152 
NATURAL SELECTION 
VII 
complicated to have "been designed by the Creator so com- 
plete that it would necessarily work out harmonious results ? 
The theory of “ continual interference ” is a limitation of the 
Creator’s power. It assumes that He could not work by pure 
law in the organic, as He has done in the inorganic world ; it 
assumes that He could not foresee the consequences of the laws 
of matter and mind combined — that results would continually 
arise which are contrary to what is best — and that He has to 
change what would otherwise be the course of nature in order 
to produce that beauty, and variety, and harmony which even 
we, with our limited intellects, can conceive to be the result 
of self-adjustment in a universe governed by unvarying law. 
If we could not conceive the world of nature to be self-adjust- 
ing and capable of endless development, it would even then 
be an unworthy idea of a Creator to impute the incapacity of 
our minds to Him; but when many human minds can conceive, 
and can even trace out in detail, some of the adaptations in 
nature as the necessary results of unvarying law, it seems 
strange that, in the interests of religion, any one should seek 
to prove that the System of Nature, instead of being above, 
is far below our highest conceptions of it. I, for one, cannot 
believe that the world would come to chaos if left to law 
alone. I cannot believe that there is in it no inherent power 
of developing beauty or variety, and that the direct action of 
the Deity is required to produce each spot or streak on every 
insect, each detail of structure in every one of the millions of 
organisms that live or have lived upon the earth. For it is 
impossible to draw a line. If any modifications of structure 
could be the result of law, why not all ? If some self-adapta- 
tions could arise, why not others ? If any varieties of colour, 
why not all the varieties we see ? No attempt is made to 
explain this, except by reference to the fact that “ purpose ” 
and “ contrivance ” are everywhere visible, and by the illo- 
gical deduction that they could only have arisen from the 
direct action of some mind, because the direct action of our 
minds produces similar “ contrivances ” ; but it is forgotten 
that adaptation, however produced, must have the appearance 
of design. The channel of a river looks as if made for the 
river, although it is made by it ; the fine layers and beds in a 
deposit of sand often look as if they had been sorted, and 
