26 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



all show stamped on them the unmistakable characters 

 of ancestral adaptation, and the progressions of organic 

 evolution. What does the fact imply ? There is not 

 a single known example of a complex organism which 

 is not developed out of simpler forms. Before it can 

 attain the complex structure which distinguishes it, 

 there must be an evolution of forms similar to those 

 which distinguish the structure of organisms lower in 

 the series. On the hypothesis of a plan which pre- 

 arranged the organic world, nothing could be more 

 unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this inability 

 to construct an organism at once, without making several 

 previous tentative efforts, undoing to-day what was so 

 carefully done yesterday, and repeating for centuries the 

 same tentatives in the same succession. Do not let us 

 blink this consideration. There is a traditional phrase 

 much in vogue among the anthropomorphists, which 

 arose naturally enough from a tendency to take human 

 methods as an explanation of the Divine a phrase which 

 becomes a sort of argument * The Great Architect.' 

 But if we are to admit the human point of view, a glance 

 at the facts of embryology must produce very uncom- 

 fortable reflections. For what should we say to an 

 architect who was unable, or being able was obstinately 

 unwilling, to erect a palace except by first using his 

 materials in the shape of a hut, then pulling them down 

 and rebuilding them as a cottage, then adding story to 

 story and room to room, not with any reference to the 

 ultimate purposes of the palace, but wholly with refer- 

 ence to the way in which houses were constructed in 

 ancient times? What should we say to the architect 



