o4 
all that should afterwards be evolved, and this, too, by the 
direct fiat of an almighty Being ? In other words, were all 
the wonderful examples of adaptation of means to ends, which 
are now found in both the animal and vegetable world, brought 
into existence by a Great First Cause—God,—or are they due 
to second causes—to Natural Selection ? 
2. In endeavouring to solve the mystery of Life, not a few 
students of nature, and a larger number of those who merely 
follow where others lead, have arrived at the conclusion that 
Life was produced in the remote past by purely physical 
causes, which causes had their origin in matter itself. In 
other words, certain elementary bodies entered into combina- 
tion, and the product of that union was Life. With this 
primitive creature, or Hvolute—the monad—commenced an 
unconscious struggle for improvement—a seeking after some- 
thing which did not exist—the result of the struggle being 
complex organisms, intellectual faculties, moral sentiments, 
will, and conscience. 
Many of those who hold these views, dogmatically assert 
that Evolution is to be regarded as proved to a demonstration ; 
yet they know that not a single instance can be cited of the 
transmutation of one order of animals into another ; they know 
that, as far as human experience goes, no sponge ever pro- 
duced a jelly-fish ; no insect ever gave birth to a mollusk, nor 
a mollusk a fish. Again, they know that no bird ever pro- 
duced a mammal, nor one order of mammals ever produced 
another order. In the face of the evident persistency of 
species in the present, these people maintain that in the past 
there was constant transmutation. 
3. Another class of persons are those who, while willing to 
admit that man’s physical nature may have been derived from 
some unknown anthopoid, his ~uyy and rvevua were bestowed 
upon him by a superior Being. Such persons endeavour to 
pursue the via media, and in doing so often use expressions 
which are somewhat contradictory. Thus, one eminent 
naturalist, when describing a particular family of flowers, 
says, “ the labellum is developed into a long nectary i order 
to attract lepidoptera, and we shall presently give reasons for 
suspecting that the nectar is purposely so lodged that it can 
be sucked only slowly in order to give time for the curious 
chemical quality of this viscid matter setting hard and dry.* 
Now, may it not be asked, By whose order were these con- 
trivances arranged? Was it by the order of the flower, or of 
the insect? If by either plant or animal, then it must be 
* Darwin on Orchids. 
