565 
iS8o.] A Change of Front . 
where he pronounces it “ difficult to perceive and highly 
improbable that any animal except man has the faculty of 
discerning between what is beautiful and what is the re- 
verse.” Yet he admits that, according to the experiments 
of Sir John Lubbock, certain inserts possess a sense of 
colour, and he even speaks of “ dim instincts for beauty ” 
as present in the lower animals. But letting this pass, 
what is his right to assume the absence of an aesthetic sense 
in the animal world ? Is the mineralogist justified in as- 
serting, without analysis, that a certain ore is free from 
arsenic or sulphur ? ... 
What, then, are the factors which the author invokes in 
place of natural selection and sexual selection ? He does 
not, with the theistic evolutionists in general, hold that 
development takes place upon certain divinely ordained 
lines; he does not say that God has implanted in every 
organism a tendency to variation, which under certain cir- 
cumstances becomes aCtive, and which then gives scope for 
natural selection to come into play. He does not suspend 
judgment, and urge that we must here await the results of 
further investigation. He simply calls in the old Paleyan 
“ design and contrivance !” 
It will be at once perceived that this is no scientific ex- 
planation of the phenomena at all. We might as well say 
that the unsupported stone falls to the earth because God 
so wills, which, though theologically correct, is scientifically 
inadmissible. If God has “ contrived the existence of any 
animal, or any particular arrangement in such animal, has 
he done so arbitrarily, or upon some fixed principle ? The 
former supposition surely is unworthy of Absolute Reason. 
If, then, the latter hold good, the task of Science is to dis- 
cover what is the principle involved, and not to remain 
contented with such “ brave words” as “ design” and 
“contrivance.” 
But there is a further consideration ; the great difficulty 
in the way of theism has been couched in the old question 
“ Si Deus est unde malum ?” It is strange that the Darwin- 
ian theory, though accused of atheism, has supplied the 
most satisfactory reply to this perplexing query, by showing 
that God is— if I may use the expression— not responsible 
for the most striking and gratuitous forms of evil. In so 
doing it has, I submit, rendered a service to theism and to 
Christianity which will be recognised in the future. It may 
be useful to consider how the question had been previously 
dealt with. The shallow optimism of George Combe and 
his followers carefully confines itself to a certain class of 
