328 THE NATURAL THEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE, [xm. 



arranger; wherever there is adaptation of means to 

 an end, there must be an adapter ; wherever an 

 organisation, there must be an organiser. The 

 existence of a designing God is no more demonstrable 

 from Nature than the existence of other human beings 

 independent of ourselves, or, indeed, the existence of 

 our own bodies. But, like the belief in them, the 

 belief in Him has become an article of our common 

 sense. And that this designing mind is, in some 

 respects, similar to the human mind, is proved to us 

 (as Sir John Herschel well puts it) by the mere fact 

 that we can discover and comprehend the processes of 

 Nature. 



But here again, if we be contradicted, we can only 

 reassert. If the old words, " He that made the eye, 

 shall He not see ? He that planted the ear, shall He not 

 hear ?" do not at once commend themselves to the 

 intellect of any person, we shall never convince that 

 person by any arguments drawn from the absurdity of 

 conceiving the invention of optics by a blind race, or 

 of music by a deaf one. 



So we will assert our own old-fashioned notion 

 boldly ; and more : we will say, in spite of ridicule, 

 that if such a God exists, final causes must exist also. 

 That the whole universe must be one chain of final 

 causes. That if there be a Supreme Reason, He must 

 have a reason, and that a good reason, for every 

 physical phenomenon. 



We will tell the modern scientific man You are 

 nervously afraid of the mention of final causes. You 

 quote against them Bacon's saying, that they are 

 barren virgins; that no physical fact was ever dis- 

 covered or explained by them. You are right as far as 



