332 THE WORLD OF LIFE 



reached from a consideration of some of the broader pheno- 

 mena of animal life and organisation. In the last paragraph 

 quoted he even shows that phenomena occur during the 

 growth of the plant, which are, as I suggested from other 

 facts, comparable in complexity with those of the meta- 

 morphosis of the higher insects, and, therefore, equally 

 requiring the agency of some high directive power for an 

 adequate rational explanation of them. 



I am quite aware that this view, of the earth and organic 

 nature having been designed for the development of the 

 human race ; and further, that it has been so designed that 

 in the course of its entire evolution its detailed features and 

 organisation have been such as not only to serve the 

 purposes of the whole series of living things but also in 

 their final outcome, to serve the purposes and add to the 

 enjoyments of man, is highly distasteful to a large proportion 

 of scientific workers. They think, and some of them say, 

 that it is a return to the old superstition of special creation, 

 that science has nothing to do with first causes, whether in 

 the form of spiritual or divine agencies, and that once we 

 begin to call in the aid of such non-natural and altogether 

 hypothetical powers we may as well give up science 

 altogether. In my early life I should have adopted these 

 same arguments as entirely valid, and should perhaps have 

 thought of the advocates of my present views with the same 

 contemptuous pity which they now bestow upon myself. 

 But, I venture to urge, the cases are not fairly comparable, 

 because both their point of view and my own are very 

 different from those of our fellow-workers of the first half of 

 the nineteenth century. 



Let me recall the conditions that prevailed then as 

 compared with those of to-day. Then the opposition was 

 between science and religion, or, perhaps more correctly, 

 between the enthusiastic students of the facts and theories 

 of physical science in the full tide of its efforts to penetrate 

 the inmost secrets of nature, and the more or less ignorant 

 adherents of dogmatic theology. Now, the case is wholly 

 different. Speaking for myself I claim to be as whole- 

 heartedly devoted to modern science as any of my critics. 



