8 22 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



give what it does not possess, that the greater is contained in the less, 

 the superior in the inferior, the whole in a part." 



Still another difficulty for the opponents of teleology arises from 

 their inability to understand the purpose of many things in Nature. 

 This, however, far from being an objection to the argument from 

 design, should only make one more conscious of his ignorance, and 

 of the limitation of human knowledge. If we can discern manifest 

 evidence of design — and this no reasonable man can deny — in even 

 a few things, and if, of the manifold purposes exhibited in any given 

 object, we can discover but one, we have evidence which is quite 

 sufficient for the validity of the design-argument, and quite suf- 

 ficient, likewise, to meet all the requirements of the teleologist. 



It is, indeed, passing strange that those who are always so prompt 

 to deny the existence of purpose in Nature, when there is question of 

 teleology, or when theological implications are suspected, are the 

 very first to insist on the evidence of mind and purpose when in 

 their own case it is demanded by the exigencies of argument or dis- 

 covery, and especially when it is demanded by the exigencies of 

 special pleading. 



A case in point is the argument for the great antiquity of man 

 based on the existence of arrowheads and flint flakes, found in cer- 

 tain deposits whose age is indisputable. Contrary to the traditional 

 view regarding the recent advent of man on earth, we have anti- 

 teleologists who claim as the date of the appearance of our race 

 one which carries us back tens, yea, hundreds of thousands of years. 

 And on what do they base their argument? On evidences of mind 

 and purpose. The arrowheads and flint flakes, they declare, and 

 rightly, could not have been fashioned by chance; they could not 

 have been formed by even the highest representatives of the brute 

 creation. They indicate intelligence, design. They must, therefore, 

 have been produced by man. Man, therefore, must have existed 

 long prior to the period usually assigned as the date of his apparition 

 on our planet. 



Now, while no one can object to the argument, as thus presented, 

 we find it strangely inconsistent that its validity should be ques- 

 tioned where the evidence of mind and purpose is far more striking 

 — to wit, in the multifarious phenomena of the universe, all of which 

 betoken far more than human intelligence and power. I shall here 

 limit myself to only a single but a most telling illustration — the 

 preparation of the world as the dwelling place of man. The storage 

 of coal as fuel, the introduction of certain plants and animals shortly 

 before the advent of our species, and in strict correlation with it — 

 plants which were almost indispensable as articles of food, and the 

 appearance of animals, such as the sheep, cow, and horse, which 



