I know that contradiction in terms lurks within much that I have said, but the texture of the world is a warp and woof of contradiction in terms; of continuity in discontinuity, and discontinuity in continuity; of unity in diversity, and of diversity in unity. As in the development of a fugue, where, when the subject and counter subject have been enounced, there must henceforth be nothing new, and yet all must be new, so throughout organic life—which is as a fugue developed to great length from a very simple subject—everything is linked on to and grows out of that which comes next to it in order—errors and omissions excepted. It crosses and thwarts what comes next to it with difference that involves resemblance, and resemblance that involves difference, and there is no juxtaposition of things that differ too widely by omission of necessary links, or too sudden departure from recognised methods of procedure.
To conclude; bodily form may be almost regarded as idea and memory in a solidified state—as an accumulation of things each one of them so tenuous as to be practically without material substance. It is as a million pounds formed by accumulated millionths of farthings; more compendiously it arises normally from, and through, action. Action arises normally from, and through, opinion. Opinion, from, and through, hypothesis. “Hypothesis,” as the derivation of the word itself shows, is singularly near akin to “underlying, and only in part knowable, substratum;” and what is this but “God” translated from the language of Moses into that of Mr. Herbert Spencer? The conception of God is like nature—it returns to us in another shape, no matter how often we may expel it. Vulgarised as it has been by Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and others who shall be nameless, it has been like every other _corruptio optimi—pessimum_: used as a hieroglyph by the help of which we may better acknowledge the height and depth of our own ignorance, and at the same time express our sense that there is an unseen world with which we in some mysterious way come into contact, though the writs of our thoughts do not run within it—used in this way, the idea and the word have been found enduringly convenient. The theory that luck is the main means of organic modification is the most absolute denial of God which it is possible for the human mind to conceive—while the view that God is in all His creatures, He in them and they in Him, is only expressed in other words by declaring that the main means of organic modification is, not luck, but cunning.