154 Luck, or Cunning ? 
detail rigorously, so, as between substances, there is neither 
absolute union and homogeneity, not absolute disunion 
and heterogeneity ; there is always a little place left for 
repentance ; that is to say, in theory we should admit that 
both design and chance, however well defined, each have an 
aroma, as it were, of the other. Who can think ofa case in 
which his own design—about which he should know more 
than any other, and from which, indeed, all his ideas of 
design are derived—was so complete that there was no 
chance in any part of it? Who, again, can bring forward a 
case even of the purest chance or good luck into which no 
element of design had entered directly or indirectly at any 
juncture? This, nevertheless, does not involve our being 
unable ever to ascribe a result baldly either to luck ot cun- 
ning. In some cases a decided preponderance of the action, 
whether seen as a whole or looked at in detail, is recognised 
at once as due to design, purpose, forethought, skill, and 
effort, and then we properly disregard the undesigned 
element ; in others the details cannot without violence be 
connected with design, however much the position which 
rendered the main action possible may involve design—as, 
for example, there is no design in the way in which individual 
pieces of coal may hit one another when shot out of a 
sack, but there may be design in the sack’s being brought to. 
the particular place where it is emptied ; in others design 
may be so hard to find that we rightly deny its existence, 
nevertheless in each case there will be an element of the 
opposite, and the residuary element would, if seen through a 
mental microscope, be found to contain a residuary element 
of és opposite, and this again of its opposite, and so on 
ad infinitum, as with mirrors standing face to face. This. 
having been explained, and it being understood that when 
we speak of design in organism we do so with a mental 
reserve of exceptis excipiendis, there should be no hesitation 
in holding the various modifications of plants and animals 
to be in such preponderating measure due to function, that 
