CHAPTER X.

SPECIAL ADAPTATION IN PROVISIONS OF

INANIMATE NATURE-WATER.

QUITTING the world of living organisms, in which the evidence of intelligent purpose has now been submitted to examination, we will select a striking provision in the inanimate world-an instance of apparent adaptation frequently adduced as an "irresistible proof of Design, unique of its kind, and suggestive of pure benevolence."

All bodies, or nearly all bodies, with increase of temperature increase in bulk, an increase arising from the repulsive power of heat. Almost the only real exception to this general law of expansion with increase, and of contraction with decrease of heat, is that of water. Heated to its boiling-point, 212° F., water expands. Permitted to cool, it will contract until it attains the temperature of 40° F., the point of maximum density. With a further diminution of temperature, water will begin to dilate until it reaches the freezingpoint, 32° F. If cooled below this point without freezing, it will continue to dilate. When converted into ice, the dilatation is very noticeable. The ice swims on the water, the specific gravity of ice being less than the specific gravity of water.

This curious property of water has fascinated the advocate of Final Causes, who has not failed to discover in it a conspicuous indication of Providential purpose, and to exhibit with admiring piety the mode of its operation and its beneficent results. Every winter it is represented; the surface of our rivers and lakes gets covered with a crust of ice. But for this marvellous property of water the ice would sink; the surface of the water thus freshly exposed would freeze in its turn, and a second layer of ice would be formed, to sink like the first. This process would be repeated, until at last, even in a comparatively mild winter, the whole of the water contained in a river or lake would be converted into a solid mass, which the summer sun would be quite unable to dissolve. "Thus the whole earth would become a frozen mass, and all animated beings perish."

"But by the ordinance of Infinite Wisdom it has been ordained that water should expand instead of contracting below the temperature of 40°, and the sheet of ice once formed, being lighter than the adjacent water, floats on its surface instead of sinking, and thus helps to protect the fluid below it from the further influence of cold."1

The significance of this case, as an indication of Design, consists in its unique character. But, unfortunately for the teleologist, the case is not "an isolated one." There is another instance of this ex

1 Natural Philosophy, by Golding Bird, pp. 427-428; and Arnott's Elements of Physics, Part i. pp. 201-202.

ceptional behaviour. The metal bismuth, when in a molten condition, exhibits the same peculiarity of conduct. One special end which this extraordinary property, in the case of water, is supposed to promote is the preservation of our fishes. The moderate temperature required for the finny tribe is secured, says Dr. Arnott, by this important exception to the general law, and, he adds, many regard it with delight as one of the clearest instances of Providential interference.

But, reiterates Dr. Tyndall, it is not the only exception. The molten bismuth acts exactly as the water acts; and in the case of the bismuth there are "no fish to be saved." Once for all, the man of science moralises, "the natural philosopher, as such, has nothing to do with purposes and designs. His vocation is to inquire what nature is, not why she is, though he, like others, and he more than others, must stand at times rapt in wonder at the mystery in which he dwells."

If the animal world of man, bird, beast, or fish is largely benefited by such natural arrangements, we have ample evidence that there are compensatory disadvantages. Water, according to the Greek poet's verdict, is a noble element, but congeal it, and it clothes the mountains with perpetual snow; it forms uninhabitable sheets of glazier ice, it spreads around the Arctic and Antarctic Poles desolate regions, frozen plains, and dangerous floating icebergs.

CHAPTER XI.

THE UNIVERSE AS A WORK OF ART-VOLTAIRE AND PALEY-THE WATCH AND THE WORLD.

THE intelligence which the advocate of Final Causes infers from certain indications in the works of nature is assimilated to the intelligence displayed in the works of man. Of these latter works, the watch has been selected as a representative instance. The startling emphasis of Paley's exposition has conferred on this illustration of design a celebrity which amounts to a kind of logical apotheosis. In the choice, however, of this example, Paley had been preceded by Voltaire. Half a century before the perspicuous Archdeacon expatiated on the evidentiary character of the watch, the always witty and often wise Frenchman had protested: "Je serai toujours persuadé qu'une horloge prouve un horloger et que l'univers prouve un Dieu." Mr. J. S. Mill, who appears to have convinced himself of the existence, not indeed of an Omnipotent Creator, but of a Deity whose power, though inconceivably great, was still limited, was of opinion that Paley put the case too strongly. But before we examine the argument, let us once more repeat it, not in the words of the theologian of last century, but in the language

of a thoughtful and accomplished scholar, also a theologian of our own time.1

"A person walking on the sea-shore finds a watch or other piece of mechanism; he observes its parts and their adaptation to each other; he sees the watch in motion, and comprehends the aim of the whole. In the formation of that senseless material he perceives that which satisfies him that it is the work of intelligence, in other words [has] the marks of design. And looking from the watch to the world around him, he seems to perceive innumerable ends and innumerable actions tending to them in the composition of the world itself and in the structure of plants and animals. Advancing a step further, he asks himself the question why he should not acknowledge the like marks of design in the moral world also; in passions, in actions, and in the great end of life. Of all these there is the same account to be given-'the machine of the world,' of which God is the Maker."

The writer whose presentment of the argument we have followed is not satisfied with it. He appears to regard it as deficient in logical force and "suggestive of an imperfect conception of the Divine Being." It is no proof, but an illustration. What the artist is, the God of nature is not. The world Creator is not a watchmaker. Mr. Mill is equally dissatisfied with it.2 While admitting that there is some force in the argu

1 The Epistles of St. Paul, &c., by Rev. Benjamin Jowett, vol. ii. P. 475.

2 Mill's Three Essays on Religion, p. 168.