336 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



adaptations must be taken into account in considering 

 the conditions of life upon this planet. 



" I will confine my remarks here to the relative con- 

 dition of man, in his adaptation to his environment ; for 

 this element of adaptation in the Argument of Design 

 seems to have been too much depended upon. Moreover 

 Dr. Kidd's remarks will afford a good illustration of the 

 faulty a priori or deductive reasoning of the teleologists 

 of the old school. 



" Starting with the truism that man can now exist upon 

 this world — a possibility which, perhaps, did not exist 

 during the greater part of the world's history — we have 

 to consider the degree of perfection to which this adapt- 

 ability has arrived ; and a careful scrutiny will not bring 

 out more than a relatively perfect view. Consider his 

 wants. Food stands foremost. Now his calculations on 

 the produce of his fields can never be absolute. He may 

 be in no way to blame ; but after all his care and striving, 

 his harvest may be ruined. Again : one of the most 

 essential elements which furnishes to sustain our immense 

 manufactures is coal. We may regard coal as ' provi- 

 dentially ' stored up for man's use ; but we can conceive 

 — if it be there by God's providence — that it might have 

 been far more accessible and less dangerous to procure ; 

 for even with the most careful processes being adopted 

 for its extraction, an enormous loss of life has occurred. 

 So, too, with regard to calamities by fires, earthquakes 

 and storms. Who can foretell the fate of man, who is 

 ever liable to destruction from natural causes which he 

 cannot always avoid, and has no power to control ? Not 

 to mention diseases, hundreds of instances show an absence 

 of a conceivably perfect adaptation between himself and 

 his environment. In Dr. Kidd's contribution to the Bridge- 

 water Treatises, he alludes to the beneficial effect of wind 



