68 DARWimAHTA. 



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 evi- 

 dence 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 " Bridge water 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 Dar- 

 win'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 re- 

 ceive this law of natural selection as true, and where 

 does he find himself \ Before, he could refer the exist- 

 ence 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 Dar- 

 win brings up another power, namely, natural selec- 

 tion, in place of this impressible 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 circum- 

 stances, infer the existence of the designer — God — 

 when he can, at the same time, satisfactorily account for 

 the thing produced, by the operation of this natural se- 



