de ses
Travaux.' Paris, 1844, p. 82.

CHAPTER III.

IMPOTENCE OF PALEY'S CONCLUSION. THE TELEOLOGY OF THE EVOLUTIONIST.

Though the ideas of design, and of the foot, have come together in our
minds with sufficient spontaneity, we yet feel that there is a
difference--and a wide difference if we could only lay our hands upon
it--between the design and manufacture of the ligament and tendons of
the foot on the one hand, and on the other the design, manufacture, and
combination of artificial strings, pieces of wood, and bandages, whereby
a model of the foot might be constructed.

If we conceive of ourselves as looking simultaneously upon a real foot,
and upon an admirably constructed artificial one, placed by the side of
it, the idea of design, and design by an intelligent living being with a
body and soul (without which, as has been already insisted on, the use
of the word design is delusive), will present itself strongly to our
minds in connection both with the true foot, and with the model; but we
find another idea asserting itself with even greater strength, namely,
that the design of the true foot is far more intricate, and yet is
carried into execution in far more masterly manner than that of the
model. We not only feel that there is a wider difference between the
ability, time, and care which have been lavished on the real foot and
upon the model, than there is between the skill and the time taken to
produce Westminster Abbey, and that bestowed upon a gingerbread cake
stuck with sugar plums so as to represent it, but also that these two
objects must have been manufactured on different principles. We do not
for a moment doubt that the real foot was designed, but we are so
astonished at the dexterity of the designer that we are at a loss for
some time to think who could have designed it, where he can live, in
what manner he studied, for how long, and by what processes he carried
out his design, when matured, into actual practice. Until recently it
was thought that there was no answer to many of these questions, more
especially to those which bear upon the mode of manufacture. For the
last hundred years, however, the importance of a study has been
recognized which does actually reveal to us in no small degree the
processes by which the human foot is manufactured, so that in the
endeavour to lay our hands upon the points of difference between the
kind of design with which the foot itself is designed, and the