10 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



the accuracy of my contention that a belief in the pur- 

 posiveuess or design of animal and vegetable organs is 

 commonly held to be incompatible with the belief that 

 they have all been evolved from one, or at any rate, 

 from not many original, and low, forms of life. Gene- 

 rally, however, as this incompatibility is accepted, it is 

 not unchallenged. From time to time a voice is uplifted 

 in protest, whose tones cannot be disregarded. 



"I have always felt," says Sir William Thomson, in 

 his address to the British Association, 1871, " that this 

 hypothesis " (natural selection) " does not contain the 

 true theory of evolution, if indeed evolution there has 

 been, in biology. Sir John Herschel, in expressing a 

 favourable judgment on the hypothesis of zoological 

 evolution (with however some reservation in respect to 

 the origin of man), objected to the doctrine of natural 

 selection on the ground that it was too like the Laputan 

 method of making books, aud that it did not sufficiently 

 take into account a continually guiding and controlling 

 intelligence. This seems to me a most valuable and 

 instructive criticism. I feel profoundly convinced that 

 the argument of design has been greatly too much lost 

 sight of in recent zoological speculations. Keaction 

 against the frivolities of teleology such as are to be 

 found in the notes of the learned commentators on 

 Paley's * Natural Theology,' has, I believe, had a tem- 

 porary effect in turning attention from the solid and 

 irrefragable argument so well put forward in that excel- 

 lent old book. But overpoweringly strong proofs of 

 intelligent and benevolent design lie all around us,"* 



* Address to the British Association, 1871. 



