re Geoffroy St. Hilaire.

"Whoever," says this author, "holds the doctrine of final causes, will,
if he is consistent, hold also that of the immutability of species; and
again, the opponent of the one doctrine will oppose the other also."[10]

Nothing can be plainer; I believe, however, that even without quotation
the reader would have recognized the accuracy of my contention that a
belief in the purposiveness or design of animal and vegetable organs is
commonly held to be incompatible with the belief that they have all been
evolved from one, or at any rate, from not many original, and low, forms
of life. Generally, however, as this incompatibility is accepted, it is
not unchallenged. From time to time a voice is uplifted in protest,
whose tones cannot be disregarded.

"I have always felt," says Sir William Thomson, in his address to the
British Association, 1871, "that this hypothesis" (natural selection)
"does not contain the true theory of evolution, if indeed evolution
there has been, in biology. Sir John Herschel, in expressing a
favourable judgment on the hypothesis of zoological evolution (with
however some reservation in respect to the origin of man), objected to
the doctrine of natural selection on the ground that it was too like the
Laputan method of making books, and that it did not sufficiently take
into account a continually guiding and controlling intelligence. This
seems to me a most valuable and instructive criticism. _I feel
profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too
much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations._ Reaction against
the frivolities of teleology such as are to be found in the notes of the
learned commentators on Paley's 'Natural Theology,' has, I believe, had
a temporary effect in turning attention from the solid and irrefragable
argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. But
overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie
all around us,"[11] &c. Sir William Thomson goes on to infer that all
living beings depend on an ever-acting Creator and Ruler--meaning, I am
afraid, a Creator who is not an organism. Here I cannot follow him, but
while gladly accepting his testimony to the omnipresence of intelligent
design in almost every structure, whether of animal or plant, I shall
content myself with observing the manner in which plants and animals act
and with the consequences that are legitimately deducible from their
action.