ON THE EVOLUTION MATERIALISM AND THEOLOGY. 330 



to be there, is and must be very different from ours, only 

 remotely analogous to ours, because we cannot postulate 

 the existence of a Person in which it resides ; but yet 

 we must use the notion of design, because the only other 

 alternative, chance, is still wider away from the facts. 

 If we must elect between the two agencies, chance and 

 design, the latter must be nearer the truth. Design we 

 know already in our. own case to be a true shaping 

 power, while chance effects nothing but evil in the long 

 run. Chance, as an explanation and if design be 

 denied, chance must be offered as the explanation is 

 a word expressing nothing, a word which, under pretence 

 of explanation, affirms nothing whatever. It is this : 

 but it is also much more serious; for it is the express 

 denial of God, and is thus genuine atheism. 



For even if we^ could prove the existence of a God 

 that cared not how the world went, and in no way 

 controlled the course of its evolution and history, although 

 perhaps we could not justly be called atheists, yet the 

 voice of the world, since the days of Epicurus, has 

 regarded the belief that the gods are careless as practi- 

 cally atheism. A power that called the world into being, 

 and immediately resigned all control over it, abandoning 

 it to a chance fate, would scarcely be deserving the name 

 of God. In some way, then, we are compelled to suppose 

 that Nature did not grope her way blindly and blunder- 

 ingly to her most splendid achievements, to life, to 

 consciousness and its contents, to the poet's vision of 

 beauty, the martyr's enthusiasm for virtue, the thinker's 

 thirst for truth. These high things could not have been 

 accidental. The best things that have resulted on earth 

 love, joy, peace, virtue, truth, beauty, these and 

 possibly grander things elsewhere realized, Nature, or 

 rather a power behind Nature, meant, contemplated, and 



