298 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



can have ordered the race- variations referred to in the 

 passage last quoted, for the considerations therein men- 

 tioned. To this it may be at once replied that even man 

 often has several distinct intentions and motives for a single 

 action, and the theist has no difficulty in supposing that, 

 out of an infinite number of motives, the motive men- 

 tioned in each case may have been an exceedingly subor- 

 dinate one. The theist, though properly attributing to 

 God what, for want of better terms, he calls " purpose " 

 and " design," yet affirms that the limitations of human 

 purposes and motives are by no means applicable to the 

 Divine " purposes." Out of many, say a thousand million, 

 reasons for the institution of the laws of the physical 

 universe, some few are to a certain extent conceivable by 

 us ; and amongst these the benefits material and moral 

 accruing from them to men and to each individual man in 

 every circumstance of his life, play a certain, perhaps a 

 very subordinate part. 1 As Baden Powell observes : " How 



1 In the same spirit Mr. Lewes, in criticising the Duke of Argyll's "Reign 

 of Law" (Fortnightly Review, July 1867, p. 100), asks whether we should 

 consider that man wise who spilt a gallon of wine in order to fill a wine- 

 glass ? But, because we should not do so, it by no means follows that we 

 can argue from such an action to the action of God in the visible universe. 

 For the man's object, in the case supposed, is simply to fill the wine-glass, 

 and the wine spilt is so much loss. With God it may be entirely different 

 in both respects. All these objections are fully met by the principle thus 

 laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas : " Quod si aliqua causa particular-is de- 

 ficiat a suo effectu, hoc est propter aliquam causam particularem impedi- 

 antem quse continetur sub ordine causse universalis. Unde effectus ordinem 

 causre universalis nullo modo potest exire." .... "Sicutindigestiocontingit 

 prseter ordinem virtutis nutritivse ex aliquo impedimento, puta ex grossitie 

 cibi, quam necesse est reducere in aliam causam, et sic usque ad causam 

 primam universalem. Cum igitur Deus sit prima causa universalis non 

 unius generi tantum, sed universaliter totius entis, impossibile est quod 

 aliquid contingat prseter ordinem divinse gubernationis ; sed ex hoc ipso 



