and yet in the face of all this shall deliberately say there has been no design here, and no superior intellect ordaining what we see. He that says this has to believe that when different forms of life answer to one another perfectly, it is a mere accident; and that when certain creatures have special habits and characters with all their organization corresponding with their habits and instincts, that it is a mere accident, that all the instincts of animals either as private individuals or as members of a society are accidental, and that whatever has hitherto been noticed as a plain proof of design, is on the contrary nothing but the sequence of events as ascertained by us.' He has to believe that a spider was not made to catch insects, and that the art of making its web was not imparted to it for that purpose; that no carnivorous animals, on land or in the waters or in the air, were designed to keep down the redundancy of those animals which constitute their prey; that certain birds and other animals were not made to live in the trees; that fishes were not designed for the water, nor winged creatures to soar in the air; that the various. modes of rearing the young of animals are accidental; that milk was not prepared for the mother's breast; that insects were not framed for any of the functions they perform, that their extra-foetal transformations are fortuitous and not regulated by any plan; that the products of the earth were not intended to support animal life. In one word, that all these things, if they be beneficial and answer useful purposes, are the unintentional result of blind matter pushing its way in the world at random, without any definite object, and after innumerable and incalculable instances of failure, at last hitting on the arrangement which has turned out to be right.

In vain is it that to the advocates of this system you present the most striking instances of adaptation of parts for a function, the most marvellous instances of instinct, the most curious habits and contrivances of certain animals kept up from time immemorial as the sacred traditions of their race, the arts, the architecture, the expedients, the inventions, the economies, the precautions of thousands of creatures in their sphere of life. To all these examples the answer is, 'True, this is a very curious result, and has the appearance of a plan; but it never was intended that by any of these arrangements any particular object should be secured. Natural Selection has indeed at last effected that the most beneficial organization should, after innumerable failures, be the characteristic of the animal that has survived, and has outlived the extermination of its predecessors; and because its organization suits its mode of life, it is now an established member of the animal kingdom; but this is not a design-it is the mere sequence of events: and there is nothing more wonderful in those phenomena which are called the contrivances of Nature than in the fact that water should freeze at a low temperature, or that sugar should melt when thrown into water.'

Neither in this system can beauty either in colour or in form, or in the execution of any intricate contrivance, be admitted as any part of a plan of* Nature. If the landscape is beautiful; if the heavens are glorious to behold; if all the wealth of Nature's wardrobe shines in gorgeous show; if Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of the lilies of the field; if the animals are of surpassing beauty in

* It must be remembered that Mr Darwin has said, 'some naturalists believe that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of man, or for mere variety. This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory' (219).

their forms, their colours, their clothing, and the grace of their movements; if the song of birds is sweet, and every country sound charming to the observant mind; none of these varieties of the beautiful were intended to please or to produce admiration; they are an accident. We must take them as we find them, but never confound a rigorous sequence of events with a studied plan. We have seen that the beauty of male birds is attributed to the coquetry of the females, preferring the accidental distinction of a new feather in certain males. These males, more favoured than others of their sex, owing to the new feather in their plumage, were selected partners in the breeding season; and so by degrees new feathers coming more and more into favour, in thousands of ages, a bird with the splendid plumage of the tropics was finally established.

*

This is the theory to account for beauty of plumage that a great Physiologist has had the courage to propound; and this is the theory which other Physiologists have been able to digest! to such miserable puerilities has the severe and cautious study of Nature descended in this School.

It

may cheer us for a moment after hearing such sentiments to listen to an opposite expression of thought suggested by a contemplation of Nature.

Flowers may be regarded not only as the last, but the

* 'I see no good reason to doubt that female birds by selecting during thousands of generations the inost melodious or beautiful males, according to their standard of beauty, might produce a marked effect' (91).

It would appear therefore that the beauty of male birds is not according to any real standard of beauty, nor is it the arrangement and painting of that master mind from which all beauty is derived, but is simply an expression of the feeling of the hens! We cannot be too thankful to the hens for the taste they have thus manifested; we may, however, presume that the result may be accepted as completely successful, as it is thus proved that hens and not creation were the inventors. There can be no objection in the Theory to praise the taste of a hen.

Whether

most elaborated organs of the vegetable system. we contemplate the beauty of their forms, the splendour of their colours, or the delicious fragrance they everywhere breathe around us; or whether with a physiological eye we survey the delicacy of their structure, and investigate the peculiar functions they perform; we cannot but feel the greatest admiration of the skill with which, in a compass so small, and by means apparently so simple, such a series of actions, terminating in results so varied and important, can be at once combined and regulated.'*

But if the difficulties in the denial of design in Nature is great in these instances of external appearance, immeasurably greater are they when we approach the profound teachings of comparative anatomy, and consider, in the great though imperfect light of modern discoveries, the structure of the animal frame, the parts prepared for the animal's peculiar life and habits, and those which relate to the circulation of its blood, its respiration, nutrition, and reproduction. We have seen something of this in the last chapter, and of course many more chapters might be written on such a theme without exhausting the subject. But whatever anatomy reveals to us of the surprising provisions in the animal frame, whatever is intricate and perfect in adaptation, and whatever moreover is not yet understood in the functions of all the parts is, in this system, to be attributed solely to the Sequence of ascertained events: they are events the result of time, and of matter working itself into certain conditions; mind and forethought have had no part whatever in planning and constructing them.

If we speak according to Mr Darwin's more serious in

ology.

Supplement, Encyclopædia Britannica, Article, 'Vegetable Physi

is

terpretation of his meaning, then the formation of an eye on optical principles is simply an event; it is so because it So, but it never was designed to secure the faculty of sight by an eye. If, however, we make use of his more favourite language, and mount with him his hobby, then Natural Selection made the first eye; and this we shall presently see he describes as a fact in enthusiastic language. In the same way Natural Selection constructed the first stomach, the first intestines, the first biliary duct, the first heart, and the veins and the arteries, and the whole apparatus of respiration.

has

The curious part of this system is, that though its author tells us he has such confidence in his metaphor, as to attri bute to its operation alone all the most admired contriv ances discoverable in Nature, yet he seems to feel no difficulty whatever in attributing to Ignorance and Impotence all that has hitherto been considered inseparable from Wisdom and Power. In the question of transforming a low grade of animal life into a higher, of improving its organization, there is nothing to undertake the process that any intellect. Let us suppose the case of the promotion of a toad, or a worm, in the scale of life, there is nothing to begin the move but the animal's own body; and if we were to concede that a toad wished to improve his organization, the creature could think of nothing better, nor make the slightest move, we will not say, in the right direction, but in any direction whatever towards a change. But the transmutations nevertheless take place, the anatomical structure is altered, and changes involving an intuitive knowledge of all the profoundest secrets of Physiology, in all its branches, are duly effected when there is no intellect at all employed in the change, nor any definite plan or ob