152 DARWINIANA. 



its formation or mode of production adds nothing to 

 it and takes nothing away. We infer design from 

 certain arrangements and results ; and we have no oth- 

 er way of ascertaining it. Testimony, unless infallible, 

 cannot prove it, and is out of the question here. 

 Testimony is not the appropriate proof of design: 

 adaptation to purpose is. Some arrangements in 

 Nature appear to be contrivances, but may leave us in 

 doubt. Many others, of which the eye and the hand 

 are notable examples, compel belief with a force not 

 appreciably short of demonstration. Clearly to settle 

 that such as these must have been designed goes far 

 toward proving that other organs and other seemingly 

 less explicit adaptations in Nature must also have been 

 designed, and clinches our belief, from manifold con- 

 siderations, that all Nature is a preconcerted arrange- 

 ment, a manifested design. A strange contradiction 

 would it be to insist that the shape and markings of 

 certain rude pieces of flint, lately found in drift-de- 

 posits, prove design, but that nicer and thousand-fold 

 more complex adaptations to use in animals and vege- 

 tables do not a fortiori argue design. 



We could not affirm that the arguments for design 

 in Nature are conclusive to all minds. But we may 

 insist, upon grounds already intimated, that, whatever 

 they were good for before Darwin's book appeared, 

 they are good for now. To our minds the argument 

 from design always appeared conclusive of the being 

 and continued operation of an intelligent First Cause, 

 the Ordainer of Nature ; and we do not see that the 

 grounds of such belief would be disturbed or shifted 

 by the adoption of Darwin's hypothesis. We are not 



