8 4 
The Formative Power in Nature. [February, 
and the admirable adaptability of each to each, contributing 
without break to the action of the whole. Yet when the 
processes of nature are the machines in contemplation, in all 
seriousness we are told that there was no purpose in their 
construction, no manifestation of intelligence in the adapta- 
tion of part to part, no consideration of their fitness, and 
that there was nothing to show that the objedt to be achieved 
was in the contemplation of the architect, who builded so well 
that, not only were the several parts properly adjusted, but 
that each objeCt played its part in the machinery of nature ; 
and that those perfect but diversified machines are not only 
complete in themselves, but are stepstones in the great 
economy of an orderly universe ; and that all this order and 
manifold arrangement is but the accidental development of 
particular gases which cohered and produced by their own 
institution an albuminous substance termed protoplasm,” 
which in itself had animation and the power of reproduction 
and differentiation ; that there was neither plan nor purpose in 
the development, that there was neither founder nor architect, 
but that the accidental agglomeration of different gases in- 
termixing in different proportions would adequately account 
for the flora and the fauna of the earth. 
We may talk of teleology and deride it* and substitute 
spontaneity, yet when spontaneity is paraded we may well 
demand from whence was the intelligence and purpose so 
evidently underlying the processes of nature derived ? Human 
technics require intelligence as an antecedent to mechanical 
manifestation. t It is then indeed but sorry reasoning to deny 
intelligence to the formative power through which Nature’s 
machines grew into being. I am not now arguing that this 
formative principle necessarily is God — that I have proved 
elsewhere. J I am merely testingthe sufficiency of the monistic 
or materialistic propaganda by the commonest phase of 
surface reasoning. It may be an a priori assumption to 
speak of the existence of God, but language gives no term 
for that reasoning which denies intelligence to the formative 
principles dispersed throughout natural phenomena. 
All persons who refledt must allow (in fadt it is a scientific 
axiom) that there can be no mechanism or artistic delinea- 
tion produced without intelledtual application, without 
intelligence as the formative power. A parity of reasoning 
would lead to the inference that if the technics of man 
require intelligence to produce and perfedt them so would 
* Vide “ Haeckel’s “ History of Creation,” vol. i., p. 66. 
f Vide Helmholtz. 
\ “ Scientific Materialism.” 
