WILLIAM G. STEVENSON. De 
The eye, the ear, the hand—each organ was made in 
all its present perfection for a special and individual 
purpose ; and, as the mechanism of a watch proves the 
existence of design—and a designer, so the more won- 
drous mechanism of the bodily organs proves that they 
are the immediate products of a creating, designing 
mind. 
Admitting, as I do, that forethought is apparent in 
the structural plans of life, and that there is evidence of 
contrivance in the harmonious adjustment of all its 
varied phenomena, it is, nevertheless, impossible to un- 
derstand design—reflecting as it does the last expression 
of antecedent purpose—until the interlacing threads of 
law have been traced hither and thither through their 
many and complex relations. 
The discovery of the relationship of facts which bear 
witness to the unity of nature should, therefore, precede 
all deductions pertaining to design. What idea, for 
example, of adaptation or design could have been en- 
tertained by Aristotle when he ignorantly stated that 
lions and wolves have but one neck-bone, for the 
reason, he says, that ‘‘nature saw that these animals 
wanted the neck more for strength than for other pur- 
poses.’’ To try to tell why nature has done a thing is, 
at any time, an intellectual performance of doubtful 
merit, but to try to do it in the absence of definite 
knowledge of related facts is an extravagant violation 
of intellectual integrity. Design in the structure of 
the solar system was hardly a debatable question pre- 
vious to the times of Kepler and Newton. 
The weakness of the argument of design has always 
been that its champions have failed to trace the methods 
by which nature has wrought the mystic patterns of 
living things, or to recognize the power of the inherent 
laws or properties of matter, and the influences of envi- 
