Part 3 (1/2)

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formed in all its beauty and excellence. It must (always a.s.suming that this theory is true) result from this combined action of natural variation, the struggle for life, and natural selection, with as much certainty as the b.a.l.l.s, after collision, must pa.s.s to corners of the table different from those to which they were directed, and so far forth as the eye is formed by these laws, acting upward from the nerve merely sensitive to light, we can no more infer design, and from design a designer, than we can infer design in the direction of the billiard-b.a.l.l.s after the collision. Both are sufficiently accounted for by blind powers acting under a blind necessity.

Take away the struggle for life from the one, and the collision of the b.a.l.l.s from the other--and neither of these was designed--and the animal would have gone on without eyes. The b.a.l.l.s would have found the corners of the table to which they were first directed.

While, therefore, it seems to me clear that one who can find no proof of the existence of an intelligent Creator except through the evidence of design in the organic world, can find no evidence of such design in the construction of the eye, if it were constructed under the operation of Darwin's laws, I shall not for one moment contend that these laws are incompatible with design and a self-conscious, intelligent Creator. Such design might, indeed, have coexisted with the necessity or natural selection; and so the billiard-players might have 'designed the collision of their b.a.l.l.s; but neither the formation of the eye, nor the path of the b.a.l.l.s after collision, furnishes any sufficient proof of such design in either case.

One, indeed, who believes, from revelation or any other cause, in the existence of such a Creator, the fountain and Source of all things in heaven above and in the earth beneath, will see in natural variation, the struggle for life, and natural selection, only the order or mode in which this Creator, in his 'own perfect wisdom, sees fit to act. Happy is he who can thus see and adore. But how many are there who have no such

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belief from intuition, or faith in revelation; but who have by careful and elaborate search in the physical, and more especially in the organic world, inferred, by induction, the existence of G.o.d from what has seemed to them the wonderful adaptation of the different organs and parts of the animal body to its, apparently, designed ends! Imagine a mind of this skeptical character, in all honesty and under its best reason, after finding itself obliged to reject the evidence of revelation, to commence a search after the Creator, in the light of natural theology. He goes through the proof for final cause and design, as given in a summary though clear, plain, and convincing form, in the pages of Paley and the ”Bridgewater Treatises.” The eye and the hand, those perfect instruments of optical and mechanical contrivance and adaptation, without the least waste or surplusage--these, say Paley and Bell, certainly prove a designing maker as much as the palace or the watch proves an architect or a watchmaker. Let this mind, in this state, cross Darwin's work, and find that, after a sensitive nerve or a rudimentary hoof or claw, no design is to be found. From this point upward the development is the mere necessary result of natural selection; and let him receive this law of natural selection as true, and where does he find himself? Before, he could refer the existence of the eye, for example, only to design, or chance. There was no other alternative. He rejected chance, as impossible.

It must then be a design. But Darwin brings up another power, namely, natural selection, in place of this impossible chance. This not only may, but, according to Darwin, must of necessity produce an eye. It may indeed coexist with design, but it must exist and act and produce its results, even without design. Will such a mind, under such circ.u.mstances, infer the existence of the designer--G.o.d--when he can, at the same time, satisfactorily account for the thing produced, by the operation of this natural selection? It seems to me, therefore, perfectly evident

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that the subst.i.tution of natural selection, by necessity, for design in the formation of the organic world, is a step decidedly atheistical. It is in vain to say that Darwin takes the creation of organic life, in its simplest forms, to have been the work of the Deity. In giving up design in these highest and most complex forms of organization, which have always been relied upon as the crowning proof of the existence of an intelligent Creator, without whose intellectual power they could not have been brought into being, he takes a most decided step to banish a belief in the intelligent action of G.o.d from the organic world. The lower organisms will go next.

The atheist will say, Wait a little. Some future Darwin will show how the simple forms came necessarily from inorganic matter. This is but another step by which, according to Laplace, ”the discoveries of science throw final causes further back.”

A.G.--It is conceded that, if the two players in the supposed case were ignorant of each other's presence, the designs of both were frustrated, and from necessity. Thus far it is not needful to inquire whether this necessary consequence is an unconditional or a conditioned necessity, nor to require a more definite statement of the meaning attached to the word necessity as a supposed third alternative.

But, if the players knew of each other's presence, we could not infer from the result that the design of both or of either was frustrated. One of them may have intended to frustrate the other's design, and to effect his own.

Or both may have been equally conversant with the properties of the matter and the relation of the forces concerned (whatever the cause, origin, or nature, of these forces and properties), and the result may have been according to the designs of both.

As you admit that they might or might not have designed the collision of their b.a.l.l.s and its consequences the question arises whether there is any way of ascertaining which of the two conceptions we may form about it is the true one. Now, let it be remarked that design can never be demonstrated. Witnessing the act does not make known the design, as we have seen in the case a.s.sumed for the basis of the argument. The word of the actor is not proof; and that source of evidence is excluded from the cases in question. The only way left, and the only possible way in cases where testimony is out of the question, is to infer the design from the result, or from arrangements which strike us as adapted or intended to produce a certain result, which affords a presumption of design. The strength of this presumption may be zero, or an even chance, as perhaps it is in the a.s.sumed case; but the probability of design will increase with the particularity of the act, the specialty of the arrangement or machinery, and with the number of identical or yet more of similar and a.n.a.logous instances, until it rises to a moral certainty--i.

e., to a conviction which practically we are as unable to resist as we are to deny the cogency of a mathematical demonstration. A single instance, or set of instances, of a comparatively simple arrangement might suffice. For instance, we should not doubt that a pump was designed to raise water by the moving of the handle. Of course, the conviction is the stronger, or at least the sooner arrived at, where we can imitate the arrangement, and ourselves produce the result at will, as we could with a pump, and also with the billiard-b.a.l.l.s.

And here I would suggest that your billiard-table, with the case of collision, answers well to a machine. In both a result is produced by indirection--by applying a force out of line of the ultimate direction.

And, as I should feel as confident that a man intended to raise water who was working a pumphandle, as if he were bringing it up in pailfuls from below by means of a ladder, so, after due examination of the billiard-table and its appurtenances, I should probably think it likely that the effect of the rebound was expected and intended no less than that of the immediate impulse. And a similar inspection of arrangements and results in Nature would raise at least an equal presumption of design.

You allow that the rebound might have been intended, but you require proof that it was. We agree that a single such instance affords no evidence either way. But how would it be if you saw the men doing the same thing over and over? and if they varied it by other arrangements of the b.a.l.l.s or of the blow, and these were followed by a.n.a.logous results? How if you at length discovered a profitable end of the operation, say the winning of a wager? So in the counterpart case of natural selection: must we not infer intention from the arrangements and the results? But I will take another case of the very same sort, though simpler, and better adapted to ill.u.s.trate natural selection; because the change of direction--your necessity--acts gradually or successively, instead of abruptly.

Suppose I hit a man standing obliquely in my rear, by throwing forward a crooked stick, called a boomerang. How could he know whether the blow was intentional or not? But suppose I had been known to throw boomerangs before; suppose that, on different occasions, I had before wounded persons by the same, or other indirect and apparently aimless actions; and suppose that an object appeared to be gained in the result--that definite ends were attained--would it not at length be inferred that my a.s.sault, though indirect, or apparently indirect, was designed?

To make the case more nearly parallel with those it is brought to ill.u.s.trate, you have only to suppose that, although the boomerang thrown by me went forward to a definite place, and at least appeared to subserve a purpose, and the bystanders, after a while, could get traces of the mode or the empirical law of its flight, yet they could not themselves do anything with it. It was quite beyond their power to use it. Would they doubt, or deny my intention, on that account? No: they would insist that design on my part must be presumed from the nature of the results; that, though design may have been wanting in any one case, yet the repet.i.tion of the result, and from different positions and under varied circ.u.mstances, showed that there must have been design.

Moreover, in the way your case is stated, it seems to concede the most important half of the question, and so affords a presumption for the rest, on the side of design. For you seem to a.s.sume an actor, a designer, accomplis.h.i.+ng his design in the first instance. You--a bystander--infer that the player effected his design in sending the first ball to the pocket before him. You infer this from observation alone. Must you not from a continuance of the same observation equally infer a common design of the two players in the complex result, or a design of one of them to frustrate the design of the other? If you grant a designing actor, the presumption of design is as strong, or upon continued observation of instances soon becomes as strong, in regard to the deflection of the b.a.l.l.s, or variation of the species, as it was for the result of the first impulse or for the production of the original animal, etc.

But, in the case to be ill.u.s.trated, we do not see the player. We see only the movement of the b.a.l.l.s. Now, if the contrivances and adaptations referred to really do ”prove a designer as much as the palace or the watch proves an architect or a watchmaker”--as Paley and Bell argue, and as your skeptic admits, while the alternative is between design and chance--then they prove it with all the proof the case is susceptible of, and with complete conviction. For we cannot doubt that the watch had a watchmaker.

And if they prove it on the supposition that the unseen operator acted immediately--i.e., that the player directly impelled the b.a.l.l.s in the directions we see them moving, I insist that this proof is not impaired by our ascertaining that he acted mediately--i.e., that the present state or form of the plants or animals, like the present position of the billiard-b.a.l.l.s, resulted from the collision of the individuals with one another, or with the surroundings. The original impulse, which we once supposed was in the line of the observed movement, only proves to have been in a different direction; but the series of movements took place with a series of results, each and all of them none the less determined, none the less designed.

Wherefore, when, at the close, you quote Laplace, that ”the discoveries of science throw final causes farther back,” the most you can mean is, that they constrain us to look farther back for the impulse. They do not at all throw the argument for design farther back, in the sense of furnis.h.i.+ng evidence or presumption that only the primary impulse was designed, and that all the rest followed from chance or necessity.

Evidence of design, I think you will allow, everywhere is drawn from the observation of adaptations and of results, and has really nothing to do with anything else, except where you can take the word for the will. And in that case you have not argument for design, but testimony. In Nature we have no testimony; but the argument is overwhelming.

Now, note that the argument of the olden time--that of Paley, etc., which your skeptic found so convincing--was always the argument for design in the movement of the b.a.l.l.s after deflection. For it was drawn from animals produced by generation, not by creation, and through a long succession of generations or deflections. Wherefore, if the argument for design is perfect in the case of an animal derived from a long succession of individuals as nearly alike as offspring is generally like parents and grandparents, and if this argument is not weakened when a variation, or series of variations, has occurred in the course, as great as any variations we know of among domestic cattle, how then is it weakened by the supposition, or by the likelihood, that the variations have been twice or thrice as great as we formerly supposed, or because the variations have been ”picked out,” and a few of them pre served as breeders of still other variations, by natural selection?

Finally let it be noted that your element of necessity has to do, so far as we know, only with the picking out and preserving of certain changing forms, i. e., with the natural selection. This selection, you may say, must happen under the circ.u.mstances. This is a necessary result of the collision of the b.a.l.l.s; and these results can be predicted. If the b.a.l.l.s strike so and so, they will be deflected so and so. But the variation itself is of the nature of an origination. It answers well to the original impulse of the b.a.l.l.s, or to a series of such impulses. We cannot predict what particular new variation will occur from any observation of the past. Just as the first impulse was given to the b.a.l.l.s at a point out of sight, so the impulse which resulted in the variety or new form was given at a point beyond observation, and is equally mysterious or unaccountable, except on the supposition of an ordaining will. The parent had not the peculiarity of the variety, the progeny has. Between the two is the dim or obscure region of the formation of a new individual, in some unknown part of which, and in some wholly unknown way, the difference is intercalated. To introduce necessity here is gratuitous and unscientific; but here you must have it to make your argument valid.