The answer to this is, that the theory which Messrs. Darwin and Wallace
have persuaded the public to accept is demonstrably false, and that the
opponents of evolution are certain in the end to triumph over it. Paley,
in his "Natural Theology," long since brought forward far too much
evidence of design in animal organisation to allow of our setting down
its marvels to the accumulations of fortunate accident, undirected by
will, effort and intelligence. Those who examine the main facts of
animal and vegetable organisation without bias will, no doubt, ere long
conclude that all animals and vegetables are derived ultimately from
unicellular organisms, but they will not less readily perceive that the
evolution of species without the concomitance and direction of mind and
effort is as inconceivable as is the independent creation of every
individual species. The two facts, evolution and design, are equally
patent to plain people. There is no escaping from either. According to
Messrs. Darwin and Wallace, we may have evolution, but are on no account
to have it as mainly due to intelligent effort, guided by ever higher and
higher range of sensations, perceptions, and ideas. We are to set it
down to the shuffling of cards, or the throwing of dice without the play,
and this will never stand.
According to the older men, cards did indeed count for much, but play
counted for more. They denied the teleology of the time--that is to say,
the teleology that saw all adaptation to surroundings as part of a plan
devised long ages since by a quasi-anthropomorphic being who schemed
everything out much as a man would do, but on an infinitely vaster scale.
This conception they found repugnant alike to intelligence and
conscience, but, though they do not seem to have perceived it, they left
the door open for a design more true and more demonstrable than that
which they excluded. By making their variations mainly due to effort and
intelligence, they made organic development run on all-fours with human
progress, and with inventions which we have watched growing up from small
beginnings. They made the development of man from the amoeba part and
parcel of the story that may be read, though on an infinitely smaller
scale, in the development of our most powerful marine engines from the
common kettle, or of our finest microscopes from the dew-drop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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