132 
to the conception, that ‘‘ there may be a princi- 
ple or law from which the existing order of 
physical life, with all its apparent anomalies 
[and its manifold diversities], flows as a 
necessary result,’’ the knowledge of which, 
‘Sif attainable, would exhibit to us the order 
of living nature as one consistent system, free 
from exceptions and anomalies.”’ 
All this, and indeed all the volume, proceeds 
on lines quite accordant with those of the 
purely scientific evolutionist. Moreover, in 
thus regarding intuition as a kind of acquisi- 
tion or development, the theologian joins hands 
with the agnostic evolutionist, although they 
are moving in opposite directions. But the 
latter doubts, to use the words of one of them, 
‘¢ whether the law-governed mind of man is 
not itself the highest form of mind.’’ The 
former, accepting ‘‘ the admission which must 
be made by all parties of the co-existence of 
fundamental unity with almost unlimited diver- 
sity,’’ and of inexplicable anomalies, endeav- 
ors to show, through mathematical analogies, 
that the existence of man may involve ‘* the 
possibility of snakes, as truly and as really as 
the existence of elliptic motion involves that of 
parabolical,’’ and ‘‘that a mind higher than 
human might see in the definition of man the 
possible existence of useless organs, both in 
man and in other creatures.’’ At the close of 
the essay, descending from pure speculation 
of what may be, to more scientific considera- 
tions, his idea may be gathered from the 
following condensed abstract : — 
‘‘ Let it be granted that all living beings have been 
developed according to some law, not necessarily 
known, or even capable of description in words, but 
still a real law of development; does this give us all 
the elements necessary for the solution of the life 
problem? If we say yes, do we not run into the mis- 
take of a beginner who fancies that he can solve a 
problem of motion round a centre when he has been 
told what is the law of force? Is it not necessary to 
know the conditions of projection, the initial cireum- 
stances of motion or development? And may not this 
portion of the data be quite as important as the 
knowledge of the law of force? Itseems to me that 
they who are most anxious to establish the principle 
of evolution should be the most ready to perceive the 
necessity of taking into account the consideration of 
initial circumstances. . . . A quantity of protoplasm 
with an assumed power of development will not ac- 
count for existing forms of life, without the addi- 
tional hypothesis of some causative power to determine 
the initial circumstances. Given an original germ, 
and given some power which shall direct the particu- 
lar original cause of the development of that germ, 
and the whole subsequent development is conceiva- 
ble: but the germ and the law of development left to 
themselves may be as insufficient as the particle and 
the law of attraction. ... We have seen that the 
parabola, the ellipse, and the hyperbola are all possi- 
ble curves for a particle moving round a centre of 
SCIENCE. 
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force. Only one of these curves — namely the ellipse, 
and only the ellipse under the condition of small 
eccentricity or approximate circularity — can suffice 
for the orbit of a planet which shall be the home of 
the highest form of life, namely, that of man... . 
The original conditions of motion, the initial cireum- 
stances as a mathematician would call them, must 
have been delicately adjusted in order to select, out 
of all possible forms of orbit, that one circular or 
nearly circular form which is compatible with the 
existence upon the earth’s surface of beings like our- 
selves. May we not infer from this a similar neces- 
sity of original delicate adjustment in the process of 
the evolution of a highly organized creature from a 
protoplasmic germ ? ”’ 
The third essay, entitled ‘God and nature,’ 
is mainly the development and application of 
a point made in a university sermon, which the 
author thought had been overlooked (but per- 
haps it really passed unnoticed because it is so 
obviously true), namely, that ‘‘ all physical 
science, properly so called, is compelled by its 
very nature to take no account of the being of 
God: as soon as it does this, it trenches upon 
theology, and ceases to be physical science.’’ 
And so, coining a discriminating word to ex- 
press this, he would say that science was 
atheous, and therefore could not be atheistic. 
Intrenched in this position, he sharply criticises, 
as unscientific, Haeckel’s denial of the exist- 
ence of purpose in nature, and comes down 
upon Professor Seeley for his rash statement 
(in ‘ Natural religion’) that ‘ science opposes 
to God, nature.’ 
In the fourth essay, ‘ The philosophy of cray- 
fishes,’ the text is supplied by Mr. Huxley’s 
well-known lecture upon these little crustaceans, 
which lecture, the bishop insists, ‘leads the 
mind of the reader, and, as it would seem, in- 
tentionally, beyond the region of natural his- 
tory into the domain of philosophy, and even of 
divinity.’’ In that domain the bishop is a match 
for the naturalist: at least, he is able to verify 
an old prediction of Huxley’s, that the evolu- 
tionist need not expect ever to drive the teleolo- 
gist out of the field. Indeed, it cannot be easy 
to dislodge a teleologist who is so far-sighted as 
to ‘*‘ have great doubt whether we can properly 
speak of final ends at all, unless we embrace 
in our conception the whole cosmos.’’ To 
Huxley’s favorite line of remark that there is 
no great good in ‘*‘ demonstrating the proposi- 
tion that a thing is fitted to do that which it 
does,’’ and that it is ‘‘ merely putting the cart 
before the horse to speak of the mind of a 
crayfish as a factor in the work done by the 
organism, when it is merely a dim symbol of a 
part of such work in the doing,’’ the bishop 
replies, that the importance of demonstrating 
a proposition depends upon the point of view 
[Vou. III, No. 52. 
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