TIIEOEIES OV NATUllAL SELECTION AND DESIGN. 47 



tlie former might be held to be incomplete until the question 

 of origin is determined^ we should remember that they are 

 not inter-dependent^ and that the doctrine reaches into a 

 department where scientific induction must be supplemented 

 by faith. 



5. The claims recently urged in behalf of the theory of 

 natural selection as a substitute for the theory of design are 

 not admissible, because it fails to give a satisfactory explana- 

 tion of the differences among closely-related organisms, of 

 the gradation and succession of organisms, of the complex 

 phenomena of organs and functions and especially of sex, of 

 the laws and the limits of variation, of the law of reversion 

 to type, or of the numberless adaptations implied in all 

 these. Whereas all such fall into order and significance 

 when traced to active intelligence both as to origin and 

 guidance. 



The Chairman (the Eev. R. W. Kennion, M.A.),— I am sure all will 

 accord tlie author their best thanks for his paper, and add a further expres- 

 sion of their thanks to Mr. James for havino^ so kindly read it. 



Mr. W. P. James, F.L.S. — I have read Professor Duns' paper with great 

 pleasure, and need hardly say that I cordially agree with its main conclusions. 

 It is, I am afraid, too condensed in parts to be readily understood by a popular 

 audience. Only those who are accustomed to biological studies can here 

 and there follow the course of reasoning, which is sometimes more hinted at 

 than developed. There is one small point on which I should like to offer a 

 criticism. 1 should be inclined to give the " Theory of Design " a much 

 wider scope than is indicated on the second and third pages of the paper. In 

 fact, Professor Duns has very much narrowed its application by opposing it 

 to the theory of Natural Selection, and so confining it to animals and plants. 

 But the theory of design, or, as it is more usually stated, the argument 

 from design, covers a great deal more ground than natural selection. Nor, 

 again, is it wise to limit it to purpose ; it should be enlarged so as to 

 include order as well as purpose ; so as, in fact, to be equivalent to intel- 

 ligence. Order is often to be traced where we cannot venture to guess at 

 purpose. Let us take the familiar and, as it were, classical example of 

 phenomena the purpose of which has bafiled the human intellect, namely, 

 comets. Yet order is most manifest in the fact that they obey with unde- 

 viating regularity some law of motion which drives them round the sun in 

 conic sections, either in elongated ellipses, or parabolas, or hyperbolas. Order, 

 again, is seen in the geometrical regularity of crystals, of which the snow- 

 crystal, with its six rays diverging at an angle of 60 deg., is a familiar 

 example; in the arithmetical constancy of the formula by which chemical 

 combinations can be expressed, in the circulation of water, in the distri- 

 bution of light and heat — in fact, in all the great physical features of our 



