Otherwise we must conclude that the Being without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, the Being who never puts an insect into the air or a polyp into the water without providing it with some appropriate food, so that it may live and grow, has left the vast majority of his human children, made with religious appetences of conscience, reverence, hope, without a corresponding nutriment of truth.

This view tends to atheism; for if the presence of adaptation everywhere is the legitimate proof of creative design, the absence of adaptation in so important a sphere tends, so far, to set aside that proof.
The view which we are opposing contradicts that law of progress which alone gives meaning and unity to history.

Instead of progress, it teaches degeneracy and failure.

But elsewhere we see progress, not recession.
Geology shows us higher forms of life succeeding to the lower.

Botany exhibits the lichens and mosses preparing a soil for more complex forms of vegetation.