adow of reason can be assigned for the belief that the
variations, alike in nature, and the result of the same general laws, which
have been the groundwork through Natural Selection of the formation of the
most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were
intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can
hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief that 'variation has been led
along certain beneficial lines,' like a stream 'along definite and useful
lines of irrigation.'"

"If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of{256}
all time pre-ordained, the plasticity of the organization, which leads to
many injurious deviations of structure, as well as that redundant power of
reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a
consequence, to the Natural Selection and survival of the fittest, must
appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent
and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we
are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of
freewill and predestination."

Before proceeding to reply to this remarkable passage, it may be well to
remind some readers that belief in the existence of God, in His primary
creation of the universe, and in His derivative creation of all kinds of
being, inorganic and organic, do not repose upon physical phenomena, but,
as has been said, on primary intuitions. To deny or ridicule any of these
beliefs on physical grounds is to commit the fallacy of _ignoratio
elenchi_. It is to commit an absurdity analogous to that of saying a blind
child could not recognize his father because he could not _see_ him,
forgetting that he could _hear_ and _feel_ him. Yet there are some who
appear to find it unreasonable and absurd that men should regard phenomena
in a light not furnished by or deducible from the very phenomena
themselves, although the men so regarding them avow that the light in which
they do view them comes from quite another source. It is as if a man, A,
coming into B's room and finding there a butterfly, should insist that B
had no right to believe that the butterfly had not flown in at the open
window, inasmuch as there was nothing about the room or insect to lead to
any other belief; while B can well sustain his right so to believe, he
having met C, who told him he brought in the chrysalis and, having seen the
insect emerge, took aw