284 
The two 
Alternatives 
of Cosmo- 
gony. 
have had the much smaller and approximately human power 
of calculating or foreseeing their consequences. A power 
that makes laws of action, foreseeing all the consequences, 
does ipso facto design them. 
Nobody has ever attempted to show any fallacy in that 
argument ; and, if it cannot be refuted, it is conclusive on 
both points, i.e., that there is a Creator, and that he designed 
everything, and did not blindly start some laws of nature or 
forces, and leave them to act as they might, and that we merely 
have the accidental results which have survived; for I need 
hardly remind you that so-called accidents play a very large 
part in the only rival theories of cosmogony that are now in 
fashion, all going under the name of Evolution of one kind or 
another. 
I now propose to go further, and to take up the question of 
apparent design at some later stages of the universe, and to 
see how much of it can be accounted for without a vast deal 
more of creative action than merely starting some kind of 
force. Many persons fancy that it is quite enough to call any 
common growth Evolution, and then “ spontaneous evolution,” 
and then take that for a proof that everything can come, and 
has come, by spontaneous evolution from some unknown kind 
of self-existing matter, with no properties or qualities : which 
is all a mass of bad logic and absurdity. 
For, first, it is a mere perversion of words to call growth 
Evolution, while it means the increase of some seed or egg 
without any visible external addition, such as one has to make 
in order to increase any dead thing. Secondly, it is not true, 
if it means that the additions to the body are evolved from it 
as mere changes ; for they are added to it by sundry processes, 
which the writer who is called “ the chief apostle of Evolu- 
tion” pronounces mysterious, and confesses that he is “ in the 
dark ” about them, which is an odd way of commending a 
new philosophy and “unification of all knowledge.” Thirdly, 
whether mysterious or not, each process must have some 
cause, as much as every other motion in the world. If that 
cause is a known physical force or attraction, there must 
still be a prime cause behind it to settle its direction and 
its intensity and to make it continue to act. Calling it 
spontaneous is simply saying you know nothing about it, 
and it is evident nonsense to call that an explanation, or to 
call growth Evolution; for it is in fact attraction of a 
very peculiar kind, with selection of the particles to be 
attracted, and a different selection for every different animal 
and vegetable. 
