Ch. III.] RELIGION. 63 



answer ; and if he, or any one, admits [that] these variations 

 are accidental, as far as purpose is concerned (of course not 

 accidental as to their cause or origin), then I can see no 

 reason why he should rank the accumulated variations by 

 which the beautifully-adapted woodpecker has been formed as 

 providentially designed. For it would be easy to imagine the 

 enlarged crop of the pouter, or tail of tho fantail, as of some 

 use to birds, in a state of nature, having peculiar habits of 

 lifo. These are the considerations which perplex me about 

 design ; but whether you will care to hear them, I know not. 



On the subject of design, he wrote (July 1860) to Dr. 

 Gray: 



" One word more on * designed laws ' and * undesigned 

 results.' I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun and 

 kill it, I do this designedly. An innocent and good man stands 

 under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightning. Do you 

 believe (and I really should like to hear) that God designedly 

 killed this man ? Many or most persons do believe this ; 1 

 can't and don't. If you believe so, do you believe that when 

 a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that par- 

 ticular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that 

 particular instant ? I believe that the man and the gnat are 

 in tho same predicament. If the death SI neither man nor 

 gnat is designed, I see no good reason to believe that their 

 first birth or production should be necessarily designed." 



C. D. to W. Graham. Down, July 3rd, 1881. 



Deae Sir, — I hope that you will not think it intrusive on 

 my part to thank you heartily for the pleasure which I have 

 derived from reading your admirably-written Creed of Science, 

 though I have not yet quite finished it, as now that I am old I 

 read very slowly. It is a very long time since any other 

 book has interested me so much. The work must have cost 

 you several years and much hard labour with full leisure for 

 work. You would not probably expect any one fully to agree 

 with you on so many abstruse subjects ; and there are some 

 points in your book which I cannot digest. The chief one is 

 that the existence of so-called natural laws implies purpose. 

 I cannot see this. Not to mention that many expect that 

 the several great laws will some day be found to follow 

 inevitably from some one single law, yet taking the laws as 

 we now know them, and look at the moon, where the law of 

 gravitation — and no doubt of the conservation of energy — of 

 the atomic theory, &c, &c, hold good, and I cannot see that 



