PLAN AND PURPOSE IN NATURE. 218 



in the great drama of Nature, as environments for coming 

 life were prepared, up to that period Avhen Man, the only 

 creature who " looks before and after," came upon the scene 

 of his unique career. The argument for Design, furnished 

 by the orderly sequence of environments for coming organ- 

 isms, touches closely the question between the views of 

 Creation or Evolution of life-forms themselves. The 

 principles of the older view are indeed not more stifled 

 at present than were the forms of constitutional freedom in. 

 the House of Lords under the Tudor despotism, which proved 

 themselves of such solid value as bases of a struggle for 

 freedom and a purer government, which men were yet to 

 wage in England. It is of great importance at the present 

 juncture to keep in a simple form before the minds of men, 

 in spite of the weight of current authority against it, the view 

 of creation apart from development, the latter being but one 

 of the tributary forces of the former. 



29 It may then be that in due course of time the great struc- 

 ture of the cosmic theory of evolution shall fall to pieces by 

 internecine strife, and the older conception, purified indeed 

 by scientific progress, and yet substantially unaltered, will 

 remain. 



30 We have come to this pass that, if we are to look for any 

 " law " governing the growing suitability of the environ- 

 ments for organisms, it is rather one of death and destruction 

 than any evolution or life-process such as, on their side, the 

 organisms require. Which then of the gods of the evolu- 

 tionary pantheon shall bring to pass this wondrous cycle of 

 cosmic phenomena? Shall it be Struggle, Survival, Here- 

 dity, Variability, Selection (natural, sexual, histological, 

 germinal, or physical, of Karl Pearson), all v/ith their capital 

 letters, suggestive of the bearskins, which Hnxley remarked 

 seemed to be put on the Grenadiers to make them look 

 much finer fellows than they were ? None of these will do. 

 We can but say then of these adapted environments, with a 

 well-known " sceptic " of old, who had an awkward way of 

 looking for himself at facts which he could verify and com- 

 prehend, '• AVhy herein is a marvellous thing that ye know 

 not whence they are, and yet they have opened the way for 

 life to come forth and flourish." 



31 Shall we listen for an ansAver to the expert in geology, 

 who tells us of the metamorphosis of the primary rocks by 

 heat and pressure, of the mode of origin of the plutouic and 

 volcanic rocks, of the action of ice and floods, ot the sedi- 



