1867.] Creation bij Law. 479 



him hundreds of rivers in every part of the world which are thus 

 rendered useless for navigation. 



Exactly the same thing occurs in organic nature. We see 

 some one wonderful case of adjustment, some unusual development 

 of an organ, but we pass over the hundreds of cases in which 

 that adjustment and development do not occur. No doubt when 

 one adjustment is absent another takes its place, because no organism 

 can continue to exist that is not adjusted to its environment ; and 

 unceasing variation with unlimited powers of multiplication, in most 

 cases, furnish the means of self-adjustment. The world is so con- 

 stituted, that by the action of general laws there is produced the 

 greatest possible variety of surface and of climate; and by the 

 action of laws equally general, the greatest possible variety of 

 organisms have been produced adapted to the varied conditions of 

 every part of the earth. The Duke of Argyll would probably 

 himself admit that the varied surface of the earth, the plains and 

 valleys, the hills and mountains, the deserts and volcanoes, the 

 winds and currents, the seas and lakes and rivers, and the various 

 climates of the earth, are all the results of general laws acting and 

 re-acting during countless ages]; and that the Creator does not appear 

 to guide and control the action of these laws — here determining 

 the height of a mountain, there altering the channel of a river — here 

 making the rains more abundant, there changing the direction of a 

 current. He would probably admit that the forces of inorganic 

 nature are self-adjusting, and that the result necessarily fluctuates 

 about a given mean condition (which is itself slowly changing), 

 while within certain limits the greatest jwssible amount of variety 

 is produced. If then a " contriving mind " is not necessary at 

 every step of the process of change eternally going on in the in- 

 organic world, why are we required to believe in the continual action 

 of such a mind in the region of organic nature ? True, the laws at 

 work are more complex, the adjustments more delicate, the appear- 

 ance of special adaptation more remarkable; but why should we 

 measure the creative mind by our own ? Why should we suppose 

 the machine too complicated to have been designed by the Creator 

 so complete, that it would necessarily work out harmonious results ? 

 The theory of "continual interference" is a limitation of the 

 Creator's power. It assumes that he could not work by pure law 

 in the organic as he has done in the inorganic world ; it assumes 

 that he could not foresee the consequences of the laws of matter 

 and mind combined — that results would continually arise which are 

 contrary to what is best, and that he has to change what would 

 otherwise be the course of nature in order to produce that beauty 

 and variety and harmony, which even we, with our limited intellects, 

 can conceive to be the result of self-adjustment in a universe 

 governed by unvarying law. If we could not conceive the world 



