306 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [xn. 



can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath in 

 a cold winter's day. 



Consider a kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows 

 the hours, minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries " cuckoo ! " 

 and perhaps shows the phases of the moon. When the 

 clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits 

 are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever 

 clockmaker could predict all it will do after an exami- 

 nation of its structure. 



If the evolution theory is correct, the molecular 

 structure of the cosmic gas stands in the same relation 

 to the phenomena of the world as the structure of the 

 clock to its phenomena. 



Now let us suppose a death-watch, living in the clock- 

 case, to be a learned and intelligent student of its works. 

 He might say, " I find here nothing but matter and force 

 and pure mechanism from beginning to end/' and he 

 would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion 

 that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would 

 be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another 

 death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, Hstening 

 to the monotonous " tick ! tick ! " so exactly like his 

 own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock 

 was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that 

 its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy 

 to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism 

 to the pendulum, to the fact that the one thing the 

 clock did always and without intermission was to tick, 

 and that all the rest of its phenomena were intermittent 

 and subordinate to ticking ! For all this, it is certain 

 that kitchen clocks are not contrived for the purpose of 

 making a ticking noise. 



Thus the teleological theorist would be as wrong as 

 the mechanical theorist, among our death-watches ; and, 

 probably, the only death-watch who would be right 



