360 DARWINIANA. 



sensible meaning ; so we conclude that he regards 

 brutes as automata, and was thinking of design as co- 

 extensive merely with general conceptions. Not con- 

 cerning ourselves with the difficulty he may have in 

 drawing a line between the simpler judgments and 

 affections of man and those of the highest-endowed 

 brutes, we subserve our immediate ends by remarking 

 that the automatic theory would seem to be one 

 which can least of all dispense with design, since, 

 either in the literal or current sense of the word, un- 

 designed automatism is, as near as may be, a contra- 

 diction in terms. As the automaton man constructs 

 manifests the designs of its maker and mover, so the 

 more efficient automata which man did not construct 

 woujd not legitimately suggest less than human intel- 

 ligence. And so all adaptations in the animal and 

 vegetable world which irresistibly suggest purpose 

 (in the sense now accepted) would also suggest de- 

 sign, and, under the law of parsimony, claim to be 

 thus interpreted, unless some other hypothesis will 

 better account for the facts. We will consider, pres- 

 ently, if any other does so. 



We here claim only that some beings other than 

 men design, and that the adaptations of means to ends 

 in the structure of .animals and plants, in so far as 

 they carry the marks of purpose, carry also the impli- 

 cation of having been designed. Also, that the idea 

 or hypothesis of a designing mind, as the author of 

 Nature however we came by it having possession 

 of the field, and being one which man, himself a de- 

 signer, seemingly must needs form, cannot be rivaled 

 except by some other equally adequate for explana- 



