284 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



air, it would require equal intelligence to make him in 

 a million years. Unless time and intelligence are 

 essentially the same, it is futile to attempt to substi- 

 tute the former for the latter as a factor in creation. 



If I were the only human being known to myself 

 on the earth, and should go out some day and meet a 

 man, and then begin to inquire and reason concerning 

 his origin, what would be the logical conclusion to 

 which I might come? Was he created by chance or 

 by design? 



For the purpose of answering this question I pro- 

 ceed to obtain all the possible facts. I examine him 

 as a piece of mechanism, and find him exceedingly 

 complex — composed of bones, muscles, nerves, carti- 

 lage, and various other tissues; I find that the mus- 

 cles are more than five hundred in number, of many 

 shapes and sizes, and so attached to the bones and 

 other parts as to give infinite varieties of motion, and 

 so arranged as to furnish strength and beauty. 



I look more closely and see that each muscle is 

 composed of fibers of microscopic size, each fiber of 

 cells, and each cell of molecules formed by the union 

 of many atoms of several elements. 



I examine the frame- work of his body and find it 

 composed of more than two hundred bones, differing 

 much in size and shape, and joined together so as to 

 permit the most varied motions, or firmly united in 

 order to furnish the best protection to the most deli- 

 cate organs. I find them to be of such shapes and 

 sizes, and composed of such materials and occupying 

 such relations to each other as to constitute a perfect 

 mechanism for motion and protection. 



I look with the microscope, and see that what be- 

 fore seemed to be solid bone is permeated by tubes 

 and by small openings in all directions, which serve 

 as highways for the passage of nourishment. 



