Picture - Cosmic Polymath

DIVISION OF LABOUR IN RELATION TO DESIGN 357
germs, seeds, and eggs, and of original capacity for development in specific directions in every part of every plant
and animal existing on the earth.
What is true of the several systems of animals is also true of their sense organs. These are all formed before
they are called upon to act. The eye is developed before it is exposed to the light ; the ear before it is acted upon
by a sounding body ; the nostrils before they come into contact with smelling particles ; the mouth before it is
supphed with sapid substances (food) ; and the skin before it receives impacts from the outer world. The young
animal, if deprived of its sense organs, would, in a great measure, be helpless and very inadequately equipped to cope
with the exigencies of life. The sense organs are prepared by nature in advance, and for the express purpose of
making the animal superior to its surroundings and master of the situation. The sense organs grow and develop
because of powers inhering in the impregnated ovum. They are not caused by externahties : Hght does not form
the eye ; sound the ear ; odoriferous particles the nose ; sapid substances the mouth ; and the outer world the
skin. Neither are the sense organs the product of voluntary effort on the part of the sentient animals themselves.
The facts revealed by development unequivocally point to a First Cause and design, and it is mere perversion
to attribute any one of them to chance. It is also, in my opinion, impossible to account for them by " natural
selection " and " evolution," if by this is meant the manufacture of an animal out of a plant or of the several races
of animals out of each other. Such a process must be inaugurated, regulated, and supervised by an omnipresent,
intelhgent Agent. These statements are not met by saying that rudimentary forms develop by accident or by effort,
and by increments throughout the ages. There is no proof of this. The several types of animals are provided
from the first with the organs (sense and otherwise) which adapt them to their surroundings and their peculiar
modes of life. That the sense and other organs of the higher animals are not evolved from the rudimentary sense
and other organs of the lower ones is evident from this, that many of the lower forms have certain of their organs
more highly developed than are the corresponding organs of the higher animals.
The sense organs are as truly original endowments as the organs of locomotion, whether these consist of suckers,
cilia, feet, legs, hands, arms, fins, flippers, propelling tails, or wings. To say that rudimentary animals develop by
accident or by volimtary effort during untold ages the organs on which their very existence depends is to reverse
the order of nature. Such belief takes for granted a period of probation for the development of the organs during
which the animals would be helpless, and, for the most part, starve. Animals live because the sense organs and
organs of locomotion enable them to detect and to secure food. Where would a fish be as regards its food supply
if deprived of its eyes and of its tail and fins, or a bird if deprived of its keen sight, wings, and legs, or a mammal
if deprived of its eyes, ears, feet, legs, hands, and arms 1
All animals move freely about in search of food, and their sense organs and organs of locomotion are, in every
instance, adapted to their pecuhar mode of life.^
The electric organ of the electric fish affords a good example of a large special structure which, strictly speak-
ing, is not necessary to the fish as such. It is an original endowment ; its function being one of defence and attack.
It cannot be accounted for either by " natural selection " or " evolution." The development of such a large heavy
structure by increments extending over long intervals and before it was of use would have been an incubus and
burden to the fish which it could scarcely have survived. Its development pari passu with the other parts of the
fish entails no burden. The structure and function keep abreast of each other, and are mutually explanatory.
The sense and travelling organs of animals are, in the majority of cases, due to infoldings of the sldn and out-
growths from the body, but the essentials of the infoldings and outgrowths are in the body itself. It is not con-
ceivable that a fish could voluntarily develop eyes and a swimming tail and fins at discretion, or a bird and bat their
eyes, ears, and highly complex and wonderfully differentiated wings, or a quadruped its five senses and beautifully
devised, cunningly constructed legs, joints, and feet. Still less is it conceivable that these remarkable structures
could be developed by accident from extraneous matter, that is, from the substances with which they come in con-
tact, or the media on which they act. Animals cannot develop their sense and travelhng organs by efforts of will,
however long continued ; neither can they be developed accidentally by environment. The only possible explana-
tion is that they are original creations. As a matter of fact, the sense and travelhng organs are necessary to the
continuation of life, in the same way that the molecules, cells, germs, seeds, and eggs are necessary to the beginnings
of life. The sense organs and organs of locomotion are original endowments, specially provided to enable animals
to maintain their places in nature.
It is a remarkable fact that the several orders of animals, and each order separately, conform as regards their
travelling organs to the requirements of their physical surroundings. Thus the animals which confine their move-
ments mainly to the land are distinguished by small feet ; those which swim have expanded feet, flippers, fins, or
' In the case of plants and the more stationary animals the food either invests them or is brought to them by prc-determiued arrangements.
The jilant and stationary animal are jirovided for even in the absence of a locomotory apparatus.