For we have seen
that environment works most unsparingly against those who, having
taken certain of the steps in the ascending path, fail to continue
therein.
But in order to attain this highest end for which it has always been
working, an immense number of subsidiary ends have had to be
attained. These are not merely digestion and brain, but a host of
others: _e.g._, in vertebrates, vertebrae of the right substance,
position, form, arrangement, and union. And in the ascending line,
for whose highest forms it has continually worked, the difficulties
of attaining each subsidiary end have been successively solved, and
through this host of subsidiary ends the animal kingdom has advanced
straight to its goal of intelligence and righteousness. Now the
whole process is a grand argument for design. But I would not
emphasize the process so much as the end attained. This especially,
when attained by conformity to that environment, demands more than
mere mindless atoms in or behind that environment. Can we call the
ultimate power which makes for righteousness "it?" Can we call it
less than "Him, in whom we live and move and have our being?"
The history of life is a grand drama. "Paradise Lost" and
Shakespeare's plays are but fragments of it. But without
intelligence they could never have been composed; without a choice
of means and ends they could never have been placed upon the stage.
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