io6 COMPARATIVE ANATOMY vin 



theory of descent will begin a new period in the history of com- 

 parative anatomy" 



On the other hand, it happened rather unfortunately that 

 popular views of natural theology, probably through the great 

 influence of a famous work published during what I have 

 described as the first or " utility " stage of morphology, have 

 attached themselves more or less to the ideas of that period, 

 and well-meaning but mistaken persons regard with aversion 

 and alarm the modern theories which are, to a certain extent, 

 subversive of those ideas. I have no hesitation in saying 

 mistaken, for it is perfectly evident that all arguments as to 

 " the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator," derived 

 from an animal structure not miraculously created, but 

 produced by the ordinary laws of generation, as all known 

 animal structures are, must be entirely and equally valid, 

 whether the laws producing that structure have been operating 

 for a shorter or longer period. 



As Professor Asa Gray has well put it, " If the argument 

 from structure to design is convincing when drawn from a 

 particular animal, say a Newfoundland dog, and is not 

 weakened by the knowledge that this dog came from similar 

 parents, would it be weakened if, in tracing his genealogy, 

 it were ascertained that he was a remote descendant of the 

 mastiff or some other breed, or that both these and other 

 breeds came (as is suspected) from some wolf? If not, how 

 is the argument for design in the structure of our particular 

 dog affected by the supposition that his wolfish progenitor 

 came from a post-tertiary wolf, perhaps less unlike an existing 

 one than the dog in question is to some other of the numerous 

 existing races of dogs, and that this post -tertiary came from 

 an equally or more different tertiary wolf? And if the 

 argument from structure to design is not invalidated by our 

 present knowledge that our individual dog was developed from 

 a single organic cell, how is it invalidated by the supposition 

 of an analogous natural descent, through a long line of 

 connected forms, from a cell, or from some simple animal 

 existing ages before there were any dogs ? " * 



1 Natural Selection not inconsistent with Natural Theology : a Free Examina- 

 tion of Darwin's Treatise on the Origin of Species. Boston, 1861. 



