54 PROFESSOR DUNS ON THE 



wards required for all created things, why is it unphilosophical to say that 

 He put into a series of germs that which was requisite for the potentialities 

 of the different beings intended to be developed ? Is it less scientific to 

 say that God made twenty or thirty different types than that He made only 

 one ? I think not. On the contrary, I regard it as equally true, and 

 scientific, and philosophical, to say that He may have done this, and that, as 

 I believe, He really did. If it were not so, how comes it that we have the 

 higher forms of animal life side by side with the very lowest — the perfect 

 eye of the trilobite of past ages side by side with the foraminifera ? Surely 

 this is not to be accounted for on the assumption that everything we now 

 see is the result of this process of natural selection, or blind, unreasoning 

 chance, which waits for an opportunity, and which stops the fly from going 

 into the plant by unconsciously putting around the flower certain curious 

 hairs and glands, and so forth. If the evolutionists were to say that this 

 was consciously done, then I might sit down, exclaiming, " What a wonderful 

 plant ! " But they admit that it is unconsciously, and I say the theory is 

 very unscientific. I hold that theirs is not so good a plan as that which I 

 have in my mind, namely, that the great God should, when it pleased Him, 

 have given to so many germs or eggs the power of producing all the 

 phenomena we see. Why not? Nature shows this everywhere, but not in 

 the way of transmutation ; I grant there are variations, but variations 

 within strict limits, such as are seen among the pigeons, where we have 

 the fantail, the pouter, and the jacobin, vrith a number of other varieties, 

 which are all, however, in structure and habits, pigeons. Here you have 

 variation, but not transmutation ; and you may see the same thing in the 

 carnivora. There you may observe great variety ; but where do you see the 

 carnivora entirely crossing the limits of their natural order and producing 

 creatures of other kinds ? Never ! In fact, we know that there is an 

 antipathy between certain families of the carnivora which is difficult 

 to account for on the theory of natural selection, but which is not difficult 

 to account for when we remember that there is a persistency to coo- 

 serve the race. There is another fact which should not be overlooked, 

 and that is, the order and design exhibited in the inanimate world. I 

 was much struck with this in thinking over a point in physical geography 

 the other day. Why should not the earth's axis be perpendicular with 

 a universal unchanging season, year by year ? Why should it not 

 be horizontal ? The explanation is, that if that were the case the earth 

 would not be fitted, as it is, in almost every part, for the abode of man. 

 When you consider the position of the tropics, with their constant sunlight 

 of twelve hours each day, and the poles, with their six months of light and 

 six months of darkness, you perceive that each has the same amount of day 

 and night, while the accompanying changes and alternations in the seasons 

 render every part of the earth more or less habitable. And, with regard to 

 geology, it is clearly shown that, if the elevation of the land had been different 

 to what it has been, one half of the world would have been uninhabitable. 

 As you are all aware, the rise of the earth from the level of the sea goea 



