21 



More and more as the subject develops itself under investi- 

 gation, and as we pass from the individual to its species and 

 thence to its genus, and so on upwards till we see the whole of 

 the animal kingdom or the vegetable kingdom linked together, 

 more and more does the fact, that what we call design is a rela- 

 tive and not an absolute thing, become forced upon us ; and if 

 the term is to be retained in conjunction with evolution, it 

 must be allowed to have no such determinate meaning as has 

 hitherto been applied to it by teleologists. Whether, however, 

 these plans or types, specific or ordinal, were conceived in the 

 Divine Mind simply and immediately upon, or long before, 

 their execution, is beside the real question. Whether, too, 

 each type as it appeared was a necessary result of the laws of 

 God^s evolution, is beside the question, which is this: Recog- 

 nizing objective types as real facts in nature, did God as a 

 Being external to creation conceive them in any way at all, or 

 are they simply the necessary issue of " concurrent conditions'^ ; 

 all external agency being excluded ? I prefer to believe that God, 

 as an external Personal agent, had something to do with them. 



I cannot see that the statements, — " Every part [of an or- 

 ganism] is the effect of a pre-existing part (p. 617, Fortnightly 

 Review, No. XVIII. 1868) ; that, " the polarities of the organic 

 substance assume the form [of the organism] ; that, ^' the type 

 emerges from the momenta (p. 621), or that "the type (or 

 arrangement of parts) is the result of concurrent conditions, not 

 the cause of their concurrence (p. 366), — throw any light 

 upon the question at all ; they are the positivist's attempts at 

 expression of facts, but are in no way explanatory, and simply 

 amount to a denial of design of the types or forms of animals 

 and vegetables ; that they were but the necessary result of 

 [fortuitous ?] concurrent conditions. Have we not here some- 

 thing very like the Lucretian fortuitous concourse of atoms? 



But suppose we admit that this materialistic or positive view 

 is equally good with that of a Personal God, so far as both may 

 be supposed to furnish a vera causa of the origin of organs and 

 forms. Then it is at this point that Revelation steps in and 

 turns the balance in favour of a Personal God external to 

 creation, and Who has worked by laws and evolved the present 

 state of things from chaos. 



Mr. Lewes further remarks (p. 621), that — 



" The type does not dominate the momenta, it emerges from them ; the 

 animal organism is not cast in a mould, but the imaginary mould is the 

 form which the polarities of the organic substances assume. It would seem 



* Mr. Lewes defines organs as structures possessing definite functions ; 

 while he applies the word forms to rudimentary and useless structures. 



