26 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



did, for there was no principle of knowledge within her. 

 Still worse, there was no constant purpose in view, and 

 no controlling Power governing the process of evolution. 

 Nature had no special aims in view; anything, in fact, 

 might have happened. She did not aim particularly at 

 life or the human consciousness. When life first resulted, 

 it was an accident, lucky or unlucky, as we choose to 

 regard it. When the first rudiments of that wonderful 

 revealer of nature, the eye, were laid, they came by 

 chance, and by further repeated chances the eye was im- 

 proved. It was improved as a telescope is improved, 

 by slow degrees, only, unlike the telescope, it was 

 improved not by an inventor or maker, but by Natural 

 Selection, which preferred the animals with good eyes, 

 and elected them to continue the advantage to the species. 

 What has resulted need not have resulted, for Nature 

 neither knew, nor cared, nor directed. Things might 

 have taken a wholly different course, on the earth at 

 least, with a slight accidental alteration of conditions at 

 a critical moment in the history of any one of the species. 

 In particular, man himself, the crown of creation, might 

 not have appeared at all. And after his appearance it 

 was only owing to the chapter of accidents unusually 

 favourable that he emerged victor from the general 

 battle-field of existence. Man is here to-day the "master 

 and the interpreter of Nature," because he has escaped 

 a thousand perils and chances of failure, any of which, 

 taking a more adverse turn, might in the infant stages 

 have early closed his since distinguished career. He is 

 here, too, because the particular line of his brute pro- 

 genitors, itself since extinct, survived sufficiently long to 

 launch him on a precarious world, not too well provided. 

 Had the latter circumstance been other, or had the 

 special branch of the tree of life from which man is 



