Or the circumstances might have been such, that the lowest organisms were the best endowed for the struggle of life. If the earth were covered with water, fish would survive, and higher creatures would perish. Natural selection cannot have made the conditions of its own action--the circumstances in the midst of which it must operate. Therefore, there is more in progressive variation than it can explain: there is what only an all-regulative intelligence can explain. Again, there is a law of over-production, we are told, which gives rise to a struggle for existence. Well, is this law not a means to an end worthy of Divine Wisdom? In it we find the reason why the world is so wonderfully rich in the most varied forms of life. What is called over-production is a productivity which is in excess of the means of subsistence provided for the species itself; but no species exists merely for itself. The ratio of the production of life is probably none too high for the wants of all the creatures which have to be supplied with food and enjoyment. And the wants of all creatures are what have to be taken into account; not the wants of any single species--not the wants of man alone. If we adequately realised how vast is the number of guests which have constantly to be fed at the table of nature, we would, I have no doubt, acknowledge that there is little, if any, real waste of life in the world. Then, the struggle to which the rate of production gives rise is, on the showing of the Darwinians themselves, subservient to the noblest ends. Although involving privation, pain, and conflict, its final result is order and beauty. All the perfections of sentient creatures are represented as due to it. Through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The inference seems natural that these perfections were designed to be attained by it; that this state of struggle was ordained for the sake of the advantages which it is actually seen to produce. The suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals for some higher end than happiness--that He cares for animal perfection as well as for animal enjoyment; but it affords no reason for denying that the ends which the conflict actually serves, it was also intended to serve. Besides, the conflict is clearly not a struggle for bare existence; it is, even as regards the animals, a struggle for the largest amount of enjoyment which they can secure, and for the free and full exercise of all their faculties. It thus manifests, not only indirectly but also directly, what its ends are. They are ends which can only be reasonably conceived of as having been purposed by an intelligence, and which are eminently worthy of a Divine intelligence.