PLAN AND PURPOSE IN NATUKE. 209 



accidental indefinite variations have liad their day and ceased 

 to be. Bateson finds a lai-,2;e number of variations to be 

 sudden, considerable, and discontinuous. Weismann finds 

 the cause of variations to be in the germ-substance, and his 

 most recent view is, that "it is the adaptive requirement 

 itself that produces the useful direction of variation by 

 means of selection al processes -within the germ,"* as quoted 

 above. If from all this " adaptive requirement," "variations 

 arising Avhen and where needed," " everything adapted, 

 in animate nature," the light of Design be excluded 

 it is pertinent to remember the story of Eichelieu with a 

 troublesome suitor for pecuniary help, whose final argumen 

 on his own behalf, " But, Sir, one must live," was met with 

 the characteristic answer, " 1 do not see the necessity ! " Why 

 indeed should the multitudinous organisms of earth, air and 

 water so successfully struggle to live and change if the 

 doctrines of Darwin, Weismann, Bateson and others, even 

 if true, be not teleological in the profoundest sense ? 



23 Even the familiar and Avell Avorn subject of artificial selec- 

 tion, so elaborately handled by Darwin, instead of supporting 

 a view of life, in which chance reigns, only constitutes, by 

 its analogy with the wild life of plants and animals, a power- 

 ful argument for the operation of mind. The very essence of 

 artificial selection is that it proceeds from Design on the part 

 of an intelligent being ; the unconscious selection of domes- 

 ticable animals in earlier days being but a small part of this 

 subject. 



24 It is in this obscure field of the origin of variations that the 

 battle of evolution must next be fought. Mr. Bateson indeed 

 said " variation, in fact, is evolution. "f The theory of organic 

 evolution, under whatsoever of the many existing forms it 

 may appear, is compelled to assume the origin from uni-cellu- 

 lar organisms, or even from non-cellular masses of undiffer- 

 entiated bioplasm, of all the plants and animals known to-day 

 ranging from protozoa to man, and from protophyta to oaks, 

 yews, and olive trees. To the ordinary man this is a large 

 order upon his faith. But, to begin with, hundreds of millions 

 of years are gi-anted to the evolutionist, or taken by him, and 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer presents him in his Synthetic Philosophy 

 with an analogy, which is of a character most compromising 

 to his own views. The words, in connection with our sub- 

 ject of Design, deserve to be written in letters of gold. They 



* Op. cit., p. 50. t Materials for the Study of Variation, p. 6. 



