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some instances, exactly where it should be regulai'ly found." — (Carp, ib.) In 

 these and many like cases, parts which we are perhaps justified in saying are 

 perfectly useless to the individual creature, seem to exist purely in conformity 

 with the great law of the unity of Organic type. 



To the Natural Theologian following in the track of the older school of 

 Naturalists, rudimentary organs were as great a stumbling block as to his 

 leaders. The scarcely perceptible eyes of the mole may deserve the special 

 praise accorded by Paley, in this instance, to Divine "skill ;" but on his view 

 of things, what can we make of that species in which the aborted organ is 

 completely covered from the light 1 What, again, of the teeth of the foetal 

 whale, or of the undeveloped air-bladder of some Fishes, or of the redundant 

 provision of gills and lungs in some of the Batrachians, or of the caudal 

 vertebrae in Man 1 A yet more serious difficulty beset the utilitarian Divine 

 in this department of his work. u Adaptation " was a word as much in vogue 

 with him as now is " Correlation " with the Darwinians. In Paley's pages 

 one reads perpetually of the Divine " contrivances." It is obvious to ask 

 " Wherefore all this painful adaptation of means to ends ]" Why should 

 Omnipotence resort to contrivance to attain particular purposes 1 As Paley 

 himself perceives " contrivance by its very definition and nature is the refuge 

 of imperfection." Besides, after all that can be said on the admirable structure 

 of the Eye, and its adaptation to the light, the intervention of Almighty power 

 still appears needful to enable lis to see. How otherwise can the inverted 

 image on the retina raise in the Mind a visual idea 1 How can any mechanism 

 bridge over the chasm between the material image and the immaterial Mind 1 

 Then why should God devise complex machinery, which, after all, does not 

 dispense withjiis direct volition 1 " What fitness," it is well demanded, " is 

 there in one mechanism more than in another, or in any than in none at all, 

 to produce its appended perception?" 



Now in these, and kindred questions, Morphological Science comes in to 

 relieve, though, it may be, not wholly to remove our difficulties. Discarding 

 the mechanical idea, it calls on us to regard the Universe, not as a piece-meal 

 product in which God, by a series of contrivances, has managed to adapt 

 particular creations, one by one, to pre-established general laws, but as a mighty 

 whole, whereof the parts are mutually related, and cohere in one all-compre- 

 hensive system. From this point of view, the eye seems adapted to the light, 

 neither more nor less than the light to the eye. The great optical laws 

 extending over tracts of time and space where vision cannot be, yet have relation 

 to that wondrous little structure no less than it to them. The old idea of 

 adaptation merges in the wider one of correlation ; and all the forces of the 

 Universe are seen to be cboperant. Symmetry and Beaiity, in and for them- 

 selves, appear to be creative ends which the Divine Artist has not thought 

 fit to disregard ; and we are at liberty to think that many things are as they 

 are, not because He could not otherwise have reached some special purpose, 

 but because he never violates that Order of thought, and Harmony of design, 

 by which His mind expresses itself in Matter. Nor can we fail to see that 

 one beneficial result, at least, in relation to God's intelligent creatures has 

 been attained by this inflexible regard to order ; for had he condescended to 

 no method in His Universe, Science itself would have been impossible. The 

 physical world have been an undecipherable Enigma, differing from the 

 wonderful reality as does an incoherent scrawl from an intelligible writing. 



This wider view of Nature leaves unshaken in the older argument all 

 that is really sound. The moral proof of beneficent design cannot be weakened 

 by observing, that the fitness of every part for its peculiar function is attained 

 without departure from the grander principle of Organic symmetry. The two ends 

 are reached concurrently. I again cite from Dr. Carpenter the following passage : — 



