PHILOSOPHY AMD “ EVOLUTION ” : AN INQUIRY. 131 
intransmutability, and that of directivity — co-ordinating and 
arranging bioplastic movements. 
We conclude that evolution does not explain the fact of 
living * matter. 
Purpose and Design in nature . — Another great fact of nature is 
the apparent Purpose and Design, the suitability and suiting of 
means to ends, and of organism to environment and vice versa, 
which is visible everywhere. Except the theistic, no variety of 
evolution doctrine makes any serious effort to account for this.f 
Haeckel's denied. — Haeckel, J with characteristic coolness, 
seeks, not for the first time, to evade difficulty by simply denying 
its existence. 
“Nowhere,” according to him, “in the evolution of animals and 
plants do w6 find any trace of design. . . . And there is no 
more trace of ‘ design,’ in the embryology of the individual plant, 
animal, or man.” 
Nor is Spencer more illuminating. Take for example, his 
explanation of the backbone. He tells us that the segment- 
ation is the inherited effect of fractures caused by bending. 
Spencer's fallacy . — On which Professor W. K. Brooks (of the 
John Hopkins University) says that 
“Aristotle has shown ( Parts of Animals, i, 1) that Empedocles 
and the ancient writers err in teaching that the bendings to which 
* This is admitted by Spencer, in Principles of Biology (vol. i, p. 120), 
He writes, “We are obliged to recognise that life in its essence cannot be 
conceived in physico-chemical terms. ... It needs but to observe 
how even simple forms of existence are in their ultimate nature incom- 
prehensible, to see that this most complex form of existence is, in a sense, 
doubly incomprehensible.” 
+ Hume testifies that “The order and arrangement of nature, the 
curious adjustment of final causes, the plain use and intention of every 
part and organ, all these bespeak in the clearest language an intelligent 
cause or Author. The heavens and the earth join in the same testimony.” 
To this testimony of the famous philosophical sceptic may be added the 
words of that “ Prince of Science,” Lord Kelvin. Lord Kelvin says, “I 
feel profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly 
too much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations. Overpow T eringly 
strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us, and if 
ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from 
them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing 
us through nature the influence of a free Will, and teaching us that all 
living things depend on one everlasting Creator and Euler.” 
+ The Riddle of the Universe , p. 95. Yet, while denying “design,” 
Haeckel inconsistently admits that there are in nature, “ purpose," 
“ contrivance,” and “ selection.” 
