307 
developing itself is contrary to all modern science, and 
would not be listened to for a moment in any but tbe hazy 
regions of automatic cosmogony, for which any hypothesis 
seems good enough. 
There are other kinds of natural contrivances towards 
which surrounding circumstances could do nothing, if they 
ever could without some creative power moving to meet 
them — viz., those which must either be complete or nothing. 
There are cases, properly insisted on by Paley, and never 
answered, of holes being made in certain bones for arteries to 
pass through, and of sinews passed through loops in others 
like cords through a pulley to change their direction. It is 
plain that those must be all or nothing, and could not come 
gradually. And animals that live by gnawing and biting 
hard things, such as the rodents and elephants, have their teeth 
continually growing, which no others have. What conceiv- 
able automatic process could have caused that, and that the 
teeth should not only grow, but be in alternate hard and soft 
slices vertically, so as to keep the grinding teeth always rough, 
and the gnawing teeth sharp, and yet not too thin ? There 
are innumerable other questions like these, to which the 
Evolutionists never attempt any answer. 
If they ask how we account for some useless latent organs, 
or visible traces of them, we answer that, if they are waiting 
to be developed into useful ones, that is the clearest possible 
proof of design, and that accounts for them ; and, if they are 
dying out because they are no longer wanted, we have no 
more to say than that it seems to be a law of nature that they 
should : so, at least, the Darwinians say, though traces of 
some useless organs have remained for as long as we know 
anything of the animals. But, assuming that law to be as true 
as they like, it is itself a very striking proof of design, that 
living organs should increase with use while dead machines 
only wear out. Wooden legs do not get larger or stronger 
by use, but the contrary, while live ones do, up to a certain 
point. That is no more accounted for by its commonness than 
all generation is, or the general likeness of offspring to 
parents, and occasional advance upon them. All these would 
appear miraculous or impossible to that imaginary philosopher 
of Herschehs shut up by himself to divine laws of nature, 
which is the position assumed by one who would logically 
deduce them from any real axiom that he chooses to start 
with. Mr. Spencer professes to have done it, and we see 
with what success ; he cannot stir a step anywhere without 
assuming the result that he professes to dedhce, and a 
Incomplete 
Machinery is 
useless. 
