337 
“ Nothing at first can appear more diflScult to believe than 
that the more complex organs and instincts should have been 
perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, 
human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight 
variations, each good for the individual possessor.^^ Surely,^^ 
observes Martineau, an authority with some, commenting on 
this passage, the antithesis could not be more false were we 
to speak of some patterned damask as made, not by the weaver, 
but by the loom ; or, of any methodised product as arising, not 
from its primary, but from its secondary source. All the de- 
termining conditions of species, — viz. : (1) The possible range of 
variation ; (2) its hereditary preservation ; (3) the extrusion of 
inferior rivals, — must be conceived as already contained in the 
constituted laws of organic life ; in, and through which, just as 
well as by unmeditated starts [or, as he says elsewhere, ‘^^creative 
paroxysms reason superior to the human, may evolve the 
ultimate results."’^ To which I would add that some of the 
laws of organic life, upon the assumption of which Darwin 
works out his explanations, are in themselves so marvellous, — 
for example, a taste for beauty in the female pheasant coinci- 
dent with our own, — that we may well transfer our wonder 
from the patterned damask to the “ loom itself. And 
behind these postulated laws a power, as we have seen, is 
wanted. As Max Muller reminds us, even Charles Darwin 
requires a Creator to breathe life into matter,^^ — and, indeed, 
a good deal more than mere life. No scientific explanation 
even touches the ultimate dynamical question. Light is 
thrown on the methods of creation, but the creative power 
remains a mystery beyond the sphere of science. 
I have thus endeavoured, I fear at too great length, to 
present you with a sketch of one branch of the argument 
against corpuscular Materialism (the only popular form of the 
doctrine of Materialism), as it presents itself to my mind. 
We are, I have contended, absolutely unable to conceive that 
the organic and sentient wholes which make up the animal 
world can have sprung from inorganic, non-sentient atoms, 
without a new infusion of power, still less that the self-con- 
scious minds which constitute the world of man can have had 
such an origin. To the difiiculties thus raised the Materialist 
has only one reply, which consists in the hypothesis that the 
atoms themselves are, from the beginning, endowed with all 
the powers, including the power of thought, which ultimately 
make their appearance on the stage of Being. I have 
endeavoured to show, with the help of better illustration than 
I myself could bring to bear upon the subject, that even this 
hypothesis is insufficient to account for the facts and the 
VOL. XVI. 2 A 
