RELIGION AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 245 



that some philosophers have maintained that the eye was formed by the 

 need for seeing, a statement which I need take no trouble to refute, 

 just as those who make it take no trouble to establish, I will not say 

 truth, but even its possibility. But the fact, if it be a fact, that the 

 eye was not originally as well adapted to see with as it it is now, and 

 that the power of perceiving light and of things in the light grew by 

 degrees, does not show, nor even tend to show, that the eye was not 

 intended for seeing with. 



The fact is that the doctrine of evolution does not affect the sub- 

 stance of Paley's argument at all. The marks of design which he has 

 pointed out remain marks of design still even if we accept the doctrine 

 of evolution to the full. What is touched by this doctrine is not the 

 evidence of design but the mode in which the design was executed. 

 Paley, no doubt, wrote on the supjiosition (and at that time it was 

 hardly possible to admit any other supposition) that we must take ani- 

 mals to have come into existence very nearly such as we now know them: 

 and his language, on the whole, was adapted to that supposition. But 

 the language would rather need supplementing than changing to make 

 it applicable to the supposition that animals were formed by evolution. 

 In the one case the execution follows the design by the effect of a 

 direct act of creation ; in the other case the design is worked out by a 

 slow process. In the one case the Creator made the animals at once 

 such as they now are ; in the other case he impressed on certain par- 

 ticles of matter, which, either at the beginning or at some point in the 

 history of his creation, he endowed with life, such inherent powers 

 that in the ordinary course of time living creatures such as the present 

 were developed. The creative power remains the same in either case ; 

 the design with which that creative power was exercised remains the 

 same. He did not make the things, we may say ; no, but he made 

 them make themselves. And surely this rather adds than withdraws 

 force from the great argument. It seems in itself something more 

 majestic, something more befitting him to whom a thousand years are 

 as one day and one day as a thousand years, thus to impress his will 

 once for all on his creation, and provide for all its countless variety by 

 this one original impress, than by special acts of creation to be per- 

 petually modifying what he had previously made. It has often been 

 objected to Paley's argument, as I remarked before, that it represents 

 the Almighty rather as an artificer than a creator, a workman dealing 

 with somewhat intractable materials and showing marvelous skill in 

 overcoming difiiculties rather than a beneficent Being making all things 

 in accordance with the purposes of his love. But this objection dis- 

 appears when we put the argument into the shape which the doctrine 

 of evolution demands, and look on the Almighty as creating the origi- 

 nal elements of matter, determining their number and their properties, 

 creating the law of gravitation whereby as seems probable the worlds 

 have been formed, creating the various laws of chemical and physical 



