144 NATURAL SELECTION vn 



which those laws are not in themselves capable of producing ; 

 that the universe alone, with all its laws intact, would be 

 a sort of chaos, without variety, without harmony, without 

 design, without beauty; that there is not (and therefore we 

 may presume that there could not be) any self -developing 

 power in the universe. I believe, on the contrary, that the 

 universe is so constituted as to be self-regulating ; that as 

 long as it contains Life, the forms under which that life is 

 manifested have an inherent power of adjustment to each 

 other and to surrounding nature ; and that this adjustment 

 necessarily leads to the greatest amount of variety and beauty 

 and enjoyment, because it does depend on general laws, and 

 not on a continual supervision and rearrangement of details. 

 As a matter of feeling and religion, I hold this to be a far 

 higher conception of the Creator and of the Universe than 

 that which may be called the "continual interference" 

 hypothesis ; but it is not a question to be decided by our 

 feelings or convictions it is a question of facts and of reason. 

 Could the change which geology shows us has continually 

 taken place in the forms of life, have been produced by general 

 laws, or does it imperatively require the incessant supervision 

 of a creative mind ? This is the question for us to consider, 

 and our opponents have the difficult task of proving a nega- 

 tive, if we show that there are both facts and analogies in 

 our favour. 1 



Mr. Darwin's Metaphors liable to Misconception 

 Mr. Darwin has laid himself open to much misconception, 

 and has given to his opponents a powerful weapon against 

 himself, by his continual use of metaphor in describing the 

 wonderful co-adaptations of organic beings. 



" It is curious," says the Duke of Argyll, " to observe the 

 language which this most advanced disciple of pure naturalism 

 instinctively uses, when he has to describe the complicated 

 structure of this curious order of plants (the Orchids). 

 ' Caution in ascribing intentions to nature ' does not seem to 



1 In addition to the laws referred to above, there are of course the funda- 

 mental laws and properties of organised matter and the mysterious powers of 

 Life, which we shall probably never be able to explain, but which must be 

 taken as the basis of all attempts to account for the details of form and 

 structure in organised beings. 



