THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' 



555 



laws, of the forces * possessed by the molecules of which the 

 primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this 

 be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay poten- 

 tially in the cosmic vapour, and that a sufficient intelligence 

 could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of 

 that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the fauna of 

 Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what 

 will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's 

 day 



.... The teleological and the mechanical views of na- 

 ture are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the con- 

 trary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more 

 firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement of 

 which all the phenomena of the universe are the conse- 

 quences, and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy 

 of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that 

 this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to 

 evolve the phenomena of the universe." f 



The acute champion of Teleology, Paley, saw no difficulty 

 in admitting that the " production of things " may be the 

 result of trains of mechanical dispositions fixed beforehand 

 by intelligent appointment and kept in action by a power at 

 the centre, J that is to say, he prolepticaily accepted the mod- 

 ern doctrine of Evolution ; and his successors might do well 

 to follow their leader, or at any rate to attend to his weighty 

 reasonings, before rushing into an antagonism which has no 

 reasonable foundation. 



Having got rid of the belief in chance and the disbelief 

 in design, as in no sense appurtenances of Evolution, the 

 third libel upon that doctrine, that it is anti-theistic, might 

 perhaps be left to shift for itself. But the persistence with 

 which many people refuse to draw the plainest consequences 



* I should now like to substitute the word powers for " forces." 

 f The " Genealogy of Animals " (' The Academy,' 1869), reprinted in 

 ' Critiques and Addresses." 



I ' Natural Theology,' chap, xxiii. 



