2G8 CREATION BY LAW. 



question of how the Creator has worked. The Duke 

 (and I quote him as having well expressed the views 

 of the more intelligent of Mr. Darwin's opponents) 

 maintains, that He has personally applied general laws 

 to produce effects, which those laws are not in them- 

 selves capable of producing; that the universe alone, 

 with all its laws intact, would be a sort of chaos, with- 

 out variety, without harmony, without design, without 

 beauty ; that there is not (and therefore we may pre- 

 sume that 'there could not be) any self-developing 

 power in the universe. I believe, on the contrary, 

 that the universe is so constituted as to be self-regu- 

 lating; that as long as it contains Life, the forms under 

 which that life is manifested have an inherent power 

 of adjustment to each other and to surrounding na- 

 ture; and that this adjustment necessarily leads to the 

 greatest amount of variety and beauty and enjoyment, 

 because it does depend on general laws, and not on 

 a continual supervision and re-arrangement of details. 

 As a matter of feeling and religion, I hold this to be 

 a far higher conception . of the Creator and of the 

 Universe that that which may be called the u continual 

 interference " hypothesis ; but it is not a question to 

 be decided by our feelings or convictions, it is a ques- 

 tion of facts and of reason. Could the change, which 

 Geology shows us has ever taken place in the forms 

 of life, have been produced by general laws, or does 

 it imperatively require the incessant supervision of a 

 creative mind ? This is the question for us to consider, 

 and our opponents have the difficult task of proving 



