GROUNDS AND CONSEQUENCES OF EVOLUTION. 355 



of intelligent intention, no matter what human or higher 

 uses the coordination may subsei-ve. In the second place, 

 the natural reason can never divest itself of the conviction 

 that complicated and slowly maturing results which re- 

 spond to the wants of sensitive beings were designed so 

 to respond. Among the wants of intelligent beings are 

 appropriate stimuli to mental activity, and appropriate 

 rewards for mental effort. One of the highest and noblest 

 stimuli to mental activity is the hope of attaining to the 

 higher laws or modes of change and succession in the 

 natural world, and thus approaching as close as possible 

 into intelligent relation with the unseen and mysterious 

 Power which sustains the world. The law of evolution 

 discloses itself as the highest generalization of the phe- 

 nomena of the cosmos. If we discover that this law in- 

 volves not only an ideal, but a physical, continuity, we 

 seem to have attained in cosmical dynamics to that unity 

 which has been the aspiration of all science and all philoso- 

 phy. This, then, is the highest possible disclosure of the 

 Supreme Intelligence which nature can yield ; and we 

 shall expose ourselves to no just charge of credulity in 

 thinking such a revelation of the Supreme Mind to be one 

 of the final causes of the all-embracing scheme of evolu- 

 tion by continuity. 



The world and its parts may be compared to a stately 

 dwelling ; and the scientist who investigates its constitu- 

 tion and the mode of its origin is like a visitor from 

 some realm where houses are not built. This intelligent 

 visitor studies inquiringly every accessible part. He cata- 

 logues the parts as the naturalist catalogues the members 

 of the animal kingdom. He discovers a unity in the 

 conception of the edifice, and says that its style is 



