INTRODUCTION. V 



A similar notion of the limitation of creative power runs through the 

 whole of the Timaeus. The gods in making man and animals do the 

 best they can, but they deal with a more or less intractable material, 

 which often baffles their efforts. " Let us always, and in all that we 

 say," says Plato, " hold that God made them as far as possible the 

 fairest and best, out of things which were not fair and good."^ 



Galen, also, some centuries later, took much the same position, when 

 criticising the Mosaic cosmogony.'' Moses, he says, teaches us that 

 the Creator is lord over the necessary properties of matter, and that 

 he can suspend or modify them at his will. He tells us that the Creator 

 can make an animal of any matter he may please, a man from a stone, 

 an ox from dust. This we deny. The laws of matter are antecedent 

 to the Creator, and obligatory upon him. He can only work in 

 harmony with them. He can choose the best which they allow, but J 

 not the best ab^s^utely. j 



Aristotle, then, admits that necessity is a factor in the world of life ; 

 and this not merely in the sense that living bodies consist throughout 

 of ordinary matter, retaining its original properties unaltered ; but also 

 in the sense that some parts of living structures are the simple outcome/ 

 of such properties, u ncontrol led and undirected by design or final cause.' Ci/hf^^ 

 What he denies is that the whole organism, or more than an incon-*| ^ ^j 

 siderable part of it, can thus be explained. It is ridiculous, he saysf-" - jaA« 

 to suppose that such phenomena as those of organic life are merely ""f 



the result of chance ; meaning by chance, as I understand him, no 

 separate mysterious agency, but such uncoordinated combinations of 

 necessary causes as are too tangled for man to unravel, and whose 

 results are therefore not to be predicted. The very essence of chance is[^ 

 its uncertainty. Chance is the principle of the inconstant. But the 

 p'henomena in question present a high degree of constancy, and can 

 be foretold with more or less precision. It is quite plain that besides 

 the necessary forces of matter, there is something else at work which 

 guides and coordinates these, so as to make them converge to a pre- 

 determined end. If a man cannot see this, it is absurd to argue with 

 him ; as well try and convince a man born blind, who denies the 

 existence of colour.^ You see a house or a ship, and without hesitation 

 you infer that such house or ship was made for the purposes to which 

 ships and houses are subservient. Why .'' Because they are manifestly 

 adapted to those purposes. Why, then, when you see a plant or an 

 animal with equally manifest adaptations, do you hesitate to draw a 

 similar inference .-' True, in one case you can see the agent at work, 

 while in the other the agency is yivisilile. But, why should this make 



^ Jowett's Transl. ii. 546. ^ £)e Ugy part. xi. 14. ^ Phys. ii. I, 5- 



