mentation, have an intuitive impulse to select the proper materials, and to gather them for the purpose. All creatures, guided sometimes apparently by senses of which we know nothing, are under like impulses to provide effectually for the nourishing of their young; and it is most curious and instructive to observe that the extent of provision which is involved in the process, and in the securing of the result, seems very often to be greater as we descend in the scale of nature, and in proportion as the parents are dissociated from the actual feeding or personal care of their offspring. The mammalia have nothing to provide except food for themselves, and have at first, and for a long time, no duty to perform beyond the discharge of a purely physical function. Birds have more to do in the building of nests, in the choice of sites for these, and after incubation in the choice of food adapted to the period of growth. Insects, much lower in the scale of organisation, and subject to the wonderful processes of metamorphosis, have to provide very often. for a distant future, and for successive stages of development not only in the young but in the nidus which surrounds them. Bees, if we are to believe the evidence of observers, have an intuitive guidance in the selection of food which has the power of producing organic changes in the bodies of the young, even to the determination and development of sex, so that, by the administration. of it, under what may be called artificial conditions, certain selected individuals can be made the mothers and queens of future hives. These are but a few examples of facts of which the whole animal world is full, presenting, as it does, one vast series of adjustments between bodily organs and corresponding instincts. But this adjustment would be useless unless it were part of

another adjustment-between the instincts and perceptions of animals and those facts and forces of surrounding nature which are related to them, and to the whole cycle of things of which they form a part. In those instinctive actions of the lower animals which involve the most distant and the most complicated anticipations, it is certain that the prevision involved is a prevision which is not in the animals themselves. They appear to be, and beyond all doubt really are, guided by some simple appetite, by an odour or a taste, and, in all probability, they have generally as little consciousness of the ends to be subserved as the suckling has of the processes of nutrition. The path along which they walk is a path which they did not engineer. It is a path made for them, and they simply follow it. But the propensities and tastes and feelings which make them follow it, and the rightness of its direction towards the ends to be attained, do constitute an adjustment which may correctly be called mechanical, and is part of a unity which binds together the whole world of life, and the whole inorganic world on which living things depend."-Duke of Argyll on Animal Instinct (Cont. Rev., July 1875).

Instinctive actions will not be shown to be less evidences of Divine purpose by its being proved that intelligence, at least in the higher animals, probably always co-operates in some degree with instinct, or that much which is referred to instinct may be traced either directly to experience or to the hereditary transmission of qualities originally generated by experience.

NOTE XX., page 152.

HISTORY AND DESIGN.

The quotation is from the eighteenth-the concluding -volume of the 'Etudes sur l'Histoire de l'Humanité,' by Professor Laurent of Ghent. I have given some account of his historical doctrine, and endeavoured to defend the theistic inference which he has drawn from his laborious survey of historical facts against the objections of Professor J. B. Meyer, in my Philosophy of History in France and Germany,' pp. 321-330. Bunsen, in the work entitled 'God in History,' seeks to establish the same great thesis.

"History," says Niebuhr, "shows, on a hundred occasions, an intelligence distinct from nature, which conducts and determines those things which may seem to us accidental; and it is not true that history weakens our belief in Divine Providence. History is, of all kinds of knowledge, the one which tends most decidedly to that belief."-Lectures on the History of Rome, vol. ii. p. 59.

Süssmilch's celebrated treatise, 'Göttliche Ordnung in der Veränderung des menschlichen Geschlechtes, &c. ;' M'Cosh's 'Method of the Divine Government;' and Gillett's 'God in Human Thought,' vol. ii. pp. 724-792, may be consulted as regards the evidences of Divine purpose to be found in the constitution of society.

NOTE XXI., page 168.

HISTORY OF THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.

The proof of the Divine existence from the order and adaptations of the universe is known as the physicotheological or teleological argument. It has also been sometimes called the cosmological argument; the very word cosmos, like the Latin mundus and our own universe, implying order. It is so obvious and direct that it has presented itself to the mind from very ancient times. It is implied in such passages of Scripture as Job xxxvii. -xli.; Ps. viii., xix., civ.; Isa. xl. 21-26; Matt. vi. 25-32; Acts xiv. 15-17, xvii. 24-28. Pythagoras laid great stress on the order of the world; and it was mainly on that order that Anaxagoras rested his belief in a Supreme Intelligence. Socrates developed the argument from the adaptation of the parts of the body to one another, and to the external world, with a skill which has never been surpassed. His conversation with Aristodemus, as recorded in the 'Memorabilia' of Xenophon, is of wonderful interest and beauty. Few will follow it even now without feeling constrained to join Aristodemus in acknowledging that "man must be the masterpiece of some great Artificer, carrying along with it infinite marks of the love and favour of Him who thus formed it." Plato presents the argument specially in the 'Timæus,' and his whole philosophy is pervaded by the thought that God is the primary source and perfect ideal of all order and harmony. Aristotle expressly maintains that "the appearance of ends and means is a proof of design," and conceives of God as the ultimate Final Cause. Cicero (De Nat. Deor., ii. c. 37) puts into the

mouth of Balbus an elaborate exposition of the design. argument. The 'De Usu Partium' of Galen is a treatise on natural theology, teaching design in the structure of the body.

This proof is found more frequently than any other in the writings of the fathers and scholastics. "When we see a vessel," says Theophilus, "spreading her canvas, and majestically riding on the billows of the stormy sea, we conclude that she has a pilot on board; thus, from the regular course of the planets, the rich variety of creatures, we infer the existence of the Creator."—Ad Autol., 5. Minucius Felix (c. 18) compares the universe to a house, and Gregory of Nazianzum (Orat., xxviii. 6) compares it to a lyre, in illustrating the same argument. Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, Basil the Greek, Chrysostom, &c., employ it. So do Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, &c.

The opposition of Bacon and Descartes to final causes had no influence in preventing theologians from insisting on their existence. From Boyle and Derham to Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises, an enormous literature appeared in England devoted to this end. Germany, also, in the second half of the eighteenth century, was almost as much overflooded with Lithotheologies, Hydrotheologies, Phytotheologies, Insectotheologies, &c., as it at present is with works on Darwinism. In France, Fénelon in his 'Démonstration de l'Existence de Dieu,' and Bernardin de Saint Pierre in his 'Etudes' and Harmonies de la Nature,' eloquently, although not perhaps very solidly or cautiously, reasoned from the wonders of nature to the wisdom of God.

Hume and Kant, by their criticisms of the design argument, rendered to it the great service of directing