212 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



believe that the complex series of motions that 

 make and maintain a table or a brain are inde- 

 pendent of conscious instigation and conscious 

 guidance. If a face should grow out of clay 

 without any visible hand moulding it, we would 

 say it must have been moulded by spiritual power ; 

 and when, in the womb, atoms of carbon, and 

 hydrogen, and oxygen, and nitrogen run together 

 in such a way that, as Huxley says, " we are 

 forcibly reminded of a modeller in clay," surely 

 we must recognise a conscious purposive hand. 

 Tyndall talks of " the exquisite sense of the 

 beautiful displayed by nature in the formation of 

 a common block of ice." 



" All these operations " (of the atoms), says 

 Le Bon, " so precise, so admirably adapted to one 

 purpose, are directed by forces of which we have no 

 conception, which act exactly as if they possessed 

 a power of clairvoyance very superior to reason. 

 What they accomplish every moment of our 

 existence is far above what can be realised by the 

 most advanced science." 



If an amoeba suddenly grew into a man, what a 

 miracle it would seem ! And when the micro- 

 scopic ovum becomes an infant it is surely a 

 miracle quite as wonderful, and we are surely 

 constrained to believe in a conscious directive 

 force. 



