NATURAL SELECTION AND- NATURAL THEOLOGY 253 



should think the thoughtful theistic philosopher would take the 

 other side. Not to do so seems to concede that only supernatural 

 events can be shown to be designed, which no theist can admit — 

 seems also to misconceive the scope and meaning of all ordinary 

 arguments from design in nature." 



Where can we find three more eminent naturalists, or three 

 men more thoughtful, or more distinguished, than Darwin, Huxley, 

 and Gray, for integrity of mind and for that sturdy conservatism 

 which is not incompatible with independence .-' 



What are we to infer if, after studying a subject they were all 

 so preeminently fitted for 'handling, a subject which falls within a 

 province to which all three had devoted their lives, they are led 

 to such contradictory conclusions that one asserts that the old 

 argument from design fails, now that natural selection is discov- 

 ered, while another is convinced that natural selection presents to 

 the believer in teleology no new difficulties, at the same time that 

 a third tells us that although natural selection has given a death- 

 blow to the commoner and coarser forms of teleology, there is a 

 wider teleology which it does not touch at all 1 



Is it not clear that they have not all considered the same 

 question .-' Must we not seek a meeting-point for Darwin and 

 Gray in Huxley's more profound conception of the matter } May 

 not the argument from design which Darwin had in mind be 

 identical with the commoner and coarser teleology of Huxley ? 

 And may not the wider teleology which, as Huxley tells us, is 

 untouched by natural selection, be that in which Gray finds no 

 new difficulties ? 



Before we try to find out what this wider teleology is, it may 

 be well to look more closely into the nature of the "death-blow" 

 which science has given to "the old argument for design as given 

 by Paley," and to this I shall devote this and the following 

 lecture; while I shall try to show, in the lecture on the Mechan- 

 ism of Nature, that zoology leaves ample room for a wider tele- 

 ology, which may be independent of research into the sciences. 



This blow cannot have come from the mere extension, as such, 

 of the domain of natural causation; for Paley was as familiar as 

 we with Newton's demonstration that all the hosts of heaven are 

 a vast mechanism, regulated according to the same laws as those 



