402 APPENDIX 



proceeds to another instance : ' If you believe so (i.e. that God 

 designedly killed this man), do you believe that when a swallow 

 snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow 

 should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant ? I 

 believe that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. 

 If the death of neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no reason 

 to believe that their first birth or production should be necessarily 

 designed.' All through this reasoning he argues on the hypothesis 

 that God must have used the lightning in the destruction of 

 the man and the swallow in the death of the gnat with the same 

 kind of purpose as that with which the sportsman uses his 

 gun. This proves, I think, thai he had not come to reflect on the 

 notion of Deity without a remnant of Paleyism. He argued, as no 

 other man had equal right to argue, against current conceptions of 

 design in Nature and special providences in physical occurrences. 1 

 But the old habit of regarding God only as Providence, only as 

 Designer, prevented him from seeing that, so far as God or the 

 order of the universe is concerned, lightning, swallow, and sports- 

 man stand precisely upon one level with regard to the good man, 

 gnat, and pheasant they respectively destroy. The difficulties 

 which lie in the way of regarding the universe as the sport of 

 chance were manifest to Darwin. His reason demanded a supreme 

 Law a God of some sort ; but Paley's extra-mundane God still 

 haunted him, and prevented him from ever entertaining the notion 

 that God may be Himself the supreme Law and Life of the 

 universe. Would such a God be personal ? Agnostics leaning to 

 theism are not bound to answer that question. No theologies 

 have made us comprehend what a personal God means. We do 

 not know what personality actually is, either in ourselves or in any 

 other being ; yet the idea of God, regarded as the Law and Life of 

 the universe planned we know not how, and pursuing its develop- 

 ment on paths beyond the ken of human senses and intelligence 

 accords with Darwin's own dictum : 2 * The theory of Evolution is 

 quite compatible with the belief in a God.' 



1 See in particular p. 309, ' Although I did not think,' down to 

 ' which the wind blows.' 



2 P. 307. 



