Wherefore, if we believe that the species were
designed, and that natural propagation was designed, how can we say
that the actual varieties of the species were not equally designed?
Have we not similar grounds for inferring design in the supposed
varieties of a species, that we have in the case of the supposed
species of a genus? When a naturalist comes to regard as three
closely-related species what he before took to be so many varieties of
one species, how has he thereby strengthened our conviction that the
three forms were designed to have the differences which they actually
exhibit? Wherefore, so long as gradated, orderly, and adapted forms in
Nature argue design, and at least while the physical cause of
variation is utterly unknown and mysterious, we should advise Mr.
Darwin to assume, in the philosophy of his hypothesis, that variation
has been led along certain beneficial lines. Streams flowing over a
sloping plain by gravitation (here the counterpart of natural
selection) may have worn their actual channels as they flowed; yet
their particular courses may have been assigned; and where we see them
forming definite and useful lines of irrigation, after a manner
unaccountable on the laws of gravitation and dynamics, we should
believe that the distribution was designed.
To insist, therefore, that the new hypothesis of the derivative origin
of the actual species is incompatible with final causes and design is
to take a position which we must consider philosophically untenable.
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