, as every newly evolved law came into
existence it must have been, as it were, grafted on the stock of all
pre-existing natural laws, and so would not enter the cosmic system as an
element of confusion, but rather as an element of further progress. For
instance, when, with the origin of organic nature, the law of natural
selection entered upon the cosmos, it was grafted upon the pre-existing
stock of other natural laws, and so combined within them in unity. And a
little thought will show that it was impossible that it should do
otherwise; for it was impossible that natural selection could ever produce
organisms which would ever be able by their existence to conflict with the
pre-existing system of astronomic or geologic laws; seeing that organisms,
being a product of later evolution than these laws, would either have to be
adapted to them or perish. And hence the new law of natural selection,
which consists in so adapting organisms to the pre-existing laws that they
must either conform to them or die. Now, I have chosen the case of natural
selection because, as alluded to in the text, it is the law of all others
which is the most conspicuously effective in producing the harmonious
complexity of nature. But the same kind of considerations may be seen to
apply to most of the other general laws with which we are acquainted,
particularly if we bear in mind that the general outcome of their united
action as we observe it--the cosmic harmony on which so much stress is
laid--is not _perfectly_ harmonious.
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