certain, indeed, that we may confidently say, 'It is absurd for a man to conceive the idea even that some day a Newton will arise who can explain the origin of a single blade of grass by natural laws which are uncontrolled by design'--such a hope is entirely forbidden us." Seventy years afterwards this impossible "Newton of the organic world" appeared in the person of Charles Darwin, and achieved the great task that Kant had deemed impracticable. Since Newton (1682) formulated the law of gravitation, and Kant (1755) established "the constitution and mechanical origin of the entire fabric of the world on Newtonian laws," and Laplace (1796) provided a mathematical foundation for this law of cosmic mechanicism, the whole of the inorganic sciences have become purely _mechanical_, and at the same time purely _atheistic_. Astronomy, cosmogony, geology, meteorology, and inorganic physics and chemistry are now absolutely ruled by mechanical laws on a mathematical foundation. The idea of "design" has wholly disappeared from this vast province of science. At the close of the nineteenth century, now that this monistic view has fought its way to general recognition, no scientist ever asks seriously of the "purpose" of any single phenomenon in the whole of this great field. Is any astronomer likely to inquire seriously to-day into the purpose of planetary motion, or a mineralogist to seek design in the structure of a crystal? Does the physicist investigate the purpose of electric force, or the chemist that of atomic weight? We may confidently answer in the negative--certainly not, in the sense that God, or a purposive natural force, had at some time created these fundamental laws of the mechanism of the universe with a definite design, and causes them to work daily in accordance with his rational will. The anthropomorphic notion of a deliberate architect and ruler of the world has gone forever from this field; the "eternal, iron laws of nature" have taken his place.