EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 



109 



Are not the laws of nature thus adapted, can they be with- 

 out control and subject to chance ? 



The truer question is not whether there is evidence of 

 design, which life and law ahke prove, but how that design 

 operates, whether by direct interference, or through a chain 

 of secondary causes. Admitting in each case creative 

 energy and control, the more recondite is the chain of 

 causes, the more profound would appear to be the creative 

 wisdom. 



A time-piece which, as we say, goes of itself for days or 

 weeks, is more admirable than a dummy watch, whose hands 

 must be turned with the finger ; a paper-machine in which rags 

 at one end become paper at the other is a higher exhibition 

 of intellect than the process of hand-made paper ; so those 

 who insist most strongly on the evidence of design in the 

 creation do not oppose, but should rather compete with the 

 veriest agnostic in the endeavour to trace back to the furthest 

 the method of His working who worketh all things according 

 to the counsels of His will. 



If law is the will of the Creator, wherever that law 

 operates, that will controls. But its vigour is hourly seen in 

 the exuberance of life. 



Each new-born life is a new being, a new creation, of 

 origin as mysterious as the first origin of living beings upon 

 earth, and springing from the same source of life. The 

 parents are but secondary causes, and can no more create a 

 new life than they can form a star. 



The up-springing of life in all its reproductive forms is 

 proof of the ever-working power of the Creator as plainly as 

 the existence of life is proof of a First Cause. 



And circumstance works by laws of life whose wise 

 adjustment passes the profoundest search of human 

 intellect, being the constant expression of the Creator s will. 



So Evolution is Design. 



The Chairman (D. Howard, Esq., D.L., F.C.S.) — We are much 

 indebted to Mr. Cox Bompas for placing before ns one phase of this 

 question. We shall be very glad to hear any remarks upon his 

 paper. 



