214 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



turn my eyes myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. " The insect youth 

 are on the wing." Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. 

 Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their con- 

 tinual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exulta- 

 tation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties. . . . The whole winged 

 insect tribe, it is probable, are equally intent upon their proper employments, 

 and under every variety of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, 

 by the oflices which the Author of their nature has assigned to them.* 



The Christian of to-day believes, no less firmly than Paley 

 did, that God is omnipotent, and that God is love. But the old 

 couleur de rose view of Nature is no longer possible, " Destruc- 

 tion is the rule ; life is the exception." The waste is enormous ; 

 the suffering terrible. The many perish ; the few survive. All 

 down the scale of sentient being, " perfected by suffering " 

 seems written in unmistakable characters. The law of God's 

 work in Nature is indeed progress, but progress at a tremendous 

 and, as it seems to us, reckless cost. These are facts for which 

 neither evolution, except incidentally, nor any other theory of 

 Nature, is responsible. But they are facts of which any theory, 

 theological or scientific, must now take cognizance. They are as 

 fatal to the old teleology of Paley as the facts of embryology 

 are to the theory of independent creations. We may still rev- 

 erently say, " It is God's will," but that is only an admission 

 that we can not explain the facts, or justify them to the reason 

 or the conscience. It may be a necessary, as it certainly is a 

 devout, attitude of mind, but there is in it an undertone of 

 despair. 



Evolution is not responsible for the problem. Can it help us 

 in the solution ? The old teleology was destroyed by the new 

 facts, and Darwin offers us a deeper and wider view of purpose 

 based upon these facts. We used to start with the assumption 

 that everything exists solely for the good of man. And though 

 we expressed our belief in an all-wise and beneficent Creator, our 

 teleological inquiries would sometimes take the unsubmissive 

 form of Pourquoi Dieu fait-il tant de mouches ? (Why did God 

 make so many flies ?) a question which was popularly supposed 

 to merge itself in that of the origin of evil. The new teleology 

 proceeds differently. It seeks to give a reason for the existence 

 of each species, by fitting it into its place in the genealogical 

 tree, and relating all the species to one another in the unity of 

 the whole. As Asa Gray puts it : 



The forms and species, in all their variety, are not mere ends in themselves, 

 but the whole is a series of means and ends in the contemplation of which we 

 may obtain higher and more comprehensive and perhaps worthier, as well as 

 more consistent, views of design in Nature than heretofore.f 



. * " Natural Theology," pp. 370, 3Y1. t " Darwiuiaua," p. 378. 



