438 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE. 



weakness. Uniformity of method is a mark of strength. Con- 

 tinual interposition to alter a pre-arranged set of actions, 

 implies defective arrangement in those actions. The main- 

 tenance of those actions, and the working out by them of the 

 highest results, implies completeness of arrangement. If 

 human workmen, whose machines as at first constructed re- 

 quire perpetual adjustment, show their increasing skill by 

 making their machines self-adjusting ; then, those who figure 

 to themselves the production of the world and its inhabitants 

 by a " Great Artificer,'^ must admit that the achievement of 

 this end by a persistent process, adapted to all contingencies, 

 implies greater skill than its achievement by the process of 

 meeting the contingencies as they severally arise. 



So, too, it is with the contrast under its moral aspect. We 

 saw that to the hypothesis of special creations, a difficulty is 

 presented by the absence of high forms of life during im- 

 measurable epochs of the Earth's existence. But to the 

 hypothesis of evolution, absence of them is no such obstacle. 

 Suppose evolution, and this question is necessarily excluded. 

 Suppose special creations, and this question can have no 

 satisfactory answer. Still more marked is the con- 



trast between the two hypotheses, in presence of that vast 

 amount of suffering entailed on all orders of sentient beings 

 by their imperfect adaptations to their conditions of life, and 

 the further vast amount of suffering entailed on them by 

 enemies and by parasites. We saw that if organisms were 

 severally designed for their respective places in Nature, the 

 inevitable conclusion is that these innumerable kinds of in- 

 ferior organisms which prey on superior organisms, were in- 

 tended to inflict all the pain and mortality which results. 

 But the hypothesis of evolution involves us in no such 

 dilemma. Slowly, but surely, evolution brings about an in- 

 creasing amount of happiness. In all forms of organization 

 there is a progressive adaptation, and a survival of the most 

 adapted. If, in the uniform working out of the process, 

 there are evolved organisms of low types which prey on 



