The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution | Page 4

to-day; but if we find it to be full measure, shaken together and running over, we ought to maintain that natural theologians can no longer adhere to the arguments of such writers as Paley, Bell, and Chalmers, without deliberately violating the only logical principle which separates science from fetishism.
To avoid misapprehension, however, I may here add that while Mr. Darwin's theory is thus in plain and direct contradiction to the theory of design, or system of teleology, as presented by the school of writers which I have named, I hold that Mr. Darwin's theory has no point of logical contact with the theory of design in the larger sense, that behind all secondary causes of a physical kind, there is a primary cause of a mental kind. Therefore throughout this essay I refer to design in the sense understood by the narrower forms of teleology, or as an immediate cause of the observed phenomena. Whether or not there is an ultimate cause of a psychical kind pervading all nature, a causa causarum which is the final raison d'��tre of the cosmos, this is another question which, as I have said, I take to present no point of logical contact with Mr. Darwin's theory, or, I may add, with any of the methods and results of natural science. The only position, therefore, which I here desire to render plain is that, if the doctrine of evolution is seen to be established by sufficient evidence, and therefore the causes which it sets forth are recognised as adequate to furnish a scientific explanation of the results observed, then the facts of organic nature necessarily fall into the same logical category, with reference to any question of design, as that of all or any other series of facts in the physical universe.
This being understood, I shall now proceed to render an epitome of the evidence in favour of organic evolution, and I shall do so by classifying the arguments in a way tending to show their distinct or independent character, and therefore calculated to display the additional force which they acquire from their cumulative nature.

I.
THE ARGUMENT FROM CLASSIFICATION.
I shall first take the argument from classification. Naturalists find that all species of plants and animals present among themselves structural affinities. According as these structural affinities are more or less pronounced, the various species are classified under genera, orders, families, classes, sub-kingdoms, and kingdoms. Now in such a classification it is found impossible to place all the species in a linear series, according to the grade of their organization. For instance, we cannot say that a wolf is more highly organized than a fox or a jackal; we can only say that the specific points wherein it differs from these animals are without significance as proving the one type to be more highly organized than the others. But of course in many cases, and especially in the cases of the larger divisions, it is often possible to say--The members in this division are more highly organized than are the members in that division. Our system of classification therefore may be likened to a tree, in which a short trunk may be taken to represent the lowest organisms which cannot properly be termed either plants or animals. This short trunk soon separates into two large trunks, one of which represents the vegetable and the other the animal kingdom. Each of these trunks then gives off large branches signifying classes, and these give off smaller, but more numerous branches, signifying families, which ramify again into orders, genera, and finally into the leaves, which may be taken to represent species. Now, in such a representative tree of life, the height of any branch from the ground may be taken to indicate the grade of organization which the leaves, or species, present; so that, if we picture to ourselves such a tree, we will understand that while there is a general advance of organization from below upwards, there are numberless slight variations in this respect between leaves growing even on the same branch; but in a still greater number of cases, leaves growing on the same branch are growing on the same level--that is, although they represent different species, it cannot be said that one is more highly organized than the other. Now, this tree-like arrangement of specific organisms in nature is an arrangement for which Mr. Darwin is not responsible. I mean that the framing of this natural classification has been the work of naturalists for centuries past; and although they did not know what they were doing, it is now evident to evolutionists that they were tracing the lines of genetic relationship. For, be it observed, a scientific or natural classification differs very much from a popular or hap-hazard classification, and the difference consists in this, that while