WHAT IS DARWINISM f 67 



be ; but at present we may accept these simple 

 laws, without going further back, and the ques- 

 tion then is, Whether the variety, the harmony, 

 the contrivance, and the beauty we perceive, 

 can have been produced by the action of these 

 laws alone, or whether we are required to be- 

 lieve in the incessant interference and direct 

 action of the mind and will of the Creator." (p. 

 267) ^ Mr. Wallace says, that the Duke of 

 Argyll maintains that God " has personally 

 applied general laws to produce effects which 

 those laws are not in themselves capable of 

 producing ; that the universe alone with all its 

 laws intact, would be a sort of chaos, without 

 variety, without harmony, without design, 

 without beauty ; that there is not (and there- 

 fore we may presume that there could not be) 

 any self-developing power in the universe. I 

 believe, on the contrary, that the universe is so 

 constituted as to be self-regulating ; that as 

 long it contains life, the forms under which 



^ The question is not, as Mr. Wallace says, " How has the 

 Creator worked ? " but it is, as he himself states, whether the 

 essential properties of matter have alone worked out all the 

 wonders of creation ; or, whether they are to be referred to the 

 mind and will of God. It is worthy of remark how Messrs. 

 Darwin and Wallace refer to Mr. Spencer as their philosopher. 

 W^e have seen what Spencer's philosophy is. 



