80

"I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations common and multiform with organic beings under domestication, and, in a lesser degree, with those in a state of nature had been due to chance. This, of course, is a wholly incorrect expression: but it serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation.”1

Nothing occurs without a cause. But it is another question whether, in this department of the action of natural forces, design is discoverable. Mr. Darwin appears to hold that variability furnishes the materials for natural selection to act upon, but without reference to such prospective action. In regard to the observaion of Dr. Asa Gray,2 that "variation has been led along certain beneficial lines," he says:

"The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our precipice may be called accidental; but this is not strictly correct, for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events, all obeying natural laws, - on the nature of the rock, on the lines of stratification or cleavage, on the form of the mountain which depends on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and, lastly, on the storm and earthquake which threw down the fragments. But, in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put, their shape may strictly be said to be accidental. And here we are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I am aware that I am travelling beyond my proper province.

"An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which results from the laws imposed by him; but can it be reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes, so that the builder might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have determined the shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake, can it with any greater probability be maintained that he specially ordained, for the sake of the breeder, each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants; many of these variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far more 2 Darwiniana, p. 148

1 Origin of Species, p. 137.

often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did he ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary, in order that the fancier might make his grotesque powter and fantail breeds? Did he cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary, in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport? But if we gve up the principle in one case; if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided, in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed, no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that the variations, alike in nature, and the result of the same general laws which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines,' like a stream along definite and useful lines of irrigation.'

"If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time pre-ordained, the plasticity of the organization, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as that redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection, and survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains every thing, and foresees every thing. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free-will and predestination.”1

Here Mr. Darwin appears to find evidences of design in the agencies which are concerned in natural selection; but with reference to variability, which furnishes the materials on which natural selection oper ates, he can see no proof of design as regards the use to be made of its results in building up animal structures. Yet foresight and plan must be assumed everywhere: hence he is brought to an antinomy, an irreconcilable contradiction.

1 Animals and Plants under Domestication, ii. 431.

This is a strange conclusion. Indefinite variability is the assumed fact on which this reasoning proceeds. Granting, for the moment, that there is ground for this assumption, let us look closely at the inferences connected with it. In the first place, what if the same Agent which broke in pieces the rock, and cast its fragments down at the base of the precipice, were the architect and builder of the edifice? Should we ques tion that this providing of the materials had reference to the purpose in view? Even if the method chosen by the Agent for creating the materials struck us as wasteful, or otherwise wanting in skill, should we doubt that it was part of a plan? It is the same Agent, the same Universal Power, which is manifest in natural selection, that is exerted in producing the phenomena of variability on which natural selection acts. In the second place, Mr. Darwin mixes up a moral question, a question pertaining to the theodicy, with the distinct problem whether design is, or is not, manifest in the origination of animal structures. Why God should plan to give existence to this or that animal, or frame nature so that man may direct and combine laws in such way as to modify animal structures in this or that direction, is a question apart. It is one question whether there is arrangement: it is another question whether that arrangement is merciful or not. Here general laws —— the consideration of order-comes in, and evolution may help natural theology. In the third place, Mr. Darwin's remarks seem to imply that only a single purpose can be aimed at in the creative activity. The rocks which are heaped up at the foot of the precipice, if they were intended for the benefit of the builder who uses them, may also serve other uses, uses possibly inscrutable to us. The laws, to say the least, under

which they come to be what they are, were the whole sweep of their operation and results understood, might be seen to be for the best.

Teleology is not disproved by gradualness of development. The evolution theory is not laid under the necessity of so far contradicting the natural convictions of the race as to make the human eye an undesigned result of unthinking forces. Design is recognized by able naturalists who give large room for the potentiality of protoplasm; and its plasticity under the influence of environment is one of the phases of evolution doctrine which is not without eminent advocates among the students of nature. Function or future use becomes, under this view, the formative idea which specializes organs, and determines structure. An acute naturalist who favors this hypothesis thus writes upon sexual differences, one of the most impressive illustrations of design: :

"Instead of thus eliminating by degrees every trace of finality in sexuality, till we merge into merely mechanical results, is it not just as logical to say that the sexuality of mammalia and flowering plants was potentially visible in the conjugation of monera and plasmodia? and that the 'sexual idea' has reigned throughout, function ever dominating structure, till the latter had conformed to the more complete function by becoming specialized more and more? Or, in the words of Janet, 'The agreement of several phenomena, bound together with a future determinate phenomenon, supposes a cause in which that future phenomenon is ideally represented; and the probability of the presumption increases with the complexity of the concordant phenomena and the number of relations which unite them to the final phenomena.'" 1

The writer last named also observes:

"Finality is certainly not destroyed, whether we believe organs to have been developed by evolution, or to have been created in 1 Janet, Final Causes, p. 55: Final Causes, by Mr. George Hens low. in Modern Review, January, 1881,

man.

some analogous manner to the fabrication of a steam-engine by For my own part, I still hold to the theory that uses cause adaptations, on the principle that function precedes structure. Thus as a graminivorous animal has its food already (so to say) cut up into slices in grass-blades, it does not require scissors to reduce it to small pieces in order to make a convenient mouthful. But a carnivorous animal has a large lump of flesh in the shape of a carcass. It requires to cut it up. The action of biting, in order to do this previous to masticating, has converted its teeth into scissor-like carnassials; and, as it can no longer masticate, it bolts the pieces whole. So, too, man would never have thought of making scissors, unless he had had something that he wanted to cut up. The parallel is complete: only in the one case it is spontaneously effected by the plasticity and adaptability of living matter, and in the other case it is artificially produced by the consciousness and skill of man.” "1

It is plain that the extreme form of Darwinian theory, which holds to a boundless variability in protoplasm, and puts the whole differentiating power in the environment, does not get rid of design. The outer conditions are made to determine every thing. But since there is an upward progress from the simplest organisms to the most complicated and perfect; since, moreover, this process of building up an orderly system, as regards the proximate causes, is necessary,chance is excluded. The alternative of chance is design.

But the assumption of limitless variability is untenaple. Out of variations numberless there must appear individual peculiarities adapted to give success in the struggle for existence. Then, in "this ocean of fluctuation and metamorphosis," variations coinciding with these must appear, from generation to generation, to join on to them and to build up a highly organized species. The series of chances required to be overcome

1 Modern Review, ut sup., p. 56.