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intelligent guidance. Now, it is the observation of distinguished men of
science that we see precisely such guidance in nature. There is nothing
in the Darwinian theory, as I said, that would conduct species upward
rather than downward. To account for the steady upward progress we must
resort to a higher Cause. We must say with Asa Gray, "Variation has been
led along certain beneficial lines, like a stream along definite and
useful lines of irrigation." We must say with Prof. Owen, "A purposive
route of development and change, of correlation and inter-dependence,
manifesting intelligent will, is as determinable in the succession of
races as in the development and organization of the individual.
Generations do not vary accidentally in any and every direction, but in
pre-ordained, definite, and correlated courses." This judgment is one
which Prof. Carpenter has also substantially agreed with, declaring that
the history of Evolution is that of a consistent advance along definite
lines of progress, and can only be explained as the work of a mind in
nature.
The old argument from Design, it has been frequently said of late, is
quite overthrown by Evolution. In one sense it is: _i.e._ the old idea
of a special purpose and a separate creation of each part of nature. But
the divine agency is not dispensed with, by Evolution; only shifted to a
different point of application; transferred from the particular to the
general; from the fact to the law. Paley compared the eye to a watch;
and said it must have been made by a divine hand. The modern scientist
objects that the eye has been found to be no hand-work; it is the last
result of a complicated combination of forces; the mighty machine of
nature, which has been grinding at the work for thousands of years. Very
well; but the modern watch is not made by hand, either, but by a score
of different machines. But does it require less, or not more
intelligence to make the watch in this way? Or if some watch should be
discovered that was not put together by human hand, but formed by
another watch, not quite so perfect as itself, and this by another
watch, further back, would the wonder, the demand for a superior
intelligence as the origin of the process be any the less? It strikes me
that it would be but the greater. The farther back you go, and the more
general, and invariable, and simple the fundamental laws that brought
all things into their present form, then, it seems to me, the m
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