dications from the first. The variations of which we speak, as originating in no obvious causal relation to the external conditions, do not include dwarfed or starved, and gigantesque or luxuriant forms, and those drawn up or expanded on the one hand, or contracted and hardened on the other, by the direct difference in the supply of food and moisture, light and heat. Here the action of the environment is both obvious and direct. But such cases do not count for much in evolution.

Moreover, while we see how the mere struggle and interplay among occurring forms may improve them and lead them on, we cannot well imagine how the adaptations which arrest our attention are thereby secured. Our difficulty, let it be understood, is not about the natural origination of organs. To the triumphant outcry, "How can an organ, such as an eye, be formed under Nature?" we would respond with a parallel question, How can a complex and elaborate organ, such as a nettle-sting, be formed under Nature? But it is so formed. In the same species some individuals have these exquisitely-constructed organs and some have not. And so of other glands, the structure and adaptation of which, when looked into, appear to be as wonderful as anything in Nature. The impossibility lies in conceiving how the obvious purpose was effectuated under natural selection alone. This, under our view, any amount of gradation in a series of forms goes a small way in explaining. The transit of a young flounder's eye across the head is a capital instance of a wonderful thing done under Nature, and done unaccountably.

But simpler correlations are involved in similar difficulty. The superabundance of the pollen of pinetrees above referred to, and in oak-trees, is correlated with chance fertilization under the winds. In the analogous instance of willows a diminished amount of pollen is correlated with direct transportation by insects. Even in so simple a case as this it is not easy to see how this difference in the conveyance would reduce the quantity of pollen produced. It is, we know, in the very alphabet of Darwinism that if a male willow-tree should produce a smaller amount of pollen, and if this pollen communicated to the offspring of the female flowers it fertilized a similar tendency (as it might), this male progeny would secure whatever advantage might come from the saving of a certain amount of work and material; but why should it begin to produce less pollen? But this is as nothing compared with the arrangements in orchidflowers, where new and peculiar structures are introduced-structures which, once originated and then set into variation, may thereupon be selected, and thereby led on to improvement and diversification. But the origination, and even the variation, still remains unexplained either by the action of insects or by any of the processes which collectively are per sonified by the term natural selection. We really believe that these exquisite adaptations have come to pass in the course of Nature, and under natural selection, but not that natural selection alone explains or in a just sense originates them. Or rather, if this term is to stand for sufficient cause and rational explanation, it must denote or include that inscrutable

something which produces-as well as that which results in the survival of "the fittest."

We have been considering this class of questions only as a naturalist might who sought for the proper or reasonable interpretation of the problem before him, unmingled with considerations from any other source. Weightier arguments in the last resort, drawn from the intellectual and moral constitution of man, lie on a higher plane, to which it was unnecessary for our particular purpose to rise, however indispensable this be to a full presentation of the evidence of mind in Nature. To us the evidence, judged as impartially as we are capable of judging, appears convincing. But, whatever view one unconvinced may take, it cannot remain doubtful what position a theist ought to occupy. If he cannot recognize design in Nature because of evolution, he may be ranked with those of whom it was said, "Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." How strange that a convinced theist should be so prone to associate design only with miracle!

All turns, however, upon what is meant by this Nature, to which it appears more and more probable that the being and becoming-no less than the wellbeing and succession-of species and genera, as well as of individuals, are committed. To us it means "the world of force and movement in time and space," as Aristotle defined it—the system and totality of things in the visible universe.

What is generally called Nature Prof. Tyndall names matter—a peculiar nomenclature, requiring new definitions (as he avers), inviting misunderstand

ing, and leaving the questions we are concerned with just where they were. For it is still to ask: whence this rich endowment of matter? Whence comes that of which all we see and know is the outcome? That to which potency may in the last resort be ascribed, Prof. Tyndall, suspending further judgment, calls mystery-using the word in one of its senses, namely, something hidden from us which we are not to seek to know. But there are also mysteries proper to be inquired into and to be reasoned about; and, although it may not be given unto us to know the mystery of causation, there can hardly be a more legitimate subject of philosophical inquiry. Most scientific men have thought themselves intellectually authorized to have an opinion about it. "For, by the primitive and very ancient men, it has been handed down in the form of myths, and thus left to later generations, that the Divine it is which holds together all Nature;" and this tradition, of which Aristotle, both naturalist and philosopher, thus nobly speaks-continued through succeeding ages, and illuminated by the Light which has come into the world-may still express the worthiest thoughts of the modern scientific investigator and reasoner.

1 Παραδέδοται δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχαίων καὶ παμπαλαίων ἐν μύθου σχήματι καταλελειμένα τοῖς ὕστερον, ὅτι περιέχει ΤΟ ΘΕΙΟΝ τὴν ὅλην φύσιν.— Arist. Metaphys., xi. 8, 19.

INDEX.