316 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



work far more easily and expeditiously. She constructs 

 a hand, an eye, a whole body, and multitudes of them, in 

 a very short space of time comparatively, because when 

 she has once gained any advantage, or learned an art in 

 the organic sphere, she holds to it by a blind conservative 

 instinct, and faithfully reproduces it in the next genera- 

 tion, through the fact of inheritance. Though even in 

 these cases of rapid reproduction, embryology teaches 

 that the embryo goes through the same successive stages 

 in the womb that the long line of its phylogenetic 

 ancestors passed through, only that the steps of the 

 process which it cost Nature millions of years to learn in 

 the case of the species, are now, in the case of the indi- 

 vidual, abridged into a few weeks or months. 



This is the whole story. And here the design argu- 

 ment, as formerly understood, loses its point and force, 

 apparent design being explained by and resolved into 

 natural process and the fact of inheritance. What we 

 mistook for a preconception in an infinite mind, realized 

 by an almighty and skilful hand, is a most excellent 

 result that chance has spared and that natural selection 

 has brought to the front. And suppose an objector were 

 to maintain that this conservative faculty of Nature's; 

 this obstinate holding on to an advantage once gained, 

 and passing it on from parent to offspring ; this marvel- 

 lous faculty of repeating in a few weeks or months all the 

 creative skill which it took millions of years to acquire ; 

 this facility of reproducing at a few sittings the choicest 

 masterpieces of her work, elaborating the human eye in 

 a, dark region, carving the human hand, and laying up 

 the tender cells and coils of the future brain ; that all 

 this is to the full as extraordinary and transcendent 

 workmanship as was ever the supposed sudden creations 

 of species with all their organs and adaptations. Yes, 



