WHAT TO BELIEVE IN SCIENCE : TELEOLOGY OK EVOLUTION. 1 3 
world, showing more and more clearly with every advance that 
no part of it all is useless or uncared for, but all teeming with 
marvellous work, with the stamp and impress of purpose, with 
the signs of an omnipresent intelligence. 
Opinions about the actual course of Nature have changed 
many times, and with each change the religious philosopher 
has still acknowledged, as he was bound to acknowledge, its 
wisdom and goodness under each disguise or change of guise ; 
whether he thought that the round earth had been made so 
sure that it could not be moved, or knew it to be engaged 
incessantly in rapid and varied motion ; whether he thought 
the earth a circular plain dotted with hills and surrounded by 
an ocean river, or knew it to be an oblate spheroid ; whether 
he believed the sun and moon to have been created three or 
four days after the earth’s redemption from chaos, or believed that 
particular opinion to be utterly absurd ; whether he thought that 
no other animals had ever existed on the earth than such as we 
now know, or was aware that multitudes of other genera and 
species had long ago died out ; whether he believed the earth’s 
crust to have been formed only by fiery agencies or only 
through the instrumentality of water, or knew it to have been 
formed by neither of these exclusively ; whether he believed the 
granite rocks to be primeval, the strong foundations of the 
earth whereon all its outer covering rested and had been built 
up, or knew that granite-rocks had been continually forming 
in all geological periods ; — through all these changes of opinion 
he continued, as to our view he was bound to continue, stedfast 
in loyalty to one belief — that, however the world had been made, 
it had been made wisely and had been made well. 
We propose, then, to consider the theory of the world’s 
history which the old writers on Teleology maintained, and to 
contrast it with the theory which they rejected. Sir Charles 
Bell says expressly : “ Everything declares the species to have 
its origin in a distinct creation, not in a gradual variation from 
some original type ; and any other hypothesis than that of a 
new creation of animals suited to the successive changes in the 
inorganic matter of the globe — the condition of the water, and 
atmosphere, and temperature — brings with it only an accumu- 
lation of difficulties.” * But it is now abundantly clear that 
“ the changes in the inorganic matter of the globe ” of which 
Sir Charles Bell speaks have not taken place suddenly and at 
long intervals, as he supposed ; they have been continuous and 
unceasing ; they are working now. We need not witness Etna 
and Vesuvius in eruption to be aware of these changes. The 
boy who “ in a showerful spring stares at the spate ” may see 
Bell, te On the Hand,” p. 166. 
