This has been the great cause of the change which we have to investigate. But its effects have not been all one way. Some have been favourable to the Design argument, and of these we will speak first.

In the first place, many new and brilliant examples of adaptation have been brought to light. The contrivances for the fertilisation of orchids, which Mr. Darwin has detailed, are not less striking than those which Sir Charles Bell found in the mechanism of the hand. Again, some broader considerations, due to this progress of science, have helped to strengthen our argument, and make it more adequate. Those grand views of the antiquity and extent of the creation, which geology and astronomy have opened out, have made our ideas of the Creator so stupendous that in some aspects they can scarcely be distinguished from the infinite. It still remains true that the ideas thus gained are not strictly infinite. But at the same time they have been enlarged so prodigiously that the mind is prepared to concede indefinite expansion as at least credible. Further, what is really important, though at first sight it may not appear so, modern science witnesses most strongly to the unity of God. That form of the Design argument which starts from apparent purpose in individual objects, is on this point weak. But the great doctrine of modern science, universal law, speaks conclusively.

With

Gods many and Lords many, how could such uniformity be? The recognition of this truth makes polytheism impossible. And, indeed, when I speak only of the universality of the same laws, I understate the unity which science has disclosed in the universe. Not only have we evidence that the same laws of gravitation, motion, heat, light, hold in the remote stars, and perhaps remoter nebulæ, as well as here, but further that those distant bodies, and indeed the whole universe, so far as we can judge, is composed of the same kinds of matter as those with which we are familiar. Further we have learned that several of the principal agents of nature, motion, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, are mutually convertible-to all appearance different modes of the same agent. And, lastly, it is worthy of note, in connection with this subject of cosmical unity, that the most active of all the forces of nature, gravitation, at least seems to bind together the Universe by a power instantaneous in its effect at all distances,2 an image

1 See 'Origin and Development of Religious Belief,' ch. xii. By S. Baring-Gould.

2 I am not aware of any evidence that the transmission of gravitation is not instantaneous, however difficult that conception may be metaphysically. Mrs. Somerville, in her work 'The Connection of the Physical Sciences,' § 28, p. 431, mentions that the acceleration of the moon's mean motion was at one time thought to be due to the non-instantaneous transmission of gravitation. It was computed that the speed of transmission must be 50,000,000 times as great as the velocity of light. But this acceleration has since been otherwise explained, as by change in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, and possible retardation of her diurnal rotation.

indeed of omnipresent action. All these things are evidence for a common character and a common rule for the whole material creation, as it now exists throughout space. And we have evidence too of the like unity throughout time. For there is a growing conviction that the present state of the universe is the result of an evolution, i. e. a long protracted working of the same forces on the same materials, according to the same laws as those which we now behold. This belief has gained a footing in astronomy, geology, natural history, and even anthropology.1 Many philosophers now ask no longer for special interventions of God to explain the formation. of the heavens, or of the crust of the earth, the development of life, or the origin of human speech and civilisation. There may be others, also men of eminence, who would not go so far. But the former must, I think, be allowed to be the rising school. And even their opponents, who would believe in special interference on the part of God, say in the origin of the particular species of living beings, would still allow that even here there has been an order, a system, an observation of type. On all hands it would be admitted that there has been a unity of character between the present and the past for an enormous period of time. And this unity speaks for

1 See Address of Sir W. R. Grove to the British Association, Nottingham, 1866, On Continuity.'

C

a common author. There is evidence of one God throughout time, as well as throughout space.

This may suffice for the favourable effects. I turn now to the adverse results, which have, as I have said, been the greater of the two. They may I think be arranged under three heads.

1. Discovery of cases in which Design seems wanting. A wider acquaintance with the Universe has not strengthened the belief that the explanation of the several objects of Nature is to be found in some special design as to each of them. At no time was there thought to be universal evidence of such Design as I have said already; difficulties and exceptions were allowed. But the phenomena of organic life were thought to give great support. Here was the stronghold of the belief. Indeed, at one time,1 this idea of beneficent Design was thought to be the true key to the understanding of organic structures, the clue to discovery as to their parts. But it is now I believe generally allowed, that often some of these parts do not serve any object useful to the organism as a whole. The idea of a necessary functional fitness is abandoned. Mr. Darwin indeed states2 'that it would be difficult to name one of the higher animals in which some part

1 Dr. Carpenter's 'General Physiology,' art. 354.

2 On the Origin of Species,' by C. Darwin, ch. xiii. p. 535, 5th edition.

is not in a rudimentary condition. In the mammalia, for instance, the males always possess rudimentary mammæ; in snakes one lobe of the lungs is rudimentary; in birds the "bastard wing" may safely be considered as a rudimentary digit, and in not a few species the wings cannot be used for flight, or are reduced to a rudiment.'

'What can be more curious,' he adds, 'than the presence of teeth in foetal whales, which when grown up have not a tooth in their heads, or the teeth which never cut through the gums in the upper jaws of embryo calves?' And this assertion of the inadequacy of the notion of Design to explain fully organic structures is not at all peculiar to the writers who adopt Mr. Darwin's views. Long before the publication of the 'Origin of Species' it was recognised that some further idea besides adaptation was needed. It was thought that this idea might be found in the notion of a general plan, adhered to at times and in places where it had no functional fitness. Professor Owen, in his work on 'The Nature of Limbs,' recognises this absence of adaptation in some parts of various animals, and accounts for those parts as the carrying out of a general type. He instances the fin of a whale as needlessly complex in structure, as having in fact nearly every segment and bone which is found in the human hand, and again the cranium of the chicken as composed of a