ntinually further multiplied by every fresh discovery, whether in the
minute or the vast--by the microscope or the telescope; for every fresh
law that is discovered, being in harmony with all that has previously
been discovered, not only yields its own proof of design, but infinitely
more, by all the relations in which it stands to other laws: it yields,
in fact, as many as there are adjustments which have been effected
between itself and all besides. Each new proof of design, therefore, is
not a solitary fact; but one which entering as another element into a
most complex machinery, indefinitely multiplies the combinations, in any
one of which chance might have gone astray. From this infinite array
of proofs of design, it seems to man's reason, in ordinary moods, stark
madness to account for the phenomena of the universe upon any other
supposition than that which docs account, and can alone account, for
them all,--the supposition of a Presiding Intelligence, illimitable
alike in power and in wisdom.

The only difficulty is justly to appreciate such an argument to obtain a
sufficiently vivid impression of such an accumulation of probabilities.
This very difficulty, indeed, in some moods, may minister to a temporary
doubt. For let us catch man in those moods,--perhaps after long
meditation on the metaphysical grounds of human belief,--and he begins
to doubt, with unusual modesty, whether the child of dust is warranted
to conclude anything on a subject which loses itself in the infinite,
and which so far transcends all his powers of apprehension; he begins
half to doubt, with Hume, whether he can reason analogically from the
petty specimens of human ingenuity to phenomena so vast and so unique;
a misgiving which is strengthened by reflecting on all those to him
incomprehensible inferences to which the admission of the argument leads
him, and which seem almost to involve contradictions. Let him ponder for
awhile the ideas involved in the notion of Selfsubsistence, Eternity,
Creation; Power, Wisdom, and Knowledge, so unlimited as to embrace at
once all things, and all their relations, actual and possible,--this
'unlimited' expanding into a dim apprehension of the 'infinite';--of
infinitude of attributes, omnipresent in every point of space, and
yet but one and not many infinitudes;--let him once humbly ponder such
incomprehensible difficulties as these, and he will soon feel that
though in the argument from design, there seem