downward movement
being part of one of those sequences of phenomena which are classed
under the head of gravitation. Now, to assert that this, or any other,
and consequently every other, specimen of gravitation, cannot possibly
have been unpremeditated would no doubt be unwarrantable. No doubt there
is one solitary, one infinitesimal chance that the force whose action
results in gravitation may, when producing that result, be acting with
as little choice of direction as a fidgetty man makes when moving his
arms or legs about for no better reason than that he will not take the
trouble to keep them quiet. Only, as on the supposition that the force
did not select its course, the chances against its always taking the
same course would be infinity less one indefinitely multiplied, the
probability that it does select must needs be the same indefinite
multiple of virtual infinity. Not less than this is the preponderance
of probability that the invariably recurrent sequences of phenomena
which we are in the habit of referring to gravitation, are premeditated,
and that the law of gravitation has, so to speak, been wittingly
ordained. And in this respect all invariable sequences of phenomena,
otherwise termed laws of nature, stand plainly in the same category. One
solitary and infinitesimal unit is the sole deduction to be made from
what would otherwise be infinite certainty, that the assumption we
started with is false, and that all invariable sequences are
premeditated, all the laws of nature enacted by a law-giver who intended
what he was enacting.

Intention, however, is not quite the same thing as design. It is
possible for action to be at once intentional and purposeless. If a man,
taking regularly a constitutional walk, is observed always to take the
same road, and to stop exactly at the same point, there can be no
reasonable doubt as to his intention to walk just so far and no farther;
but it does not follow that he has any object in walking which he
supposes would not be equally served by his walking a few paces more or
less. Similarly whatever be the certainty that the laws of nature have
been intentionally established, there is in that certainty no proof of
their having been established for any purpose beyond that of gratifying
some whim or humour of the lawgiver. For indications of design in the
universe we must look rather to organic than to inorganic nature, rather
to structure than to law. We shall find applying t