penter, but a creator—κτιστης ού τεχνίτης. In the beginning he created all things and then impressed on them the power of development, of evolving into the innumerable species we now behold. All things existed in idea before they existed in fact, and the design and purpose which are revealed in animate and inanimate Nature are the witnesses of the foresight and providence of creative wisdom. Paley and the older school of teleologists pointed to a watch as a beautiful and convincing evidence of design. To the modern teleologist, studying the universe in the light of evolution, it is not simply a watch that presents itself as a witness of purpose running through all things created, from atom to star, but it is a watch which is competent to produce other and better watches. God makes things, it is true, but he makes them by making them make themselves. Similarly, we read purpose in Nature not only by limiting our view to the present and to simple individuals, but also, and more particularly, by studying the species and the class to which individuals belong, in the light of their past history or in the changes they may undergo in the future by reason of varied conditions or continued development. In the words of Mr. Aubrey L. Moore: "If ontogeny, the history of the individual, gives us no answer, we fall back on phylogeny, the history of the race. Organs, which on the old theory of special creations were useless and meaningless, are now seen to have their explanation in the past or in the future, according as they are rudimentary or nascent. There is nothing useless, nothing meaningless in Nature, nothing due to caprice or chance, nothing irrational or without a cause, nothing outside the reign of law. This belief in the universality of the reign of law is the scientific analogue of the Christian's belief in Providence."[1]
- ↑ Science and the Faith, p. 197.
