ix LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 205 



production of what we can hardly avoid considering as the 

 ultimate aim and outcome of all organised existence intel- 

 lectual, ever-advancing, spiritual man. It therefore implies 

 that the great laws which govern the material universe were 

 insufficient for his production, unless we consider (as we may 

 fairly do) that the controlling action of such higher intelli- 

 gences is a necessary part of those laws, just as the action of 

 all surrounding organisms is one of the agencies in organic 

 development. But even if my particular view should not be 

 the true one, the difficulties I have put forward remain, and, 

 I think, prove that some more general and more funda- 

 mental law underlies that of natural selection. The law of 

 " unconscious intelligence " pervading all organic nature, put 

 forth by Dr. Laycock and adopted by Mr. Murphy, is such 

 a law ; but to my mind it has the double disadvantage of 

 being both unintelligible and incapable of any kind of proof. 

 It is more probable that the true law lies too deep for us to 

 discover it ; but there seems to me to be ample indications 

 that such a law does exist, and is probably connected with the 

 absolute origin of life and organisation. 1 



1 Some of my critics seem quite to have misunderstood my meaning in this 

 part of the argument. They have accused me of unnecessarily and unphiloso- 

 phically appealing to "first causes" in order to get over a difficulty of 

 believing that " our brains are made by God and our lungs by natural selec- 

 tion ;" and that, in point of fact, "man is God's domestic animal." An 

 eminent French critic, M. Claparede, makes me continually call in the aid of 

 " une Force supfrrieure" the capital F meaning, I imagine, that this 

 " higher Force " is the Deity. I can only explain this misconception by the 

 incapacity of the modern cultivated mind to realise the existence of any 

 higher intelligence between itself and Deity. Angels and archangels, spirits 

 and demons, have been so long banished from our belief as to have become 

 actually unthinkable as actual existences, and nothing in modern philosophy 

 takes their place. Yet the grand law of "continuity," the last outcome of 

 modern science, which seems absolute throughout the realms of matter, force, 

 and mind, so far as we can explore them, cannot surely fail to be true beyond 

 the narrow sphere of our vision, and leave an infinite chasm between man 

 and the Great Mind of the universe. Such a supposition seems to me in 

 the highest degree improbable. 



Now, in referring to the origin of man, and its possible determining 

 causes, I have used the words "some other power" "some intelligent 

 power" " a superior intelligence " "a controlling intelligence," and only 

 in reference to the origin of universal forces and laws have I spoken of the 

 will or power of " one Supreme Intelligence." These are the only expres- 

 sions I have used in alluding to the power which I believe has acted in the 

 case of man, and they were purposely chosen to show that I reject the 

 hypothesis of " first causes " for any and every special effect in the universe, 



