the unknown, this is taken for granted. Now, if we throw the above inference into the form of a syllogism, which we can do by making this assumption the major premiss, it will stand thus:

Like effects are due to like causes;

Human contrivances and natural adaptations are alike; Therefore both are due to like causes.

The reasoning here, as reasoning, is without fault. But though formally correct, is it so in matter?

We are perfectly justified in concluding what we know by observation to be true of certain things, is also true of all similar things, although they be not within the sphere of observation. This is the essential principle of legitimate induction. The question then which we have to answer is: Are human contrivances and natural adaptations similar? They do not belong to the same class of phenomena, but they do resemble each other in one point-in one single point, viz., in the subserviency of means to an end. If it could be proved that this point of resemblance cannot be due to any cause save intelligence, we should then have a complete induction. This cannot be proved. We have therefore at the utmost an argument from analogy only. I say only, for it is manifest that the impossibility of proving or testing the resemblance greatly impairs the strength of the inference. The most that can be urged in this case is, that the similarity between human contrivances and natural adjustments in the fact of both conspiring to ends-renders it more probable that the natural should also resemble the human in being designed, than if the former bore no resemblance to anything connected with design.1

Such inconclusiveness is inherent to all analogical reasoning. Besides this, it must be borne in mind that analogy itself may be weak or strong according as the points of agreement or the points of difference predo1 Mill's Logic, vol. ii. ch. xx., and Essay on Theism.

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minate. "Analogy," says Laplace, "is based on the probability that things which resemble one another have similar causes (causes du même genre) and produce similar effects." In considering the vital question, whether natural and human adjustment are of doubtful analogy or not, we must ask ourselves: What is the probability that they are products of similar causes? Here at once we bring to light a flagrant weakness in the assumed analogy. We may compare two kinds of adjustments, but how can we compare these two kinds of causes? We are not permitted to assume the nature of that unknown cause which we are setting ourselves to prove. We are not supposed to know anything at all about it before the inference is made. We reason thus: As human contrivances are to human intelligence, so are natural adaptations to divine intelligence. But this begs the whole question. We may call the fourth term x, or use any other symbol which will stand for the unknown; but we must not forget that the fourth term is unknown. We must not forget that our argument is strictly a posteriori, and that "it is impossible for you to know anything of the cause but what you have antecedently, not inferred, but discovered to the full in the effect." The probability, then, here spoken of must be determined by our estimate of other possible causes; and whatever strength there may be in these old-fashioned prima facie objections, it is immeasurably increased by the evolution theory; which, from the realistic point of view, has all the weight of a positive argument.

To appreciate the force of these stereotyped difficulties as put by Hume, and since by John Mill and countless others, let us turn to the position of Paley. "There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement without anything capable of arranging; subserviency and relation to a purpose without that which could intend a purpose; 1 Essais Philosophique sur les Probabilités. 2 Hume, Of a Providence and Future State.

means suitable to an end and executing their office in accomplishing that end without the end having been contemplated or the means accommodated to it. Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to a use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind." He takes Voltaire's illustration of the watch; triumphantly proves that "its mechanism being observed," the inference follows "that the watch must have had a maker;" and then proceeds to show "that every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design which existed in the watch exists in the works of nature."

It would be superfluous to dwell on the idle tautology of asserting that design proves a designer, &c. We might as well say, a son proves a father. But in other parts of the passage, Paley postulates the fact on which the whole design argument depends. If we again make use of technical forms, his proposition is that

All adaptation proves design;

The works of Nature evince adaptation;

Therefore the works of Nature prove design.

Is it not transparent that the major premiss naïvely assumes that which Paley's well-selected instances are intended to establish?

The illustration of the watch, which at first sight seems so forcible, serves to expose the radical fallacy of the teleological argument. If a rational being found a watch in a desert place, the effect upon his mind would entirely depend upon the state of his previous knowledge. If he were already familiar with the handiwork of civilised man, he would know the watch to be a contrivance for some purpose or other, and therefore made by a contriver; even though he had never seen a watch before. But he could only arrive at this conclusion from what he already knew of the cause of analogous objects. A savage who had no such knowledge could not, and (as travellers are well aware) does not, make this inference. If he heard it tick,

he would think the watch alive; if it stopped, he might think it dead or asleep; but if his own complicated frame leads him not to infer design (which it certainly does not), still less will the watch do so. With respect to the arrangements in the order of Nature, we are just as ignorant of their ultimate cause as the savage is of the cause of the watch. But we are more illogical, and even more anthropomorphical, than the savage, in ascribing these adjustments to a cause of which we know absolutely nothing.

Further examination will convince us that in place of the syllogism into which Paley's reasoning is cast we are compelled to substitute the following:

Some kind of adaptation proves design;

Some (other) kind is evinced in the order of Nature; Therefore in the order of Nature we have evidence of design.

Unfortunately this is not an argument at all. It is what logicians call a case of undistributed middle term, from which no conclusion whatever can be drawn. As Coleridge observed, "Neither the products nor the producents are ejusdem generis, consequently not subjects of analogy. . . . The proof proceeds on analogy questionable in both its factors.” 1

To escape this difficulty, some thinkers, while admitting the objection to restricting the theological doctrine of final causes-the doctrine of designed ends-to perceptible adjustments, maintain that we have even stronger evidence of intelligence in "the vast scheme of universal order and harmony of design which pervades and connects the whole." 2 Discoverable adaptations are comparatively limited sometimes the presumable final cause has aborted. Innumerable things exist "by which no visible end or purpose is answered." For what purpose is life

itself conferred, or to what end does the material universe 1 Aids to Reflection.

2 Powell's Unity of Worlds, Essay i. sec. v.

altogether exist?" Still, the writer I am citing holds that "order implies what by analogy we call intelligence; subserviency to an observed end implies intelligence foreseeing, which by analogy we call design."

A more recent author1 takes the same line of argument. He tells us we must not limit our conception of final causes to the few particular ends which we are able to discern. Order and arrangement obtain, where no use or special purpose is discoverable. The true conception of final causes includes the principles of universal harmony, and dependent connection, no less than that of special adaptation. For if we regard all things whatever as "systematic unities, the parts of which are definitely related to one another and co-ordinated to a common issue," then, analytically considered, each part is adapted to its whole, and, synthetically considered, each whole is adapted to the kosmos. In this wider sense, adaptation is quite as conspicuous in the field of astronomy or of chemistry as in that of physiology.

Dr. Flint, moreover, escapes the questionable analogy in one of the terms of the equation by repudiating the equation itself. "When we infer from an examination of their construction that the eye and the ear have been designed by an intelligent being, we are no more dependent on our knowledge that a watch or a telescope has been designed by an intelligent being, than we are dependent on our knowledge of the eye and ear being the products of intelligence when we infer that the watch and the telescope are the products of intelligence. There is an inference in both cases, and an inference of precisely the same nature in both cases. It is as direct and independent when the transition is to God from his works as when to our fellow-men from their works. . . . We deny, then, that there is any truth in the statement that the design argument rests on the analogy between the works of nature and the products of art. It rests directly on the character

1 Professor Flint, Theism.