THE SUCCESSION OF ANIMAL FORMS IQI 



marvellous connection of life with organization. It does not 

 account for the determination and arrangement of forces 

 implied in life. A very simple illustration may make this 

 plain. If the problem to be solved were the origin of the 

 mariner's compass, one might assert that it is wholly a physical 

 arrangement, both as to matter and force. Another might 

 assert that it involves mind and intelligence in addition. In 

 some sense both would be right. The properties of magnetic 

 force and of iron or steel are purely physical, and it might even 

 be within the bounds of possibility that somewhere in the 

 universe a mass of natural loadstone may have been so balanced 

 as to swing in harmony with the earth's magnetism. Yet we 

 would surely be regarded as very credulous if we could be in- 

 duced to believe that the mariner's compass has originated in 

 that way. This argument applies with a thousandfold greater 

 force to the origin of life, which involves even in its simplest 

 forms so many more adjustments of force and so much more 

 complex machinery. 



Fourthly, these hypotheses are partial, inasmuch as they fail 

 to account for the vastly varied and correlated interdepen- 

 dences of natural things and forces, and for the unity of plan 

 which pervades the whole. These can be explained only by 

 taking into the account another element from without. Even 

 when it professes to admit the existence of a God, the evolu- 

 tionist reasoning of our day contents itself altogether with the 

 physical or visible universe, and leaves entirely out of sight the 

 power of the unseen and spiritual, as if this were something 

 with which science has nothing to do, but which belongs only 

 to imagination or sentiment. So much has this been the case, 

 that when recently a few physicists and naturalists have referred 

 to the " Unseen Universe," they have seemed to be teaching 

 new and startling truths, though only reviving some of the 

 oldest and most permanent ideas of our race. From the dawn 

 of human thought it has been the conclusion alike of philoso- 



