48 THE CKEED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



its favour, can any rational and candid mind doubt that 

 there was a purpose in the course of evolution of the 

 universe ? Can any one really doubt that the human 

 consciousness on our earth was not meant and intended 

 to come finally out of the whole evolutionary process and 

 struggle for existence ? At least, can any one doubt that 

 the eye and the ear, which open out the world to all 

 the animals, were not, somehow, in Nature's aims ; or can 

 they believe the other alternative, that the first rudi- 

 mentary eye came one day as the result of a lucky 

 chance, a fortunate meeting of the atoms, that it only 

 appeared after infinite impotent combinations had in 

 vain been tried, at one happy moment when the right 

 number and due arrangement of particles were hit upon ? 

 Is this credible ? And then the same origin must be 

 assigned for the ear, and for all the other organs of sense, 

 as well as for all the mutually adapted organs of the body 

 the origin of chance, a perpetual shifting and rear- 

 rangement of the atoms by chance and mechanical neces- 

 sity till the new and startling phenomena appeared. 

 We say by chance since they were not themselves 

 endowed with any self -moving power, nor was any con- 

 cert possible amongst them, nor any general marshalling 

 agency supposed. Now, it is faintly conceivable, though 

 incredible, that chance might produce the physical organ, 

 which, it must be allowed, is resolvable into cells and 

 nerves and finally into a collocation of atoms. Given 

 endless time to exhaust all wrong arrangements, an 

 instrument like the eye might in the end result ; but it 

 would clearly require an incredible period of time, by 

 the laws of probability, before the right combination of 

 atoms resulted from chance alone. But even if the right 

 arrangement which gave the physical organ at last did 

 result, there is still a gulf from the organ to the seeing 



