DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS. 153 



blind to the philosophical difficulties which the thor- 

 oughgoing implication of design in Nature has to 

 encounter, nor is it our vocation to obviate them. It 

 suffices us to know that they are not new nor peculiar 

 difficulties — that, as Darwin's theory and our reason- 

 ings upon it did not raise these perturbing spirits, they 

 are not bound to lay them. Meanwhile, that the doc- 

 trine of design encounters the very same difficulties 

 in the material that it does in the moral world is just 

 what ought to be expected. 



So the issue between the skeptic and the theist is 

 only the old one, long ago argued out — namely, wheth- 

 er organic Nature is a result of design or of chance. 

 Variation and natural selection open no third alterna- 

 tive ; they concern only the question how the results, 

 whether fortuitous or designed, may have been brought 

 about. Organic Nature abounds with unmistakable 

 and irresistible indications of design, and, being a con- 

 nected and consistent system, this evidence carries the 

 implication of design throughout the whole. On the 

 other hand, chance carries no probabilities with it, can 

 never be developed into a consistent system, but, when 

 applied to the explanation of orderly or beneficial 

 results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond 

 all computation. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply 

 inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos. 



It is very easy to assume that, because events in 

 Nature are in one sense accidental, and the operative 

 forces which bring them to pass are themselves blind 

 and unintelligent (physically considered, all forces 

 are), therefore they are undirected, or that he who 

 describes these events as the results of such forces 





