22 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 



experiences. These limitations of science, this in- 

 ability to account for the commencement of 

 things, this incapacity to touch certain spheres of 

 experience in any way, may well lead us to consider 

 whether those who thought that the Argument 

 from Design had completely perished were right 

 in their supposition. For it is, of course, with the 

 Argument from Design that I am primarily con- 

 cerned, and to its present position I will now 

 direct my remarks. 



Let us commence by taking one out of the many 

 instances of design which are to be found in the 

 pages of Paley's work. In his thirteenth chapter he 

 deals with the tongue of the woodpecker, which 

 he says " is one of those singularities which nature 

 presents us with when a singular purpose is to be 

 answered. It is a particular instrument for a par- 

 ticular use : and what, except design, ever pro- 

 duces such ? " Then he proceeds to describe the 

 tongue and its purpose, and asks, with, one might 

 imagine, a prescient eye on the Lamarckian theory 

 which was to come, " Should it be said, that, by 

 continual endeavours to shoot out the tongue to 

 the stretch, the woodpecker's species may by 

 degrees have lengthened the organ itself beyond 

 that of other birds, what account can be given of 

 its form, of its tip ? how, in particular, did it get 

 its barb, its dentation ? These barbs, in my 

 opinion," he concludes, " wherever they occur, are 

 decisive proofs of mechanical contrivances." 



It is clear what kind of argument underlies 

 these words, and many others of a like kind in the 

 same book. It is the argument of the watch found 



