Paley’s weakest place, as already implied, is in the matter of rudimentary organs; the almost universal presence in the higher organisms of useless, and sometimes even troublesome, organs is fatal to the kind of design he is trying to uphold; granted that there is design, still it cannot be so final and far-foreseeing as he wishes to make it out.  Mr. Darwin’s weak place, on the other hand, lies, firstly, in the supposition that because rudimentary organs imply no purpose now, they could never in time past have done so—­that because they had clearly not been designed with an eye to all circumstances and all time, they never, therefore, could have been designed with an eye to any time or any circumstances; and, secondly, in maintaining that “accidental,” “fortuitous,” “spontaneous” variations could be accumulated at all except under conditions that have never been fulfilled yet, and never will be; in other words, his weak place lay in the contention (for it comes to this) that there can be sustained accumulation of bodily wealth, more than of wealth of any other kind, unless sustained experience, watchfulness, and good sense preside over the accumulation.  In “Life and Habit,” following Mr. Mivart, and, as I now find, Mr. Herbert Spencer, I showed (pp. 279-281) how impossible it was for variations to accumulate unless they were for the most part underlain by a sustained general principle; but this subject will be touched upon more fully later on.

The accumulation of accidental variations which owed nothing to mind either in their inception, or their accumulation, the pitchforking, in fact, of mind out of the universe, or at any rate its exclusion from all share worth talking about in the process of organic development, this was the pill Mr. Darwin had given us to swallow; but so thickly had he gilded it with descent with modification, that we did as we were told, swallowed it without a murmur, were lavish in our expressions of gratitude, and, for some twenty years or so, through the mouths of our leading biologists, ordered design peremptorily out of court, if she so much as dared to show herself.  Indeed, we have even given life pensions to some of the most notable of these biologists, I suppose in order to reward them for having hoodwinked us so much to our satisfaction.

Happily the old saying, Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret, still holds true, and the reaction that has been gaining force for some time will doubtless ere long brush aside the cobwebs with which those who have a vested interest in Mr. Darwin’s reputation as a philosopher still try to fog our outlook.  Professor Mivart was, as I have said, among the first to awaken us to Mr. Darwin’s denial of design, and to the absurdity involved therein.  He well showed how incredible Mr Darwin’s system was found to be, as soon as it was fully realised, but there he rather left us.  He seemed to say that we must have our descent and our design too, but he