248 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



both facts and the manner of presenting them, to the Dutch 

 writer, Nieuwentyt, who, in 1716, wrote a book which was trans- 

 lated into English (1730) under the title of "The Religious 

 Philosopher," although the real starting-point for the series of 

 English books on natural theology, which culminated in the Bridge- 

 water Treatises about 1836, was the work on "The Wisdom of God 

 Manifested in the Works of Creation," by Ray (1691), who illus- 

 trates the delicacy and usefulness of all the parts of living creat- 

 ures by such familiar examples of adaptation as the structure of 

 the eye, the hollowness of the bones, the stomach of the camel, 

 the armor of the hedgehog, etc. 



Science formed no part of a "liberal" education in the early 

 days of our century, and the youth who was born with the instincts 

 of a naturalist found little to satisfy these instincts except books 

 of this sort, which, scanty and inadequate as they are, have the 

 charm, which often eludes the laboratory handbook, of emphasiz- 

 ing the environment as the complement of structure. The share 

 of the writers on natural theology in shaping the education of 

 English naturalists has not been adequately esteemed ; for they 

 substituted, for the vulgar ignorance which finds nothing but dis- 

 gust spiced with immodesty in our bodily frame, a living sense of 

 the grandeur and instructiveness of animated nature. No one can 

 read Paley and fail to see that the mechanism of living things is 

 at least as well worthy of study as the " humanities " ; for what- 

 ever our opinion of the value of his conclusions may be, he shows 

 that there is a field for the profitable employment of the best 

 powers of the best minds in the most familiar plant ; and that 

 the humblest worm may furnish inexhaustible delight, and may 

 lead us to questions which demand the utmost exercise of our 

 highest faculties. 



In 1859 Darwin writes to Lubbock: "I do not think I hardly 

 ever admired a book more than Paley's ' Natural Theology.' I 

 could almost, formerly, have said it by heart"; and in his autobi- 

 ography he says the logic of Paley's " Evidences " and of his " Nat- 

 ural Theology" "gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The 

 careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part 

 by rote, was the only part of the academic course which, as I 

 then felt, and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the 



