11 



of the later effects which we now witness, illustrate the 

 greatness of the thinking but the more. The justice of this 

 point may appear from the fact, that there are Theistic evolu- 

 tionists who make the very claim just urged. They advance 

 the evolutionist theory, and in the same breath they stoutly 

 assert that in doing so they have not weakened, but improved 

 the grounds of the teleological argument. However, we may 

 judge their concession of this improved theory of evolution to 

 be unwise and weak ; this other assertion is solid, that they 

 are no whit inferior in knowledge or logic to their atheistic 

 comrades and co-labourers, who pronounce the teleological 

 argument dead. 



20. The attempt to account for structures adapted to func- 

 tions by evolution, has no pretence, even, of applying, except in 

 organised beings which perpetually reproduce their kinds. 

 For it is the claim of slight variations in generation, and of 

 the fuller development of nascent new organs by the reaction 

 of environment, which form the " working parts " of the 

 theory. But clear instances of finality are not confined to 

 these vegetable and living beings. There are wondrous 

 adaptations in the chemical facts of inorganic nature, in the 

 mechanism of the heavenly bodies, in the facts of meteorology. 

 Here, then, their speculation breaks down hopelessly. Have 

 suns and stars, for instance, attained to their present ex- 

 quisite adjustments of relation, and perfection of being, by 

 the blind experiments of countless reproductions ? Then, 

 the fossil-suns, unfitted to survive, ought to lie about us as 

 thick as fossil polypi and mollusks ! 



21. The claim, that a blind conatus towards higher action felt 

 in the animal may have assisted the plastic influence of environ- 

 ment from without in developing rudimental organs, cannot 

 assist the evolutionists. They differ among themselves as to 

 the mode of such influence ; they contradict each other. 

 Natural history fatally discredits the claim by saying, that 

 the organ must be possessed by the species of animals, before 

 any of them could feel any conatus towards its use. Can 

 seeing be before eyes, even in conception ? No. How, then, 

 could eyeless animals feel any conatus to see ? Let no one be 

 deluded by the statement that a blind boy among us may feel 

 a yearning to see. He is a defective exception in a seeing 

 species, who do crave to see because they already have eyes ; 

 and who suggest to their blind fellow the share in this desire 

 by the other faculty of speech. It still remains true, that the 

 species must have eyes beforehand, in order that individuals 



