PDF - Wallace Online

212 NATURAL SELECTION ixIf it is said, "those changes are automatic, and are set inmotion by external causes," then one essential part of ourconsciousness, a certain amount of freedom in willing, isannihilated ;and it is inconceivable how or why there shouldhave arisen any consciousness or any apparent will, in suchpurely automatic organisms. If this were so, our apparentWILL would be a delusion, and Professor Huxley's belief" that our volition counts for something as a condition of thecourse of events," would be fallacious, since our volition wouldthen be but one link in the chain of events, counting forneither more nor less than any other link whatever.If, therefore, we have traced one force, however minute,to an origin in our own WILL, while we have no knowledge ofany other primary cause of force, it does not seem an improbableconclusion that all force may be will-force ;and thus,that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actuallyis, the WILL of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence.It has been often said that the true poet is a seer ;and in the noble verse of an American poetess we find expressedwhat may prove to be the highest fact of science, thenoblest truth of philosophy :God of the Granite and the Rose !Soul of the Sparrow and the Bee !The mighty tide of Being flowsThrough countless channels, Lord, from Thee.It leaps to life in grass and flowers,Through every grade of being runs,While from Creation's radiant towersIts glory flames in Stars and Suns.ConclusionThese speculations are usually held to be far beyond thebounds of science ;but they appear to me to be more legitimatedeductions from the facts of science than those whichconsist in reducing the whole universe, not merely to matter,but to matter conceived and defined so as to be philosophicallyinconceivable. It is surely a great step in advance, to getrid of the notion that matter is a thing of itself, which canexist per se, and must have been eternal, since it is supposedto be indestructible and uncreated, that force, or the forces