CREATION BY LAW. 265 
The point on which the Duke of Argyll lays most 
stress, is, that proofs of Mind everywhere meet us in 
Nature, and are more especially manifest wherever we 
find “contrivance” or “beauty.” He maintains that 
this indicates the constant supervision and direct in- 
terference of the Creator, and cannot possibly be 
explained by the unassisted action of any combination 
of laws. Now, Mr. Darwin’s work has for its main 
object, to show, that all the phenomena of living 
things,—all their wonderful organs and complicated 
structures, their infinite variety of form, size, and 
colour, their intricate and involved relations to each 
other,—may have been produced by the action of a 
few general laws of the simplest kind, laws which are 
in most cases mere statements of admitted facts. The 
chief of these laws or facts are the following :— 
1. The Law of Multiplication in Geometrical Pro- 
gression.—All organized beings have enormous powers 
of multiplication. Even man, who increases slower 
than all other animals, could under the most favour- 
able circumstances double his numbers every fifteen 
years, or a hundred-fold in a century. Many animals 
and plants could increase their numbers from ten to 
a thousand-fold every year. 
2. The Law of Limited Populations.—The number 
of living individuals of each species in any country, 
or in the whole globe, is practically stationary ; whence 
it follows that the whole of this enormous increase 
must die off almost as fast as produced, except only 
those individuals for whom room is made by the. death 
