CHAPTER IV 



CILIARY MECHANISMS 



LITTLE more than a century ago, a remark- 

 able book on Natural Theology was published 

 by William Paley, an English ecclesiastic. It 

 presented an argument for the existence and 

 benevolence of a personal deity, and was founded on 

 some of the phenomena of nature. In essence, Paley 's 

 argument was that the existence of any contrivance in 

 nature necessarily involved the existence of a designing 

 mind which created it, and he described many mecha- 

 nisms which are, without doubt, constructed for very 

 definite and particular uses. This argument was not 

 new in Paley's time. It had previously been presented 

 in published form by a Dutch writer, and undoubtedly had 

 existed in some form in man's mind since an early period. 

 But Paley developed it elaborately and with great success, 

 and it has ever since had a powerful influence on the 

 common conceptions of the Creator and the universe. 



Nevertheless the world has generally come to agree 

 with Huxley's statement that Paley's argument from 

 design, as he evidently intended to apply it, received its 

 death-blow from Darwin's " Origin of Species," which 

 accounts in quite a different manner for the appearance of 

 mechanisms in nature. What Paley really accomplished 

 for the theology of his time, was the damming up of the 

 flood of knowledge that later destroyed the greater part 



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