LIFE AND ITS PHENOMENA 51 



who are predisposed to look upon all processes in Nature 

 as being the result of chemico-physical forces alone. 



There are no facts known to occur in Nature in 

 support of Darwinism. 



We can see, too, how the error of Darwinism misled 

 Romanes, who in referring to the well-known argument 

 of the watch with which Paley begins his work on 

 Natural Theology, says that he " will suppose the dis- 

 coverer of the watch to proceed to the sea-side and to 

 examine a bay. He would note the corresponding con- 

 figuration of the cliff's, the river with its suitable bed 

 entering the bay and many other details, etc. . . . Now I 

 think that our imaginary inquirer would be a dull man, 

 if he failed to conclude that the evidence of design 

 furnished by the marine bay was at least as cogent as 

 that which he had previously formed in his study of the 

 watch. . . . The teleologist would feel that he must 

 abandon the supposition of any special design in the 

 construction of that particular bay." Then in turning 

 from the phenomena of the inorganic world to those of 

 organisms, Romanes observes : " The mere fact that we 

 meet with more numerous and apparently more complete 

 instances of design in the one province than in the other 

 is, ex hypotJiesi, merely due to our ignorance of natural 

 causation in the more intricate province," by which he 

 means " Natural Selection "} 



Romanes thus tries to bring the inorganic into line 

 with the organic by means of Natural Selection. But in 

 drawing a comparison between a sea-beach and a watch, 

 which is supposed to represent an organism, Romanes 

 strangely failed to see that the two things are not really 

 comparable ; for purely physical forces, provided with 



' Thoughts on Religion, pp. 57, 65. 



