266 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



If we give a negative answer to questions like this, it is clear 

 that belief that the works of nature prove design by their resem- 

 blance to human contrivances has indeed received its death-blow ; 

 not because Paley's analogy breaks down, but because it becomes 

 impregnable. 



Natural selection forces us to reconsider the argument from 

 the analogy of human contrivances, not because it shows that 

 the eye and the cat and the hinge of the bivalve shell have 

 come about in order of nature; but because it gives to human 

 contrivances a significance of which Paley never dreamed, and 

 because it forces us to ask whether the hunter who contrives a 

 net furnishes any different basis for analogy with the works of 

 nature than the fish that contrives to get the bait without danger, 

 or the spider and the sundew which also spread their snares, or 

 the hydroid with its net of poisoned tentacles, or the radiolarian 

 with its web of protoplasm. 



