294 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



block to many in the way of their recognition of Divine ac- 

 tion at all : although nothing can be more inconsistent than 

 to speak of the first cause as utterly inscrutable and incom- 

 prehensible, and at the same time to expect to find traces 

 of a mode of action exactly similar to our own. It is surely 

 enough if the results harmonize on the whole and prepon- 

 deratingly with the rational, moral, and aesthetic instincts 

 of man. 



Mr. J. J. Murphy M has brought strongly forward the 

 evidence of " intelligence " throughout organic Nature. He 

 believes " that there is something in organic progress which 

 mere " Natural Selection " among spontaneous variations will 

 not account for," and that " this something is that organ- 

 izing intelligence which guides the action of the inorganic 

 forces, and forms structures which neither " Natural Selec- 

 tion " nor any other unintelligent agency could form." 



This intelligence, however, Mr. Murphy considers may 

 be unconscious, a conception which it is exceedingly diffi- 

 cult to understand, and which to many minds appears to be 

 little less than a contradiction in terms ; the very first con- 

 dition of an intelligence being that, if it knows any thing, it 

 should at least know its own existence. 



Surely the evidence from physical facts agrees well with 

 the overruling, concurrent action of God in the order of 

 Nature ; which is no miraculous action, but the operation 

 of laws which owe their foundation, institution, and main- 

 tenance, to an omniscient Creator of whose intelligence our 

 own is a feeble adumbration, inasmuch as it is created in 

 the " image " and " likeness " of its Maker. 



This leads to the final consideration, a difficulty by no 

 means to be passed over in silence, namely the . ORIGIN OF 

 MAN. To the general theory of Evolution, and to the spe- 

 cial Darwinian form of it, no exception, it has been shown, 



52 See " Habit and Intelligence," vol. i., p. 348. 



