256 THE LESSON OF EVOLUTION 



hunter all his days, and could not have lived in large 

 communities. 



Now, if there had been only two of these groups, 

 we might reasonably have said that it was by mere 

 chance that the one was developed before the other. 

 But when we see that there were more than two 

 highly complex combinations, all of which happened 

 in the particular order required for progress, it is 

 evident that the probabilities are in favour of this 

 particular chain of events having been brought about 

 intentionally, either by guidance or by pre-arrange- 

 ment. I see no escape from this conclusion. 



The great, but not insuperable, difficulty in accep- 

 ting the theory of Theism is that of knowing where 

 to draw the line between the designed and the 

 undesigned. It is evident that we must consider 

 all those objects as designed which have assisted to 

 carry out the design , and without which the design 

 would have failed. But it is not necessary to go 

 further and insist that everything which exists has 

 been designed. There is nothing unscientific about 

 the theory of design ; but Professor Meldola, in his 

 notice of the first edition of this book , 61 laughs at it , 

 and quotes authority against me, just as theologians 

 laughed at Darwinian and quoted authority against 

 him. And in ridicule he presents me with two 

 new examples of design in nature. 



The first is that sponges and other organisms of 

 the Cretaceous seas were endowed with the power of 

 accumulating silica so that , when man was evolved , 

 he might find flints ready to hand for the purpose 



""Nature," vol. 66, p. 219. 



