balls at the same instant, with like forces, in the directions before given. In this case the balls would not pass as before, namely, the red ball to the south, and the white ball to the west, but they must both meet and strike each other in the centre of the table, and, being perfectly elastic, the red ball must pass to the west pocket, and the white ball to the south pocket. We may suppose that the players acted wholly without concert with each other, indeed, they may be ignorant of each other's design, or even of each other's existence; still we know that the events must happen as herein described. Now, the first half of the course of these two balls is from an impulse, or proceeds from a power, acting from design. Each player has the design of driving his ball across the table in a diagonal line to accomplish its lodgment at the opposite corner of the table. Neither designed that his ball should be deflected from that course and pass to another corner of the table. The direction of this second part of the motion must be referred entirely to necessity, which directly interferes with the purpose of him who designed the rectilinear direction. We are not, in this case, to go back to find design in the creation of the powers or laws of inertia and elasticity, after the order of which the deflection, at the instant of collision, necessarily takes place. We know that these powers were inherent in the balls, and were not created to answer this special deflection. We are required, by the hypothesis, to confine attention in point of time, from the instant preceding the impact of the balls, to the time of their arrival at the opposite corners of the table. The cues are moved

by design. The impacts are acts from design. The first half of the motion of each ball is under the direction of design. We mean by this the particular design of each player. But, at the instant of the collision of the balls upon each other, direction from design ceases, and the balls no longer obey the particular designs of the players, the ends or purposes intended by them are not accomplished, but frustrated, by necessity, or by the necessary action of the powers of inertia and elasticity, which are inherent in matter, and are not made by any design of a Creator for this special action, or to serve this special purpose, but would have existed in the materials of which the balls were made, although the players had never been born.

I have thus stated, by a simple example in physical action, what is meant by design and what by necessity; and that the latter may exist without any dependence upon the former. If I have given the statement with what may be thought, by some, unnecessary prolixity, I have only to say that I have found many minds to have a great difficulty in conceiving of necessity as acting altogether independent of design.

Let me now trace these principles as sources of action in Darwin's work or theory. Let us see how much there is of design acting to produce a foreseen end, and thus proving a reasoning and self-conscious Creator; and how much of mere blind power acting without rational design, or without a specific purpose or conscious foresight. Mr. Darwin has specified in a most clear and unmistakable manner the operation of

his three great powers, or rather, the three great laws by which the organic power of life acts in the formation of an eye. (See p. 169.) Following the method he has pointed out, we will take a number of animals of the same species, in which the eye is not developed. They may have all the other senses, with the organs of nutrition, circulation, respiration, and locomotion. They all have a brain and nerves, and some of these nerves may be sensitive to light; but have no combination of retina, membranes, humors, etc., by which the distinct image of an object may be formed and conveyed by the optic nerve to the cognizance of the internal perception, or the mind. The animal in this case would be merely sensible of the difference between light and darkness. He would have no power of discriminating form, size, shape, or color, the difference of objects, and to gain from these a knowledge of their being useful or hurtful, friends or enemies. Up to this point there is no appearance of necessity upon the scene. The billiard-balls have not yet struck together, and we will suppose that none of the arguments that may be used to prove, from this organism, thus existing, that it could not have come into form and being without a creator acting to this end with intelligence and design, are opposed by anything that can be found in Darwin's theory; for, so far, Darwin's laws are supposed not to have come into operation. Give the animals, thus organized, food and room, and they may go on, from generation to generation, upon the same organic level. Those individuals that, from natural variation, are born with light-nerves a little more sensitive to light

than their parents, will cross or interbreed with those who have the same organs a little less sensitive, and thus the mean standard will be kept up without any advancement. If our billiard-table were sufficiently extensive, i. e., infinite, the balls rolled from the corners would never meet, and the necessity which we have supposed to deflect them would never act.

The moment, however, that the want of space or food commences natural selection begins. Here the balls meet, and all future action is governed by necessity. The best forms, or those nerves most sensitive to light, connected with incipient membranes and humors for corneas and lenses, are picked out and preserved by natural selection, of necessity. All cannot live and propagate, and it is a necessity, obvious to all, that the weaker must perish, if the theory be true. Working on, in this way, through countless generations, the eye is at last formed in all its beauty and excellence. It must (always assuming that this theory is true) result from this combined action of natural variation, the struggle for life, and natural selection, with as much certainty as the balls, after collision, must pass to corners of the table different from those to which they were directed, and so far forth as the eye is formed by these laws, acting upward from the nerve merely sensitive to light, we can no more infer design, and from design a designer, than we can infer design in the direction of the billiard-balls after the collision. Both are sufficiently accounted for by blind powers acting under a blind necessity. Take away the struggle for life from the one, and the collision of the balls from the other-and

neither of these was designed-and the animal would have gone on without eyes. The balls would have found the corners of the table to which they were first directed.

While, therefore, it seems to me clear that one who can find no proof of the existence of an intelligent Creator except through the evidence of design in the organic world, can find no evidence of such design in the construction of the eye, if it were constructed under the operation of Darwin's laws, I shall not for one moment contend that these laws are incompatible with design and a self-conscious, intelligent Creator. Such design might, indeed, have coexisted with the necessity or natural selection; and so the billiard-players might have designed the collision of their balls; but neither the formation of the eye, nor the path of the balls after collision, furnishes any sufficient proof of such design in either case.

One, indeed, who believes, from revelation or any other cause, in the existence of such a Creator, the fountain and source of all things in heaven above and in the earth beneath, will see in natural variation, the struggle for life, and natural selection, only the order or mode in which this Creator, in his own perfect wis dom, sees fit to act. Happy is he who can thus see and adore. But how many are there who have no such belief from intuition, or faith in revelation; but who have by careful and elaborate search in the physical, and more especially in the organic world, inferred, by induction, the existence of God from what has seemed to them the wonderful adaptation of the different organs and parts of the animal body to its,