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Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902

"The Humour of Homer and Other Essays"

If each step of the road was designed, the
whole journey was designed, though the particular end was not
designed when the journey was begun. And so is it, according to the
older view of evolution, with the development of those living
organs, or machines, that are born with us, as part of the
perambulating carpenter's chest we call our bodies. The older view
gives us our design, and gives us our evolution too. If it refuses
to see a quasi-anthropomorphic God modelling each species from
without as a potter models clay, it gives us God as vivifying and
indwelling in all His creatures--He in them, and they in Him. If it
refuses to see God outside the universe, it equally refuses to see
any part of the universe as outside God. If it makes the universe
the body of God, it also makes God the soul of the universe. The
question at issue, then, between the Darwinism of Erasmus Darwin and
the neo-Darwinism of his grandson, is not a personal one, nor
anything like a personal one. It not only involves the existence of
evolution, but it affects the view we take of life and things in an
endless variety of most interesting and important ways.


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