Some Wayside Problems 59 



avoid. Indeed, they make little secret of the fact that 

 their zeal on behalf of the forces of nature is in large 

 measure owing to their belief that the machinery of 

 those forces is sufficient to account for the construction 

 of the universe without an Architect. The blind action 

 of natural laws, the struggle for existence, the survival of 

 the fittest, are sufficient to account for everything ; that 

 which it requires mind to explain, required nevertheless 

 no mind to form. 1 It is against this doctrine that the 

 foregoing arguments, and other such, have weight, and 

 he who will in any degree attempt to read nature for 

 himself, will doubtless in no long time come to two 

 conclusions : the first that in every direction mystery 

 bounds our knowledge ; the second that where our 

 minds do contrive to penetrate, there has been Mind 

 before them, and that to read the purposes of that 

 mind must be the highest ambition of ours. And this 

 it is that constitutes the true charm of scientific investi- 

 gation. An historian once contemptuously dismissed 

 the chronicles of the Heptarchy as no more worthy of 

 attention than the battles of kites and crows. Natural 

 history would be something still worse if it dealt but 

 with the aimless and random workings of blind forces. 

 How different the view of such a discoverer as Kepler, 

 exclaiming: U O God! I think Thy thoughts after 

 Thee ! " This frame of mind is not devout only, but 

 alone rational and scientific. Dieu explique le monde, et 

 le monde le prouve? 



In attempting to explain the origin of all things by 

 mechanical forces alone we are attempting a task which 

 is, and must ever remain, impossible. Granting all that 

 our scientists assert, the question of the ultimate cause 

 remains still unanswered. "I believe," says Professor 

 Weismann, 3 "that the theory of selection by no means 

 leads as is always assumed to the denial of a teleo- 



1 ' ' Quoi ! le monde forme prouverait moins une intelligence 

 que le monde explique ! " (Diderot}. 

 - Rivarol. 

 :i Studies in the Theory of Descent. English translation, p. 716. 



