This view has been well advocated by Mr.Joseph John Murphy, in his recent work so often here referred to.
{238} This intelligence, however, is evidently not altogether such as ours, or else has other ends in view than those most obvious to us.

For the end is often attained in singularly roundabout ways, or with a prodigality of means which seems out of all proportion with the result: not with the simple action directed to one end which generally marks human activity.
Organic nature then speaks clearly to many minds of the action of an intelligence resulting, on the whole and in the main, in order, harmony, and beauty, yet of an intelligence the ways of which are not such as ours.
This view of evolution harmonizes well with Theistic conceptions; not, of course, that this harmony is brought forward as an argument in its favour generally, but it will have weight with those who are convinced that Theism reposes upon solid grounds of reason as _the_ rational view of the universe.

To such it may be observed that, thus conceived, the Divine action has that slight amount of resemblance to, and that wide amount of divergence from what human action would be, which might be expected _a priori_--might be expected, that is, from a Being whose nature and aims are utterly beyond our power to imagine, however faintly, but whose truth and goodness are the fountain and source of our own perceptions of such qualities.
The view of evolution maintained in this work, though arrived at in complete independence, yet seems to agree in many respects with the views advocated by Professor Owen in the last volume of his "Anatomy of Vertebrates," under the term "derivation." He says:[244] "Derivation holds that every species changes in time, by virtue of inherent tendencies thereto.

'Natural Selection' holds that no such change can take place without the influence of altered external circumstances.[245] {239} 'Derivation' sees among the effects of the innate tendency to change irrespective of altered circumstances, a manifestation of creative power in the variety and beauty of the results; and, in the ultimate forthcoming of a being susceptible of appreciating such beauty, evidence of the pre-ordaining of such relation of power to the appreciation.

'Natural Selection' acknowledges that if ornament or beauty, in itself, should be a purpose in creation, it would be absolutely fatal to it as a hypothesis." "'Natural Selection' sees grandeur in the view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.