PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 273 



strictly scientific methods. It also seems clear that the signifi- 

 cance of the argument from contrivance or interference with the 

 order of physical nature, turns on the account which science gives 

 of this aspect of personal identity; for the discovery of natural 

 selection forbids us to assert, before this question is answered, that 

 the evidence of contrivance afforded by living things and their 

 works is different from that which is afforded by inorganic bodies 

 and their movements, inasmuch as it shows us the chain of physi- 

 cal causation which joins the works of man and of other living 

 beings to that part of the order of nature to which they are adjusted. 



While I cannot agree with those enthusiastic zoologists who 

 hold that life has been proved to be a matter of physics and 

 chemistry, modern science seems, to me, to demand that we sus- 

 pend judgment upon this difficult question, and wait for more 

 evidence, for there seems to me to be no better basis for a negative 

 than for an affirmative answer. 



If science furnishes proof that the continuity of life is not 

 only a natural phenomenon but a physical phenomenon, which 

 may be expressed in terms of physical matter and mechanical 

 energy, then, indeed, the argument from contrivance has received 

 its death-blow; for we can no longer find, in the actions of living 

 things, or in those of any living thing, evidence of interference 

 with the, order of physical nature. If, however, the answer which 

 science gives is imperfect or indecisive, then I think we must 

 admit that, while weakened by the discovery of natural selection, 

 the argument from contrivance is not utterly destroyed. Finally, if 

 science fails to throw any light on the origin and meaning of per- 

 sonal identity, then the argument from contrivance has the same 

 value, whatever this may be, that it had before natural selection 

 was discovered. 



Two hundred and fifty years ago no one thought of asking 

 whether living beings ever arise out of dead matter, for all believed 

 that they never arise in any other way ; and that this may be illus- 

 trated by observing how quickly dead things, like dung and rotten 

 meat and the carcasses of dead animals, breed maggots and flies 

 under the influence of the hot sun. 



" The proposition that life may, and does, proceed from that 

 which has no life was held alike by the philosophers, the poets. 



