VII 
CREATION BY LAW 
151 
navigable river, and reflect how easily rocks, or a steeper 
channel in places, might render it useless to man; — and a 
little inquiry would show him hundreds of rivers in every 
part of the world, which are thus rendered useless for 
navigation. 
Exactly the same thing occurs in organic nature. We see 
some one wonderful case of adjustment* some unusual develop- 
ment of an organ, but we pass over the hundreds of cases in 
which that adjustment and development do not occur. No 
doubt when one adjustment is absent another takes its place, 
because no organism can continue to exist that is not adjusted 
to its environment ; and unceasing variation, with unlimited 
powers of nmltiplication, in most cases, furnishes the means 
of self-adjustment. The world is so constituted that by the 
action of general laws there is produced the greatest possible 
variety of surface and of climate ; and by the action of laws 
equally general, the greatest possible variety of organisms has 
been produced, adapted to the varied conditions of every part of 
the earth. The objector would probably himself admit that 
the varied surface of the earth — the plains and valleys, the 
hills and mountains, the deserts and volcanoes, the winds and 
currents, the seas and lakes and rivers, and the various 
climates of the earth — are all the results of general laws 
acting and reacting during countless ages ; and that the 
Creator does not appear to guide and control the action of 
these laws — here determining the height of a mountain, there 
altering the channel of a river — here making the rains more 
abundant, there changing the direction of a current. He 
would probably admit that the forces of inorganic nature are 
self-adjusting, and that the result necessarily fluctuates about 
a given mean condition (which is itself slowly changing), while 
within certain limits the greatest possible amount of variety 
is produced. If then a “ contriving mind ” is not necessary 
at every step of the process of change eternally going on in 
the inorganic world, why are we required to believe in the con- 
tinual action of such a mind in the region of organic nature ? 
True, the laws at work are more complex, the adjustments 
more delicate, the appearance of special adaptation more 
remarkable ; but why should we measure the creative mind 
by our own? Why should we suppose the machine too 
