Finally, we must have evolution; consent is too spontaneous, instinctive, and universal among those most able to form an opinion, to admit of further doubt about this.  We must also have mind and design.  The attempt to eliminate intelligence from among the main agencies of the universe has broken down too signally to be again ventured upon—­not until the recent rout has been forgotten.  Nevertheless the old, far-foreseeing Deus ex machina design as from a point outside the universe, which indeed it directs, but of which it is no part, is negatived by the facts of organism.  What, then, remains, but the view that I have again in this book endeavoured to uphold—­I mean, the supposition that the mind or cunning of which we see such abundant evidence all round us, is, like the kingdom of heaven, within us, and within all things at all times everywhere?  There is design, or cunning, but it is a cunning not despotically fashioning us from without as a potter fashions his clay, but inhering democratically within the body which is its highest outcome, as life inheres within an animal or plant.

All animals and plants are corporations, or forms of democracy, and may be studied by the light of these, as democracies, not infrequently, by that of animals and plants.  The solution of the difficult problem of reflex action, for example, is thus facilitated, by supposing it to be departmental in character; that is to say, by supposing it to be action of which the department that attends to it is alone cognisant, and which is not referred to the central government so long as things go normally.  As long, therefore, as this is the case, the central government is unconscious of what is going on, but its being thus unconscious is no argument that the department is unconscious also.

I know that contradiction in terms lurks within much that I have said, but the texture of the world is a warp and woof of contradiction in terms; of continuity in discontinuity, and discontinuity in continuity; of unity in diversity, and of diversity in unity.  As in the development of a fugue, where, when the subject and counter subject have been enounced, there must henceforth be nothing new, and yet all must be new, so throughout organic life—­ which is as a fugue developed to great length from a very simple subject—­everything is linked on to and grows out of that which comes next to it in order—­errors and omissions excepted.  It crosses and thwarts what comes next to it with difference that involves resemblance, and resemblance that involves difference, and there is no juxtaposition of things that differ too widely by omission of necessary links, or too sudden departure from recognised methods of procedure.