1 1 2 Specific Genesis 



My meaning, which I rashly imagined plain enough, was 

 that Mr. Darwin's theory might be so taken as to oppose the 

 conception of design in the same way as the old Ionian theory 

 opposed that conception. That I was fully justified in ex- 

 pressing such an opinion is, I conceive, plain, from the lan- 

 guage employed by Mr. Darwin himself. In his work on 

 Animals and Plants under Domestication, Mr. Darwin con- 

 siders the building of an edifice from broken fragments of 

 rock, and makes use even of strong expressions of the kind 

 referred to. He says : — 



' In regard to the use to which the fragments may be put, their 

 shape may strictly be said to be accidental. ... If the various laws 

 which have determined the shape of each fragment were not predeter- 

 mined for the builder's sake, can it with any greater probability be 

 maintained that He specially ordained, for the sake of the breeder, 

 each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants ? 

 .... But, if we give up the principle in one case, — if we do not 

 admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally 

 guided, in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image 

 of symmetry and vigour, might be formed — no shadow of reason can 

 be assigned for the belief that the variations, alike in nature, and the 

 result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork 

 through Natural Selection of the formation of the most perfectly 

 adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and 

 specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly 

 follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief that " variation has been led 

 along certain beneficial lines," like a stream " along definite and useful 

 lines of irrigation.'" 



Not only then may the organic world, on the Darwinian 

 theory, be conceived as formed in some sense accidentally, but 

 we have Mr. Darwin's own words for viewing that formation as 

 ' STRICTLY ACCIDENTAL.' I say ' his words,' because I am far 

 from desiring to bind Mr. Darwin in anti-teleological fetters. 

 I have carefully given him credit for every theistic expression 

 I noticed, as it was at once my duty and my pleasure to 

 do. 



