154 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



other. In short, the efficacy of the unconscious and unco- 

 ordinated physicochemical factors of inorganic nature is lim- 

 ited to fortuitous results, which serve no purpose, embody 

 no intelligible law, convey no meaning nor idea, and afford no 

 sesthetic satisfaction, being mere aggregates or sums rather than 

 natural units and real totalities. But it does not extend to the 

 production of complex systematic formations such as living or- 

 ganisms or human artefacts. Left to itself, therefore, inor- 

 ganic nature might conceivably duplicate the simplest arte- 

 facts such as the chipped flints of the savage, and it might 

 also construct a complex heterogeneous chaos of driftwood, 

 mud, and sand like the Great Raft of the Red River, but 

 it would be utterly impotent to construct a complicated telic 

 system comparable to an animal, a clock, or even an organic 

 compound, like chlorophyll. 



In this connection, it is curious to note how extremely 

 myopic the scientific materialist can be, when there is ques- 

 tion of recognizing a manifestation of Divine intelligence in 

 the stupendous teleology of the living organism, and how in- 

 credibly lynx-eyed he becomes, when there is question of de- 

 tecting evidences of human intelligence in the eoliths alleged 

 to have been the implements of a "Tertiary Man." In the 

 latter case, he is never at a loss to determine the precise 

 degree of chipping, at which an eolith ceases to be inter- 

 pretable as the fortuitous product of unconscious processes, 

 and points infallibly to the intelligent authorship of man, but 

 he grows strangely obtuse to the psychic implications of 

 teleology, when it comes to explaining the symmetry of a 

 starfish or the beauty of a Bird of Paradise. 



In conclusion, it is clear that the hypothesis of a spon- 

 taneous origin of organic life from inorganic matter has in 

 its favor neither factual evidence nor aprioristic probability, 

 but is, on the contrary, ruled out of court by the whole force 

 of the scientific principle of induction. To recapitulate, there 

 are no sub-cellular organisms, and all cellular organisms (which 

 is the same as saying, all organisms), be they unicellular or 



