lity_ laid down in the second paragraph of this
section, Sec. 5].

'I conclude, therefore, that the hypothesis of metaphysical teleology,
although in a physical sense gratuitous, may be in a psychological sense
legitimate. But as against the fundamental position on which alone this
argument can rest--viz. the position that the fundamental postulate of
Atheism is more _inconceivable_ than is the fundamental postulate of
Theism--we have seen two important objections to lie.

'For, in the first place, the sense in which the word "inconceivable" is
here used is that of the impossibility of framing _realizable_ relations
in the thought; not that of the impossibility of framing _abstract_
relations in thought. In the same sense, though in a lower degree, it is
true that the complexity of the human organization and its functions is
inconceivable; but in this sense the word "inconceivable" has much less
weight in an argument than it has in its true sense. And, without
waiting again to dispute (as we did in the case of the speculative
standing of Materialism) how far even the genuine test of
inconceivability ought to be allowed to make against an inference which
there is a body of scientific evidence to substantiate, we went on to
the second objection against this fundamental position of metaphysical
teleology. This objection, it will be remembered, was, that it is as
impossible to conceive of cosmic harmony as an effect of Mind [i.e. Mind
being what we know it in experience to be], as it is to conceive of it
as an effect of mindless evolution. The argument from inconceivability,
therefore, admits of being turned with quite as terrible an effect on
Theism, as it can possibly be made to exert on Atheism.

'Hence this more refined form of teleology which we are considering, and
which we saw to be the last of the possible arguments in favour of
Theism, is met on its own ground by a very crushing opposition: by its
metaphysical character it has escaped the opposition of physical
science, only to encounter a new opposition in the region of pure
psychology to which it fled. As a conclusion to our whole inquiry,
therefore, it devolved on us to determine the relative magnitudes of
these opposing forces. And in doing this we first observed that, if the
supporters of metaphysical teleology objected _a priori_ to the method
whereby the genesis of natural law was deduced from the datum of the
persistence of force, in that this method invo