Thus it is evident that the idea of a causal nexus between successive phenomena is a primary conception, and therefore ineradicable and certain. Even from the purest evolution point of view it must be true, for, if man’s mind grew out of the forces of Nature, this idea must represent a fact in Nature. Also, analysis shows that all causative force originates in _will_. Lastly, culture and reason, by a necessary law of expansion, carry us upward to the conception of one infinite sustaining and creative will. Science may sometimes obscure but can not destroy this idea. Evolution, which was supposed by some to have destroyed it for ever, has only temporarily obscured it in the minds of the unreflecting, by the supposed identity of evolution with materialism. From this temporary eclipse it now emerges with still greater clearness and far greater nobleness. For, observe: All the effects known to us in Nature are finite; therefore a personal will, which determines these _separately_ by successive acts, as we do, must also be finite like ourselves. But a will, which by _one eternal_ act ever-doing, never done, determines the evolution and the sustentation of an infinite cosmos, must itself be infinite. Thus only in the doctrine of universal evolution do we rise to a just conception of God as an infinite cause. 5. =Design in Nature.=--As the idea of _cause_ and force is related to _will_, so precisely is the idea of _design_ related to _thought_. We get this also, not from without, but from within. Adaptation of means to ends is in our experience the result of thought, and we can not conceive it to result otherwise. The effect of science can not be to destroy this primary conception--which, indeed, like all primary conceptions, is ineradicable, and already more certain than anything can be made by proof--but only to exalt and purify our conceptions of the designer. For, observe: In any case of _adaptive_ structure, whether in the animal body or in planetary relations, the evidence of design is not in the materials, but in the _use_ of the materials; not in the _parts_, but in the _adjustment_ of the parts for a purpose. Design, purpose, adjustment, _adaptation_, are not material things, but relations or intellectual things, and therefore perceivable only by thought, and conceivable only as the result of thought. It is simply impossible to talk about such adaptive structures without using language which implies design. The very word “_adaptive_” implies it. It is impossible even to think of such structures without implicitly assuming intelligence as the cause. It makes no particle of difference _how_ the material originated, or whether it ever originated at all; it matters not whether the adaptation was done at once out of hand, or whether by slow process of modification; it matters not whether the adaptive modification was brought about by a process of natural selection, or by pressure of a physical environment; whether without