therefore, in view of the considerations set forth in Chapter
IV. of this work, it is no longer open to Professor Flint or to any other
writer logically to assert--"I can conceive of no other intelligent answer
being given to" such questions "than that there is a God of wisdom."

The same answer awaits this author's further disquisition on other
biological laws, so it is needless to make any further quotations in this
connection. But there is one other principle embodied in some of these
passages which it seems undesirable to overlook. It is said, for instance,
"Natural selection might have had no materials, or altogether insufficient
materials, to work with, or the circumstances might have been such that the
lowest organisms were the best endowed for the struggle for life. If the
earth were covered with water, fish would survive and higher creatures
would perish."

Now the principle here embodied--viz., that had the conditions of evolution
been other than they were, the results would have been different--is, of
course, true; but clearly, on the view that _all_ natural laws spring from
the persistence of force, no other conditions than those which actually
occurred, or are now occurring, could ever have occurred,--the whole course
of evolution must have been, in all its phases and in all its processes, an
unconditional necessity. But if it is said, How fortunate that the outcome,
being unconditionally necessary, has happened to be so good as it is; I
answer that the remark is legitimate enough if it is not intended to convey
an implication that the general quality of the outcome points to beneficent
design as to its cause. Such an implication would not be legitimate,
because, in the first place, we have no means of knowing in how many cases,
whether in planets, stars, or systems, the course of evolution has failed
to produce life and mind--the one known case of this earth, whether or not
it is the one success out of millions of abortions, being of necessity the
only known case. In how vastly greater a number of cases the course of
evolution may have been, so to speak, deflected by some even slight, though
strictly necessary, cause from producing self-conscious intelligence, it is
impossible to conjecture. But this consideration, be it observed, is not
here adduced in order to _disprove_ the assertion that telluric evolution
has been effected by Intelligence; it is merely adduced to prove that such
an assertion cannot re