VALUES AND FINAL CAUSES 85 



that the advantages and disadvantages to scientific thought 

 of the argument from design were very evenly balanced ; 

 that if, on the one hand, the search for design might, inci 

 dentally, lead to the discovery of scientific cause and effect, 

 on the other, it was likely to distort the inquiry by blinding 

 the seeker to consequences which he did not wish to discover. 

 And this, no doubt, is true, but it is not the whole truth. 

 Eagerness to establish the goodness of creation has always 

 proved a powerful stimulus to scientific thought ; and 

 optimistic theory, which is the speculative correlative of 

 self-confidence and elation of spirits, has usually been the 

 precursor or the contemporary of scientific progress. But 

 it would be inaccurate to say that search for design has 

 ever led to the discovery of what it went forth to seek ; 

 its reward has always been in a wholly distinct category. 

 This also should be added : not only has the wish to prove 

 design stimulated inquiry, but the apparent proof of it has 

 often secured the currency of scientific theories, which other 

 wise might have been overlooked or rejected. Even then 

 it must be allowed that the weapon cuts both ways, and that 

 the wish to discover design in all things may help to per 

 petuate scientific error as well as scientific truth. 



The conclusion then is, I think, justified that though the 

 elevation of spirits which has its expression in theories of 

 design may act as a powerful stimulant to scientific inquiry, 

 and though the coupling of an apparent proof of design with 

 a scientific theory may give that theory, whether it be false 

 or true, an advantage over rivals which are not favoured 

 in the same way, the scientific proof, considered by itself, 

 remains wholly unaffected by it, and the intellectual satis 

 faction depends not on that, but on the success of its own 

 processes. When once it has been established by con 

 vincing proof that the earth moves round the sun, it would 

 seem idle and impertinent, even to men of no scientific 

 attainments, to exact a further proof that the movement 

 was designed to serve some human purpose, and to declare 

 that without such proof it was unintelligible. In scientific 

 inquiry we have the plainest instance of self-contained 



