the author turned himself to savages nearer home who fail to see
design in nature. The book takes up a great many cases of interesting
facts in animals and plants as clearly showing evidences of design as
did the watch our savage picked up. But the inference we were expected
to draw was that the design shown in nature argued clearly for a
Designer above nature; in other words, that nature was unintelligible
without God. Everyone in the class believed in God without this
preliminary, and consequently the book was unnecessary, so far as we
were concerned. We started with the condition of mind which the author
hoped to produce. One effect the book did have; in the absence of any
other reputable course in zooelogy, it gave us an astonishing
collection of interesting facts about animals.

Some of Paley's statements were certainly peculiar. His Malay pig with
its upper teeth wonderfully curved was said to be in the habit of
hanging its head upon a bush while it slept, in order to save the
strain upon its porcine neck. This was too much even for our
credulity. None the less the impression made upon some of us by the
evidence for design in nature has never left us.

Among many scientists to-day it is supposed to be crude to speak of
purpose in nature, and there is reason for their attitude. But the
statement that there is no such plan conveys to the ordinary thinker a
meaning that is far more erroneous than could possibly exist in his
mind should he believe implicitly in design and purpose. As between
design in the universe in the usual sense of the word, and a purely
accidental connection of events in the universe, there can be no
doubt as to the choice. The truth is far better expressed by the word
design than by the chaos which is the alternative idea in the average
mind. In these later years we have come to use a different word. We
now conjure in such connection with the word adaptation. In every
animal and every plant the trained eye sees unending examples of
adaptation; that is, of a fittedness to the work it has to do. The
modern scientist feels sure not only that the animal is fitted to his
work, but that he has been so fitted by the work; that the very use he
makes of his organs has determined their structure. This work has
decided that the structure which he has is the structure that shall
survive and shall produce other structures like itself. Adaptation
therefore does not simply express the idea that the animal is