cravings of appetite, and execute the desires of the mind, the latter wants never being attained by the brutes. The anterior extremities of the ape assist in locomotion, not one of them walking erect naturally. And the erect posture of man is the natural effect of his superior physical structure. Now this cephalization, this subordination of the members and structure of the anterior part of the body to the head, is a difference in degree, constituting an order. Professor Dana has recently shown that the same cephalic distinctions exist throughout the animal kingdom, and may be made the basis of an improved classification.1

Objection to B. The principles of variation, natural selection, and other forces in nature will account for the transmutation of the first system of life into the second, the second into the third, and so on. This is the doctrine known as Darwinism, and the development theory. Darwin suggests that each great division of the animal kingdom may have originated in a single progenitor-say four or five in all,— and analogy would lead him one step further to believe "that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype," and that "into this one primordial form life was first [created] breathed."

Answer. To answer this objection in detail would require statements of numerous zoological facts not within the proper limits or province of this Article. This theory has found some able advocates, but the weight of authority is against it, and, in our view, as a scientific explanation of all the facts it utterly fails. It comes within our province to allude to the proofs assumed for this theory from geology. Strange to say its advocates admit that most geological facts are pitted against it. Says Darwin: "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged

1 American Journal of Science, (2d series) Vol. xxvi. pp. 321, 440; Vol. xxvii. pp. 10, 157.

against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record."1 "He who rejects these views [the extreme imperfection] on the nature of the geological record will rightly reject my whole theory."2

The very first evidence in favor of the theory to be expected from geology, is the discovery of the intermediate links, or the animals and plants connecting together different families and orders. There are fully thirty thousand described species of fossil plants and animals, but such links as are required by the development theory to connect any two different classes have never yet been discovered. There are seventeen classes in the animal kingdom, but no two of them have been brought into the chain by the discovery of these thirty thousand forms; therefore there are thirty thousand chances to one that the missing links will never be found. To account for the deficiencies they say that the geological record is imperfect, and that time will produce them. This is very unsatisfactory to the philosopher. The true geological inferences in reference to the origin of the different systems have been stated under B. The little aid afforded Darwinism by paleontology explains why its advocates are chiefly naturalists, not geologists.

But granting the truth of Darwinism, or any judicious modification of its principles, the foundation of our argument is rather strengthened than destroyed. The theory of development may be used like the nebular hypothesis. The latter was devised by La Place to sustain atheism, but after being avoided by theologians as long as possible, has been generally adopted by them, and is turned against its original friends. Hence we say to the development school, go on with your investigations, and if you succeed in establishing your principles we will use your theory for illustrating the argument for the existence of God.

The theory accounts for the origin of the different systems of life by the action of various laws. It is a law of nature

1 Origin of Species (Amer. ed.), p. 246.

2 Origin of Species, p. 298.

that system shall succeed system, each an improvement upon the preceding, and that all organisms shall be developed in an unbroken series from one or more primordial forms. It is a law that the systems shall be gradually changed into one another without divine interposition. The track has been laid in which the wheels will always run, aided only by the original impetus. A system of progress in which remarkable events of diverse nature are ordained to succeed one another harmoniously, is more wonderful than one where an interposing agency is required to repair damages. When the type have becu set up for the printing of a commentary they cannot be used to publish a lexicon without rearrangement. If there was a self-acting machine, capable of rearranging the type in their new combinations at the instant the last sheet of the commentary was struck off, it would be a more wonderful contrivance than the old-fashioned mode of laboriously resetting the type by the interposition of printers. So a system of nature that will provide for all emergencies without interposition is more wonderful, and calls more loudly for a Creator, than the theory which demands occasional aid from a power above law.

Objection to A. There are germs and tendencies in matter to produce organisms, and these will produce others upon Darwinian principles. This objector goes a step further back than Darwin. He makes an assumption without proof. If it were true, with such quantities of matter around us, we should constantly see examples of the production of organisms; and the waste rocks, soils, and reefs that now abound would teem with verdure and life.

To change the inorganic to the organic is a far more difficult task than to develop a monad into an elephant. Physical forces are convertible into vital only through the medium of an organized fabric. Man can produce varieties in organisms, but cannot in any known way create life.

But without further discussion we would say, as in the answer to the previous objection, if it be true that forces adequate to produce organisms reside in matter, and that

life has appeared in consequence of their action, we derive a stronger argument for the existence of God than in any other way. For who endowed matter with those wonderful properties, capable of developing life, reason, and a series of organisms, containing infinite complications, for ages investigated by the mightiest intellects, and not yet wholly comprehended? Whoever endowed matter with these properties also designated the epochs when the forces should operate, some interminably, others intermittently. He arranged for the advent of disturbing forces which remained dormant for millions of years after the beginning of life. And if these arrangements were all provided for in the tendencies of matter, it does not concern the argument for a Creator, if the plan was executed by second causes. God made the forces, and ordained that they should produce life and systems. The work is his, even if deputed to subordinates. This objector cannot urge the eternity of matter, for he assumes a beginning to organic life of necessity, and matter could not have existed always without producing developments; and, as before shown, the world ere this must have passed beyond the organic cycle to inorganic desolation if these tendencies existed.

Arguments from Design.

The adaptation of means to ends observable in the history of the earth, proves the existence of an adapting cause. When we perceive order, harmony, or adaptation of means to ends in any human work, we at once refer the contrivance to mind. Wisdom has suggested and the hands have executed the plan. Hence when we observe order and adaptation in nature, we immediately refer them to the mind of the author of nature. The reference is instinctive, while the ground of the feeling may be in our experience of the origin of human contrivance.

There were thousands of special illustrations of the adap tation of means to ends in the early history of the world. They were in the structure of every animal and plant, in the

fitnesses of each part for its own functions and their relations to the whole body. These illustrations as derived from living examples, have been frequently employed by theologians. Although we might argue from the structure of each fossil in almost the same words, we pass by the readiest elucidations of the argument to notice others peculiar to geology. We shall only attempt to point out a few features of the plan in the physical structure of organisms.

A. All organisms from the very first have been constructed upon the same general uniform plan. We will illustrate from a single division of the animal kingdom. The study of the different vertebrate animals shows a wonderful unity running through the whole series. Every bone has its particular use and shape, varying in the several classes according to the habits and modes of life. The bones of the forward extremities are homologous, the same in number, but of different shape, in the hand of man, the paw of the lion, the wing of the bat and bird, and the paddle of the whale. The whole series is therefore constructed upon a plan, every part adapted to its place in the grand system. It is the discovery of the details of this plan of structure to which the efforts of naturalists are directed. They are striving to attain to the perfection of the divine idea in contriving the system. On account of this uniform plan the paleontologist can refer specimens of the remains of animals to their proper place in the series; and whenever certain parts of animals are brought to him, he can refer them to their appropriate place, even if they are something unexpected. Thus when tracks of gigantic birds were discovered at Northampton by the father of Ichnology, although totally unprecedented, he did not shrink from announcing to the world the existence, in the Triassic period, of birds four times the size of the largest living species. The footprints corresponded to those of birds, therefore the animals that made them must have been birds. There was no other place in the series for them. Guided by the same principles several years later, when Professor Owen received from New Zealand a broken bone a few inches long, he