Testimony, unless
infallible, cannot prove it, and is out of the question here. Testimony
is not the appropriate proof of design: adaptation to purpose is. Some
arrangements in Nature appear to be contrivances, but may leave us in
doubt. Many others, of which the eye and the hand are notable examples,
compel belief with a force not appreciably short of demonstration.
Clearly to settle that such as these must have been designed goes far
toward proving that other organs and other seemingly less explicit
adaptations in Nature must also have been designed, and clinches our
belief, from manifold considerations, that all Nature is a preconcerted
arrangement, a manifested design. A strange contradiction would it be
to insist that the shape and markings of certain rude pieces of flint,
lately found in drift-deposits, prove design, but that nicer and
thousand-fold more complex adaptations to use in animals and vegetables
do not a fortiori argue design.
We could not affirm that the arguments for design in Nature are
conclusive to all minds. But we may insist, upon grounds already
intimated, that, whatever they were good for before Darwins book
appeared, they are good for now. To our minds the argument from design
always appeared conclusive of the being and continued operation of an
intelligent First Cause, the Ordainer of Nature; and we do not see that
the grounds of such belief would be disturbed or shifted by the
adoption of Darwins hypothesis.
Pages:
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211