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Show 74 DARWINIAN A. the collision of the individuals with one another, or with the surroundings. The original impulse, which we once supposed was in the line of the observed movement only proves to have been in a different direction;' but the series of movements took place with a series of results, each and all of them none the less determined, none the less designed. Wherefore, when, at the close, you quote Lap]ace, that "the discoveries of science throw final causes farther back," the most you can mean is, that they constrain us to look farther back for the impulse. They do not at all throw the argurnent for . design farther back, in the sense of furnishing evidence or presumption that only the primary impulse was designed, and that all the rest followed from chance or necessity. Evidence of design, I think you will allow, everywhere is drawn from the observation of adaptations and of results, and has really nothing to do with anything else, except where you can take the word for the will. And in that case you have not arg~trnent for design, but testirnony. In Nature we have no testimony; but the argument is overwhelming. Now, note that the argument of the olden time-that of Paley, etc., which your skeptic found so convincingwas always the argument for design in the movement of the balls after deflection. For it was drawn from animals produced by generation, not by creation, and through a long succession of generations or deflections. Wherefore, if the argument for design is perfect in the case of an animal derived from a long succession of individuals as nearly alike as offspring is generally like parents and grandparents, and if this argument is not DESIGN VERSUS NECESSITY. weakened when a variation, or series or variations, has ~ccurred in the course, as great as any variations we know of among domestic cattle, how then is it weakened by the supposition, or by the likelihood, that the · variations have_ been twice or thrice as great as we formerly supposed, or because the variations have been "picked out," and a few of them preserved as breeders of still other variations, by natural selection? Finally let it be noted that your element of necessity has to do, so far as we know, only with the picking out and preserving of certain changing forms, i.e., with the natural selection. This selection, you may say, must happen under the circumstances. This is a necess~ry result of the col1ision of the balls ; and these results can be predicted. If the balls strike so and so, they will oe deflected so and so. But the variation itself is of the nature of an origination. It answers wen to the original impulse of the balls, or to a series of such impulses. We cannot predict what particular new variation will occur from any observation of the past. Just as the first impulse was given to the balls at a point out of sight, so the inpulse which resulted in the variety or new form was given at a point beyond observation, and is equally mysterious or unaccountable, except on the supposition of an ordaining will. The parent had not the peculiarity of the variety, the progeny has. Between the two is the dim or obscure region of the formation of a new individual, in some unknown part of which, and in some wholly unknown way, the difference is intercalated. To introduce necessity here is gratuitous and unscientific; but here you must have it to make your argument valid. |
