210 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



3. But the doctrine of natural selection is said to have de- 

 stroyed the argument from design in Nature. This is a much 

 more serious matter. For a Christian is bound to believe that 

 Nature is the work of an all-wise and beneficent Creator, whom 

 he also believes to be almighty, so that the Christian can not 

 accept the view adopted by Mr. J. S. Mill, and make a division 

 of labor or of territory between God and a power which limits 

 and thwarts him. We propose to state the difficulty here as 

 clearly and as strongly as we can, because we believe that it is 

 the difficulty which presses most heavily upon thinking men 

 at the present time. In the case of Mr. Darwin himself we no- 

 tice that, while the substitution of derivation for special creation 

 seems even to have strengthened his belief in the grandeur of 

 creation, the substitution of natural selection for Paley's tele- 

 ology cut away the main argument for believing in a God 

 at all. 



We are not surprised, then, to find those who are at least in 

 imperfect sympathy with Christianity rejoicing in the discomfit- 

 ure of the theologians. Mr. G. H. Lewes's psean of triumph, in 

 the " Fortnightly " of 1868, is perhaps the locus dassicus for this 

 view. Prof. Huxley, with ill-concealed exultation, tells us that 

 what struck him most forcibly on his first perusal of the " Origin 

 of Species " was " the conviction that teleology, as commonly un- 

 derstood, had received its death-blow at Mr. Darwin's hands." * 

 Haeckel, in the same strain, says,t "Wir erblicken darin den 

 definitiven Tod aller teleologischen und vitalistischen Beurthei- 

 lung der Organismen " ; and in his " History of Creation," X "1 

 maintain, with regard to the much-talked-of ' purpose in Nature,' 

 that it really has no existence, but for those persons who ob- 

 serve phenomena in animals and plants in the most superficial 

 manner." 



From the insolent dogmatism of Haeckel, and the anti-theo- 

 logical animus of Lewes and Huxley, it is refreshing to turn to 

 the cautious and reverent utterances of Charles Darwin. In his 

 letters we are able to trace every stage through which he passed 

 on this question. At Cambridge, circa 1830, he read carefully 

 and with " much delight " Paley's " Evidences " and his " Natural 

 Theology," and speaks of the reading of these books as the only 

 part of the academical course which was of the least use in the 

 education of his mind,* but he " did not trouble about " Paley's 

 premises — i. e., he took the existence of God as a personal being 

 for granted. Later on, apparently between 1836 and 1839, though 

 he still " did not think much about the existence of a personal 

 God," he abandoned Paley's view, and never returned to it : 



* " Lay Sermons." f "Gcnerelle Morphologie," i, p. 160. 



X Vol. i, p. 19, English translation. * " Life and Letters," i, p. 41. 



