leness for the reception and maintenance of organic life, by which
they in turn would be maintained and multiplied, while less aptly
organised forms, succumbing in the struggle for existence, perished and
vanished away. Thus everything arranges itself--_everything_, however,
being here another name for Nature, which alone does or can exist, which
is all and does all; yet, though doing all things in general, does
whatever it does quite unintelligently, and without the least desire of
doing any one thing in particular more than another.

Though speaking of this as a show of reasoning, I would by no means be
understood to consider it as merely a show. On the contrary, I must
admit that it contains a modicum of reality sufficient, in my opinion,
to secure the position taken up from being utterly overthrown by any
direct attack not followed up by reference to a certain palpable
absurdity which we shall presently perceive to be inseparably connected
with the position. To so much of real reasoning as we have before us,
let then all due respect be shown. No doubt all existences must
necessarily dispose themselves or be disposed somehow. No doubt all
occurrences must succeed each other somehow. No doubt, either, that if
the disposing or otherwise originating forces operated quite
regardlessly of plan, no one disposition or succession would be a whit
less possible than any other--the most symmetric or evenly graduated
than the most disjointed or confused. Now although, since exertion is
utterly inconceivable without volition, and since volition is equally
inconceivable without consciousness, it must be impossible for any
forces ever to exert themselves altogether unintentionally, it is yet
perfectly possible for their exertion to have no ulterior intention
beyond that of gratifying an unprospective will. This is all that one
fidgetting about, as the phrase is, intends, when he has no special
motive for fidgetting in any particular direction more than in any
other, and similarly it may by possibility be the mere fidgettiness of
Nature that gives rise to all natural phenomena. Nature, indeed, cannot,
any more than any other force or combination of forces, be utterly
destitute of intelligence, but its intelligence may not inconceivably be
of no higher sort than that which the sensitive plant exhibits or
mimics. Nature cannot exert itself quite unconsciously, nor consequently
quite unintentionally, but its exertions, though not uninte