which we find in the chemical system, yet that does not carry us far; for we have no explanation of that integration of matter which we have observed in the chemical elements. They do not belong to the present constitution of things. Nor have we any explanation of the fact that these elements exist in relations which can be thought. We get Power from Mr. Spencer, but we get it simply as unknowable, and that is a form, or want of form, which we cannot use. If, however, Mr. Spencer postulates a Power behind the process of evolution, if he can affirm the existence of an infinite and eternal Energy from which all things proceed, there is no reason why we should not follow so good an example. We also have a right to assume a Power behind or within the chemical elements, which will help us to account for the orderly and complex relations in which they exist. We already are acquainted with a power of that kind. We know intelligence as the source of order; we are acquainted with the way in which a principle of intelligence may be impressed on a number of efficient causes, and may cause them to exist as an intelligible system. At present we are not discussing the seat of the intelligence impressed on a material system. The intelligence may be within the system, or it may be without the system; it may be immanent or transcendent; the discussion is quite irrelevant to the main question, which is intelligence as the source of order. We have a vera causa adequate to the production of the result, and the alternative seems to lie between this explanation and no explanation.

But, then, the system of chemistry does manifest

intelligence. In this fact lies our advantage, and we mean to make full use of it, and to press it home. We have adjustments, adaptations, relations, which reveal themselves to the person who attends to them, and these are not merely mechanical. The argument becomes more stringent and more incisive as we pass beyond the merely chemical world into the wider world which it subserves. The more complex the arrangements become, the greater does the demand for intelligence become. One step beyond the atoms, and we come to the phenomena presented by water. It is but a step, and yet what a step! Oxygen and hydrogen are the constituent elements of water. They combine in certain proportions, which are invariable. The molecule of water is relatively stable, and its two elements can be separated only when work is done on them. Yet this material of water evolved at one step has many of the most wonderful properties properties which fit it to play a great part in the economy of the universe. Take its point

of maximum density, and observe how it is related to the part which it plays in the world. From that point 4° C. it expands when heated, and expands also when cooled. It takes more heat to warm it than any other body, and can therefore give more heat out when it cools. Archdeacon Wilson asks what would an architect give for a heating apparatus which would convey heat from one part of the world to another, and itself remain cool. Yet he says aqueous vapour is doing it every day of our lives. But all these things flow from the properties of water! That is exactly what we are saying. These properties are

given, with all their results, and they are in relation to the material universe in which they are. They, however, raise the question of how they became what they are. The properties of oxygen and hydrogen are unlike the properties of water. They have separately properties which it has not, and it has properties which they have not. We get no explanation out of the physical powers by which water had its origin. Even when we have traced its meaning, we are still at a loss for the explanation. Is it not evident that here again we must have recourse to intelligence as the source of order?

As we follow our teachers in science from one science to another, and watch the revelation of order more and more involved and intricate, yet all, in the end, embraced in the unity of one system, we are lost in admiration and in awe. The rationality of the system becomes the more apparent as we advance. The world is a rational world, and we see no reason on that account to deny rationality to the Power from which all things proceed. If we grant intelligence to that power, then evolution becomes luminous; refuse to grant it, and we must simply regard the order as an ultimate fact, and say no more about it.

But it may be said that here we are postulating a cause less complex than the effect, and are, in short, acting on the Spencerian maxim that the cause is always less complex than the effect. It is not so, for intelligence is in itself not simple, but complex; and besides, the objection does not apply to intelligence, because of the very nature and work of it. It is the very nature of intelligence to bring many unrelated

Even our own

elements into a synthetic unity. intelligence brings all the objects of its experience into the unity of one space and one time. Intelligence can bring many elements into the unity of one system. If intelligence of the limited order we know in ourselves can impress itself on a number of unrelated things, and make them exist in the unity of one system, what may not an infinite intelligence be able to accomplish!

CHAPTER IV

THE STRIFE AGAINST PURPOSE

Is the issue raised by evolution new or old?-Scope of evolution-Is evolution self-explanatory?—Fiske on teleology, against and for: order and purpose-Efficient and final causes-Caprice-Spinoza on final causes-Mathematics -Purposiveness-The same facts and laws appear from the point of view of cause and of purpose-Chance or purpose.

W

E are to devote this chapter to the inquiry whether the issue raised by evolution is one which is new, or is the issue one which has been tried over and over again during the history of human thought? We admit at once that the theory of evolution has cast new light on the universe, and has made the problem at once more complex and more simple. We have to reckon with evolution in every department. Du Prel says: "In the progress of modern science no principle has proved so fruitful as that of evolution. All branches compete with one another in its use, and have brought about by its aid the most gratifying results. Geology interprets the significance of superimposed, hardened strata of the earth's crust in the sense of a history of the earth's development; biology, in union with the study of fossils, arranges the living and petrified specimens of plants and animals in