SPECIAL EKDS. IN CBEATION. 529 



plan, which is not in itself indispensable for the main purposes on 

 account of which the house is built. He proceeds on a principle of 

 Order, as well as on one of Special Adaptation. He makes his build- 

 ing according to a certain style, suited to the prevailing taste of the 

 period ; and in no style of architecture are the windows and doors, 

 and other parts of the structure, arranged without some regard to 

 symmetry. "Witness — as illustrative of the same point — the general 

 resemblance in the forms of the weights used in a merchant's shop — 

 the regularity in the plaits of a wicker basket — the mould in which a 

 water-jug is cast: — and the countless devices for ministering to the 

 sense of beauty, irrespectively of the direct and proper use to which 

 an article of manufacture is intended to be put. It would probably 

 be impossible to mention a single object fashioned by human intelli- 

 gence, in which, while some special end is aimed at, the influence of 

 the principle of order is not at the same time manifest. Xow, what 

 thus holds good regarding the works of man, holds good also regard- 

 ing the works of God. While special adaptations are every where 

 met with in nature, the Creator has been pleased, for the most part, 

 if not invariably, to conform himself to a general type or pattern. It 

 was at one time a subject of fierce controversy among scientific men, 

 whether the phenomena of the universe are to be explained by refer- 

 ence to the principle of Adaptation, or to that of Order; one party, with 

 Cuvier, maintaining the former opinion ; and another, with G-eoflrey 

 St. Hilaire, the latter. But both sides (as has often happened) were 

 so far right, and so far wrong. The question between the disputants 

 was : Adaptation or Order ? The truth of the case is : Adaptation and 

 Order united. On the one hand, for instance, the eye was expressly 

 fitted to be an instrument of vision ; on the other hand, however, a 

 general plan is discernible, according to which the eyes of all creatures 

 are formed ; and only such departures have been made from the typi- 

 cal form — the normal eye, as we may term it — as were rendered neces- 

 sary or desirable by the circumstances in which particular animals 

 were designed to live. 



The law, that the works of nature, while exhibiting special adapta- 

 tions, are formed upon a general plan, did not altogether escape the 

 notice of the reflecting minds of antiquity. They had glimpses of it, 

 though dim and imperfect. The formal and scientific exposition 

 which it has received of late from several eminent writers, has been 

 one of the fruits of the progress of physical investigation ; and Drs. 

 McCosh and Dickie are entitled to the highest praise for having 

 gathered together into a focus all the light which the different natural 

 sciences, as far as we are at present acquainted with them, shed upon 



