and into which the sea consequently flowed; the successive
occurrence of rocks, shingle, and sand was due to the actions of the
waves themselves; the segregation of sea-weeds, shells, pebbles, and
different kinds of sand, was due to their different degrees of specific
gravity; the fresh-water streams ran in channels because they had
themselves been the means of excavating them; and the multitudinous
forms of life were all adapted to their several habitats simply because
the unsuited forms were not able to live in them. In all these cases,
therefore, our teleologist in the light of fuller knowledge would be
compelled to conclude at least this much--that the adaptations which he
had so greatly admired when he supposed that they were all due to
contrivance in anticipation of the existing phenomena, cease to furnish
the same evidence of intelligent design when it is found that no one of
them was prepared beforehand by any independent or external cause.

He would therefore be led to conclude that if the teleological
interpretation of the facts were to be saved at all, it could only be so
by taking a much wider view of the subject than was afforded by the
particular cases of apparent design which at first appeared so cogent.
That is to say, he would feel that he must abandon the supposition of
any _special_ design in the construction of that particular bay, and
fall back upon the theory of a much more _general_ design in the
construction of one great scheme of Nature as a whole. In short he would
require to dislodge his argument from the special adjustments which in
the first instance appeared to him so suggestive, to those general laws
of Nature which by their united operation give rise to a cosmos as
distinguished from a chaos.

Now I have been careful thus to present in all its more important
details an imaginary argument drawn from inorganic nature, because it
furnishes a complete analogy to the actual argument which is drawn from
organic nature. Without any question, the instances of apparent design,
or of the apparently intentional adaptation of means to ends, which we
meet with in organic nature, are incomparably more numerous and
suggestive than anything with which we meet in inorganic nature. But if
once we find good reason to conclude that the former, like the latter,
are all due, not to the immediate, special and prospective action of a
contriving intelligence (as in watch-making or creation), but to the
agency of