THE EVOLUTION-HYPOTHESIS. 353 



ties have slowly arisen all those structural complexities which 

 we see in them ? 



The hypothesis of Evolution then, has direct support from 

 facts which, though small in amount, are of the kind required; 

 and the proportion which these facts bear to the conclusion 

 drawn, seems as great as is the proportion between facts and 

 conclusion which, in another case, produces acceptance of the 

 conclusion. 



§ 120. Let us put ourselves for a moment in the position of 

 those who, from their experiences of human modes of action, 

 draw inferences respecting the mode of action of that ultimate 

 power manifested to us through phenomena. We shall find 

 the supposition that each kind of organism was separately 

 designed and put together, to be much less consistent with 

 their professed conception of this ultimate power, than is the 

 supposition that all kinds of organisms have resulted from 

 one unbroken process. Irregularity of method is a mark of 

 weakness. Uniformity of method is a mark of strength. Con- 

 tinual interposition to alter a pre-arranged set of actions, 

 implies defective arrangement in those actions. The main- 

 tenance of those actions, and the working out by them of the 

 highest results, implies completeness of arrangement. If 

 human workmen, whose machines as at first constructed 

 require perpetual adjustment, show their increasing skill by 

 making their machines self-adjusting ; then, those who figure 

 to themselves the production of the world and its inhabitants 

 by a " Great Artificer," must admit that the achievement of 

 this end by a persistent process, adapted to all contingencies, 

 implies greater skill than its achievement by the process of 

 meeting the contingencies as they severally arise, 



So, too, it is with the contrast under its moral aspect. We 

 saw that to the hypothesis of special creations, a difficulty 

 is presented by -the absence of high forms of life during those 

 immeasurable epochs of the Earth's existence which geology 



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