and therefore, like all other instincts, may be supposed to have a definite meaning, even though, like all other instincts, they may be supposed to have had a natural cause, which both in the individual and in the race requires, as in the natural development of all other instincts, the natural conditions for its occurrence to be supplied.  In a word, if animal instincts generally, like organic structures or inorganic systems, are held to betoken purpose, the religious nature of man would stand out as an anomaly in the general scheme of things if it alone were purposeless.  Hence we have here what seems to me a valid inference, so far as it goes, to the effect that, if the general order of Nature is due to Mind, the character of that Mind is such as it is conceived to be by the most highly developed form of religion.  A conclusion which is no doubt the opposite of that which we reached by contemplating the phenomena of biology; and a contradiction which can only be overcome by supposing, either that Nature conceals God, while man reveals Him, or that Nature reveals God while man misrepresents Him.

There is still one other fact of a very wide and general kind presented by Nature, which, if the order of Nature is taken to be the expression of intelligent purpose, ought in my opinion to be regarded as of great weight in furnishing evidence upon the ethical quality of that purpose.  It is a fact which, so far as I know, has not been considered by any other writer; but from its being one of the most general of all the facts relating to the sentient creation, and from its admitting of no one single exception, I feel that I am not able too strongly to emphasize its argumentative importance.  This fact is, as I have stated it on a former occasion, ’that amid all the millions of mechanisms and instincts in the animal kingdom, there is no one instance of a mechanism or instinct occurring in one species for the exclusive benefit of another species, although there are a few cases in which a mechanism or instinct that is of benefit to its possessor has come also to be utilized by other species.  Now, on the beneficent design theory it is impossible to explain why, when all the mechanisms in the same species are invariably correlated for the benefit of that species, there should never be any such correlation between mechanisms in different species, or why the same remark should apply to instincts.  For how magnificent a display of Divine beneficence would organic nature have afforded, if all, or even some, species had been so inter-related as to minister to each other’s necessities.  Organic species might then have been likened to a countless multitude of voices all singing in one harmonious psalm of praise.  But, as it is, we see no vestige of such co-ordination; every species is for itself, and for itself alone—­an outcome of the always and everywhere fiercely raging struggle for life[29].’