hich the ligament is
composed."[19]

This must suffice.

"True theories," says M. Flourens, inspired by a passage from
Fontenelle, which he proceeds to quote, "true theories make themselves,"
they are not made, but are born and grow; they cannot be stopped from
insisting upon their vitality by anything short of intellectual
violence, nor will a little violence only suffice to kill them. "True
theories," he continues, "are but the spontaneous mental coming
together of facts, which have combined with one another by virtue only
of their own natural affinity."[20]

When a number of isolated facts, says Fontenelle, take form, group
themselves together coherently, and present the mind so vividly with an
idea of their interdependence and mutual bearing upon each other, that
no matter how violently we tear them asunder they insist on coming
together again; then, and not till then, have we a theory.

Now I submit that there is hardly one of my readers who can be
considered as free from bias or prejudice, who will not feel that the
idea of design--or perception by an intelligent living being, of ends to
be obtained and of the means of obtaining them--and the idea of the
tendons of the foot and of the ligament which binds them down, come
together so forcibly, that no matter how strongly Professors Haeckel and
Clifford and Mr. Darwin may try to separate them, they are no sooner
pulled asunder than they straightway fly together again of themselves.

I shall argue, therefore, no further upon this head, but shall assume it
as settled, and shall proceed at once to the consideration that next
suggests itself.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] 'Natural Theology,' ch. i. Sec. 1.

[13] Ch. vii.

[14] Ch. vii.

[15] 'Natural Theology.' ch. viii.

[16] 'Natural Theology,' ch. viii.

[17] 'Natural Theology,' ch. viii.

[18] "What!" says Coleridge, in a note on Stillingfleet, to which Mr.
Garnett, of the British Museum, has kindly called my attention, "Did Sir
Walter Raleigh believe that a male and female ounce (and if so why not
two tigers and lions, &c.?) would have produced in course of generations
a cat, or a cat a lion? This is Darwinising with a vengeance."--See
'Athenaeum,' March 27, 1875, p. 423.

[19] 'Natural Theology,' ch. ix.

[20] "La vraie theorie n'est que l'enchainement naturel des faits, qui
des qu'ils sont assez nombreux, se touchent, et se lient, les uns aux
autres par leur seule vertu propre."--Flourens, 'Buffon, Hist.