6 WHAT IS DARWINISM? 



ganisms to conditions external to themselves, 

 and for those provisions for the future, which 

 on any other assumption are utterly inexplica- 

 ble. (3.) It is in conflict with no truth of reason 

 and with no fact of experience. 1 (4.) The Scrip- 

 tural doctrine accounts for the spiritual nature 

 of man, and meets all his spiritual necessities. 

 It gives him an object of adoration, love, and 

 confidence. It reveals the Being on whom his 



1 The two facts which are commonly urged as inconsistent 

 with Theism, are the existence of misery in the world, and the 

 occurrence of undeveloped or useless organs, as teeth in the jaws 

 of the whale and mammae on the breast of a man. As to the 

 former objection, sin, which is the only real evil, is accounted 

 for by the voluntary apostasy of man ; and as to undeveloped or- 

 gans they are regarded as evidences of the great plan of struc- 

 ture which can be traced in the different orders of animals. 

 These unused organs were — says Professor Joseph Le Conte, in 

 his interesting volume on Religion and Science, New York, 

 1874, p. 54 — regarded as blunders in nature, until it was 

 discovered that use is not the only end of design. "By fur- 

 ther patient study of nature," he says, " came the recognition of 

 another law beside use, — a law of order underlying and condi- 

 tioning the law of use. Organisms are, indeed, contrived for 

 use, but according to a preordained plan of structure, which 

 must not be violated." It is of little moment whether this ex- 

 planation be considered satisfactory or not. It would certainly 

 be irrational to refuse to believe that the eye was made for the 

 purpose of vision, because we cannot tell why a man has mam- 

 ma:. A man might as well refuse to admit that there is any 

 meaning in all the writings of Plato, because there is a sentence 

 in them which he cannot understand. 



