HUMAN INGENUITY AND INFINITE POWER. 



339 



purpose, but he will feel constrained to admit that he can 

 form no accurate conception why or how they were made. 

 And the fact must be admitted that different minds re- 

 garding nature from this point of view have been led to 

 form opposite conclusions. One man sees, or persuades 

 himself that he sees or seems to see, at every step of his 

 enquiry into the structure of living things, conclusive evi- 

 dence of the adaptation of means to ends, while another 

 equally observant and equally well informed, protests that 

 arrangements better adapted to fulfil the purpose for which 

 special structures are supposed to have been formed might 

 have been suggested by human reason and contrived by 

 human ingenuity, and have fulfilled more perfectly the 

 supposed end in view. It has been remarked that many 

 natural instruments are defective in important respects, and 

 that some lack the accuracy of certain human inventions. 

 The former also, it may be said, are defective as compared 

 with the latter, inasmuch as they cannot be invariably re- 

 paired if they get out of order as happens when natural 

 structures deteriorate by age, or are invaded by disease, 

 while machines made with hands can be at any time 

 readily renovated in any part. 



How, therefore, it is asked, can organs exhibiting such 

 striking imperfections be reasonably regarded as the work 

 of a Designer supposed to be possessed of Infinite power 

 and capable of perfecting what he will by a simple fiat ? 

 Reasoning man is able to see the faults, and though he 

 is powerless to correct them he is inclined to think that if 

 he had the power to form, he would have produced some- 

 thing far superior to any natural apparatus of which he has 

 cognizance ! 



z 2 



