WILLIAM G. STEVENSON. 25 
which plants and animals come? Why should a million 
perish and but one survive % 
I do not stop to name the individual facts, illustrative 
of these points, which speak so strongly against design 
and present difficulties which are insuperable on any 
theory of the direct and independent creation of species. 
Notwithstanding this negative evidence against de- 
sign, I am convinced that it is a truth and that an intel- 
ligent power works through definite means to the attain- 
ment of definite ends; and the reason why we so often 
err in our conceptions of this truth is because we can not 
always determine from an act, ora result, the purpose 
or place associated therewith. We see a boomerang 
thrown forward, but this act does not reveal the purpose 
of him who threw it, which was to strike an object stand- 
ing in an opposite direction ; this purpose can only be 
inferred when we know the deflecting force which is in- 
herent, when a stick having peculiar curves is thrown 
in a certain manner. 
The position of the rudder will not alone enable us to 
tell the exact direction of the boat, for the pilot has esti- 
mated the deflecting force of winds and tides and placed 
the helm in accordance therewith. These deflecting 
forces are known as natural laws, whose method of act- 
ing it is the object of science to determine; they are the 
influences of environment and inheritance—those silent 
but ever-present potencies—which modify organic forms 
and conceal the direct evidences of design by the com- 
plexity of their operations. When, therefore, I speak 
of ‘“‘necessity,’’—in contradistinction to ‘* design,’’—as 
the directing force of means to an end, I mean simply 
the action of these secondary causes: those which exist 
in the nature of things ; the natural laws of the universe ; 
the inherent and inexplicable properties of elementary 
and organized matter; the phenomena which may be 
compassed by the human intellect. 
