ign can there be than this
difference?" But what, let us ask, is the proximate cause of this
difference? 'The immediate volition of the Deity, manifested in special
creation,' virtually answers Paley; while we of to-day are able to reply,
'The agency of natural laws, to wit, inheritance, variation, survival of
the fittest, and probably of other laws as yet not discovered.' Now, of
course, according to the former of these two premises, there can be no more
legitimate conclusion than that the difference in question is due to
intelligent and special design; but, according to the other premise, it is
equally clear that no conclusion can be more unwarranted; for, under the
latter view, the greater rotundity of the crystalline lens in a fish's eye
no more exhibits the presence of any special design than does the
adaptation of a river to the bed which it has itself been the means of
excavating. When, therefore, Paley goes on to ask:--"How is it possible,
under circumstances of such close affinity, and under the operation of
equal evidence, to exclude contrivance from the case of the eye, yet to
acknowledge the proof of contrivance having been employed, as the plainest
and clearest of all propositions, in the case of the telescope?" the answer
is sufficiently obvious, namely, that the "evidence" in the two cases is
_not_ "equal;"--any more than is the existence, say, of the Nile of equal
value in point of evidence that it was designed for traffic, as is the
existence of the Suez Canal that it was so designed. And the mere fact that
the problem of achromatism was solved by "the mind of a sagacious optician
inquiring how this matter was managed in the eye," no more proves that
"this could not be in the eye without purpose, which suggested to the
optician the only effectual means of attaining that purpose," than would
the fact, say, of the winnowing of corn having suggested the
fanning-machine prove that air currents were designed for the purpose of
eliminating chaff from grain. In short, the real substance of the argument
from Design must eventually merge into that which Paley, in the
above-quoted passage, expressly passes over--viz., "the origin of the laws
themselves;" for so long as there is any reason to suppose that any
apparent "adaptation" to a certain set of "fixed laws" is itself due to the
influence of other "fixed laws," so long have we as little right to say
that the latter set of fixed laws exhibit any better indication