THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 51 



incidence of every aberration from the usual course of 

 human action. But this is to presuppose that omni- 

 science which wise men regard as the attribute of the 

 Divine mind alone. But it also presupposes the 

 existence and action of laws that never deviate or 

 change : for in aberration from the normal and usual 

 phenomena, the action of the law is not in any degree 

 altered, but the conditions under which it acts are 

 changed, and thus unusual phenomena emerge from 

 its necessarily undeviating action. Aberrations from 

 the normal are thus as surely the product of unvary- 

 ing law as is the normal itself. Accordingly the 

 action of chance is altogether eliminated from the 

 scheme of Nature. The very conception of chance, of 

 the fortuitous, argues the limitation of the human 

 mind. There is in the domain of Nature nothing else 

 but design. When we consider that carnivorous 

 males possess an instinct which prompts them to 

 follow with expectancy the pregnant females before 

 they have brought forth, and, if they discover them, to 

 devour the broods as soon as they are born, and 

 further that the maintenance of the species depends 

 on a sufficient number of the young being saved, we 

 seem to be in a region where chance can alone 

 determine how many, or how few, will be saved ; and 

 where, consequently, the continuance of any carnivor- 

 ous species is at the mercy of chance, and therefore in 

 constant jeopardy. 



But when we look to the actual phenomena, we 

 seem to be in a region where the arrangements of 



