ch. in.] RELIGION. 67 



verse, being what it is, without having been designed ; yet, 

 where one would most expect design, viz. in the structure 

 of a sentient being, the more I think on the subject, the less 

 I can see proof of design. Asa Gray and some others look 

 at each variation, or at least at each beneficial variation 

 (which A. Gray would compare with the raindrops * which 

 do not fall on the sea, but on to the land to fertilise it) as 

 having been providentially designed. Yet when I ask him 

 whether he looks at each variation in the rock-pigeon, by 

 which man has made by accumulation a pouter or fan tail 

 pigeon, as providentially designed for man's amusement, he 

 does not know what to answer ; and if he, or any one, ad- 

 mits [that] these variations are accidental, as far as pur- 

 pose is concerned (of course not accidental as to their cause 

 or origin), then I can see no reason why he should rank the 

 accumulated variations by which the beautifully adapted 

 woodpecker has been formed as providentially designed. 

 For it would be easy to imagine the enlarged crop of the 

 pouter, or tail of the fantail, as of some use to birds, in a 

 state of nature, having peculiar habits of life. These are 

 the considerations which perplex me about design ; but 

 whether you will care to hear them, I know not. 



On the subject of design, he wrote (July 1860) to Dr. 

 Gray : 



" One word more on ' designed laws ' and ' undesigned 

 results.' I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun, 

 and kill it, I do this designedly. An innocent and good 

 man stands under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightning 

 Do you believe (and I really should like to hear) that God 

 designedly killed this man ? Many or most persons do believe 

 this ; I can't and don't. If you believe so, do you believe 

 that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed 

 that that particular swallow should snap up that particular 

 gnat at that particular instant? I believe that the man 

 and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of 

 neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no good reason to be- 



* Dr. Gray's rain-drop metaphor occurs in the Essay, Darwin and Ms Re- 

 viewers (Danri.hiana, p. 157) : " The whole animate life of a country depends 

 absolutely upon the vegetation, the vegetation upon the rain. The moisture 

 is furnished by the ocean, is raised by the sun's heat from the ocean's surface, 

 and is wafted inland by the winds. * But what multitudes of rain-drops fall 

 back into the ocean are as much without a final cause as the incipient varie- 

 ties which come to nothing ! Does it therefore follow that the rains which 

 are bestowed upon the soil with such rule and average regularity were not 

 designed to support vegetable and animal life ? " 



