298 TIIK GENESIS OF SPECIES [Chap. 



can liave ordered the race-variations referred to in the 

 passage last quoted, for the considerations therein men- 

 tioned. To tliis it may be at once replied that even man 

 often has several distinct intentions and motives for a sincjlc 

 action, and the theist has no difficulty in supposing that, 

 out of an infinite number of motives, the motive men- 

 tioned in each case may have been an exceedingly subor- 

 dinate one. Tlie theist, though properly attributing to 

 God what, for want of better terms, he calls "purpose" 

 and " design," yet affirms that the limitations of human 

 purposes and motives are by no means applicable to the 

 Divine " purposes." Out of many, say a thousand million, 

 reasons for the institution of the laws of the physical 

 universe, some few are to a certain extent conceivable by 

 us ; and amongst these the benefits material and moral 

 accruin*^ from them to men and to each individual man in 

 every circumstance of his life, play a certain, perhaps a 

 very subordinate part.^ As Baden Powell observes : " How 



* In the .same spint ^Ir. Lewes, in criticising the Duke of Argyll's "Reign 

 of Law" (Fortnight/)/ Review, July 1867, p. 100), asks whether we should 

 consider that man wise who sjiilt a gallon of wine in order to fill a wine- 

 glass ? Hut, because we should not do so, it by no means follows that we 

 can argue from such an action to the action of God in the visible universe. 

 For the man's object, in the case supposed, is simjdy to fill the wine-glass, 

 and the wine spilt is so much loss. With God it may be entirely different 

 in both respects. All these objections are fully met by the principle thus 

 laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas : " Quod si aliqua causa particularis de- 

 ficiat a suo etfectu, hoc e.st propter ali(piam caiisam j)articularem impedi- 

 antem ([Use continctur sub ordine causje universalis. Unde effectus ordinem 

 causje universalis nullo modo potest e.xire." .... "Sicutindigestiocontingit 

 pneter ordinem virtutis nutritivsp ex aliquo impedimento, puta ex gro.ssitie 

 cibi, quam necesse est reducere in aliam cau.sam, et sic usque ad cau.sam 

 lirimam universtdem. Cum igitur Deus sit prima causa universalis non 

 unius generi tantum, sed universtditer totius enti.s, impossibile est quod 

 alii[uid contingat pneter ordinem (liviii;e gubemationis ; sed ex hoc ipso 



