Picture - Cosmic Polymath

364 DESIGN IN NATURE
instance conditioned. The perfected plant and animal exist potentially in the male and female elements, the con-
iunction of which produces the new being. There is no such thing as chance in the development of any part of a
plant or animal. The end is seen from the beginning, and the atoms, molecules, and soft and hard parts of every
organism arrange themselves according to law and order, and according to a fixed plan which is never departed from.
Growth cannot, under natural conditions, act by chance or in a haphazard way. Plants and animals m growing
follow the lead of their progenitors. Some grow in straight hues and radiate like certain crystals ; others grow
in curves ; others in spirals. As a rule, plants and animals are symmetrical : symmetry of itself impUes design.
But (and this is the remarkable thing) the symmetrical plants and animals repeat and slavishly copy the general
form and peculiarities of their parents.
§ 69. Design as seen in the Gradation of Plants and Animals, and in the Arrangements for Walking,
Swimming, and Flying.
Another subject having an obvious bearing on the question of evolution considered from the developmental
and morphological point of view is the appearance on the earth, according to the geological record, of the more
simple before the more complex plants and animals. While fully recognising the gradual differentiation which
characterises the development of man and the higher animals in utero, and the existence of the simple animals at
a period anterior to the advent of complex ones, I cannot admit that the higher forms are the Uneal descendants
of the lower forms in the evolutionary sense. In other words, I am not disposed to regard man as the product of
a mollusc even if unlimited modification and unlimited time be granted. Siich an assumption (and evolution must
always remain an assumption) is, it appears to me, derogatory to the stupendous powers inhering in the Omnipresent
Framer and Upholder of the universe. Evolution imphes an ascent from a lower to a higher type, from
an imperfect to a more perfect form, by a continuous process of development. In nature, however, there is not a
perfectly uniform advance. On the contrary there is, at times, a deterioration ; the plants and animals retrograding.
This is the case in many parasites. But apart from advance and retrogression, it cannot for a moment be doubted
that the Great First Cause would have had no more difficulty in creating a highly complex organism than a simple
one. Evohition is not necessarily a part of the scheme of creation as we know it. All things are possible with
the great " I am." Time, space, and matter are equally at His disposal. He commits no mistakes. The Ancient
of Days has nothing to learn. His works were as perfect at the dawn of creation as they are now, and no good
reason can be assigned why the higher animals, and even man, should not have appeared on the earth in as perfect
a condition as we now behold them.
The existence of an Omnipresent Deity is, however, not excluded even by evolution. Nothing can be evolved
which is not previously involved, so that evolution in its widest and most philosophic sense requires a First Cause
and a pre-existing state of things. Further, the great Designer could with equal facility have furnished the world
with its existing and pre-existing races of plants and animals by a series of separate creations according to types,
or He could have impressed upon living matter (plant and animal) at the outset those tendencies which would
inevitably result in a state of things identical with that which exists now and has existed from all time. In either
case creation would be a progressive work. The world and all it contains is possible on either supposition.
The creation, at different periods, of advancing types, and a continuous evolution from lower to higher forms
may both be explained by design and a pre-arranged plan. In either case a common idea runs through the whole.
The plan adopted in the construction of plants does not essentially differ from that adopted in the construc-
tion of animals, and both more or less closely resemble in their external configuration and general arrangements
similar plans met with in the physical universe and in the mineral Idngdom. The plans referred to provide the
original stellar, dendritic, spiral, circular, and other forms with which botanists, zoologists, anatomists, and
physiologists are famihar. Nor will this occasion surprise when it is remembered that plants and animals are the
direct product of the mineral kingdom, plus life ; the elements which form the bodies of plants and animals being
in every instance supplied by the physical universe. Further, the same elements, to a large extent, enter into the
bodies of plants and animals alike. If, however, plants and animals are the offspring, so to speak, of the physical
universe, it is plain that the organic and inorganic kingdoms must have much in common, and be amenable to the
same laws, and so it is in reality. All Hving things, plants and animals aUke, are of the earth earthy, in the sense
that the elements which form their bodies come from, and ultimately return to, the physical universe. In this is
to be found an explanation of the fact, that crystals and dendrites resemble each other, that plants resemble crystals
and dendrites, and that animals resemble plants, crystals, and dendrites respectively.
The symmetry and the repetition of parts which characterise crystals and dendrites reappear in both the vegetable
and animal kingdoms. This was to be expected, as the articulata foreshadow the vertebrata, and even the highest