276 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



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 among 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. 18 As 

 Baden Powell observes, " How can we undertake to affirm, 

 amid all the possibilities of things of which we confessedly 

 know so little, that a thousand ends and purposes may not 

 be answered, because we can trace none, or even imagine 

 none, which seem to our short-sighted faculties to be an- 

 swered in these particular arrangements ? " 



The objection to the bull-dog's ferocity in connection 



18 In the same way Mr. Lewes, in criticising the Duke of Argyll's 

 "Reign of Law" (FortnigWy 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 particularis deficiat a suo effectu, hoc est propter 

 aliquam causam particularem impediantem quae continetur sub ordine 

 causae universalis. Unde effectus ordinem causae universalis nullo modo 

 potest exire." . . . "Sicut indigestio contingit pneter ordinem virtutis 

 nutritivae 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 

 praeter ordinem divinae gubernationis ; sed ex hoc ipso quod aliquid ex 

 una parte videtur exire ab ordine divinse providentiae, quo consideratur 

 secundam aliquam particularem causam, necesse est quod in eundem 

 ovdinem relabatur secundum aliam causam." Sum. TheoL, p. i., q. 19, 

 a. 6, and q. 103, a. 7. 



19 " Unity of Worlds," Essay ii., ii., p. 260. 



