oughts and actions, before which
we feel so powerless to reawaken fresh interest concerning them, that we
give up the attempt in despair, and bow our heads, overpowered by the
sense of their immensity. Thus our inability to comprehend God is
coextensive with our difficulty in going back upon the past--and our
sense of him is a dim perception of our own vast and now inconceivably
remote history.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Quatrefages, 'Metamorphoses de l'Homme et des Animaux,' 1862, p.
42; G. H. Lewes, 'Physical Basis of Mind,' 1877, p. 83.

[22] Tom. ii. p. 486, 1794.

CHAPTER IV.

FAILURE OF THE FIRST EVOLUTIONISTS TO SEE THEIR POSITION AS
TELEOLOGICAL.

It follows necessarily from the doctrine of Dr. Erasmus Darwin and
Lamarck, if not from that of Buffon himself, that the greater number of
organs are as purposive to the evolutionist as to the theologian, and
far more intelligibly so. Circumstances, however, prevented these
writers from acknowledging this fact to the world, and perhaps even to
themselves. Their _crux_ was, as it still is to so many evolutionists,
the presence of rudimentary organs, and the processes of embryological
development. They would not admit that rudimentary and therefore useless
organs were designed by a Creator to take their place once and for ever
as part of a scheme whose main idea was, that every animal structure was
to serve some useful end in connection with its possessor.

This was the doctrine of final causes as then commonly held; in the face
of rudimentary organs it was absurd. Buffon was above all things else a
plain matter of fact thinker, who refused to go far beyond the obvious.
Like all other profound writers, he was, if I may say so, profoundly
superficial. He felt that the aim of research does not consist in the
knowing this or that, but in the easing of the desire to know or
understand more completely--in the peace of mind which passeth all
understanding. His was the perfection of a healthy mental organism by
which over effort is felt instinctively to be as vicious and
contemptible as indolence. He knew this too well to know the grounds of
his knowledge, but we smaller people who know it less completely, can
see that such felicitous instinctive tempering together of the two great
contradictory principles, love of effort and love of ease, has underlain
every step of all healthy growth through all conceivable time. Nothing
is worth looking at which is seen either too ob