continue, runs counter to such analogies as we have to guide us, and leads to a conclusion which few men ever rested in.  It need not much trouble us that we are incapable of drawing clear lines of demarkation between mere utilities, contingent adaptations, and designed contrivances in Nature; for we are in much the same condition as respects human affairs and those of lower animals.  What results are comprehended in a plan, and what are incidental, is often more than we can readily determine in matters open to observation.  And in plans executed mediately or indirectly, and for ends comprehensive and far-reaching, many purposed steps must appear to us incidental or meaningless.  But the higher the intelligence, the more fully will the incidents enter into the plan, and the more universal and interconnected may the ends be.  Trite as the remark is, it would seem still needful to insist that the failure of a finite being to compass the designs of an infinite mind should not invalidate its conclusions respecting proximate ends which he can understand.  It is just as in physical science, where, as our knowledge and grasp increase, and happy discoveries are made, wider generalizations are formed, which commonly comprehend, rather than destroy, the earlier and partial ones.  So, too, the “sterility” of the old doctrine of final causes in science, and the presumptuous uses made of them, when it was supposed that every adapted arrangement or structure existed for this or that direct and special end, and for no other, can hardly be pressed to the conclusion that there are no final causes, i.e., ultimate reasons of things.[XIII-4] Design in Nature is distinguished from that in human affairs—­as it fittingly should be—­by all comprehensiveness and system.  Its theological synonym is Providence.  Its application in particular is surrounded by similar insoluble difficulties; nevertheless, both are bound up with theism.

Probably few at the present day will maintain that Darwinian evolution is incompatible with the principle of design; but some insist that the theory can dispense with, and in fact supersedes, this principle.

The Westminster Reviewer cleverly expounds how it does so.  The exposition is too long to quote, and an abstract is unnecessary, for the argument adverse to design is, as usual, a mere summation or illustration of the facts and assumptions of the hypothesis itself, by us freely admitted.  Simplest forms began; variations occurred among them; under the competition consequent upon the arithmetical or geometrical progression in numbers, only the fittest for the conditions survive and propagate, vary further, and are similarly selected; and so on.