molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the
fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say
what will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's
day...

...The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not,
necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more
purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he
assume a primordial molecular arrangement of which all the
phenomena of the universe are the consequences, and the more
completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, who can
always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular
arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the
universe." (The "Genealogy of Animals" ('The Academy,' 1869),
reprinted in 'Critiques and Addresses.')

The acute champion of Teleology, Paley, saw no difficulty in
admitting that the "production of things" may be the result of
trains of mechanical dispositions fixed beforehand by intelligent
appointment and kept in action by a power at the centre ('Natural
Theology,' chapter xxiii.), that is to say, he proleptically
accepted the modern doctrine of Evolution; and his successors
might do well to follow their leader, or at any rate to attend to
his weighty reasonings, before rushing into an antagonism which
has no reasonable foundation.

Having got rid of the belief in chance and the disbelief in
design, as in no sense appurtenances of Evolution, the third
libel upon that doctrine, that it is anti-theistic, might perhaps
be left to shift for itself. But the persistence with which many