Look at it in this way. We know that
many of the permanent facts of the universe are
NOT chance. It is not chance that the heavenly
bodies swing clear of each other, that the seed is
furnished with the apparatus which will drift it to a
congenial soil, that the creature is adapted to its
environment. Show me a whale with its great-coat of fat,
and I want no further proof of design. But logically, as
it seems to me, ALL must be design, or all must be
chance. I do not see how one can slash a line right
across the universe, and say that all to the right of
that is chance, and all to the left is pre-ordained. You
would then have to contend that things which on the face
of them are of the same class, are really divided by an
impassable gulf, and that the lower are regulated, while
the higher are not. You would, for example, be forced to
contend that the number of articulations in a flea's hind
leg has engaged the direct superintendence of the
Creator, while the mischance which killed a thousand
people in a theatre depended upon the dropping of a wax
vesta upon the floor, and was an unforeseen flaw in the
chain of life. This seems to me to be unthinkable.
It is a very superficial argument to say that if
a man holds the views of a fatalist he will therefore
cease to strive, and will wait resignedly for what fate
may send him. The objector forgets that among the other
things fated is that we of northern blood SHOULD
strive and should NOT sit down with folded hands.
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