EVOLUTION AND TELEOLOGY. 823 



contribute so materially to our comfort and enjoyment can never, 

 by any sane man, be regarded as the result of mere fortuity, or of the 

 blind and indeterminate action of force on matter. No, the whole 

 grand march of development from the Archaean to the Quaternary 

 period, from the simplest forms of life to the most complex, from 

 monad to man, all speak in the most eloquent and unequivocal 

 language of mind and providence, of a Being who foresees, designs, 

 directs, governs; who in the language of Holy Writ "reacheth 

 from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly "; " Who 

 hath ordained all things in measure, and number and weight." 



But teleologists, while maintaining that design and purpose are 

 everywhere manifest in Nature, and while proclaiming that every- 

 thing is under the government of law, are not guilty of the error 

 into which materialistic scientists so often lapse that is, of regard- 

 ing law as a cause, or a power, or as a kind of demiurge independent 

 of the Deity. Far from it. Law in itself is nothing, does nothing, 

 explains nothing. Law is not a force, is not an agent, is not and can 

 not be the efficient or operative cause of anything whatever. Law 

 is only the method according to which force acts; it is but the ex- 

 pression of the mode of divine action. Science has been able to 

 discover a few of the laws of Nature, as it has been able to disclose 

 evidences of design and purpose in the divers realms of creation. 

 And as from the few known laws of Nature men of science are 

 justified in asserting that the entire universe and all it contains are 

 governed by law, so also is the teleologist, from the knowledge he 

 already possesses, equally warranted in declaring that not only the 

 world as a whole, but also everything in it, attests the presence and 

 action of Mind and exhibits such obvious traces of purposiveness 

 that it may truthfully be affirmed that the doctrine of final causes 

 reposes on as firm a basis as does the teaching, universally accepted, 

 that the whole of Nature, animate and inanimate, is under the con- 

 trol of divinely imposed law. 



No, it is not true that teleology has been banished from science 

 and theology by recent research, or by the confirmation which is 

 daily being given to the theory of evolution. Teleology has been 

 modified, not destroyed. It has been expanded and ennobled and 

 rendered more subtle and comprehensive than ever before. We 

 now no longer look upon the Creator as directly producing the 

 myriad species of plants and animals which variegate and beautify 

 this earth of ours, but we regard him as operating through second- 

 ary agents creatures of his hand, ministers of his wisdom and 

 power. He is not the immediate cause of the infinitude of forms 

 which characterize the organic and inorganic worlds, but rather the 

 Causa Causarum. He is not, as St. Athanasius observes, a car- 



