EVOLUTIONARY TELEOLOGY. 309 



designed not to have it as that lie was designed to 

 have the faculties and organs which he possesses. lie 

 notes that some animals lack sight, and so, with this 

 negative side of the testimony to the value of vision, 

 he is " apt to infer creative wisdom " both in what he 

 enjoys and in what the lower animal neither needs 

 nor wants. That man does not miss that which he 

 has no conception of, and is by this limitation dis- 

 qualified from judging rightly of what he can con- 

 ceive and know, is what the Westminster Remewer 

 comes to, as follows : 



" We value the constitution of our world because we live by 

 it, and because we cannot conceive oursplves as living other- 

 wise. Our conceptions of possibility, of law, of regularity, of 

 logic, are all derived from the same source ; and as we are con- 

 stantly compelled to work with tliese conceptions, as in our in- 

 creasing endeavors to better our condition and increase our 

 provision we are constantly compelled to guide ourselves by 

 Nature's regulations, we accustom ourselves to look upon these 

 regularities and conceptions as antecedent to all work, even to 

 a Creator's, and to judge of the origin of Nature as we judge 

 of the origin of inventions and utilities ascribable to man. Tliis 

 explains why the argument of design has enjoyed such univer- 

 sal popularity. But that such popularity is no criterion of the 

 argument's worth, and that, indeed, it is no evidence of any- 

 thing save of an unhappy weakness in man's mental constitu- 

 tion, is abundantly proved by the explanation itself." 



"Well, the constitution and condition of man being 

 such that he always does infer design in Nature, wliat 

 stronger presumption could there possibly be of tlie 

 relevancy of the inference? We do not say of its 

 correctness : that is another thing, and is not the pres- 

 ent point. At the last, as has well been saiJ, the 



