n Nature._ London, 1864, p. 57.

[2] The two facts which are commonly urged as inconsistent with Theism,
are the existence of misery in the world, and the occurrence of
undeveloped or useless organs, as teeth in the jaws of the whale and
mammae on the breast of a man. As to the former objection, sin, which is
the only real evil, is accounted for by the voluntary apostasy of man;
and as to undeveloped organs they are regarded as evidences of the great
plan of structure which can be traced in the different orders of
animals. These unused organs were--says Professor Joseph Le Conte, in
his interesting volume on Religion and Science, New York, 1874, p.
54--regarded as blunders in nature, until it was discovered that use is
not the only end of design. "By further patient study of nature," he
says, "came the recognition of another law beside use,--a law of order
underlying and conditioning the law of use. Organisms are, indeed,
contrived for use, but according to a preordained plan of structure,
which must not be violated." It is of little moment whether this
explanation be considered satisfactory or not. It would certainly be
irrational to refuse to believe that the eye was made for the purpose of
vision, because we cannot tell why a man has mammae. A man might as well
refuse to admit that there is any meaning in all the writings of Plato,
because there is a sentence in them which he cannot understand.

_The Pantheistic Theory_.

This has been one of the most widely diffused and persistent forms of
human thought on this whole subject. It has been for thousands of years
not only the philosophy, but the religion of India, and, to a great
extent, of China. It underlies all the forms of Greek philosophy. It
crept into the Church, concealed under the disguise of Scriptural
terminology, in the form of Neo-Platonism. It was constantly reappearing
during the Middle Ages, sometimes in a philosophical, and sometimes a
mystical form. It was revived by Spinoza in the seventeenth century, and
subsequently became dominant in the philosophy and literature of Europe.
It is coming up again. Some distinguished naturalists are swinging round
from one pole to the opposite; from saying there is no God, to teaching
that everything is God. Sometimes, one and the same book in one half
teaches materialism, in the other half idealism: the one affirming that
everything is matter, the other that matter is nothing, but that
everything is mind, and m