210 WALTER KIDD, M.D., F.2.S., ON 



are given in the section dealing with the evolution of life,* 

 and this is alleged to be " mentally representable in outline 

 if not in detail," and declared to be " a legitimate symbolic 

 conception." Perhaps so, perhaps not. The illnstrative 

 words are, " Jf a single cell, under appropr-iate conditions, 

 hecomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be 

 no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate con- 

 ditions, a cell may in the course of untold millions of years 

 give origin to the human race." (The italics are not in the 

 original.) It would be difficult for an opponent of Design in 

 Nature to make a more damaging analogy than meets one in 

 this short sentence, well thought out and expressed, as is 

 everything which Mr. Spencer writes. " Appropriate condi- 

 tions " indeed ! Why, it is these very " appropriate con- 

 ditions" which furnish the other side of the argument for 

 Design, Avhich is being here considered, and which, except 

 for a necessity to exclude design from the side of the 

 organisms, cannot be gainsaid. The fundamental difference 

 between those environments, stable and slowly varying 

 according to well-known definite laws, encountered by a 

 fertilized ovum in its course to adult life, and those encoun- 

 tered by organisms in general, is sufficiently clear. In the 

 case of the latter, the homogeneous marine conditions of pre- 

 Cambrian times, the varied terrestrial and marine " climates " 

 of Devonian and Carboniferous, the more differentiated com- 

 plex. Mesozoic, the still more elaborate Cainozoic, more 

 diverse and difficult, with growing competition for existence, 

 changing climates, Ice Ages, volcanoes, earthquakes, de- 

 struction and cultivation at the hand of man — all these, with 

 many more changes of condition which have marked the 

 fitful course of life from Protozoa to Man, in spite of their 

 outward complexity, are clear to the teleologist as evidence 

 for Design in Nature. But he would hardly have looked for 

 such an unintentional admission from analogy as Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer furnishes in his comparison of the " appropriate con- 

 ditions " of the individual and those of the race. In the case 

 of both individuals and race the environments in their orderly 

 production furnish a strong proof for Intelligent Design in a 

 Avorld which is " not chaos but cosmos," to say nothing of 

 the pre-ordained direction of development and degree of 

 growth contained in the " sealed orders " delivered to every 

 ovum embarked upon the troubled sea of life. The teleolo- 



* Epitome of Synthetic Philosophy, Sect. 118, p. 109. 



