6. _The Equilibrium or Harmony of Nature._--When a species is well adapted to the conditions which environ it, it flourishes; when imperfectly adapted it decays; when ill-adapted it becomes extinct. If _all_ the conditions which determine an organism's well-being are taken into consideration, this statement can hardly be disputed. * * * * * This series of facts or laws, are mere statements of what is the condition of nature. They are facts or inferences which are generally known, generally admitted--but in discussing the subject of the "Origin of Species"--as generally forgotten. It is from these universally admitted facts, that the origin of all the varied forms of nature may be deduced by a logical chain of reasoning, which, however, is at every step verified and shown to be in strict accord with facts; and, at the same time, many curious phenomena which can by no other means be understood, are explained and accounted for. It is probable, that these primary facts or laws are but results of the very nature of life, and of the essential properties of organized and unorganized matter. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "First Principles" and his "Biology" has, I think, made us able to understand how this may be; but at present we may accept these simple laws without going further back, and the question then is--whether the variety, the harmony, the contrivance, and the beauty we perceive in organic beings, can have been produced by the action of these laws alone, or whether we are required to believe in the incessant interference and direct action of the mind and will of the Creator. It is simply a question of how the Creator has worked. The Duke (and I quote him as having well expressed the views of the more intelligent of Mr. Darwin's opponents) maintains, that He has personally applied general laws to produce effects, which those laws are not in themselves capable of producing; that the universe alone, with all its laws intact, would be a sort of chaos, without variety, without harmony, without design, without beauty; that there is not (and therefore we may presume that there could not be) any self-developing power in the universe. I believe, on the contrary, that the universe is so constituted as to be self-regulating; that as long as it contains Life, the forms under which that life is manifested have an inherent power of adjustment to each other and to surrounding nature; and that this adjustment necessarily leads to the greatest amount of variety and beauty and enjoyment, because it does depend on general laws, and not on a continual supervision and re-arrangement of details. As a matter of feeling and religion, I hold this to be a far higher conception of the Creator and of the Universe than that which may be called the "continual interference" hypothesis; but it is not a question to be decided by our feelings or convictions, it is a question of facts and of reason. Could