Feebly try to think of what the sun is radiating into space. If it is retorted that we are incompetent to judge of the purposes of the Almighty, I reply that this is but to abandon the argument from economy whenever it is found untenable: we presume to be competent judges of almighty purposes so long as they appear to imitate our own; but so soon as there is any divergence observable, we change front. By thus selecting all the instances of economy in nature, and disregarding all the vastly greater instances of reckless waste, we are merely laying ourselves open to the charge of an unfair eclecticism. And this formal refutation of the argument from economy admits of being further justified in a strikingly substantial manner; for if all the examples of economy in nature that were ever observed, or admit being observed, were collected into one view, I undertake to affirm that, without exception, they would be found to marshal themselves in one great company--the subjects whose law is _survival of the fittest_. One question only will I here ask. Is it possible at the present day for any degree of prejudice, after due consideration, to withstand the fact that the solitary exceptions to the universal prodigality so painfully conspicuous in nature are to be found where there is also to be found a full and adequate physical explanation of their occurrence? But, again, prodigality is only one of several particulars wherein the modes and the means of the supposed divine intelligence differ from those of its human counterpart. Comparative anatomists can point to organic structures which are far from being theoretically perfect: even the mind of man in these cases, notwithstanding its confessed deficiencies in respect both of cognitive and cogitative powers, is competent to suggest improvements to an intelligence supposed to be omniscient and all-wise! And what shall we say of the numerous cases in which the supposed purposes of this intelligence could have been attained by other and less roundabout means? In short, not needlessly to prolong discussion, it is admitted, even by natural theologians themselves, that the difficulties of reconciling, even approximately, the supposed processes of divine thought with the known processes of human thought are quite insuperable. The fact is expressed by such writers in various ways,--_e.g._, that it would be presumptuous in man to expect complete conformity in all cases; that the counsels of God are past finding out; that his ways are not as our ways, and so on. Observing only, as before, that in thus ignoring adverse cases natural theologians are guilty of an unfair eclecticism, it is evident that all such expressions concede the fact, that even in those provinces of nature where the evidence of superhuman intelligence appears most plain, the resemblance of its apparent products to those of human intelligence consists in a general approximation of method rather than in any precise similarity of