calls "being utilised by another species." But it could not have been utilised unless there was a fitness for use. But the same thing cannot be said of the co-operation between the bull's horn Acacia and the ants which tenant it. There is a partnership between the ants and the tree: the tree provides food and shelter for the ants, and the ants defend it from its enemies. Instead of the fiercely raging struggle for existence of which Dr. Romanes speaks, and of the mere individualism and selfishness of species which he describes as characteristic of every species, another view is gaining ground—viz., that which looks on nature as a gigantic system of mutual co-operation; each thing and species not for itself, but for others as well. The individual for the species and the species for the genus is a view which seems to be making way, as men are getting better acquainted with the intricate inter-relations of the web of life.

Co-operation demonstrably abounds; and if it can be shown to be true, we might again find that Dr. Romanes has been brought over to the side of beneficent design as a verifiable hypothesis. "The tendency of the day is to recognise that most plants require the aid of some lower organisms for assimilating nitrogen. Thus B. Frank, who has been working for years in that direction, has proved that the beech can thrive only when a mantle of Mycorhiza-fungi develops over its roots, and that these fungi are not parasites living upon the substance of the roots, but real feeders of the beech. They obtain their food from the soil, and while so doing they yield a part of it to the roots of the tree. Further experiments of the same botanist have now shown that the same is true for the pine,

which can only thrive in a soil already containing germs of the little fungi, and when its roots become covered with the mantle of fungi, while it leads but a precarious existence in the opposite case.

"All these are but separate instances of a much more general fact, which only recently became known under the general name of 'symbiosis,' and appears to have an immense significance in nature. Higher plants

depend upon lower fungi and bacteria for the supply of that important part of their tissues, nitrogen. Lower fungi associate with unicellular algæ to form that great division of the vegetable world, the lichens. More than a hundred different species of algæ are already known to live in the tissues of other plants, and even in the tissues and cells of animals, and to render each other mutual services. And so on. Associations of high or low organisms are discovered every day; and when the conditions of life are more closely examined, the whole cycle of life changes its aspect and acquires a much deeper signification." (Prince Krapotkin in Nineteenth Century, August 1893.) It is to be hoped, as political economy is changing its aspect in these latter days, and is learning to attach less importance to competition and more to co-operation, that those conceptions which biology has derived from political economy will also change. As products may increase in a greater degree than the people that produce them, so it may be in nature also ; and the struggle for existence may neither be so keen nor so fierce as we have supposed it to be. We see in many cases that species, instead of striving for itself, may find its advantage in mutual co-operation.

It

I do not intend to say much on variation. would appear that the idea of indefinite variation is becoming antiquated, and that of definite variation coming more and more to the front. But there will apparently be some time ere the laws of definite variation can be formulated. Professor Huxley says: "The importance of natural selection will not be impaired, even if further inquiries should prove that variability is definite, and is determined in certain directions rather than in others by conditions inherent in that which varies" (Darwiniana, p. 223). If the inherent tendencies to variation be discovered, we shall get rid of those appeals to fortuitous variation which cause such perplexity. These laws of variation will also help us to a new conception of order and stability, and give a new meaning to design. It was in the interests of order, design, and purpose that the doctrine of special creation was prized. But a variation determined in certain directions will restore more than the denial of special creations has taken away. It leads us on to see the working out of the wonderful unity of plan in the millions of diverse living constructions, and the modifications of similar apparatus to serve diverse ends. Such a unity of plan certainly suggests the existence of thought behind the unity and manifested in it.

Professor Huxley has shown that mechanism and teleology are not mutually exclusive. He has said that a primordial molecular arrangement may have been intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe. May we not go further, and say that the existence of a plan implies not only a primordial arrangement by

which the plan can be realised, but also that the Power to which the plan is due is never absent from the working out of it? A power present in the world, who works according to a plan, and by which the plan can become real, gives us something which we can understand, which also delivers us from the tyranny of chance. The process of realising the plan embodied in nature has been slow, and step by step; but, then, the end has so far been accomplished. And it is a curious result to which many have come, that when we have discovered so far the means by which the plan has been wrought out, we have therefore denied, not that there is a plan, but that there is a mind, a reason which made the plan and carried it out. It is as if we denied the existence of the architect after we had seen the stones and the timber, the mason, the hodman, and the joiner at work. Or is it that we deny the planning intelligence because the building has not sprung suddenly into existence? The wise Bishop has depicted that state of mind in his own inimitable way: "Men are impatient, and for precipitating things; but the Author of nature appears deliberate throughout His operations, accomplishing His natural ends by slow successive steps" (Analogy, Part II., chap. iv.).

Our friends and teachers have shown us innumerable adaptations; they have shown us that the creatures work towards an end-an end not foreseen by the individuals or the species concerned; we therefore hold that it must have been foreseen by some one, if causation is to have its due place. We are constrained, on the other hypothesis, to

ask how unintelligent laws can work out intelligible and intelligent results. We can never get an answer to that question; for the postulation of a Supreme Intelligence cannot be tested by experiment, because it is assumed by all experiments. Every experiment assumes that we are in a rational universe, a universe the working of which corresponds to the working of an intelligence in ourselves. If the laws of nature work out intelligent and rational results, then reason is at work in them. We have not put the intelligibility into the world; we find it there, and we strive to understand and to express the working of the world in rational terms,—an attempt which would be for ever vain, if the intelligence at work in the world were not of the same kind as the intelligence which is at work in ourselves.

It may be true that the intelligence at work in the world has not wrought in the fashion we had supposed. Does that intelligence work by the way of evolution, and not in the particular mode we thought of?-for a change of conception may not be the destruction of the conception. The earth is a part of the solar system-men once thought it the centre of things; we no longer think of personal spirits as guides and rulers of the stars-we think of matter under gravitation; we have been taught that species did not arise through special acts of creation, but were developed one after the other. Well, we bow our heads in reverence, and say that God's ways are not as our ways, and His thoughts are not as our thoughts; but they are ways and thoughts of God notwithstanding. If we trace the highest