"In Canada the colours of the autumn forest are notorious. Even on cloudy days the hue of the foliage is of so intense a yellow that the light thrown from the trees creates the impression of bright sunshine, each leaf presents a point of sparkling gold. But the colours of the leafy landscape change and intermingle from day to day, until pink, lilac, vermilion, purple, deep indigo and brown, present a combination of beauty that must be seen to be realized; for no artist has yet been able to represent, nor can the imagination picture to itself, the gorgeous spectacle.[[24]]"
Have we not here an exhibition which cannot be accounted for on any principle of natural utility?
(4) The fourth point, as previously stated, will be best treated by stating beforehand what is the conclusion come to, and then justifying it. My suggestion is that if we suppose a continuous evolution without a series of designs prescribed before life began to develop, and without any external guidance, then we are lost in difficulties. We cannot account for why variation should set in in the very different ways it does, nor why such a vast variety of divergent results should be produced. We cannot account for the tendency to reversion to a previous type, when artificial or accidental variation is not continually maintained,[[25]] nor for the sterility of hybrids; nor, above all, for evolution performing such freaks (if I may so say) as the origination of our small finches and the tropical humming-birds from earlier vertebrates through the Mesozoic reptiles, the pterodactyles, Odontornithes and subsequent forms. Supposing that the Almighty Designer created a complete cosmos of (1) the starry heavens and the planetary system, (2) then a scheme whereby earth and water were to be duly distributed over our planet; (3) established the relations by which the external heavenly bodies were to regulate our seasons, tides, and times (as we know they do). (4) Suppose, further, that the Designer did not make "out of nothing" the series of finally developed animals as we now have them, but "made the animals make themselves"—that is to say, created the type, the ideal form, and adapted the laws and forces which constitute environment, so that development of form should go on regularly towards the appointed end, but in separate and appropriate channels, each terminating when its object had been attained. Suppose these conditions (which, as we shall afterwards see, are what Revelation, fairly interpreted, declares) to exist; all the known facts, and also the fairly certain inferences of Evolution, are then accounted for.
We have neither by revelation nor physical discovery an exact scheme of all the types, nor which of the elementary forms were destined to remain unchanged throughout. But some scheme of created types we surely have. Whether what we call species[[26]] are all types or not, we cannot say; probably not. All we can be sure of is that there are definite lines somewhere. We see the sterility of some hybrids, for instance, which would seem to indicate that while some forms can conjugate and their offspring remain fertile, others (approaching, as it were, the verge of separation) give rise to hybrids which are or not absolutely sterile,[[27]] according as they approach, or are more remote from, the designed barrier-line. And at that point the separation is insuperable. Certain forms of Carnivora and Ungulata seem to be for ever apart—not only the two great orders, but even subdivisions within them. Reptiles and birds, on the other hand, unlike as they at first sight seem, have no type line drawn to separate them; that, at least, is one of the more recent conclusions of biological science.
In other cases where variation has occurred, and especially when it is artificially—i.e., by the aid of selective breeding—caused or favoured, there is the constant tendency to revert, which is at once intelligible if there is a type scheme to be maintained.
If there were a series of created types, there may naturally have been what I may call sub-types; which would be certain well-marked stages on the way to the final form. Such sub-type forms would naturally occur at different ages, and being marked would show their place in the scale, and their connection with the ultimate perfect form. Such a possibility would exactly account for the series of Eohippus, Hipparion, and horse, which we have already instanced; and still more so for the rise and disappearance of the great Mesozoic Saurians when their object was fulfilled. Deny guidance and type, and everything becomes confused. Why should variation take certain directions? how comes it that natural forces and conditions of life so occur and co-operate as to produce the variety of changes needed?
And there is also one other general objection which I desire to state.
Why should development have gone in different directions towards the same object? I grant that different circumstances would produce different changes, but not for the same purpose. For example take eye-sight. The world shows several types of eye. The insect eye quite unlike any other; the crustacean eye also distinct; and birds, fishes, and animals having an eye which is generally similar and is somewhat imitated by the eye of the cuttle fish (which is not a fish, but a cephalopod).
Again, granted that poison is a useful defence to creatures: how is it given so differently?—to a serpent in the tooth; to a bee or a scorpion in the tail; to a spider in a specially adapted antenna, and to the centipede in a pair of modified legs on the thorax.
One would have supposed that natural causes tending to produce poison weapons would have all gone on the same lines. And, curiously, in some few cases, we have a sameness of line. About twelve species—all fish—have an electric apparatus, familiar to most of us in the flat sea-fish called Torpedo and in the fresh-water eel called Gymnotus. The only answer the anti-creationist can give to this dissimilarity of development is that there are many vacant places in the polity of nature, and that development takes place in that direction which fits the creature to occupy a vacant place, and is, therefore, diverse.