pment, it
would even then be an unworthy idea of a Creator, to impute the
incapacity of our minds to him; but when many human minds can conceive,
and can even trace out in detail some of the adaptations in nature as
the necessary results of unvarying law, it seems strange that, in the
interests of religion, any one should seek to prove that the System of
Nature, instead of being above, is far below our highest conceptions of
it. I, for one, cannot believe that the world would come to chaos if
left to Law alone. I cannot believe that there is in it no inherent
power of developing beauty or variety, and that the direct action of the
Deity is required to produce each spot or streak on every insect, each
detail of structure in every one of the millions of organisms that live
or have lived upon the earth. For it is impossible to draw a line. If
any modifications of structure could be the result of law, why not all?
If some self-adaptations could arise, why not others? If any varieties
of colour, why not all the varieties we see? No attempt is made to
explain this, except by reference to the fact that "purpose" and
"contrivance" are everywhere visible, and by the illogical deduction
that they could only have arisen from the direct action of some mind,
because the direct action of our minds produces similar "contrivances";
but it is forgotten that adaptation, however produced, must have the
appearance of design. The channel of a river looks as if made _for_ the
river, although it is made _by_ it; the fine layers and beds in a
deposit of sand, often look as if they had been sorted, and sifted, and
levelled, designedly; the sides and angles of a crystal exactly resemble
similar forms designed by man; but we do not therefore conclude that
these effects have, in each individual case, required the directing
action of a creative mind, or see any difficulty in their being produced
by natural Law.

_Beauty in Nature._

Let us, however, leave this general argument for a while, and turn to
another special case, which has been appealed to as conclusive against
Mr. Darwin's views. "Beauty" is, to some persons, as great a
stumbling-block as "contrivance." They cannot conceive a system of the
Universe, so perfect, as necessarily to develop every form of Beauty,
but suppose that when anything specially beautiful occurs, it is a step
beyond what that system could have produced, something which the Creator
has added for his own delectation