DESIGN IN NATUKE 257 



of making his weapons. I cannot, however, use this 

 illustration, because I have restricted the idea of 

 design to those things which were necessary to pro- 

 duce the desired end, i.e., civilised and moral man. 62 

 Now flint does not come under that category. No 

 doubt it is an excellent stone for making weapons ; 

 but others can also be used, and, of course, they were 

 so used in countries where flint is not found. It is 

 only because flint is common in Europe that the idea 

 has got about that palaeolithic man used only flint 

 for his weapons. The men who did this were not 

 the originators of civilisation, neither were their 

 descendants. Civilisation would have arisen if the 

 flint-using men had never existed. So I cannot 

 consider Professor Meldola's first illustration a happy 

 one. 



The second is still worse. It is that towns are 

 providentially located, so as to be always on the 

 bank of a river. This fails as an example, because, in 

 the first place, a simpler explanation than that of 

 superhuman design can be found. And, in the 

 second place, because towns are built by men, who 

 exercise free-will in the choice of the locality ; and 

 these local effects of human free-will could not have 

 been part of the original plan. 

 62 See 1st edition, p. 45. 



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