DESIGN LV THE ORGANIC WORLD. 463 



ordained plan, if this advance resulted from mere &quot; accidental &quot; 

 variations, we should have expected that some Bird would have 

 been evolved by &quot; natural selection &quot; with the lung of the 

 Mammal ; and that this form, by the survival of the fittest, would 

 have established itself to the exclusion of the lower type. On the 

 contrary, without any advance on the lower plan of Ornithic struc 

 ture, an extension has been given to its respiratory surface, which 

 supplies all the needs of the most actively flying Bird, and makes 

 that apparatus as perfect, in its relation to the general plan, as if 

 that apparatus had been exceptionally raised to a higher grade of 

 development. 



Here then, as in the preceding instance, we seem justified in 

 the conclusion that, as the doctrine of Natural Selection out of 

 an endless diversity of &quot;aimless&quot; variations tails to account for 

 that general consistency of (tie. advance along definite lines of progress 

 which is manifested in the history of evolution (the two cases I 

 have brought before you being merely samples of an immense 

 aggregate, whose cumulative force seems to me irresistible), it 

 leaves untouched the evidence of Design in the original scheme of 

 the Organized Creation ; while it transfers the idea of that Design 

 from the particular to the general, making all the special cases of 

 adaptation the foreknown results of the adoption of that general 

 Order which we cali Law. As Dr. Martineau has pertinently 

 asked, &quot; If it takes mind to construe the world, how can it require 

 &quot;the negation of mind to constitute it?&quot; Science, being the 

 intellectual interpretation of Nature, cannot possibly disprove its 

 origin in Mind ; and, if rightly pursued, leads us only to a higher 

 comprehension of the &quot; bright designs,&quot; a more assured recog 

 nition of llie working of the sovereign will,&quot; ot its Divine Author. 



