12 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
origin of man, and far beyond bis skill to invent or even imi- 
tate, the inference so often drawn seems a fair and legitimate 
inference, that personal agency and design underlie all that, 
for convenience of language or from reverential motives, we 
call the works of Nature. 
From the great conclusion, based on Teleology, that Nature, 
Creation, the Order of the Universe, has arisen not from chance 
but by design, we turn then to other conclusions, supposed to 
be grounded likewise on Teleology, and maintained by the 
same eminent writers who have shed so much lustre on the 
first part of the argument. 
These authors were concerned to prove not only that design 
was visible in Nature, but that, out of many ways which the 
mind a 'priori might conceive as possible, the Designer had 
chosen one particular way, in preference to all other ways, 
of effecting his purpose. It is needless to conceal that they 
were led to maintain this line of argument by the impression 
existing in their minds that the Designer had Himself declared 
his choice of plan, and that therefore his honour was involved 
in the truthfulness of the declaration. They deemed it neces- 
sary, then, to their purpose, to show two things : first, that this 
particular plan had in fact been pursued; and secondly, that 
upon a broad general view, and as far as the human intellect 
and human science could judge, this plan was of all conceiv- 
able plans the very best. We propose to join issue with them 
on both these points, and to show that the teaching of Teleo- 
logy is in favour of a different plan from that which they 
thought must have been followed; different, we say, from theirs, 
yet equally consistent with supreme wisdom and goodness. 
On whatever plan the Universe may have been contrived and 
ordered, a finite intellect scanning and gauging it, not as a 
whole, but part by part, observing only infinitesimally small 
portions of it at any one time, and most of it never, can 
scarcely fail to be impressed with what some would call 
imperfection and contrariety in the scheme, but what others 
would more logically as well as more reverently describe as 
problems awaiting solution, as mysteries not to be frivolously 
blasphemed because impenetrable or unsatisfactory to a parti- 
cular order of intelligence. But this doctrine, undeniable as 
it surely is, throws its aegis equally over every theory of 
creation, protecting all equally from a priori objections. We 
are really concerned with nothing except the facts of the case — 
facts gradually emerging, slowly revealing themselves, or being 
revealed, to the prophets and apostles and poets of science, with 
their strange gifts beyond the run of common men ; gifts of 
heroic patience and self-denial, by which, with sure steps 
though slow, they penetrate the innermost arcana of the 
