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196 DESIGN IN NATURE<br />
is conceded, but the advanced mechanical school attributes it to the atoms and not to the Deity Who made, energises,<br />
and controls the atoms. The school in question transfers to matter the intelUgence, or its equivalent, hitherto<br />
attributed to the Deity. According to it there is no duality in nature ; no<br />
Creator and created ; no tangible sub-<br />
stance and spirit ; no free-will ; no life after death ; no immortality. As there is no getting away from adapta-<br />
tion, which is another word for design, those who deny the existence of a Maker and Ruler of the universe are forced<br />
to ascribe a self-forming, and self-moving, and adaptive power to everything the universe contains. They, how-<br />
ever (and let this be noted), fail to account for the matter, force, hfe, and design which they encounter all along<br />
the line of their investigations. They assume all these things, and say that matter and force are eternal and<br />
indestructible, that hfe is the outcome of matter, and that design is mere adaptation. What cannot be proved<br />
they boldly take for granted. They ridicule faith in the unseen in one direction, and extol it in another direction<br />
when it suits their purpose.<br />
§ 33. Haeckel's Belief in the Omnipotence of Matter.<br />
Of all those who have written on the potency of matter in its relation to Hfe, force, and cognate subjects,<br />
Professor Ernst Haeckel is entitled to take a foremost place. He may be considered the head of the material or<br />
matter " cult." I do not agree with his views, but he is entitled to an unbiassed hearing, and I propose to give<br />
a somewhat extended account of his conclusions—as far as possible in his own words—in order that the reader<br />
may be supplied with the facts necessary to form an independent judgment. Haeckel's peculiar tenets are well<br />
known on the continent of Europe, but have not been much studied at home ; a circumstance which makes it<br />
imperative to consider them somewhat fully in this portion of the work.<br />
Professor Haeckel advocates spontaneous generation, evolution, natural selection, heredity, descent, &c., in<br />
their widest sense. He completely ignores a First Cause and design, and assigns the universe and all it contains<br />
to accident and blind chance. He preaches matter pure and simple, and excludes everything which does not<br />
centre in matter, and which cannot be explained by it. He regards the highest animals, including the monkeys<br />
and man, as the terminal links of one long, unbroken, continuous chain, which extends itself through time and space,<br />
beginning with the simplest conceivable hving forms (plant and animal), and culminating in the most complex, as<br />
represented by man. With him substance is everything, and there is only one living substance which has the power<br />
of modifying and adapting itself indefinitely at the bidding of environment, extraneous stimulation, natural selec-<br />
tion, accident and other inadequate causes ; the simplest plants and animals being, in every instance, the parents<br />
or progenitors of the more complex, up to man himself.<br />
In his opinion the most perfect and higher forms are manufactured by endless trifling modifications in the<br />
fulness of time out of the rudimentary and lower forms, in one continuous, unbroken series, as apart from a First<br />
Cause, design, and types.<br />
The idea of separate creations of types in plants and animals is set aside. With him every living thing runs<br />
into every other living thing, from the monad to the mollusc, and from the mollusc to the man. All hnes of<br />
demarcation, all boundaries as between hving things, are swept away, and one vast, interminable, inextricable tangle<br />
substituted. The principle of a designed, ascending series of plant and animal organisms, with variations within<br />
limits, is tabooed. There is no halting-place, no room or opportunity for definitions, classification, or orderly<br />
arrangement. No barriers of infertility are recognised.<br />
If, as Professor Haeckel and Mr. Darwin say, species are the result of modification, and are mutable up to<br />
a point, then species, according to their own showing, are illusory, inasmuch as fixity cannot logically result from<br />
continuous modification, however gradual and however prolonged. A species which is produced by a series of<br />
changes cannot consistently become stable or permanent at any period of its history. The reader has to<br />
decide as between a chaos of accidental modifications and adaptations in plants and animals extending over<br />
illimitable periods, and a designed whole in which plants and animals have, from the first, or at different periods,<br />
their limits or boundaries determined. In both cases there is continuity, but in the one the continuity is due to<br />
the endless and accidental modification of one substance as apart from a First Cause, design, and life, while in<br />
the other the continuity is due to the intelhgent modification of various substances with life and a First Cause as<br />
dominant factors.<br />
In the former instance, development and heredity apply to the whole organic kingdom, there being no<br />
boundaries or natural divisions as between the several plants and animals ; in the latter i-nstance, they apply to<br />
groups and types of plants and animals where divisions can be recognised and an orderly arrangement more or<br />
less satisfactorily estabhshed. In the one case, the ascending series consists, so to speak, of one long continuous<br />
flight of steps ; in the other of several flights of steps with halting places between ; that is, points of departure
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