Of course there is purpose or design in living things in a sense that there is not in the non-living. Every part of a living organization is purposeful. There is purpose in our lungs, our hearts, our kidneys, in short in every part of our bodies. There is purpose in the varnish on leaves, in the down and resin on buds, in the wings and hooks of seeds, in the colors of flowers and of animals, in fact, in everything that makes for the well-being of living things. But not in the same sense is there purpose in the wind, the rain, the snow, the tides, the heat, the cold, the rocks, the soil, the fountains. Animate nature struggles; inanimate nature passively submits. Dead matter forever seeks an equilibrium; living matter forever struggles against an equilibrium. The waters separate the clay and the sand and the pebbles from the soil and deposit each in its own place; but it is not a struggle or an effort; it is mechanical adjustment. It is not an effort for certain liquids to form crystals, or for certain elements to combine with certain other elements and form new compounds, but it is an effort for a tree to resist the wind, to lift up tons of water and minerals against gravity, to force its roots through the soil or grip the rock, and it is an effort for the mother to bear and nurse her young. For anything to live and grow, effort is needful; not commonly a painful effort, but a joyous one. So, when we ask, Is there design in Nature? we must make clear what part or phase of Nature we refer to. Can we say that the cosmos as a whole shows any design in our human sense of the word? I think not. The Eternal has no purpose that our language can compass. There can be neither center nor circumference to the Infinite. The distribution of land and water on the globe cannot be the result of design any more than can the shapes of the hills and mountains, or Saturn’s rings, or Jupiter’s moons. The circular forms and orbits of the universe must be the result of the laws of matter and force that prevail in celestial mechanics; this is not a final solution of the riddle, but is as near as we can come to it. One question stands on another question, and that on another, and so on, and the bottom question we can never reach and formulate. The earth rests on nothing and floats as lightly as a feather. All matter is probably only a phase of the ether, but the ether defies all proof and all negation.