40 
inorganic principles, under its own peculiar power and force, yet there is not 
the least evidence to show that the mere laws which govern inorganic matter 
could of themselves have led to a single vital organism. If this is so, it will, 
I apprehend, be a point for discussion to-night ; and it is one, no doubt, to 
which Mr. Henslow will himself refer when he replies. It has also struck 
me on this point — and Mr. Henslow will probably agree with me — that if, as 
he> has said, man is the antecedent type of perfection held in view through- 
out, then, so far as we can speak at all of any work of God, man must be 
held to combine within himself, mentally and bodily, what, for want of a better 
word, we must call a series and coalition of antecedent ideas, wrought into a 
unity, and carried upwards into a new and higher and altogether distinct 
living kind, or creature ; that there must have been a gradational ascent 
towards this result ; and that although Mr. Henslow may deny, while others 
affirm, that there are any distinct groups of ideas — any distinct species — that 
have been observed and identified in creation, of which all the varieties of 
creaturely results have been but, if I may so say, dialectic forms, yet still, 
unless we admit that there are ideas in the Divine mind according to which 
the Divine Being has been continually at work, we are literally without any 
words or terms by which we can express anything we think on the matter 
at all, and the whole of our attempts at speculation will have to give way. 
This is the course of thought which has been very much in my own mind. 
Another matter that I should like to mention is this : Mr. Henslow has 
shown us with truth, although his words perhaps impinged rather violently 
on our feelings, that even that wonderful organ the eye is not in itself perfect. 
Probably no single eye has ever been absolutely perfect ; but it has occurred 
to me that that is hardly so forcible an objection or bar to the argument from 
design as it seems, for in truth the argument from design simply goes to this, 
that in the case of the eye or any similar analogous instance, it is the idea which 
is clothed in the eye, which is in itself so infinitely perfect an idea as to be 
an argument for design. There is no person who holds the argument from 
design but would admit, — owing to what he himself would call accidental 
causes, diseases, and so on, arising from the infinite combinations of circum- 
stances to which human creatures or any others are liable, — that with the ideal 
intent and perfection of the eye there must actually be joined imperfec- 
tions in that organ, just as the eye itself is clothed in flesh. No one who 
upheld the design argument would admit that it was an answer to say that 
these instances of defective eyes proved that the eye was not absolutely 
perfect ; on the contrary, we should contend that when we came to consider 
the perfection of thought, purpose, and plan, exhibited in the eye, any inci- 
dental failure in that perfection did not in the least degree derogate from 
the merit of the argument from design. (Cheers.) Perhaps I have now 
trespassed further than I should have done upon the meeting, but with very 
great sincerity I propose a vote of thanks to Mr. Henslow, and I do it with 
the more pleasure, because I believe it to be of the highest conceivable 
value that Christian gentlemen who would shrink with the greatest fear and 
trembling from any wrong, lest they should grieve God or any child of God, 
