196 THE REV. J. H. BERNARD, D.D., ON THE 



there is no conceivable sense of the words intelligence or 

 design which can exclude consciousness. An unconscious 

 intelligence is as much a contradiction in terms as a round 

 square. And so if scientific evidence sufficient to prove that 

 nature is intelligent, and that its energies are full of purpose, 

 can be adduced — it is only putting our conclusion in another 

 form to say that the force at the basis of nature is a conscious 

 mind, like to that which each one of us experiences as really 

 himself. There is good philosophy in the adage : " Of God 

 above, or man below, what can we reason but from what we 

 know ? " 



I have not said anything as to the bearing of the doctrines 

 that are generally associated with the name of Darwin upon 

 the argument before us to night, and that for two reasons : 

 (1) In the first place I feel that no one but a properly trained 

 scientific man, who is personally conversant with the laws of 

 the evolution of species, has a right to speak before an 

 assembly like this about theories, the details of which do not 

 seem to an outsider to be yet finally settled ; (2) and in the 

 second place, it does not appear that the doctrines in question 

 affect the philosophical basis of the argument to any appreci- 

 able extent. No doubt our increased knowledge of natural 

 law would prompt us in this century to state the argument in 

 a somewhat different form from that in which we find it, for 

 example, in the pages of Paley's Natural Theology ; but in 

 substance it would remain the same. The question before us 

 was, supposing there to be an overwhelming amount of 

 scientific evidence for what looks like design in the pheno- 

 mena of the universe, what is our philosophical warrant for 

 attributing that to a conscious designer? Of course the 

 objection that comes from certain of Darwin's disciples — I 

 do not think he would have made it himself — is an objection 

 not on the score of logic, but on the score of fact. It is said 

 that what looks like design in organic life may be otherwise 

 accounted for. It is not a case — to use Professor Caird's 

 felicitous phrase — of the environment being adapted to the 

 organism, but of the organism adapting itself to its environ- 

 ment, and so being able to survive. But it is easy to see that 

 this does not touch the real fact of importance which is that 

 the process of the universe is such that it seems to imply pur- 

 pose somewhere, however we express its law. To suppose 

 that there are such things as organisms at all, in which each 

 part is reciprocally end and means, is quite enough as the 

 basis of the teleological argument ; for this involves purpose. 



