77 
and manifest method” as to be “ suggestive of especial 
design and [what he calls] arbitrary plan.” Design has usually 
been regarded as proving the overruling of Divine intelligence 
and wisdom in nature. According to Mr. Warington, it merely 
means arbitrariness. Even Buchner has a better idea of what 
he, as an avowed atheist, openly opposes. He says, “ Design 
in nature has ever been, and is still, one of the chief argu- 
ments in favour of the theory which ascribes the origin and 
preservation of the world to a ruling and organizing creative 
power.” (p. 89.) You must pardon me going on, and quoting 
some passages that will grate upon your ears : — 
Is it not more natural [he asks] to consider certain phenomena as the 
effect of changes in the temperature, than to imagine a heavenly tailor who 
takes care of the summer and winter wardrobes of the various animals ? 
The stag was not endowed with long legs to enable him to run fast, but 
he runs fast because his legs are long. He might have become a very 
courageous animal, instead of a timid one, had his legs been unfit for running. 
The mole has short spatulated feet for digging ; had they been different, it 
would have never occurred to him to dig. Things are just as they are, 
and we should not have found them less full of design, had they been 
different, (p. 91.) 
He then quotes Mr. Darwin, and especially refers to bis 
view of tbe development of tbe eye, so admirably handled in 
our Vice-President* s Inaugural Address last year ; and then 
adds — reminding us how very old this pretentious Dar- 
winism is : — 
Empedocles, the Greek philosopher, already taught that, when matter 
assumed shape, there were many irregular forms which could only partly 
sustain themselves, and which only slowly attained forms adapted to certain 
ends. (p. 92.) 
According to Buchner, nature is guilty of many purposeless 
absurdities ” (p. 94) ; and he says that comparative anatomy 
“ makes us acquainted with a number of physical characters 
which are perfectly useless to the animal possessing them, 
and which appear merely as the rudiments of an organ which 
in another species is more developed, and consequently useful 
to the animal.** (p. 97.) Again: "Contrivances apparently 
purposeless are numerous in the structure of animals and 
plants.** ( lb .) 
And yet, in some of his statements, he is more moderate 
than Mr. Warington. For instance, Mr. Warington considers 
it indisputable that “ all living beings reproduce themselves 
in a geometrical ratio of increase, which must inevitably lead 
to an overcrowding, a jostling, a struggle, both for position 
