implication of design throughout the whole. On the other hand, chance
carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a
consistent system; but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or
beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all
computation. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The
alternative is a designed Cosmos.

It is very easy to assume, that, because events in Nature are in one
sense accidental, and the operative forces which bring them to pass
are themselves blind and unintelligent, (all forces are,) therefore
they are undirected, or that he who describes these events as the
results of such forces thereby assumes that they are undirected. This
is the assumption of the Boston reviewers, and of Mr. Agassiz, who
insists that the only alternative to the doctrine, that all organized
beings were supernaturally created as they are, is, that they have
arisen _spontaneously_ through the _omnipotence of matter_.[4]

As to all this, nothing is easier than to bring out in the conclusion
what you introduce in the premises. If you import atheism into your
conception of variation and natural selection, you can readily exhibit
it in the result. If you do not put it in, perhaps there need be none
to come out. While the mechanician is considering a steamboat or
locomotive engine as a material organism, and contemplating the fuel,
water, and steam, the source of the mechanical forces and how they
operate, he may not have occasion to mention the engineer. But, the
orderly and special results accomplished, the _why_ the movement is in
this or that particular direction, etc., are inexplicable without him.
If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have
occurred and the results we behold were undirected and undesigned, or
if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers