15 2 NATURAL SELECTION vii 



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complicated to have been designed by the Creator so com- 

 plete that it would necessarily work out harmonious results ? 

 The theory of " continual interference " is a limitation of the 

 Creator's power. It assumes that He could not work by pure 

 law in the organic, as He has done in the inorganic world ; it 

 assumes that He could not foresee the consequences of the laws 

 of matter and mind combined that results would continually 

 arise which are contrary to what is best and that He has to 

 change what would otherwise be the course of nature in order 

 to produce that beauty, and variety, and harmony which even 

 we, with our limited intellects, can conceive to be the result 

 of self-adjustment in a universe governed by unvarying law. 

 If we could not conceive the world of nature to be self-adjust- 

 ing and capable of endless development, it would even then 

 be an unworthy idea of a Creator to impute the incapacity of 

 our minds to Him; but when many human minds can conceive, 

 and can even trace out in detail, some of the adaptations in 

 nature as the necessary results of unvarying law, it seems 

 strange that, in the interests of religion, any one should seek 

 to prove that the System of Nature, instead of being above, 

 is far below our highest conceptions of it. I, for one, cannot 

 believe that the world would come to chaos if left to law 

 alone. I cannot believe that there is in it no inherent power 

 of developing beauty or variety, and that the direct action of 

 the Deity is required to produce each spot or streak on every 

 insect, each detail of structure in every one of the millions of 

 organisms that live or have lived upon the earth. For it is 

 impossible to draw a line. If any modifications of structure 

 could be the result of law, why not all ? If some self -adapta- 

 tions could arise, why not others 1 If any varieties of colour, 

 why not all the varieties we see ? No attempt is made to 

 explain this, except by reference to the fact that " purpose " 

 and " contrivance " are everywhere visible, and by the illo- 

 gical deduction that they could only have arisen from the 

 direct action of some mind, because the direct action of our 

 minds produces similar " contrivances " ; but it is forgotten 

 that adaptation, however produced, must have the appearance 

 of design. The channel of a river looks as if made far the 

 river, although it is made by it ; the fine layers and beds in a 

 deposit of sand often look as if they had been sorted, and 



