that fall

into fitting places and in fitting numbers find beneficent provision, and,

if they were to wake to consciousness, might argue design from the

adaptation of their surroundings to their well-being. But what of the vast

majority that perish? As of the light of the sun, sent forth in all

directions, only a minute portion is intercepted by the earth or other

planets where some of it may be utilized for present or future life, so of

potential organisms, or organisms begun, no larger proportion attain the

presumed end of their creation.

"Destruction, therefore, is the rule; life is the exception. We notice

chiefly the exception--namely, the lucky prize-winner in the lottery-- and

take but little thought about the losers, who vanish from our field of

observation, and whose number it is often impossible to estimate. But, in

this question of design, the losers are important witnesses. If the maxim

'audi alteram partem' is applicable anywhere, it is applicable here. We

must hear both sides, and the testimony of the seed fallen on good ground

must be corrected by the testimony of that which falls by the wayside, or on

the rocks. When we find, as we have seen above, that the sowing is a

scattering at random, and that, for one being provided for and living, ten

thousand perish unprovided for, we must allow that the existing order would

be accounted as the worst disorder in any human sphere of action."

It is urged, moreover, that all this and much more applies equally to the

past stages of our earth and its immensely long and varied succession of

former inhabitants, different from, yet intimately connected with, the

present. It is not one specific creation that the question has to deal

with--as was thought not very many years ago--but a series of creations

through countless ages, and of which the beginning is unknown.

These references touch a few out of many points, and merely allude to some

of the difficulties which the unheeding pass by, but which, when brought

before the mind, are seen to be stupendous.

Somewhat may be justly, or at least plausibly, said in reply to all this

from the ordinary standpoint, but probably not to much effect. There were

always insuperable difficulties, which, when they seemed to be few, might

be regarded as exceptional; but, as they increase in number and variety,

they seem to fall into a system. No doubt we may still insist that, "in the

present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large

balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence," as Mill

concluded; and probability must needs be the guide of reason through these

dark places. Still, the balancing of irreconcilable facts is not a

satisfying occupation, nor a wholly hopeful one, while fresh weights are

from time to time dropping into the lighter side of the balance. Strong as

our convictions are, they may be overborne by evidence. We cannot rival the

fabled woman of Ephesus, who, beginning by carrying her calf from the day of

its birth, was still able to do so when it became an ox. The burden which

our fathers carried comfortably, with some adventitious help, has become

too heavy for our shoulders.

Seriously, there must be something wrong in the position, some baleful

error mixed with the truth, to which this contradiction of our inmost

convictions may be attributed. The error, as we suppose, lies in the

combination of the principle of design with the hypothesis of the

immutability and isolated creation of species. The latter hypothesis, in

its nature un-provable, has, on scientific grounds, become so far

improbable that few, even of the anti-Darwinian naturalists, now hold to it;

and, whatever may once have been its religious claims, it is at present a

hinderance rather than a help to any just and consistent teleology.

By the adoption of the Darwinian hypothesis, or something like it, which we

incline to favor, many of the difficulties are obviated, and others

diminished. In the comprehensive and far-reaching teleology which may take

the place of the former narrow conceptions, organs and even faculties,

useless to the individual, find their explanation and reason of being.

Either they have done service in the past, or they may do service in the

future. They may have been essentially useful in one way in a past species,

and, though now functionless, they may be turned to useful account in some

very different way hereafter. In botany several cases come to our mind

which suggest such interpretation.

Under this view, moreover, waste of life and material in organic Nature

ceases to be utterly inexplicable, because it ceases to be objectless. It

is seen to be a part of the general "economy of Nature," a phrase which has

a real meaning. One good illustration of it is furnished by the pollen of

flowers. The seeming waste of this in a pine-forest is enormous. It gives

rise to the so-called "showers of sulphur," which every one has heard of.

Myriads upon myriads of pollen-grains (each an elaborate organic structure)

are wastefully dispersed by the winds to one which reaches a female flower

and fertilizes a seed. Contrast this with one of the close-fertilized

flowers of a violet, in which there are not many times more grains of

pollen produced than there are of seeds to be fertilized; or with an

orchis-flower, in which the proportion is not widely different. These

latter are certainly the more economical; but there is reason to believe

that the former arrangement is not wasteful. The plan in the violet-flower

assures the result with the greatest possible saving of material and

action; but this result, being close-fertilization or breeding in and in,

would, without much doubt, in the course of time, defeat the very object of

having seeds at all.[XIII-3] So the same plant produces other flowers also,

provided with a large surplus of pollen, and endowed (as the others are

not) with color, fragrance, and nectar, attractive to certain insects, which

are thereby induced to convey this pollen from blossom to blossom, that it

may fulfill its office. In such blossoms, and in the great majority of

flowers, the fertilization and consequent perpetuity of which are committed

to insects, the likelihood that much pollen may be left behind or lost in

the transit is sufficient reason for the apparent superfluity. So, too, the

greater economy in orchis-flowers is accounted for by the fact that the

pollen is packed in coherent masses, all attached to a common stalk, the end

of which is expanded into a sort of button, with a glutinous adhesive face

(like a bit of sticking-plaster), and this is placed exactly where the head

of a moth or butterfly will be pressed against it when it sucks nectar from

the flower, and so the pollen will be bodily conveyed from blossom to

blossom, with small chance of waste or loss. The floral world is full of

such contrivances; and while they exist the doctrine of purpose or final

cause is not likely to die out. Now, in the contrasted case, that of

pine-trees, the vast superabundance of pollen would be sheer waste if the

intention was to fertilize the seeds of the same tree, or if there were any

provision for insect-carriage; but with wide-breeding as the end, and the

wind which "bloweth where it listeth" as the means, no one is entitled to

declare that pine-pollen is in wasteful excess. The cheapness of

wind-carriage may be set against the overproduction of pollen.

Similar considerations may apply to the mould-fungi and other very low

organisms, with spores dispersed through the air in countless myriads, but

of which only an infinitesimal portion find opportunity for development.

The myriads perish. The exceptional one, falling into a fit medium, is

imagined by the Westminster Reviewer to argue design from the beneficial

provision it finds itself enjoying, in happy ignorance of the perishing or

latent multitude. But, in view of the large and important part they play

(as the producers of all fermentation and as the omnipresent

scavenger-police of Nature), no good ground appears for arguing either

wasteful excess or absence of design from the vast disparity between their

potential and their actual numbers. The reserve and the active members of

the force should both be counted in, ready as they always and everywhere

are for service. Considering their ubiquity, persistent vitality, and

promptitude of action upon fitting occasion, the suggestion would rather be

that, while

". . . thousands at His bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest,

They also serve [which] only stand and wait."

Finally, Darwinian teleology has the special advantage of accounting for

the imperfections and failures as well as for successes. It not only

accounts for them, but turns them to practical account. It explains the

seeming waste as being part and parcel of a great economical process.

Without the competing multitude, no struggle for life; and without this, no

natural selection and survival of the fittest, no continuous adaptation to

changing surroundings, no diversification and improvement, leading from

lower up to higher and nobler forms. So the most puzzling things of all to

the old-school teleologists are the principia of the Darwinian. In this

system the forms and species, in all their variety, are not mere ends in

themselves, but the whole a series of means and ends, in the contemplation

of which we may obtain higher and more comprehensive, and perhaps worthier,

as well as more consistent, views of design in Nature than heretofore. At

least, it would appear that in Darwinian evolution we may have a theory that

accords with if it does not explain the principal facts, and a teleology

that is free from the common objections.

But is it a teleology, or rather--to use the new-fangled term--a

dysteleology? That depends upon how it is held. Darwinian evolution

(whatever may be said of other kinds) is neither theistical nor

nontheistical. Its relations to the question of design belong to the

natural theologian, or, in the larger sense, to the philosopher. So long as

the world lasts it will probably be open to any one to hold consistently, in

the last resort, either of the two hypotheses, that of a divine mind, or

that of no divine mind. There is no way that we know of C by which the

alternative may be excluded. Viewed philosophically, the question only is,

Which is the better supported hypothesis of the two?

We have only to say that the Darwinian system, as we understand it,

coincides well with the theistic view of Nature. It not only acknowledges

purpose (in the Contemporary Reviewer's sense), but builds upon it; and if

purpose in this sense does not of itself imply design, it is certainly

compatible with it, and suggestive of it. Difficult as it may be to

conceive and impossible to demonstrate design in a whole of which the

series of parts appear to be contingent, the alternative may be yet more

difficult and less satisfactory. If all Nature is of a piece--as modern

physical philosophy insists-- then it seems clear that design must in some

way, and in some sense, pervade the system, or be wholly absent from it. Of

the alternatives, the predication of design--special, general, or

universal, as the case may be--is most natural to the mind; while the

exclusion of it throughout, because some utilities may happen, many

adaptations may be contingent results, and no organic maladaptations could

continue, runs counter to such analogies as we have to guide us, and leads

to a conclusion which few men ever rested in. It need not much trouble us

that we are incapable of drawing clear lines of demarkation between mere

utilities, contingent adaptations, and designed contrivances in Nature; for

we are in much the same condition as respects human affairs and those of

lower animals. What results are comprehended in a plan, and what are

incidental, is often more than we can readily determine in matters open to

observation. And in plans executed mediately or indirectly, and for ends

comprehensive and far-reaching, many purposed steps must appear to us

incidental or meaningless. But the higher the intelligence, the more fully

will the incidents enter into the plan, and the more universal and

interconnected may the ends be. Trite as the remark is, it would seem still

needful to insist that the failure of a finite being to compass the designs

of an infinite mind should not invalidate its conclusions respecting

proximate ends which he can understand. It is just as in physical science,

where, as our knowledge and grasp increase, and happy discoveries are made,

wider generalizations are formed, which commonly comprehend, rather than

destroy, the earlier and partial ones. So, too, the "sterility" of the old

doctrine of final causes in science, and the presumptuous uses made of

them, when it was supposed that every adapted arrangement or structure

existed for this or that direct and special end, and for no other, can

hardly be pressed to the conclusion that there are no final causes, i.e.,

ultimate reasons of things.[XIII-4] Design in Nature is distinguished from

that in human affairs--as it fittingly should be--by all comprehensiveness

and system. Its theological synonym is Providence. Its application in

particular is surrounded by similar insoluble difficulties; nevertheless,

both are bound up with theism.

Probably few at the present day will maintain that Darwinian evolution is

incompatible with the principle of design; but some insist that the theory

can dispense with, and in fact supersedes, this principle.

The Westminster Reviewer cleverly expounds how it does so. The exposition

is too long to quote, and an abstract is unnecessary, for the argument

adverse to design is, as usual, a mere summation or illustration of the

facts and assumptions of the hypothesis itself, by us freely admitted.

Simplest forms began; variations occurred among them; under the competition

consequent upon the arithmetical or geometrical progression in numbers,

only the fittest for the conditions survive and propagate, vary further, and

are similarly selected; and so on.

"Progress having once begun by the establishment of species, the laws of

atavism and variability will suffice to tell the remainder of the story.

The colonies gifted with the faculty of forming others in their likeness

will soon by their increase become sole masters of the field; but the

common enemy being thus destroyed, the struggle for life will be renewed

among the conquerors. The saying that 'a house divided against itself

cannot stand,' receives in Nature its flattest contradiction. Civil war is

here the very instrument of progress; it brings about the survival of the

fittest. Original differences in the cell-colonies, however slight, will

bring about differences of life and action; the latter, continued through

successive generations, will widen the original differences of structure;

innumerable species will thus spring up, branching forth in every direction

from the original stock; and the competition of these species among each

other for the ground they occupy, or the food they seek, will bring out and

develop the powers of the rivals. One chief cause of superiority will lie

in the division of labor instituted by each colony; or, in other words, in

the localization of the colony's functions. In the primitive associations

(as in the lowest organisms existing now), each cell performed much the

same work as its neighbor, and the functions necessary to the existence of

the whole (alimentation, digestion, respiration, etc.) were exercised by

every colonist in his own behalf. Social life, however, acting upon the

cells as it acts upon the members of a human family, soon created

differences among them--differences ever deepened by continuance, and

which, by narrowing the limits of each colonist's activity, and increasing

his dependence on the rest, rendered him fitter for his special task. Each

function was thus gradually monopolized; but it came to be the appanage of a

single group of cells, or organ; and so excellent did this arrangement

prove, so greatly were the powers of each commonwealth enhanced by the

division of its labor, that the more organs a colony possessed, the more

likely it was to succeed in its struggle for life. . . We shall go no

further, for the reader will easily fill out the remainder of the picture

for himself. Man is but an immense colony of cells, in which the division

of labor, together with the centralization of the nervous system, has

reached its highest limit. It is chiefly to this that his superiority is

due; a superiority so great, as regards certain functions of the brain,

that he may be excused for having denied his humbler relatives, and dreamed

that, standing alone in the centre of the universe, sun, moon, and stars,

were made for him."

Let us learn from the same writer how both eyes of the flounder get, quite

unintentionally, on the same side of the head. The writer makes much of this

case (see p. 306), and we are not disposed to pass it by:

"A similar application may be made to the Pleuronecta. Presumably, these

fishes had adopted their peculiar mode of swimming long before the position

of their eyes became adapted to it. A spontaneous variation occurred,

consisting in the passage of one eye to the opposite side of the head; and

this variation afforded its possessors such increased facilities of sight

that in the course of time the exception became the rule. But the

remarkable point is, that the law of heredity not only preserved the

variation itself, but the date of its occurrence; and that, although for

thousands of years the adult Pleuronecta have had both eyes on the same

side, the young still continue during their earlier development to exhibit

the contrary arrangement, just as if the variation still occurred

spontaneously."

Here a wonderful and one would say unaccountable transference takes place

in a short time. As Steenstrup showed, one eye actually passes through the

head while the young fish is growing. We ask how this comes about; and we

are told, truly enough, that it takes place in each generation because it

did so in the parents and in the whole line of ancestors. Why offspring

should be like parent is more than any one can explain; but so it is, in a

manner so nearly fixed and settled that we can count on it; yet not from

any absolute necessity that we know of, and, indeed, with sufficiently

striking difference now and then to demonstrate that it might have been

otherwise, or is so in a notable degree. This transference of one eye

through the head, from the side where it would be nearly useless to that in

which it may help the other, bears all the marks of purpose, and so carries

the implication of design. The case is adduced as part of the evidence that

Darwinian evolution supersedes design. But how? Not certainly in the way

this goes on from generation to generation; therefore, doubtless in the way

it began. So we look for the explanation of how it came about at the first

unintentionally or accidentally; how, under known or supposed conditions,

it must have happened, or at least was likely to happen. And we read, "A

spontaneous variation occurred, consisting in the passage of one eye to the

opposite side of the head." That is all; and we suppose there is nothing

more to be said. In short, this surprising thing was undesigned because it

took place, and has taken place ever since! The writer presumes, moreover

(but this is an obiter dictum), that the peculiarity originated long after

flounders had fixed the habit of swimming on one side (and in this

particular case it is rather difficult to see how the two may have gone on

pari passu), and so he cuts away all obvious occasion for the alteration

through the summation of slight variations in one direction, each bringing

some advantage.

This is a strongly-marked case; but its features, although unusually

prominent, are like those of the general run of the considerations by which

evolution is supposed to exclude design. Those of the penultimate citation

and its context are all of the same stamp. The differences which begin as

variations are said to be spontaneous--a metaphorical word of wide

meanings--are inferred to be casual (whereas we only know them to be

occult), or to be originated by surrounding agencies (which is not in a just

sense true); they are legitimately inferred to be led on by natural

selection, wholly new structures or organs appear, no one can say how,

certainly no one can show that they are necessary outcomes of what

preceded; and these two are through natural selection kept in harmony with

the surroundings, adapted to different ones, diversified, and perfected;

purposes are all along subserved through exquisite adaptations; and yet the

whole is thought to be undesigned, not because of any assigned reason why

this or that must have been thus or so, but simply because they all

occurred in Nature! The Darwinian theory implies that the birth and

development of a species are as natural as those of an individual, are

facts of the same kind in a higher order. The alleged proof of the absence

of design from it amounts to a simple reiteration of the statement, with

particulars. Now, the marks of contrivance in the structure of animals used

not to be questioned because of their coming in the way of birth and

development. It is curious that a further extension of this birth and

development should be held to disprove them. It appears to us that all this

is begging the question against design in Nature, instead of proving that

it may be dispensed with.

Two things have helped on this confusion. One is the notion of the direct

and independent creation of species, with only an ideal connection between

them, to question which was thought to question the principle of design.

The other is a wrong idea of the nature and province of natural selection.

In former papers we have over and over explained the Darwinian doctrine in

this respect. It may be briefly illustrated thus: Natural selection is not

the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now

on this side and now on that, shapes the course. The rudder acts while the

vessel is in motion, effects nothing when it is at rest. Variation answers

to the wind: "Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell when it

cometh and whither it goeth." Its course is controlled by natural

selection, the action of which, at any given moment, is seemingly small or

insensible; but the ultimate results are great. This proceeds mainly

through outward influences. But we are more and more convinced that

variation, and therefore the ground of adaptation, is not a product of, but

a response to, the action of the environment. Variations, in other words,

the differences between individual plants and animals, however originated,

are evidently not from without but from within--not physical but

physiological.

We cannot here assign particularly the reasons for this opinion. But we

notice that the way in which varieties make their appearance strongly

suggests it. The variations of plants which spring up in a seed-bed, for

instance, seem to be in no assignable relation to the external conditions.

They arise, as we say, spontaneously, and either with decided characters

from the first, or with obvious tendencies in one or few directions. The

occult power, whatever it be, does not seem in any given case to act

vaguely, producing all sorts of variations from a common centre, to be

reduced by the struggle for life to fewness and the appearance of order;

there are, rather, orderly indications from the first. The variations of

which we speak, as originating in no obvious casual relation to the

external conditions, do not include dwarfed or starved, and gigantesque or

luxuriant forms, and those drawn up or expanded on the one hand, or

contracted and hardened on the other, by the direct difference in the supply

of food and moisture, light and heat. Here the action of the environment is

both obvious and direct. But such cases do not account for much in

evolution.

Moreover, while we see how the mere struggle and interplay among occurring

forms may improve them and lead them on, we cannot well imagine how the

adaptations which arrest our attention are thereby secured. Our difficulty,

let it be understood, is not about the natural origination of organs. To

the triumphant outcry, "How can an organ, such as an eye, be formed under

Nature?" we would respond with a parallel question, How can a complex and

elaborate organ, such as a nettle-sting, be formed under Nature? But it is

so formed. In the same species some individuals have these

exquisitely-constructed organs and some have not. And so of other glands,

the structure and adaptation of which, when looked into, appear to be as

wonderful as anything in Nature. The impossibility lies in conceiving how

the obvious purpose was effectuated under natural selection alone. This,

under our view, any amount of gradation in a series of forms goes a small

way in explaining. The transit of a young flounder's eye across the head is

a capital instance of a wonderful thing done under Nature, and done

unaccountably.

But simpler correlations are involved in similar difficulty. The

superabundance of the pollen of pine-trees above referred to, and in

oak-trees, is correlated with chance fertilization under the winds. In the

analogous instance of willows a diminished amount of pollen is correlated

with direct transportation by insects. Even in so simple a case as this it

is not easy to see how this difference in the conveyance would reduce the

quantity of pollen produced. It is, we know, in the very alphabet of

Darwinism that if a male willow-tree should produce a smaller amount of

pollen, and if this pollen communicated to the offspring of the female

flowers it fertilized a similar tendency (as it might), this male progeny

would secure whatever advantage might come from the saving of a certain

amount of work and material; but why should it begin to produce less pollen?

But this is as nothing compared with the arrangements in orchid-flowers,

where new and peculiar structures are introduced--structures which, once

originated and then set into variation, may thereupon be selected, and

thereby led on to improvement and diversification. But the origination, and

even the variation, still remains unexplained either by the action of

insects or by any of the processes which collectively are personified by

the term natural selection. We really believe that these exquisite

adaptations have come to pass in the course of Nature, and under natural

selection, but not that natural selection alone explains or in a just sense

originates them. Or rather, if this term is to stand for sufficient cause

and rational explanation, it must denote or include that inscrutable

something which produces--as well as that which results in the survival

of--"the fittest."

We have been considering this class of questions only as a naturalist might

who sought for the proper or reasonable interpretation of the problem

before him, unmingled with considerations from any other source. Weightier

arguments in the last resort, drawn from the intellectual and moral

constitution of man, lie on a higher plane, to which it was unnecessary for

our particular purpose to rise, however indispensable this be to a full

presentation of the evidence of mind in Nature. To us the evidence, judged

as impartially as we are capable of judging, appears convincing. But,

whatever view one unconvinced may take, it cannot remain doubtful what

position a theist ought to occupy. If he cannot recognize design in Nature

because of evolution, he may be ranked with those of whom it was said,

"Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." How strange that a

convinced theist should be so prone to associate design only with miracle!

All turns, however, upon what is meant by this Nature, to which it appears

more and more probable that the being and becoming--no less than the

well-being and succession--of species and genera, as well as of

individuals, are committed. To us it means "the world of force and movement

in time and space," as Aristotle defined it--the system and totality of

things in the visible universe. What is generally called Nature Prof.

Tyndall names matter--a peculiar nomenclature, requiring new definitions (as

he avers), inviting misunderstanding, and leaving the questions we are

concerned with just where they were. For it is still to ask: whence this

rich endowment of matter? Whence comes that of which all we see and know is

the outcome? That to which potency may in the last resort be ascribed,

Prof. Tyndall, suspending further judgment, calls mystery--using the word

in one of its senses, namely, something hidden from us which we are not to

seek to know. But there are also mysteries proper to be inquired into and

to be reasoned about; and, although it may not be given unto us to know the

mystery of causation, there can hardly be a more legitimate subject of

philosophical inquiry. Most scientific men have thought themselves

intellectually authorized to have an opinion about it. "For, by the

primitive and very ancient men, it has been handed down in the form of

myths, and thus left to later generations, that the Divine it is which

holds together all Nature;" and this tradition, of which Aristotle, both

naturalist and philosopher, thus nobly speaks[XIII-5]--continued through

succeeding ages, and illuminated by the Light which has come into the

world--may still express the worthiest thoughts of the modern scientific

investigator and reasoner.

FOOTNOTES:

I-1. "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the

Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life," by Charles Darwin,

M.A., Fellow of the Royal, Geological, Linnaean, etc., Societies, Author of

"Journal of Researches during H. M. S. Beagle's Voyage round the World."

London: John Murray. 1859. 502 pp., post 8vo.

I-2. Article in this Journal, vol. xxiv., p. 305.

I-3. "Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum

Ens; quae formae secundum generationis inditas leges, produxere plures, at

sibi semper similes."--Linn. Phil. Bot., 99, 157.

I-4. Agassiz, "Essay on Classification; Contributions to Natural History,"

p. 132, et seq.

I-5. As to this, Darwin remarks that he can only hope to see the law

hereafter proved true (p. 449); and p. 338: "Agassiz insists that ancient

animals resemble to a certain extent the embryos of recent animals of the

same classes; or that the geological succession of extinct forms is in some

degree parallel to the embryological development of recent forms. I must

follow Pictet and Huxley in thinking that the truth of this doctrine is

very far from proved. Yet I fully expect to see it hereafter confirmed, at

least in regard to subordinate groups, which have branched off from each

other within comparatively recent times. For this doctrine of Agassiz

accords well with the theory of natural selection."

I-6. Op. cit., p. 131.--One or two Bridgewater Treatises, and most modern

works upon natural theology, should have rendered the evidences of thought

in inorganic Nature not "unexpected."

I-7. Volume xvii. (2), 1854, p. 13.

I-8. We suspect that this is not an ultimate fact, but a natural consequence

of inheritance--the inheritance of disease or of tendency to disease,

which close interbreeding perpetuates and accumulates, but wide

breeding may neutralize or eliminate.

I-9. The rules and processes of breeders of animals, and their results, are

so familiar that they need not be particularized. Less is popularly known

about the production of vegetable races. We refer our readers back to this

Journal, vol. xxvii., pp. 440--442 (May, 1859), for an abstract of the

papers of M. Vilmorin upon this subject.

I-10. Quadrupeds of America," vol. ii., p. 239.

I-11. "Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences," vol. iv.,

p. 178.

I-12. Owen adds a third, viz., vegetative repetition; but this, in the

vegetable kingdom, is simply unity of type.

I-13. "Contributions to Natural History of America," vol. i., pp. 127--131.

I-14. Op. cit., p. 130.

II-1. To parry an adversary's thrust at a vulnerable part, or to show that

it need not be fatal, is an incomplete defense. If the discussion had gone

on, it might, perhaps, have been made to appear that the Darwinian

hypothesis, so far from involving the idea of necessity (except in the

sense that everything is of necessity), was based upon the opposite idea,

that of contingency.

III-1. Vide "Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of

Science," 1859, and London Athenoeum, passim. It appears to be conceded

that these "celts" or stone knives are artificial productions, and

apparently of the age of the mammoth, the fossil rhinoceros, etc.

III-2. See "Correspondence of M. Nickles," in American Journal of Science

and Arts, for March, 1860.

III-3. See Morlot, "Some General Views on Archaeology," in American Journal

of Science and Arts, for January, 186o, translated from "Bulletin de la

Societe Vaudoise," 1859.

III-4. Page 484, English edition. In the new American edition (vide

Supplement, pp. 431, 432) the principal analogies which suggest the extreme

view are referred to, and the remark is appended: "But this inference is

chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be

accepted. The case is different with the members of each great class, as

the Vertebrata or Articulata; for here we have in the laws of homology,

embryology, etc., some distinct evidence that all have descended from a

single primordial parent."

III-5. In Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, March, 1860.

III-6. This we learn from his very interesting article, "De la Question de

l'Homme Fossile," in the same (March) number of the Biblioteque

Universelle. (See, also, the same author's "Note sur la Periode

Quaternaire ou Diluvienne, consideree dans ses Rapports avec l'Epoque

Actuelle," in the number for August, 1860, of the same periodical.)

III-7. In Comptes Rendus, Academie des Sciences, February 2, 1857.

III-8. Whatever it may be, it is not "the homoeopathic form of the

transmutative hypothesis," as Darwin's is said to be (p. 252, American

reprint), so happily that the prescription is repeated in the second (p.

259) and third (p. 271) dilutions, no doubt, on Hahnemann's famous

principle, of an increase of potency at each dilution. Probably the

supposed transmutation is per saltus. "Homoeopathic doses of

transmutation," indeed! Well, if we really must swallow transmutation in

some form or other, as this reviewer intimates, we might prefer the mild

homoeopathic doses of Darwin's formula to the allopathic bolus which the

Edinburgh general practitioner appears to be compounding.

III-9. Vide North American Review, for April, 1860, p. 475, and Christian

Examiner, for May, p. 457.

III-10. Page 188, English edition.

III-11. In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, pp. 147--149.

III-12. In "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," vol.

i., p.128, 129.

III-13. Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," vol. 1,

p. 130; and American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.

III-14. North American Review for April 1860, p. 506.

III-15. Vide motto from Butler, prefixed to the second edition of Darwin's

work.

III-16. North American Review, loc. cit., p. 504.

III-17. North American Review, loc. cit., p. 487, et passim.

III-18. In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.

III-19. Vide article by Mr. C. Wright, in the Mathematical Monthly for May

last.

III-20. Vide Edinburgh Review for January, 1860, article on

"Acclimatization," etc.

III-21. American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 146.

IV-1. A name which, at the close of his article, De Candolle proposes for

the study of the succession of organized beings, to comprehend, therefore,

palaeontology and all included under what is called geographical botany and

zoology--the whole forming a science parallel to geology--the latter

devoted to the history of unorganized bodies, the former, to that of

organized beings, as respects origin, distribution, and succession. We are

not satisfied with the word, notwithstanding the precedent of palaeontology;

since ontology, the Science of being, has an established meaning as

referring to mental existence--i.e., is a synonym for a department of

metaphysics.

IV-2. Natural History Review, January, 1862

IV-3. What the Rev. Principal Tulloch remarks in respect to the philosophy

of miracles has a pertinent application here. We quote at second hand:

"The stoutest advocates of interference can mean nothing more than that the

Supreme Will has so moved the hidden springs of Nature that a new issue

arises on given circumstances. The ordinary issue is supplanted by a higher

issue. The essential facts before us are a certain set of phenomena, and a

Higher Will moving them. How moving them? is a question for human

definition; the answer to which does not and cannot affect the divine

meaning of the change. Yet when we reflect that this Higher Will is every.

where reason and wisdom, it seems a juster as well as a more comprehensive

view to regard it as operating by subordination and evolution, rather than

by interference or violation."

IV-4. Particularly citing Flourens: "La ressemblance n'est qu'une condition

secondaire; la condition essentielle est la descendance: ce n'est pas la

ressemblance, c'est la succession des individus, qui fait l'espece."

V-1. The phrase "Atlantic United States" is here used throughout in

contradistinction to Pacific United States: to the former of course belong,

botanically and geographically, the valley of the Mississippi and its

tributaries up to the eastern border of the great woodless plains, which

constitute an intermediate region.

V-2. The tabulated list referred to was printed as an appendix to the

official edition of this discourse, but is here omitted.

V-3. American Journal of Science, 1867, p. 402; "Proceedings of American

Academy," vol. viii., p. 244.

V-4. "Memoirs of American Academy," vol. vi., pp. 377--458 (1859)

V-5. Die vegetation der erde nach ihrer kilmatischen Anordnung," 1871.

V-6. Reference should also be made to the extensive researches of Newberry

upon the tertiary and cretaceous floras of the Western United States. See

especially Prof. Newberry's paper in the Boston Journal of Natural History,

vol. vii., No. 4, describing fossil plants of Vancouver's Island, etc.; his

"Notes on the Later Extinct Floras of North America," etc., in "Annals of

the Lyceum of Natural History," vol. ix., April, 1868; "Report on the

Cretaceous and Tertiary Plants collected in Raynolds and Hayden's

Yellowstone and Missouri Exploring Expedition, 1859--1860," published in

1869; and an interesting article entitled "The Ancient Lakes of Western

America, their Deposits and Drainage," published in The American

Naturalist, January, 1871.

The only document I was able to consult was Lesquereux's "Report on the

Fossil Plants," in Hayden's report of 1872.

V-7. There is, at least, one instance so opportune to the present argument

that it should not pass unnoticed, although I had overlooked the record

until now. Onoclea sensibilis is a fern peculiar to the Atlantic United

States (where it is common and wide-spread) and to Japan. Prof. Newberry

identified it several years ago in a collection, obtained by Dr. Hayden, of

miocene fossil plants of Dakota Territory, which is far beyond its present

habitat. He moreover regards it as probably identical with a fossil specimen

"described by the late Prof. E. Forbes, under the name of Filicites

Hebridicus, and obtained by the Duke of Argyll from the island of Mull."

V-8. "Darwinism in Morals," in Theological Review, April, 1871.

VI-1. "Histoire des Sciences et des Sevants depuis deux Siecles, suivie

d'autres etudes sur des sujets scientifiques, en particulier sur la

Selection dans 1'Espèce Humaine, par Alphonse De Candolle." Geneve: H.

Georg. 1873.

"Addresses of George Bentham, President, read at the anniversary meetings

of the Linnaean Society, 1862--1873."

"Notes on the Classification, History, and Geographical Distribution of

Compositae. By George Bentham." Separate issue from the Journal of the

Linnean Society. Vol. XIII. London. 1873.

"On Palaeontological Evidence of Gradual Modification of Animal Forms, read

at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, April 25, 1873. By Prof. W.H.

Flower." (Journal of the Royal Institution, pp. 11.)

"The Distribution and Migration of Birds. Memoir presented to the National

Academy of Sciences, January, 1865, abstracted in the American Journal of

Science and the Arts. 1866, etc. By Spencer F. Baird."

"The Story of the Earth and Man. By J.W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S.,

Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, Montreal. London:

Hodder & Stoughton; New York: Harper & Brothers. 1873. Pp. 403, 12mo.

VI-2. Since this article was in type, noteworthy examples of appreciative

scientific judgment of the derivative hypothesis have come to hand: 1. In

the opening address to the Geological Section of the British Association,

at its recent meeting, by its president, the veteran Phillips, perhaps the

oldest surviving geologist after Lyell; and, 2. That of Prof. Allman,

President of the Biological Section. The first touches the subject briefly,

but in the way of favorable suggestion; the second is a full and

discriminating exposition of the reasons which seem to assure at least the

provisional acceptance of the hypothesis, as a guide in all biological

studies, "a key to the order and hidden forces of the world of life."

VII-1. "The Theory of Evolution of Living Things, and the Application of the

Principles of Evolution to Religion, considered as illustrative of the

'Wisdom and Beneficence of the Almighty.' By the Rev. George Henslow, M.A.,

F.L.S., F.G.S., etc." New York: Macmillan & Co. 1873. 12mo, pp. 220.

"Systematic Theology. By Charles Hodge, D.D., Professor in the Theological

Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. Vol. ii. (Part II, Anthropology.") New

York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1872.

"Religion and Science: A Series of Sunday Lectures on the Relation of

Natural and Revealed Religion, or the Truths Revealed in Nature and

Scripture. By Joseph Le Conte, Professor of Geology and Natural History in

the University of California." New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1874. 12mo, pp.

324.

VII-2. "But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as

this-- we can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated

interpositions of divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the

establishment of general laws.--Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise.

"The only distinct meaning of the world 'natural' is stated, fixed, or

settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an

intelligent agent to render it so--i.e., to effect it continually or at

stated times--as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for

once."--Butler's Analogy.

VIII-1. "What Is Darwinism? By Charles Hodge, Princeton, N.J." New York:

Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

"The Doctrine of Evolution. By Alexander Winchell, LL.D., etc. New York:

Harper & Brothers. 1874.

"Darwinism and Design; or, Creation by Evolution. By George St. Clair."

London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1873.

"Westminster Sermons. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley, F.L.S., F.G.S., Canon

of Westminster, etc." London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1874.

VIII-2. These two postulate-mottoes are quoted in full in a previous

article, in No. 446 of The Nation.

XI-1. "Insectivorous Plants. By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S." With

Illustrations. London: John Murray. 1875. Pp. 462. New York: D. Appleton &

Co.

"The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants. By Charles Darwin, M.A.,

F.R.S., etc." Second Edition, revised, with Illustrations. London: John

Murray. 1875. Pp. 208. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

XI-2. The Nation, Nos. 457, 458, 1874. It was in these somewhat light and

desultory, but substantially serious, articles that some account of Mr.

Darwin's observations upon the digestive powers of Drosera and Dionaea

first appeared; in fact, their leading motive was to make sufficient

reference to his then unpublished discoveries to guard against expected or

possible claims to priority. Dr. Burdon-Sanderson's lecture, and the report

in Nature, which first made them known in England, appeared later.

A mistake on our part in the reading of a somewhat ambiguous sentence in a

letter led to the remark, at the close of the first of those articles, that

the leaf-trap of Dionaea had been paralyzed on one side in consequence of a

dexterous puncture. What was communicated really related to Drosera.

XI-3. A. Gray, in "Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and

Sciences," vol. iv., p. 98; and American Journal of Science and the Arts,

March, 1859, p. 278.

XII-1. "Les Especes affines et la Theorie de l'Evolution," par Charles

Naudin, Membre de l'Institut, in Bulletin de la Societe Botanique de

France, tome xxi., pp. 240-272, 1874. See also Comptes Rendus, September 27

and October 4, 1875, reproduced in "Annales des Sciences Naturelles," 1876,

pp. 73-81.

XII-2. In noticing M. Naudin's paper in the Comptes Rendus, now reprinted in

the "Annales des Sciences Naturelles," entitled "Variation desordonnee des

Plantes Hybrides et Deductions qu'on peut en tirer," we were at a loss to

conceive why he attributed all present variation of species to atavism,

i.e., to the reappearance of ancestral characters (American Journal of

Science, February, 1876). His anterior paper was not then known to us; from

which it now appears that this view comes in as a part of the hypothesis of

extreme plasticity and variability at the first, subsiding at length into

entire fixity and persistence of character. According to which, it is

assumed that the species of our time have lost all power of original

variation, but can still reproduce some old ones--some reminiscences, as it

were, of youthful vagaries--in the way of atavism.

XIII-1. London, 1862.

XIII-2. Hume, in his "Essays," anticipated this argument. But he did not

rest on it. His matured convictions appear to be expressed in statements

such as the following, here cited at second hand from Jackson's "Philosophy

of Natural Theology," a volume to which a friend has just called our

attention:

"Though the stupidity of men," writes Hume, "barbarous and uninstructed, be

so great that they may not see a sovereign author in the more obvious works

of Nature, to which they are so much familiarized, yet it scarce seems

possible that any one of good understanding should reject that idea, when

once it is suggested to him. A purpose, an intention, a design, is evident

in everything; and when our comprehension is so far enlarged as to

contemplate the first rise of this visible system, we must adopt, with the

strongest conviction, the idea of some intelligent cause or author. The

uniform maxims, too, which prevail throughout the whole frame of the

universe, naturally, if not necessarily, lead us to conceive this

intelligence as single and undivided, where the prejudices of education

oppose not so reasonable a theory. Even the contrarieties of Nature, by

discovering themselves everywhere, become proofs of some consistent plan,

and establish one single purpose or intention, however inexplicable and

incomprehensible."---("Natural History of Religion," xv.)

"In many views of the universe, and of its parts, particularly the latter,

the beauty and fitness of final causes strike us with such irresistible

force that all objections appear (what I believe they really are) mere

cavils and sophisms."-- ("Dialogues concerning Natural Religion," Part X.)

"The order and arrangement of Nature, the curious adjustment of final

causes, the plain use and intention of every part and organ, all these

bespeak in the clearest language an intelligent cause or author."--(Ibid.,