62 RELIGION. [Ch. III. 



by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand 

 conclusions ? 



" I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse 

 problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is 

 insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an 

 Agnostic." 



The following letters repeat to some extent what is given 

 above from tho Autobiography. The first one refers to The 

 Boundaries of Science : a Dialogue, published in Macmillans 

 Magazine, for July 1861. 



C. D. to Miss Julia Wedgwood, July 11 [1861]. 



Some one has sent us Macmillan, and I must tell you how 

 much I admire your Article, though at the same time I must 

 confess that I could not clearly follow you in some parts, which 

 probably is in main part due to my not being at all accustomed 

 to metaphysical trains of thought. I think that you understand 

 my book* perfectly, and that I find a very rare event with my 

 critics. The ideas in the last page have several times vaguely 

 crossed my mind. Owing to several correspondents, I have 

 been led lately to think, or rather to try to think, over some of 

 the chief points discussed by you. But the result has been 

 with me a maze — something like thinking on the origin of 

 evil, to which you allude. The mind refuses to look at this 

 universe, being what it is, without having been designed ; yet, 

 where one would most expect design, viz. in the structure of a 

 sentient being, the more I think on the subject, the less I can 

 see proof of design. Asa Gray and some others look at each 

 variation, or at least at each beneficial variation (which A. Gray 

 would compare with the raindropsf which do not fall on tho 

 sea, but on to the land to fertilise it) as haviDg been pro- 

 videntially designed. Yet when I ask him whether he looks 

 at each variation in the rock-pigeon, by which man has made 

 by accumulation a pouter or fantail pigeon, as providentially 

 designed for man's amusement, he docs not know what to 



* The Origin of Species. 



t Dr. Gray's rain-drop metaphor occurs in the Es3ay, Darwin and his 

 Beviewens (Darwiniana, p. 157) : "The whole animate life of a country 

 depends absolutely upon the vegetation, the vegetation upon the rain, 

 The moisture is furnished by the ocean, is raised by the sun's heat from 

 the ocean's surface, and is wafted inland by the winds. But what 

 multitudes of raindrops fall back into the ocean — are as much without a 

 final cause as the incipient varieties which come to nothing ! Does it 

 therefore follow that the rains which are bestowed upon the soil with 

 •such rule and average regularity were not designed to support vegetable 

 and animal life ? " 



