student will have enough to do if he is to master the principles of construction of the steam engine and the laws and properties of the material employed in its construction. But we should make short work of the contention of that student who asserted that the construction of the engine is altogether due to mechanical causes. The convergence of all these into a system has to be explained. Our contention here is that those who wish to explain the universe from mechanical causes alone are just as rational as the supposed student of the steam engine would be.

The evidence of intelligence is so much greater that our opponents categorically deny it altogether. They may, like Mr. Spencer, say that they deny intelligence in the interests of something greater than intelligence, and then strive as he does, through all the pages of the volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy, to explain the higher in terms of the lower; they may take the order of the universe as an ultimate fact, regarding which no question is to be asked; or they may couch their denial in other terms, and urge it for other reasons. But ultimately the argument seems to come to this: there are so many evidences of intelligence in the universe, that we must therefore infer the absence of a guiding mind.

In truth, the argument from order to intelligence is much more cogent than it was in Paley's time. No one ever strengthened the argument as Darwin has done. Evolution has widened it beyond measure, and the universe, its history and its order, are seen to be worthy of a presiding, guiding intelligence, even of

an infinite order. Let us hope that now, when the rapture and the intoxication of the first discovery of evolution have passed away, and sober reflection has come back, that the denial of intelligence to the source and ground of the universe will not be persisted in.

CHAPTER VI

ORGANIC EVOLUTION

Statement by Professor Ray Lankester-New sets of terms used in biology-Why are there new terms?-Dr. Burdon Sanderson-Darwinism-Variation, struggle for existence, natural selection, transmission-Anthropomorphic character of the process-Malthusianism-Utilitarianism— What is natural selection?-Comparison with the process of denudation in geology by Mr. J. T. Cunningham— Darwin on the eye-Professor Huxley's reproduction of chance-Organic evolution likely true, but its factors not yet discovered.

THE

HE task which evolution has set itself may be described in the words of Professor E. Ray Lankester: "It is the aim or business of those occupied with biology to assign living things, in all their variety of form and activity, to the one set of forces. recognised by the physicist and chemist. Just as the astronomer accounts for the heavenly bodies and their movements by the laws of motion and the property of attraction, as the geologist explains the present state of the earth's crust by the long-continued action of the same forces which at this moment are studied and treated in the form of laws' by physicists and chemists; so the biologist seeks to explain in all its details the long process of the evolution of the innumerable forms of life now existing, or which have

existed in the past, as a necessary outcome, an automatic product, of these same forces." (Encyc. Brit., vol. xxiv., p. 799a.) Again: "It was reserved for Charles Darwin, in the year 1859, to place the whole theory of organic evolution on a new footing, and by his discovery of a mechanical cause actually existing and demonstrable by which organic evolution must be brought about to entirely change the attitude in regard to it of even the most rigid exponents of the scientific method" (p. 8016). "The history of zoology as a science is therefore the history of the great doctrine of living things by the natural selection of varieties in the struggle for existence, since that doctrine is the one medium whereby all the phenomena of life, whether of form or function, are rendered capable of explanation by the laws of physics and chemistry, and so made the subject-matter of a true science or study of causes" (p. 799a). (p. 799a). Professor Lankester has not explained why in biology he and those who agree with him have introduced a new set of terms-terms which are not used in physics or chemistry. In physics and in chemistry men do not speak of "advantage," of "utility," of "interest." But in the article quoted Professor Lankester says: "Darwin's theory had as one of its results the reformation and the rehabilitation of teleology. According to that theory, every organ, every part, colour, and peculiarity of an organism, must either be of benefit to the organism itself, or have been so to its ancestors; no peculiarity of structure or general conformation, no habit or instinct in any organism, can be supposed to exist for the benefit or amusement of another

organism, not even for the delectation of man himself. Necessarily, according to the theory of natural selection, structures either are present because they are selected as useful, or because they were still inherited from ancestors to whom they were useful, though no longer useful to the existing representatives of these ancestors." (P. 802b.)

We know that men, even of the mental stature of Professor Ray Lankester, sometimes do not co-ordinate their notions, or ask whether one part even of a short article is quite consistent with another. If the phenomena of biology have been "rendered capable of explanation by the laws of physics and chemistry," whence this new set of terms unused and unrecognised by these sciences? We do not say in chemistry that any combination must be of benefit either to the molecule or its atoms; nor in mechanics do we speak of "interest," "advantage," "benefit." Do the terms used by Professor Lankester correspond to facts presented by biology? Can the theory of Darwin be even stated without the use of language, which introduces new conceptions not needed by physics or chemistry? Of course every physical body must be consistent with chemical and physical laws; but it is not necessary for us to say that organisms must be capable of explanation by them. If the phenomena of life are to be explained by chemical and physical laws, clearly we are shut out from the use of language implying conceptions which have no place in these sciences. Would it not be well to recognise this, and either refrain from the use of language fitted to mislead, or to admit that there is