260 ptiOFESSoi: k. l. uabney, ba)., ll.k. 



phosphorus and lime. Chemical affinity may arrange an 

 ounce or two of these atoms into a compound, which may be, 

 so far as any determination of that blind cause g'oes_, of, any 

 shape or amorphous, fluid or solid, useful, useless or hurtful 

 to sensitive beings. But here are countless millions of reptiles, 

 birds, quadrupeds and men, creatures designed to live in the 

 light and air, of whom the men number twelve hundred 

 millions at least, in each individual of whom there is a pair of 

 eyes except in the imperfect births. Numerous and exceedingly 

 delicate adjustments were necessary in each separate eye, to 

 effectnate the end of an eye — vision. The pupil must open on 

 the exterior front, and not somewhere within the socket ; the 

 interior of the ball must be a camera obsciira. There must be 

 refracting, transparent bodies, to bend the rays of light ; 

 achromatic refraction must be produced.; focal distances must 

 be adjusted aright ; there must be a sensitive sheet of nerve 

 to receive the si^ectrum ; the sensation of this image must be 

 conveyed by the optic chords to the sensorium ; the animaFs 

 perceptive faculty must be coordinated as a cognitive power 

 to this sensorial feeling ; the brow and lids must be contrived 

 to protect the wondrous organ. Here, already, is a number 

 of coincidences, and the failure of one would prevent the end 

 —vision. Let the probability that the unintelligent cause, 

 chemical affinity, would, in its blindness, hit upon one of these 

 requisites of a seeing eye, be expressed by any fraction, we 

 care not how large. Then, according to the established law of 

 logic, the probability that the same cause will produce a 

 coincidence of two requisites is found by multiplying together 

 the two fractions representing the two separate probabilities. 

 Thus, also, the joint concurrence of a third has a probability 

 expressed by the very small fraction produced by multiplying 

 together the three denominators. Before we have done with 

 the coordinations of a single eye, we thus have a probability, 

 almost infinitely great, against its production by physical law 

 alone. But in each head are two eyes, concui'riug in single 

 vision, which doubles the almost infinite improbability. It is 

 multiplied again by all the millions of the human and animal 

 races. But this is not all. To say nothing of the coincidence 

 of means in inorganic and vegetable nature, there are in 

 animals many other organs besides eyes, which, if not as com- 

 plicated, yet exhibit their distinct coordinations. These must 

 multiply the improbability that fortuity produced all the 

 former results ! Thus the power of numbers and the capacity 

 of human conceptions are exhausted before we approach the 

 absurdity of this theory of the production of en^9, in nntnre 

 without final cause. 



