TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 45 



holds good wherever life holds good. Wherever there 

 is life there is a moral government of rewards and 

 punishments understood by the amoeba neither better 

 nor worse than by man. The history of organic de- 

 velopment is the history of a moral struggle. 



We know nothing as yet about the origin of a creature 

 able to feel want and power, nor yet what want and 

 power spring from. It does not seem worth while to 

 go into these questions until an understanding has been 

 come to as to whether the interaction of want and 

 power in some low form or forms of life which could 

 assimilate matter, reproduce themselves, vary their 

 actions, and be capable of remembering, will or will not 

 suffice to explain the development of the varied organs 

 and desires which we see in the higher vertebrates and 

 man. When this question has been settled, then it will 

 be time to push our inquiries farther back. 



But given such a low form of life as here postulated, 

 and there is no force in Paley's pretended objection to 

 the Darwinism of his time. 



" Give our philosopher," he says, " appetencies ; give 

 him a portion of living irritable matter (a nerve or the 

 clipping of a nerve) to work upon ; give also to his inci- 

 pient or progressive forms the power of propagating 

 their like in every stage of their alteration ; and if he 

 is to be believed, he could replenish the world with all 

 the vegetable and animal productions which we now 

 see in it." * 



After meeting this theory with answers which need 

 not detain us, he continues : 



* 'Nat. Theol.,' ch. xxiiL 



