Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/259

Rh from age to age. And, though the progress may be exceedingly slow, the nature of the progress can not be mistaken.

If the "Natural Theology" were now to be written, the stress of the argument would be put on a different place. Instead of insisting wholly or mainly on the wonderful adaptation of means to ends in the structure of living animals and plants, we should look rather to the original properties impressed on matter from the beginning, and on the beneficent consequences that have flowed from those properties. We should dwell on the peculiar properties that must be inherent in the molecules of the original elements to cause such results to follow from their action and reaction on one another. We should dwell on the part played in the universe by the properties of oxygen, the great purifier, and one of the great heat-givers; of carbon, the chief light-giver and heat-giver; of water, the great solvent and the store-house of heat; of the atmosphere and the vapors in it, the protector of the earth which it surrounds. We should trace the beneficent effects of pain and pleasure in their subservience to the purification of life. The marks of a purpose impressed from the first on all creation would be even more visible than ever before.

And we could not overlook the beauty of nature and of all created things as part of that purpose, coming in many cases out of that very survival of the fittest of which Darwin has spoken, and yet a distinct object in itself. For this beauty there is no need in the economy of Nature whatever. The beauty of the starry heavens, which so impressed the mind of Kant that he put it by the side of the moral law as proving the existence of a Creator, is not wanted either for the evolution of the world or for the preservation of living creatures. Our enjoyment of it is a superadded gift certainly not necessary for the existence or the continuance of our species. The beauty of flowers, according to the teaching of the doctrine of evolution, has generally grown out of the need which makes it good for plants to attract insects. The insects carry the pollen from flower to flower, and thus, as it were, mix the breed; and this produces the stronger plants which outlive the competition of the rest. The plants, therefore, which are most conspicuous gain an advantage by attracting insects most. That successive generations of flowers should thus show brighter and brighter colors is intelligible. But the beauty of flowers is far more than mere conspicuousness of colors, even though that be the main ingredient. Why should the wonderful grace, and delicacy, and harmony of tint be added? Is all this mere chance? Is all this superfluity pervading the whole world and perpetually supplying to the highest of living creatures, and that, too, in a real proportion to his superiority, the most refined and elevating of pleasures, an accident without any purpose at all? If evolution has produced the world such as we see and all its endless beauty, it has bestowed on our own dwelling-place in lavish abundance and in marvelous perfection that on which men