hang up in their cottages for the purpose--the glandular tentacles of which
have wholly lost their powers of movement, if they ever had any, but which
still secrete, digest, and absorb, being roused to great activity by the
contact of any animal matter. A friend of ours once remarked that it was
fearful to contemplate the amount of soul that could be called forth in a
dog by the sight of a piece of meat. Equally wonderful is the avidity for
animal food manifested by these vegetable tentacles, that can "only stand
and wait" for it.

Only a brief chapter is devoted to Dionaea of North Carolina, the Venus's
fly-trap, albeit, "from the rapidity and force of its movements, one of the
most wonderful in the world." It is of the same family as the sundew; but
the action is transferred from tentacles on the leaf to the body of the
leaf itself, which is transformed into a spring-trap, closing with a sudden
movement over the alighted insect. No secretion is provided beforehand
either for allurement or detention; but after the captive is secured,
microscopic glands within the surface of the leaf pour out an abundant
gastric juice to digest it. Mrs. Glass's classical directions in the
cook-book, "first catch your hare," are implicitly followed.

Avoiding here all repetition or recapitulation of our former narrative,
suffice it now to mention two interesting recent additions to our
knowledge, for which we are indebted to Mr. Darwin. One is a research, the
other an inspiration. It is mainly his investigations which have shown that
the glairy liquid, which is poured upon and macerates the captured insect,
accomplishes a true digestion; that, like the gastric juice of animals, it
contains both a free acid and pepsin or its analogue, these two together
dissolving albumen, meat, and the like. The other point relates to the
significance of a peculiarity in the process of capture. When the trap
suddenly incloses an insect which has betrayed its presence by touching one
of the internal sensitive bristles, the closure is at first incomplete. For
the sides approach in an arching way, surrounding a considerable cavity,
and the marginal spine-like bristles merely intercross their tips, leaving
intervening spaces through which one may look into the cavity beneath. A
good idea may be had of it by bringing the two palms near together to
represent the sides of the trap, and loosely interlocking the fingers to
represent the marginal bristles or bars. After remaining some time in this
position the closure is made complete by the margins coming into full
contact, and the sides finally flattening down so as to press firmly upon
the insect within; the secretion excited by contact is now poured out, and
digestion begins. Why these two stages? Why should time be lost by this
preliminary and incomplete closing? The query probably was never distinctly
raised before, no one noticing anything here that needed explanation.
Darwinian teleology, however, raises questions like this, and Mr. Darwin
not only propounded the riddle but solved it. The object of the partial
closing is to permit small insects to escape through the meshes, detaining
only those plump enough to be worth the trouble of digesting. For naturally
only one insect is caught at a time, and digestion is a slow business with
Dionaeas, as with anacondas, requiring ordinarily a fortnight. It is not
worth while to undertake it with a gnat when larger game may be had. To
test this happy conjecture, Mr. Canby was asked, on visiting the Dionaeas
in their native habitat, to collect early in the season a good series of
leaves in the act of digesting naturally-caught insects. Upon opening them
it was found that ten out of fourteen were engaged upon relatively large
prey, and of the remaining four three had insects as large as ants, and one
a rather small fly.

"There be land-rats and water-rats" in this carnivorous sun-dew family.
Aldrovanda, of the warmer parts of Europe and of India, is an aquatic plant,
with bladdery leaves, which were supposed to be useful in rendering the
herbage buoyant in water. But it has recently been found that the bladder
is composed of two lobes, like the trap of its relative Dionaea, or the
valves of a mussel-shell; that these open when the plant is in an active
state, are provided with some sensitive bristles within, and when these are
touched close with a quick movement. These water-traps are manifestly
adapted for catching living creatures; and the few incomplete
investigations that have already been made render it highly probably that
they appropriate their prey for nourishment; whether by digestion or by
mere absorption of decomposing animal matter, is uncertain. It is certainly
most remarkable that this family of plants, wherever met with, and under the
most diverse conditions and modes of life, should always in some way or
other be predaceous and carnivorous.

If it be not only surprising but somewhat confounding to our
classifications that a whole group of plants should subsist partly by
digesting animal matter and partly in the normal way of decomposing
carbonic acid and producing the basis of animal matter, we have, as Mr.
Darwin remarks, a counterpart anomaly in the animal kingdom. While some
plants have stomachs, some animals have roots. "The rhizocephalous
crustaceans do not feed like other animals by their mouths, for they are
destitute of an alimentary canal, but they live by absorbing through
root-like processes the juices of the animals on which they are parasitic."

To a naturalist of our day, imbued with those ideas of the solidarity of
organic Nature which such facts as those we have been considering suggest,
the greatest anomaly of all would be that they are really anomalous or
unique. Reasonably supposing, therefore, that the sundew did not stand
alone, Mr. Darwin turned his attention to other groups of plants; and,
first, to the bladderworts, which have no near kinship with the sundews,
but, like the aquatic representative of that family, are provided with
bladdery sacs, under water. In the common species of Utricularia or
bladderwort, these little sacs, hanging from submerged leaves or branches,
have their orifice closed by a lid which opens inwardly--a veritable
trapdoor. It had been noticed in England and France that they contained
minute crustacean animals. Early in the summer of 1874, Mr. Darwin
ascertained the mechanism for their capture and the great success with
which it is used. But before his account was written out, Prof. Cohn
published an excellent paper on the subject in Germany; and Mrs. Treat, of
Vineland, New Jersey, a still earlier one in this country--in the New York
Tribune in the autumn of 1874. Of the latter, Mr. Darwin remarks that she
"has been more successful than any other observer in witnessing the actual
entrance of these minute creatures." They never come out, but soon perish
in their prison, which receives a continued succession of victims, but
little, if any, fresh air to the contained water. The action of the trap is
purely mechanical, without evident irritability in the opening or shutting.
There is no evidence nor much likelihood of proper digestion; indeed, Mr.
Darwin found evidence to the contrary. But the more or less decomposed and
dissolved animal matter is doubtless absorbed into the plant; for the whole
interior of the sac is lined with peculiar, elongated and four-armed very
thin-walled processes, which contain active protoplasm, and which were
proved by experiment to "have the power of absorbing matter from weak
solutions of certain salts of ammonia and urea, and from a putrid infusion
of raw meat."

Although the bladderworts "prey on garbage," their terrestrial relatives
"live cleanly," as nobler plants should do, and have a good and true
digestion. Pinguicula, or butterwort, is the representative of this family
upon land. It gets both its Latin and its English name from the fatty or
greasy appearance of the upper face of its broad leaves; and this
appearance is due to a dense coat or pile of short-stalked glands, which
secrete a colorless and extremely viscid liquid. By this small flies, or
whatever may alight or fall upon the leaf, are held fast. These waifs might
be useless or even injurious to the plant. Probably Mr. Darwin was the
first to ask whether they might be of advantage. He certainly was the first
to show that they probably are so. The evidence from experiment, shortly
summed up, is, that insects alive or dead, and also other nitrogenous
bodies, excite these glands to increased secretion; the secretion then
becomes acid, and acquires the power of dissolving solid animal
substances--that is, the power of digestion in the manner of Drosera and
Dionaea. And the stalks of their glands under the microscope give the same
ocular evidence of absorption. The leaves of the butterwort are apt to have
their margins folded inward, like a rim or hem. Taking young and vigorous
leaves to which hardly anything had yet adhered, and of which the margins
were still flat, Mr. Darwin set within one margin a row of small flies.
Fifteen hours afterward this edge was neatly turned inward, partly covering
the row of flies, and the surrounding glands were secreting copiously. The
other edge remained flat and unaltered. Then he stuck a fly to the middle
of the leaf just below its tip, and soon both margins infolded, so as to
clasp the object. Many other and varied experiments yielded similar
results. Even pollen, which would not rarely be lodged upon these leaves, as
it falls from surrounding wind-fertilized plants, also small seeds, excited
the same action, and showed signs of being acted upon. "We may therefore
conclude," with Mr. Darwin, "that Pinguicula vulgaris, with its small
roots, is not only supported to a large extent by the extraordinary number
of insects which it habitually captures, but likewise draws some
nourishment from the pollen, leaves, and seeds, of other plants which often
adhere to its leaves. It is, therefore, partly a vegetable as well as an
animal feeder."

What is now to be thought of the ordinary glandular hairs which render the
surface of many and the most various plants extremely viscid? Their number
is legion. The Chinese primrose of common garden and house culture is no
extraordinary instance; but Mr. Francis Darwin, counting those on a small
space measured by the micrometer, estimated them at 65,371 to the square
inch of foliage, taking in both surfaces of the leaf, or two or three
millions on a moderate-sized specimen of this small herb. Glands of this
sort were loosely regarded as organs for excretion, without much
consideration of the  question whether, in vegetable life, there could be
any need to excrete, or any advantage gained by throwing off such products;
and, while the popular name of catch-fly, given to several common species
of Silene, indicates long familiarity with the fact, probably no one ever
imagined that the swarms of small insects which perish upon these sticky
surfaces were ever turned to account by the plant. In many such cases, no
doubt they perish as uselessly as when attracted into the flame of a
candle. In the tobacco-plant, for instance, Mr. Darwin could find no
evidence that the glandular hairs absorb animal matter. But Darwinian
philosophy expects all gradations between casualty and complete adaptation.
It is most probable that any thin-walled vegetable structure which secretes
may also be capable of absorbing under favorable conditions. The myriads of
exquisitely-constructed glands of the Chinese primrose are not likely to be
functionless. Mr. Darwin ascertained by direct experiment that they
promptly absorb carbonate of ammonia, both in watery solution and in vapor.
So, since rain-water usually contains a small percentage of ammonia, a use
for these glands becomes apparent--one completely congruous with that of
absorbing any animal matter, or products of its decomposition, which may
come in their way through the occasional entanglement of insects in their
viscid secretion. In several saxifrages--not very distant relatives of
Drosera--the viscid glands equally manifested the power of absorption.

To trace a gradation between a simply absorbing hair with a glutinous tip,
through which the plant may perchance derive slight contingent advantage,
and the tentacles of a sundew, with their exquisite and associated
adaptations, does not much lessen the wonder nor explain the phenomena.
After all, as Mr. Darwin modestly concludes, "we see how little has been
made out in comparison with what remains unexplained and unknown." But all
this must be allowed to be an important contribution to the doctrine of the
gradual acquirement of uses and functions, and hardly to find conceivable
explanation upon any other hypothesis.

There remains one more mode in which plants of the higher grade are known
to prey upon animals; namely, by means of pitchers, urns, or tubes, in
which insects and the like are drowned or confined, and either macerated or
digested. To this Mr. Darwin barely alludes on the last page of the present
volume. The main facts known respecting the American pitcher-plants have,
as was natural, been ascertained in this country; and we gave an abstract,
two years ago, of our then incipient knowledge. Much has been learned
since, although all the observations have been of a desultory character. If
space permitted, an instructive narrative might be drawn up, as well of the
economy of the Sarracenias as of how we came to know what we do of it. But
the very little we have room for will be strictly supplementary to our
former article.

The pitchers of our familiar Northern Sarracenia, which is likewise
Southern, are open-mouthed; and, although they certainly secrete some
liquid when young, must derive most of the water they ordinarily contain
from rain. How insects are attracted is unknown, but the water abounds with
their drowned bodies and decomposing remains.

In the more southern S. flava, the long and trumpet-shaped pitchers
evidently depend upon the liquid which they themselves secrete, although at
maturity, when the hood becomes erect, rain may somewhat add to it. This
species, as we know, allures insects by a peculiar sweet exudation within
the orifice; they fall in and perish, though seldom by drowning, yet few
are able to escape; and their decomposing remains accumulate in the narrow
bottom of the vessel. Two other long-tubed species of the Southern States
are similar in these respects. There is another, S. psittacina, the
parrot-headed species, remarkable for the cowl-shaped hood so completely
inflexed over the mouth of the small pitcher that no rain can possibly
enter. Little is known, however, of the efficiency of this species as a
fly-catcher; but its conformation has a morphological interest, leading up,
as it does, to the Californian type of pitcher presently to be mentioned.

But the remaining species, S. variolaris, is the most wonderful of our
pitcher-plants in its adaptations for the capture of insects. The inflated
and mottled lid or hood overarches the ample orifice of the tubular pitcher
sufficiently to ward off the rain, but not to obstruct the free access of
flying insects. Flies, ants, and most insects, glide and fall from the
treacherous smooth throat into the deep well below, and never escape. They
are allured by a sweet secretion just within the orifice-- which was
discovered and described long ago, and the knowledge of it wellnigh
forgotten until recently. And, finally, Dr. Mellichamp, of South Carolina,
two years ago made the capital discovery that, during the height of the
season, this lure extends from the orifice down nearly to the ground, a
length of a foot or two, in the form of a honeyed line or narrow trail on
the edge of the wing-like border which is conspicuous in all these species,
although only in this one, so far as known, turned to such account. Here,
one would say, is a special adaptation to ants and such terrestrial and
creeping insects. Well, long before this sweet trail was known, it was
remarked by the late Prof. Wyman and others that the pitchers of this
species, in the savannahs of Georgia and Florida, contain far more ants
than they do of all other insects put together.

Finally, all this is essentially repeated in the peculiar Californian
pitcher-plant (Darlingtonia), a genus of the same natural family, which
captures insects in great variety, enticing them by a sweetish secretion
over the whole inside of the inflated hood and that of a curious forked
appendage, resembling a fish-tail, which overhangs the orifice. This
orifice is so concealed that it can be seen and approached only from below,
as if--the casual observer might infer--to escape visitation. But dead
insects of all kinds, and their decomposing remains, crowd the cavity and
saturate the liquid therein contained, enticed, it is said, by a peculiar
odor, as well as by the sweet lure which is at some stages so abundant as
to drip from the tips of the overhanging appendage. The principal
observations upon this pitcher-plant in its native habitat have been made
by Mrs. Austin, and only some of the earlier ones have thus far been
published by Mr. Canby. But we are assured that in this, as in the
Sarracenia variolaris, the sweet exudation extends at the proper season
from the orifice down the wing nearly to the ground, and that ants follow
this honeyed pathway to their destruction. Also, that the watery liquid in
the pitcher, which must be wholly a secretion, is much increased in
quantity after the capture of insects.

It cannot now well be doubted that the animal matter is utilized by the
plant in all these cases, although most probably only after maceration or
decomposition. In some of them even digestion, or at least the absorption
of undecomposed soluble animal juices, may be suspected; but there is no
proof of it. But, if pitchers of the Sarracenia family are only macerating
vessels, those of Nepenthes--the pitchers of the Indian Archipelago,
familiar in conservatories--seem to be stomachs. The investigations of the
President of the Royal Society, Dr. Hooker, although incomplete, wellnigh
demonstrate that these not only allure insects by a sweet secretion at the
rim and upon the lid of the cup, but also that their capture, or the
presence of other partly soluble animal matter, produces an increase and an
acidulation of the contained watery liquid, which thereupon becomes capable
of acting in the manner of that of Drosera and Dionaea, dissolving flesh,
albumen, and the like.

After all, there never was just ground for denying to vegetables the use of
animal food. The fungi are by far the most numerous family of plants, and
they all live upon organic matter, some upon dead and decomposing, some
upon living, some upon both; and the number of those that feed upon living
animals is large. Whether these carnivorous propensities of higher plants
which so excite our wonder be regarded as survivals of ancestral habits, or
as comparatively late acquirements, or even as special endowments, in any
case what we have now learned of them goes to strengthen the conclusion that
the whole organic world is akin.

The volume upon "The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants" is a revised
and enlarged edition of a memoir communicated to the Linnaean Society in
1865, and published in the ninth volume of its Journal. There was an extra
impression, but, beyond the circle of naturalists, it can hardly have been
much known at first-hand. Even now, when it is made a part of the general
Darwinian literature, it is unlikely to be as widely read as the companion
volume which we have been reviewing; although it is really a more readable
book, and well worthy of far more extended notice at our hands than it can
now receive. The reason is obvious. It seems as natural that plants should
climb as it does unnatural that any should take animal food. Most people,
knowing that some plants "twine with the sun," and others "against the
sun," have an idea that the sun in some way causes the twining; indeed, the
notion is still fixed in the popular mind that the same species twines in
opposite directions north and south of the equator.

Readers of this fascinating treatise will learn, first of all, that the sun
has no influence over such movements directly, and that its indirect
influence is commonly adverse or disturbing, except the heat, which
quickens vegetable as it does animal life. Also, that climbing is
accomplished by powers and actions as unlike those generally predicated of
the vegetable kingdom as any which have been brought to view in the
preceding volume. Climbing plants "feel" as well as "grow and live;" and
they also manifest an automatism which is perhaps more wonderful than a
response by visible movement to an external irritation. Nor do plants grow
up their supports, as is unthinkingly supposed; for, although only growing
or newly-grown parts act in climbing, the climbing and the growth are
entirely distinct. To this there is one exception--an instructive one, as
showing how one action passes into another, and how the same result may be
brought about in different ways--that of stems which climb by rootlets, such
as of ivy and trumpet-creeper. Here the stem ascends by growth alone,
taking upward direction, and is fixed by root-lets as it grows. There is no
better way of climbing walls, precipices, and large tree-trunks.

But small stems and similar supports are best ascended by twining; and this
calls out powers of another and higher order. The twining stem does not
grow around its support, but winds around it, and it does this by a
movement the nature of which is best observed in stems which have not yet
reached their support, or have overtopped it and stretched out beyond it.
Then it may be seen that the extending summit, reaching farther and farther
as it grows, is making free circular sweeps, by night as well as by day, and
irrespective of external circumstances, except that warmth accelerates the
movement, and that the general tendency of young stems to bend toward the
light may, in case of lateral illumination, accelerate one-half the circuit
while it equally retards the other. The arrest of the revolution where the
supporting body is struck, while the portion beyond continues its movement,
brings about the twining. As to the proximate cause of this sweeping
motion, a few simple experiments prove that it results from the bowing or
bending of the free summit of the stem into a more or less horizontal
position (this bending being successively to every point of the compass,
through an action which circulates around the stem in the direction of the
sweep), and of the consequent twining, i.e., "with the sun," or with the
movement of the hands of a watch, in the hop, or in the opposite direction
in pole-beans and most twiners.     Twining plants, therefore, ascend trees or
other stems by an action and a movement of their own, from which they derive
advantage. To plants liable to be overshadowed by more robust companions,
climbing is an economical method of obtaining a freer exposure to light and
air with the smallest possible expenditure of material. But twiners have
one disadvantage: to rise ten feet they must produce fifteen feet of stem
or thereabouts, according to the diameter of the support, and the openness
or closeness of the coil. A rootlet-climber saves much in this respect, but
has a restricted range of action, and other disadvantages.

There are two other modes, which combine the utmost economy of material
with freer range of action. There are, in the first place, leaf-climbers of
various sorts, agreeing only in this, that the duty of laying hold is
transferred to the leaves, so that the stem may rise in a direct line.
Sometimes the blade or leaflets, or some of them, but more commonly their
slender stalks, undertake the work, and the plant rises as a boy ascends a
tree, grasping first with one hand or arm, then with the other. Indeed, the
comparison, like the leaf-stalk, holds better than would be supposed; for
the grasping of the latter is not the result of a blind groping in all
directions by a continuous movement, but of a definite sensitiveness which
acts only upon the occasion. Most leaves make no regular sweeps; but when
the stalks of a leaf-climbing species come into prolonged contact with any
fitting extraneous body, they slowly incurve and make a turn around it, and
then commonly thicken and harden until they attain a strength which may
equal that of the stem itself. Here we have the faculty of movement to a
definite end, upon external irritation, of the same nature with that
displayed by Dionaea and Drosera, although slower for the most part than
even in the latter. But the movement of the hour-hand of the clock is not
different in nature or cause from that of the second-hand.

Finally--distribution of office being, on the whole, most advantageous and
economical, and this, in the vegetable kingdom, being led up to by
degrees--we reach, through numerous gradations, the highest style of
climbing plants in the tendril-climber. A tendril morphologically, is
either a leaf or branch of stem, or a portion of one, specially organized
for climbing. Some tendrils simply turn away from light, as do those of
grape-vines, thus taking the direction in which some supporting object is
likely to be encountered; most are indifferent to light; and many revolve
in the manner of the summit of twining stems. As the stems which bear these
highly-endowed tendrils in many cases themselves also revolve more or less,
though they seldom twine, their reach is the more extensive; and to this
endowment of automatic movement most tendrils add the other faculty, that
of incurving and coiling upon prolonged touch, or even brief contact, in
the highest degree. Some long tendrils, when in their best condition,
revolve so rapidly that the sweeping movement may be plainly seen; indeed,
we have seen a quarter-circuit in a Passiflora sicyoides accomplished in
less than a minute, and the half-circuit in ten minutes; but the other half
(for a reason alluded to in the next paragraph) takes a much longer time.
Then, as to the coiling upon contact, in the case first noticed in this
country,[XI-3] in the year 1858, which Mr. Darwin mentions as having led him
into this investigation, the tendril of Sicyos was seen to coil within half
a minute after a stroke with the hand, and to make a full turn or more
within the next minute; furnishing ocular evidence that tendrils grasp and
coil in virtue of sensitiveness to contact, and, one would suppose,
negativing Sachs's recent hypothesis that all these movements are owing "to
rapid growth on the side opposite to that which becomes concave"--a view to
which Mr. Darwin objects, but not so strongly as he might. The tendril of
this sort, on striking some fitting object, quickly curls round and firmly
grasps it; then, after some hours, one side shortening or remaining short
in proportion to the other, it coils into a spire, dragging the stem up to
its support, and enabling the next tendril above to secure a readier hold.

In revolving tendrils perhaps the most wonderful adaptation is that by
which they avoid attachment to, or winding themselves upon, the ascending
summit of the stem that bears them. This they would inevitably do if they
continued their sweep horizontally. But when in its course it nears the
parent

    stem the tendril moves slowly, as if to gather strength, then C.~ stiffens
and rises into an erect position parallel with it, and C so passes by the
dangerous point; after which it comes rapidly down to the horizontal
position, in which it moves until it again approaches and again avoids the
impending obstacle.

Climbing plants are distributed throughout almost all the natural orders.
In some orders climbing is the rule, in most it is the exception, occurring
only in certain genera. The tendency of stems to move in circuits--upon
which climbing more commonly depends, and out of which it is conceived to
have been educed--is manifested incipiently by many a plant which does not
climb. Of those that do there are all degrees, from the feeblest to the
most efficient, from those which have no special adaptation to those which
have exquisitely-endowed special organs for climbing. The conclusion reached
is, that the power "is inherent, though undeveloped, in almost every
plant;" "that climbing plants have utilized and perfected a
widely-distributed and incipient capacity, which, as far as we can see, is
of no service to ordinary plants."

Inherent powers and incipient manifestations, useless to their possessors
but useful to their successors--this, doubtless, is according to the order
of Nature; but it seems to need something more than natural selection to
account for it.

XII

DURATION AND

ORIGINATION OF

RACE AND SPECIES--

IMPORT OF SEXUAL REPRODUCTION

Do Varieties wear out, or tend to wear out?

(New York Tribune, and American Journal of Science and the Arts, February,
1875)

This question has been argued from time to time for more than half a
century, and is far from being settled yet. Indeed, it is not to be settled
either way so easily as is sometimes thought. The result of a prolonged and
rather lively discussion of the topic about forty years ago in England, in
which Lindley bore a leading part on the negative side, was, if we rightly
remember, that the nays had the best of the argument. The deniers could
fairly well explain away the facts adduced by the other side, and evade the
force of the reasons then assigned to prove that varieties were bound to die
out in the course of time. But if the case were fully re-argued now, it is
by no means certain that the nays would win it. The most they could expect
would be the Scotch verdict, "not proven." And this not because much, if
any, additional evidence of the actual wearing out of any variety has
turned up since, but because a presumption has been raised under which the
evidence would take a bias the other way. There is now in the minds of
scientific men some reason to expect that certain varieties would die out
in the long run, and this might have an important influence upon the
interpretation of the facts. Curiously enough, however, the recent
discussions to which our attention has been called seem, on both sides, to
have overlooked this.

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.