446 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



Now, it is surely obvious that such a " hierarchy of ministrations'* 

 as this, far from telling against the theory of natural selection, is 

 the very thing which tells most in its favour. The fact that 

 animals, for instance, only appeared upon the earth after there 

 were plants for them to feed upon, is clearly a necessity of the 

 case, whether or not there was any design in the matter. Such 

 " ministrations," therefore, as plant-organisms yield to animal- 

 organisms is just the kind of ministration that the theory of 

 natural selection requires. Thus far, then, both the theories- 

 natural selection and super-natural design have an equal right 

 to appropriate the facts. But now, if in no one instance can 

 it be shown that the ministration of plant-life to animal-life is 

 of such a kind as to subserve the interests of animal-life without 

 at the same time subserving those of the plant-life itself, then 

 the fact makes wholly in favour of the naturalistic explanation 

 of such ministration as appears. If any plants had presented 

 any characters pointing prospectively to needs of animals without 

 primarily ministering to their own, then, indeed, there would 

 have been no room for the theory of natural selection. But as 

 this can nowhere be alleged, the theory of natural selection finds 

 all the facts to be exactly as it requires them to be : such minis- 

 tration as plants yield to animals becomes so much evidence 

 of natural selection having slowly formed the animals to appro- 

 priate the nutrition which the plants had previously gathered 

 and gathered under the previous influence of natural selection 

 acting on themselves entirely for their own sakes. Therefore 

 I say it is painfully manifest that " the enchainment of all the 

 various orders of creatures in a hierarchy of activities," is 

 not "in harmony with what we might expect to find in a 

 world the outcome of a First Cause possessed of intelligence 

 and [beneficent] will." So far as any argument from such "en- 

 chainment" reaches, it makes entirely against the- view which 

 Mr. Mivart is advocating. In point of fact, there is a total 

 absence of any such " ministration " by one " order of crea- 

 tures" to the needs of any other order, as the beneficent design 

 theory would necessarily expect; while such ministration as 

 actually does obtain is exactly and universally the kind which 

 the naturalistic theory requires. 

 Again, quite independently, and still more recently, Mr. Mivart 



