the author. In evolution the matter to be explained is the universe. Is it best explained by purpose or by mechanism? As we have seen, mechanism cannot explain it. Most certainly the primitive nebulosity cannot explain it; for the nebulists are confronted with the following dilemma: either the nebula was originally more than a nebula, or it has been added to, in the course of its development, from a source beyond itself. The effect cannot be greater than the cause. If the primitive nebulosity has become the ordered cosmos with all its inhabitants, art, science, philosophy, morality, religions must all have been either in the nebula at first, or added to it from without by a power adequate to the result. Power, either within the nebula or from without, there must have been, and power of a kind fitted to bring about the end. Let it be observed that the chain of ordered causes and results is the same, whether we contemplate it from the point of view of physical causation or from the point of view of purpose. In the one case we contemplate it as bare result, in the other case we look at it as intended, and the ordered causes are grouped together with a view to accomplish the end. In the last event we have a cause sufficient to bring about the result; in the former case we have no account whatever of the order, adaptation, and method of the universe. We must go back to the fortuitous concourse of atoms, and trust to chanceto chance, now, be it remembered, not as a name for a cause the operation and nature of which we do not know now, but may hope to know by-and-by, but to chance looked at as a real cause. It may be allowed

to speak of chance as an element in a calculation of probabilities simply to express ignorance; but it is not allowable to speak of chance as a substitute for causation, and to this we are brought if we deny purpose in the universe.

But we give the universe over to confusion when we deny purpose. "You would not see evidence of purpose, we are told, much less of higher wisdom or transcendent cleverness, in the conduct of a man who, to kill a hare, fired a million pistols in all directions over a vast meadow; or who, to enter a locked room, brought ten thousand random keys, and made trial of them all; or who, to have a house, built a city, and turned the superfluous houses over to the mercy of wind and weather." And to this we are brought by our antagonism to what Mr. Spencer calls the Carpenter theory. Notwithstanding the description. of Lange just given, Mr. Spencer writes: "There is an antagonistic hypothesis which does not propose to honour the unknown Power manifested in the universe by such titles as 'the Master Builder,' or the great Artificer'; but which regards this unknown Power as probably working after a method quite different from that of human mechanics. And the genealogy of this hypothesis is as high as that of the other is low. It is begotten by that everenlarging and ever-strengthening belief in the presence of law which accumulated experiences have gradually produced in the human mind. From generation to generation science has been proving uniformities of relation among phenomena which were before thought either fortuitous or supernatural in their origin—has

been showing an established order and a constant causation where ignorance had assumed irregularity and arbitrariness. Each further discovery of law has increased the presumption that law is everywhere conformed to." (Essays, vol. i., p. 240.) Lange and Professor Huxley would overthrow design by likening the survival of the fittest to the chance shot which out of a million happened to kill the hare. Mr. Spencer would overthrow it by showing that law everywhere prevails. But the idea of law and uniformity is also quite consistent with the idea of purpose. In fact, purpose excludes arbitrariness and irregularity, and any assertion to the contrary is simply itself capricious.

CHAPTER V

EVOLUTION AND CREATION

History of the earth-Evolution as seen in geologic erasContinuity of the process-Succession-Advance and preparation for advance--Physics and geology-Some unsettled questions-Professor Caird on evolution from two points of view-At the beginning or at the end, which? Is the issue arbitrary arrangement versus evolution?-No: creation by slow process is creation-Illustrations-Mechanics and purpose once more.

THAT

HAT teleology is not hostile to efficient causes we have already seen reason to believe. Still less does it conflict with efficient causes combined in a system. In fact, as we advance along the line of march which science has taken, the idea of teleology becomes more and more luminous, until in ethics and theology it becomes indispensable. We quite admit that the idea is anthropomorphic, that it does not quite enable us to view all things sub specie eternitatis. We admit that we are unable to rise to the great height of one who is present at all the operations of the world, for whom beginning and end are not, to whom all time is a nunc stans. But, then, that objection applies to every one who is compelled to think under the conditions of space and time, and applies equally to those who affirm causation of any kind. Efficient causes

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also come under the condition of before and after; and if to think of efficient causation is valid and legitimate, final causation is also valid and legitimate.

We might therefore start with the state of the earth as it now is, and might ask what are the conditions under which rational life can exist at the present time. We might analyse these conditions, and the analysis would give us at least the various sciences in the order in which they now exist. The present condition would give us the previous conditions, biological, geological, chemical, physical, ranged in order and complexity, as each was analysed into simpler and simpler elements, and not one of the laws of nature would need to be altered in order to make the arrangement. Nothing is changed save the point of view. The difference is that we do not start with the nebula, and endeavour, by successive differentiations and integrations, to get out of it more than is in it. We start with the present state of the world as an intended result, and look on all the successive stages of the life-history of the earth as means for the accomplishment of the end.

True, we are at a disadvantage here; for the world is not finally made yet. It is only making, and we can only dimly guess at the final outcome. But, then, all schemes of thought are open to the same objection. Evolution itself, in the hands of Mr. Spencer, can only faintly guess at the final end for which evolution works. And Hegel's theory of evolution seemed to regard the Prussian of the nineteenth century as the final outcome of the toil of the Idea. We may hold, therefore, although we