WHAT TO BELIEVE IN SCIENCE: TELEOLOGY OK EVOLUTION. 15 
out any permanent axis of rotation. “ The effect,” he says, “ of 
this unfixedness and instability would be, that the equatorial 
parts of the earth might become the polar, or the polar the 
equatorial, to the utter destruction of plants and animals, which 
are not capable of interchanging their situations, but are 
respectively adapted to their own.”* His idea was, that upon 
some particular spot of the earth’s surface each organism, as we 
now know it, was abruptly called into existence out of the dust 
of the earth ; in one place a whale, in another a gudgeon, here a 
monkey and there a man. For instance, in one place he re- 
proaches his fellow-men, saying, “ We invade the territories of 
wild beasts and venomous reptiles, and then complain that we 
are infested by their bites and stings.”f And having read that 
some extensive plains in Africa are almost entirely covered with 
serpents, he exclaims, “ These are the natures appropriated to 
the situation. Let them enjoy their existence ; let them have 
their country.” According to this doctrine the extermination 
of wolves from England was an act of impiety ; and when we 
fumigate our houses to rid them of animals smaller indeed than 
wolves but almost equally objectionable, though obeying the 
laws of comfort we are defying the prescriptions of Nature. 
Believing, as Paley did, and as so many persons continue to 
believe with him, that the ancestor of each species was a fixed 
and finished design, like a watch as it comes from the hands of 
the watchmaker, only with the faculty which no human 
machinery ever had, of producing copies of itself, it was natural 
for him also to believe, and believing to fancy he perceived, that 
Nature had a special care for preserving these designs, preserv- 
ing them in the places for which they were specially designed, 
and preserving them unaltered. He contemplates arrangements 
“ for the preventing of the loss of certain species from the uni- 
verse ; a misfortune,” he says, “ which seems to be studiously 
guarded against.” “Though there may be the appearance of 
failure,” he continues, “in some of the details of Nature’s works, 
in her great purposes there never are. Her species never fail.” 
It is certain that he is utterly wrong in the majority of these 
conclusions. The climates which he thought fixed for the 
different quarters of the globe have beyond all doubt been con- 
tinually, or even continuously, varying. Plants and animals 
have not been destroyed, as he thought they must be, by such 
changes ; one reason, though not the only reason, being, that 
plants and animals, which he thought were not capable of inter- 
changing their situations, undoubtedly are capable of these 
migrations. The extinction of species is not studiously guarded 
against by Nature, and her species do fail. Within historical 
* Paley, 11 Natural Theology,” ed. 1837, p. 312. 
t Paley, “ Natural Theology,” p. 378. 
