462 TEE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



By a different distribution of atoms in the primaeval 

 world a different series of living forms on this earth must 

 have been produced. From the same causes acting accord 

 ing to the same laws, the same results will follow ; but 

 from different causes acting according to the same laws, 

 different results will follow. So far as we can see, then, 

 infinitely diverse living creatures might have been cre 

 ated consistently with the theory of evolution, and the 

 precise reason why we have a back-bone, two hands with 

 opposable thumbs, an erect stature, a complex brain, about 

 223 bones, and many other peculiarities, is only to be 

 found in the original act of creation. I do not, any less 

 than Paley, believe that the eye of man manifests design. 

 I believe that the eye was gradually developed, and we 

 can in fact trace its gradual development from the first 

 germ of a nerve affected by light rays in some simple 

 zoophyte. In proportion as the eye became a more 

 delicate and accurate instrument of vision, it enabled its 

 possessor to escape destruction, but the ultimate result 

 must have been contained in the aggregate of the causes, 

 and these causes, so far as we can see, were subject to 

 the arbitrary choice of the Creator. 



Although Professor Agassiz is clearly wrong in holding 

 that every species of animals or plants has appeared on 

 earth by the immediate intervention of the Creator, which 

 would amount to saying that no laws of connexion be 

 tween forms are discoverable, yet he seems to be right in 

 asserting that living forms are entirely distinct from those 

 produced from purely physical causes. The products of 

 what are commonly called physical agents, he says u , are 

 everywhere the same (i. e. upon the whole surface of the 

 earth) and have always been the same (i. e. during all geo 

 logical periods) ; while organized beings are everywhere dif 

 ferent and have differed in all ages. Between two such series 

 u Agassiz, Essay on Classification, p. 75. 



