em at first sight to involve the very
principles on which the Theistic proof depends. "That design implies a
designer, I am disposed to allow; and that this designer must be a
person, I am quite inclined to admit. Thus far goes Paley, and thus far
I go with him.... His general position, that design proves a personal
designer, is so _natural_, so _easy_, and so _plausible_, that it
invites one to admit it, to see where it will lead, and what it will
prove."--"Paley tells us that God is a person. He insists upon it as a
legitimate inference from his premises, nor _would it be easy to disturb
his conclusion_.... From Paley's premises, it is the clearest of all
inferences. Design must have a designer, because whatever we know of
designers has taught us that a designer is a person. All analogy is in
favor of this inference. This is Paley's reasoning upon the subject, and
it is too _natural_, too _rigid_, and too _cogent_ to be escaped
from."[280] Here we have an _apparent_ admission of the principle on
which the argument of _design_ is based, but it is _apparent_ only, and
is afterwards withdrawn. It was used to serve a temporary purpose, and
as soon as that purpose was served, it was thrown aside, although it had
been described as "so natural, so easy, and so plausible, that it
invites one to admit it," as "too _natural_, too _rigid_, and too
_cogent_ to be escaped from." "When I made the admission, I was going in
the footsteps of Paley, and adopting his own phraseology: then I came to
the conclusion to see whether it was right, and then _I gave it up_;
when I found it led me to a contrary result, then I gave it up; what I
supposed to be _design_ in the opening of my argument is _no longer
design_. My reverend friend is wrong in supposing that _I admit design_,
and yet refuse to admit the force of the _design argument_."[281] And
what is the reason which now induces him to deny the existence of
_design_ in Nature, and to withdraw all the admissions he had previously
made? Why, simply because he conceives that, by a legitimate extension
of the same analogy, the design argument may be pushed to a _reductio ad
absurdum_, so as to prove first the existence of an _organized person_,
"an animal God," and, secondly, an infinite series of such organized
persons, since one such must necessarily presuppose another, and that
again another, and so on _in infinitum_. For there are two stages in his
extension of the analogy. In the first,