i88i.] 
The Formative Power in Nature . 
85 
the technics, transcendentally exceeding those of man, as dis- 
played in nature require intellect to conceive and perfect 
them. The persistence of denial which underlies the whole 
argument is mainly due to the faCt that in Nature’s machines 
we find the completed form without at the same time seeing 
the process of the details, and so they are pronounced to be 
self induced ; this cannot be said of a complicated machine 
constructed by human power, or of a fine work of art with 
the initiation and every manipulation of which we are 
familiar ; yet how easy would it be to understand the diver- 
sified mechanics of nature if we did for the processes of 
nature that which we do when contemplating a machine or 
a work of art, viz., interfuse the intelligence used in the 
work, presenting the object as a compound of intellect 
and material. We would then suppose that when looking 
at a natural product we were viewing a compound of matter 
and mind, and that the energy of the formative principle and 
its power were interfused with the substance out of which 
phenomena have arisen. Matter then would be considered 
merely as the vehicle and intelligence as the machinist and 
moulder of the form ; the effect produced would then be but a 
continuation of the formative cause. Such view would in no 
way deny the developement theory, the evolution hypothesis 
as it is called. Scientific theories may be promulgated and 
sustained without impinging on theological dogmas, with 
which they have nothing in common, also without a sub- 
version of religious ideas or the reverence which all well 
balanced minds have for the Great Supreme. 
Whenever a systematic denial is given to the theory of 
evolution we search for the reason and find that it arises 
either from the absence of a knowledge of its teaching, from 
an absolute ignorance of natural science, or from a warping 
of the judgment by some theological bias to which the 
deniers are attached, and the desire to uphold some dogma 
in which they are interested. Theologians and materialists 
equally err, the first in thinking it incumbent on them to 
uphold at any cost their beliefs, thinking, as many sincerely 
do, that all discussions of the creation hypothesis and dis- 
quisitions on the subject are incompatible with the teach- 
ings by which they are indoctrinated ; the latter deny the 
existence of God in creation, deeming his interposition to be 
teleological or miraculous, as though it were less miraculous 
to suppose that all we know of nature and of the orbs which 
stud the skies eventuated without a director or founder : per- 
haps a great faCtor in the idea is that the introduction of 
God into the scheme of the universe would be wholly de- 
