Our problem stands somewhat as follows: We have given protoplasm, a strange substance of marvellous capacities, which we call functions, and possessing a power of developing into beings of ever higher grades of organization. Environment proves to be a combination of forces working for the higher development of functions in a certain orderly sequence. And every lower function in the ascending line demands the development of the next higher. Digestion demands muscle, and muscle nerve, and nerve brain. We shall soon see that mammalian structure had to culminate in the family, and the family demands unselfishness and obedience. Environment therefore proves from the beginning to have been unceasingly working for the highest end; never, even temporarily, merely for the lower. For we have seen that environment works most unsparingly against those who, having taken certain of the steps in the ascending path, fail to continue therein.
But in order to attain this highest end for which it has always been working, an immense number of subsidiary ends have had to be attained. These are not merely digestion and brain, but a host of others: _e.g._, in vertebrates, vertebræ of the right substance, position, form, arrangement, and union. And in the ascending line, for whose highest forms it has continually worked, the difficulties of attaining each subsidiary end have been successively solved, and through this host of subsidiary ends the animal kingdom has advanced straight to its goal of intelligence and righteousness. Now the whole process is a grand argument for design. But I would not emphasize the process so much as the end attained. This especially, when attained by conformity to that environment, demands more than mere mindless atoms in or behind that environment. Can we call the ultimate power which makes for righteousness "it?" Can we call it less than "Him, in whom we live and move and have our being?"
The history of life is a grand drama. "Paradise Lost" and Shakespeare's plays are but fragments of it. But without intelligence they could never have been composed; without a choice of means and ends they could never have been placed upon the stage. Does the plot of this grander drama of evolution demand no intelligence in its ultimate cause and producer? Is the succession of steps, each succeeding the other in such order as to lead to truth and right and continual progress toward a spiritual goal, is this plot possible without a great composer who has seen the end from the beginning? Could it ever have been executed upon the stage of the world, and perhaps of the universe, without an executing will?