That which requires thought and reason to understand must be itself thought and reason. That which mind alone can investigate or express must be itself mind. And if the highest conception attained be but partial, then the mind and reason studied is greater than the mind and reason of the student. If the more it be studied the more vast and complex is the necessary connexion in reason disclosed, then the more evident is the vast extent and compass of the intelligence thus partially manifested, and its reality, as existing in the immutably connected order of objects examined, independently of the mind of the investigator. The reluctance frequently manifested by scientific men to admit the force of so plain an argument, appears to be generally due to a fundamental misconception. It is constantly assumed that to introduce the element of purpose in Nature is to deny the continuity of Natural law, and that to speak of design in regard of a process or a structure, is equivalent to saying that a non-natural agent intervenes at that particular point and takes the work out of Nature's hands. This, it may be supposed, was Professor Huxley's idea when he spoke of "the commoner and coarser forms of teleology," giving as an instance the supposition that eyes were constructed for the purpose of enabling their possessors to see. It might indeed be replied that, at any rate, it is less difficult to suppose this, than that eyes were constructed without any purpose of seeing, or knowledge of the laws of optics;--but evidently it is taken for granted that Theists imagine every purposive item in nature to be violently introduced from without, like the forms of lions or peacocks into which topiarian gardeners clip their shrubs. But, as has been said, the laws of Nature are the expression of the mind of God: it is through them that He accomplishes His design. As Professor Romanes came to see at the close of his life, it is strange what jealousy there is of admitting the Creator into Creation. "It is still assumed on both sides," he wrote,[324] "that there must be something inexplicable or miraculous about a phenomenon in order to its being divine,"--and although we must utterly demur to such a description of the position of Theists, it undoubtedly is true of their adversaries. Their objections on this head can only signify that it is with the laws of Nature as with a railway locomotive from which the driver, having got up steam and set it going, jumps off, leaving it entirely to its own devices. But, as a legislator, if rightly interpreted, speaks by the mouth of every judge who administers the law in practice, and applies it to concrete cases,--so the Author of Nature, whose laws cannot be perverted, provides through them for all that is to be operated by the forces He has instituted.