SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 31 



" If evolution [says Father Boedder]* be the 

 true explanation of the existing order of the cosmos 

 and this evolution is due to the gradual working 

 out to their final issues of laws inherent in matter 

 from the commencement, then the question 

 whether this existing order be due to intelligence 

 or not, is not solved, but merely pushed back. In 

 the achievements of human industry, a self-con- 

 structing machine would be taken to imply not 

 comparative absence of skill and contrivance in its 

 maker, but a higher exercise of these qualities ; , /*' 

 and the same will have to be said of the machine r 

 of the cosmos. The more its order is due to an "* 

 evolution which is the outcome of the action of j .., , 

 fixed laws inherent from the first and tending 

 definitely towards the final result, the more strik- 

 ing is the manifestation which it bears upon its 

 face." 



" Know, silly child," said Mother Carey to the 

 fairy who had made a butterfly, " know, silly 

 child, that anyone can make things, if they will 

 take time and trouble enough ; but it is not every- 

 one who, like me, can make things make them- 

 selves.'^ Now all that we are learning daily from 

 science, perhaps most of all from biology, under 

 the influence of the remarkable facts first discovered 

 by the Augustinian Abbot Mendel, does certainly 

 seem to leave no doubt as to the existence of those 

 orderly series of occurrences which we call " laws of 

 nature." If such there be they must either be the 

 result of the ordainments of a Lawgiver or they 



* Natural Theology, p. 166. 



t Kingsley, Water Babies^ chap. vii. 



*^l 



