NATURAL SELECTION AND ENVIRONMENT 163 



sidiary ends have had to be attained. These are not 

 merely digestion and brain, but a host of others : e.g., 

 in Tertebrates, vertebrae of the right substance, posi- 

 tion, form, arrangement, and union. And in the as- 

 cending hne, for whose highest forms it has continu- 

 ally worked, the difficulties of attaining each subsidiary 

 end have been successively solved, and through this 

 host of subsidiary ends the animal kingdom has ad- 

 vanced straight to its goal of intelligence and right- 

 eousness. Now the whole process is a grand argu- 

 ment for design. But I would not emphasize the 

 process so much as the end attained. This especially, 

 when attained by conformity to that environment, de- 

 mands more than mere mindless atoms in or behind 

 that environment. Can we call the ultimate power 

 which makes for righteousness " it ? " Can we call 

 it less than " Him, in whom we live and move and 

 have our being ? " 



The history of life is a grand drama. " Paradise 

 Lost" and Shakespeare's plays are but fragments of it. 

 But without intelligence they could never have been 

 composed ; without a choice of means and ends they 

 could never have been placed upon the stage. Does 

 the plot of this grander drama of evolution demand 

 no intelligence in its ultimate cause and producer? 

 Is the succession of steps, each succeeding the other in 

 such order as to lead to truth and right and continual 

 progress toward a spiritual goal, is this plot possible 

 without a great composer who has seen the end from 

 the beginning? Could it ever have been executed 

 upon the stage of the world, and perhaps of the uni- 

 verse, without an executing will ? 



Now I freely grant you that this is no mathematical 



