me for reflection before he ventured to say who,
or what, or where the designer was. Then gaining some insight into the
manner in which the deed had been drawn, he would conclude that the
draftsman was a specialist who had had long practice in this particular
kind of work, but who now worked almost as it might be said
automatically and without consciousness, and found it difficult to
depart from a habitual method of procedure.

We turn, then, on Paley, and say to him: "We have admitted your design
and your designer. Where is he? Show him to us. If you cannot show him
to us as flesh and blood, show him as flesh and sap; show him as a
living cell; show him as protoplasm. Lower than this we should not
fairly go; it is not in the bond or _nexus_ of our ideas that something
utterly inanimate and inorganic should scheme, design, contrive, and
elaborate structures which can make mistakes: it may elaborate low
unerring things, like crystals, but it cannot elaborate those which have
the power to err. Nevertheless, we will commit such abuse with our
understandings as to waive this point, and we will ask you to show him
to us as air which, if it cannot be seen, yet can be felt, weighed,
handled, transferred from place to place, be judged by its effects, and
so forth; or if this may not be, give us half a grain of hydrogen,
diffused through all space and invested with some of the minor
attributes of matter; or if you cannot do this, give us an imponderable
like electricity, or even the higher mathematics, but give us something
or throw off the mask and tell us fairly out that it is your paid
profession to hoodwink us on this matter if you can, and that you are
but doing your best to earn an honest living."

We may fancy Paley as turning the tables upon us and as saying: "But you
too have admitted a designer--you too then must mean a designer with a
body and soul, who must be somewhere to be found in space, and who must
live in time. Where is this your designer? Can you show him more than I
can? Can you lay your finger on him and demonstrate him so that a child
shall see him and know him, and find what was heretofore an isolated
idea concerning him, combine itself instantaneously with the idea of the
designer, we will say, of the human foot, so that no power on earth
shall henceforth tear those two ideas asunder? Surely if you cannot do
this, you too are trifling with words, and abusing your own mind and
that of your reader. Where,