28 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 



Selection does everything that its most ardent 

 worshippers claim for it, more, far more, than 

 Darwin, its original describer claimed for it, can 

 it dispense with design ? That is the question to 

 which we may well address ourselves. Just let us 

 recall for a moment what is claimed for the alter- 

 native ; what has to be accounted for by those 

 who deny the existence of an Intelligent Author 

 of the universe. The world, so science assures us, 

 at a certain date in the past, was a mass of nebulous 

 matter at a terrifically high temperature. Slowly 

 and with vast convulsions and cataclysms, it cooled 

 down. Then by some chance mixing together of 

 some nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and 

 other elements, in some manner hitherto undis- 

 coverable by, and even unimaginable by, modern 

 chemists, the lowest form of living organism 

 emerged the offspring of the blindest kind of 

 chance, yet endowed somehow or another with 

 ^* the marvellous power of propagating its kind, 

 and, more, with a tendency to vary fortuitously 

 in all directions. Then the law of Natural Selection, 

 also the result of blind chance, sprang into ex- 

 istence without any Lawgiver to lay it down. By 

 this simple process of extinguishing the 'Swad- 

 ' f . vantageous variationg^Natu^raJ Selection developed 

 '' "' out of the come-b^ch*ance rfotozoan all the 

 $* . forms of animal and vegetable life which have 

 n***"'' flourished on this earth, or which now astonish us 

 liX by their multitude and variety. Finally it brought 

 ^ forth the head and crown of things man. And 

 more, far more, the brain of man. 



And what does that mean ? Hamlet, Paradise 



