Is it any longer necessary, or even possible, to insist upon a First Cause for all that exists? Can the argument from Design be said to retain its validity as a proof of the working of a controlling Mind? If we admit the evidence for the existence of a Creator, can we know anything about Him? Can we, in particular, still assert with any confidence that He is good? Let us take the questions in order and give the replies that were made to them from the different sides. And, first of all, from the side of negation. The number of those who directly denied that there must have been a First Cause were very few. But there were many who did their utmost to discredit the idea as due to what they held to be an illegitimate deduction from our limited human experiences. Others were disposed to quarrel with the word "Cause" altogether, and to dispute the propriety of its employment. They wished to banish it altogether from the scientific vocabulary, and to substitute for the terms {29} cause and effect, antecedent and consequent, reducing causation to conjunction. But it was generally admitted that, where we have to deal with an invariable antecedent followed by an invariable consequent, nothing was to be gained by a change in the common phraseology. John Stuart Mill refused to abandon the word. Speaking of one who had done so, he said, "I consider him to be entirely wrong." "The beginning of a phenomenon is what implies a Cause."[1] There were, he allowed, "permanent causes," but, he added, "we can give no account of the origin of the permanent causes"--which was virtually to abandon the subject as being beyond the domain of science. In regard to the second question, it very soon became evident that the old views of Design would be subjected to the most incisive criticism. To many it appeared as if the new doctrine of evolution had supplied an explanation which left no room for the recognition of the particular contrivances upon which Paley had constructed his argument. No one asserted this more strongly than Haeckel, the German biologist. To quote his words, "The development of the universe is a monistic mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose {30} whatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special result of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly bodies, nor in that of the crust of our earth, do we find any trace of controlling purpose." "Nowhere in the evolution of animals and plants do we find any trace of design, but merely the inevitable outcome of the struggle for existence, the blind controller." "All is the result of chance." We ought to add that he somewhat qualified this last statement by explaining that "chance" itself must be considered as coming under "the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law."[2]