PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 193 



reasonable from experience to infer another, and draw a long 

 chain of conclusions concerning his past or future conduct. 

 But this method of reasoning can never have place with 

 regard to a being so remote and incomprehensible, who bears 

 much less analogy to any other being in the universe than 

 the sun to a waxen taper, and who discovers himself only by 

 some faint traces or outlines, beyond which we have no 

 authority to ascribe to him any attribute or perfection."* 

 Now this position is the root of what is called Agnosticism ; 

 and it is a position adopted by many persons who, in other 

 matters, do not call Kant master. It is urged that the whole 

 line of reasoning here adopted proves only what every 

 scientific man — be he a Theist or not — would admit; it only 

 proves that the principle of purpose must be brought in to 

 give any satisfactory explanation of nature ; it does not 

 prove that nature is really full of purpose, but only that it 

 seems so to a discursive intelligence like ours ; and more 

 particularly it fails to prove that that apparent purpose 

 points to a conscious mind. 



i. In the first place it is worth while to pause for a moment 

 to note the great concessions which Kant makes to the 

 Theist. He admits fully— nay he insists with emphasis — 

 that the principles of mechanism are quite inadequate to 

 account for the phenomena of nature, e.g., for the phenomena 

 of organic life. We cannot explain organised life in any 

 way without bringing in the idea of purpose ; the language 

 of Biologists eloquently shows the impossibility of elimina- 

 ting at least the idea of design from our investigation of 

 nature, and he adds that we cannot comprehend in any way 

 the apparent adaptation of means to ends in nature unless 

 we bring in the idea of a Supreme Mind (§ 75). For the 

 theoretical needs of biological science, as well as for the 

 practical needs of morals, the idea of God is indispensable ; 

 although it is, too, an essential point in the Philosophy of 

 Kant that God's existence cannot be proved to demonstration 

 from the evidence afforded by external nature. It is signifi- 

 cant to observe, I think, that this was an essential part of the 

 philosophy of the founder of modern criticism. 



ii. But then we go on to inquire : why precisely is our 

 analogical reasoning illegitimate in a theoretical point of 

 view ? It is conceded on all hands that it does not amount 

 to demonstration. No analogy does. It is urged that it is 



* Essay On a Providence and a Future Stale. 



