DESIGN' VERSUS NECESSITY. 85 



enabled the "young animals to see more distinctly 

 than their parents or brethren," equally indicate design 

 — if not as much as a perfect crystalline, or a Dollond 

 compound lens, yet as much as a common spectacle- 

 glass ? 



Darwin only assures you that what you may have 

 thought was done directly and at once was done in- 

 directly and successively. But you freely admit that 

 indirection and succession do not invalidate design, 

 and also that Paley and all the natural theologians 

 drew the arguments which convinced your skeptic 

 wholly from eyes indirectly or naturally produced. 



Recall a woman of a past generation and show her 

 a web of cloth ; ask her how it was made, and she will 

 say that the wool or cotton was carded, spun, and 

 woven by hand. When you tell her it was not made 

 by manual labor, that probably no hand has touched 

 the materials throughout the process, it is possible 

 that she might at first regard your statement as tan- 

 tamount to the assertion that the cloth was made 

 without design. If she did, she would not credit 

 your statement. If you patiently explained to her 

 the theory of carding -machines, spinning -jennies, 

 and power-looms, would her reception of your ex- 

 planation weaken "her conviction that the cloth was 

 the result of design ? It is certain that she would 

 believe in design as firmly as before, and that this 

 belief would be attended by a higher conception and 

 reverent admiration of a wisdom, skill, and power 

 greatly beyond anything she had previously conceived 

 possible. 



Wherefore, we may insist that, for all that yet 



