I 



I 



90 FACTS AND FANCIES 



the different organs and functions, each tending 

 to swallow up the others and each struggling 

 for its own existence. This resolution of the 

 body of each animal into a house divided 

 against itself is at first sight so revolting to 

 common sense and right feeling that few like 

 to contemplate it. Roux and other recent 

 writers, however, especially in Germany, have 

 brought it into prominence, and it is no doubt 

 a necessary consequence of the evolutionary 

 idea, though altogether at variance with the 

 theory of intelligent design, which supposes 

 the animal machine put together with care 

 and for a purpose, and properly adjusted in 

 all its parts. On the hypothesis of evolution, 

 the animal thus ceases to be, in the proper 

 sense of the term, even a machine, and be- 

 comes a mere mass of conflicting parts depend- 

 ing for any constancy they may have on a 

 chance balancing of hostile forces, without any 

 compelling power to bring them together at 

 first, or any means to bind them to joint action 

 in the system. The more such a doctrine is 

 considered, the more difficult does it seem to 

 believe in the possibility of its truth. Evolu- 

 tion has already reduced the cosmos into chaos, 

 the harmony of the universe into discord ; but 





