DESIGN VERSUS NECESSITY. GT 



neither of these was designed and the animal would 

 have gone on without eyes. The balls would have 

 found the corners of the table to which they were first 

 directed. 



While, therefore, it seems to me clear that one who 

 can find no proof of the existence of an intelligent 

 Creator except through the evidence of design in the 

 organic world, can find no evidence of such design in 

 the construction of the eye, if it were constructed un- 

 der the operation of Darwin's laws, I shall not for 

 one moment contend that these laws are incompatible 

 with design and a self-conscious, intelligent Creator. 

 Such design might, indeed, have coexisted with the 

 necessity or natural selection ; and so the billiard-play- 

 ers might have designed the collision of their balls ; 

 but neither the formation of the eye, nor the path of 

 the balls after collision, furnishes any sufficient proof 

 of such design in either case. 



One, indeed, who belie ves, from revelation or any 

 other cause, in the existence of. such a Creator, the foun- 

 tain and source of all things in heaven above and in the 

 earth beneath, will see in natural variation, the strug- 

 gle for life, and natural selection, only the order or 

 mode in which this Creator, in his own perfect wis- 

 dom, sees fit to act. Happy is he who can thus see 

 and adore. But how many are there who have no 

 such belief from intuition, or faith in revelation ; but 

 who have by careful and elaborate search in the phys- 

 ical, and more especially in the organic world, in- 

 ferred, by induction, the existence of God from what 

 has seemed to them the wonderful adaptation of the 

 different organs and parts of the animal body to its, 



