38 



Conclusion, 



The general result which will be gathered from this essay, 

 the w^riter trusts, will be, that if the word " design " is to be 

 retained at all, it must have a far more extended and qualified, 

 if not very different meaning to that which has hitherto been 

 assigned to it. At present it fails to embrace a very large class 

 of structural phenomena in living creatures : it fails to account 

 for the so-called evils inflicted by physical forces which in their 

 more beneficent forms are loudly applauded as witnesses to the 

 goodness of God : thus, electricity in its use to man for tele- 

 graphic purposes might be pronounced as designed as much as 

 coal and steam ; but the teleologist hesitates to say it was 

 made to kill when pent up in a thunderstorm. Or again, that 

 although God has given us coal, natural theologians do not 

 recognize the awful destruction of life which year after year is 

 unavoidably made in getting it, as a judgment upon his pre- 

 sumption. 



The word design, therefore, cannot be any longer entertained 

 in so absolute a sense as heretofore. All those so-called 



physical evils must be taken into account in any scheme of 

 creation which professes to have at least some show of phi- 

 losophy and comprehensiveness. And although, as the writer 

 in the Quarterly (for July, 1869) has forcibly shown, that in 

 such structures as the eye and hand design clings to the 

 facts,''' and by no mental effort can we throw it off — witness 

 Lotze ! — yet to some students those innumerable cases of imper- 

 fection, as seen in rudimentary organs and ill-adaptations, and 

 so forth — bunglings,'' as they have been called by materialists 

 — weigh so heavily upon their minds that they cannot see the 

 power of law which governs them, and which itself is a proof of 

 design. There can be no law without a lawgiver. Order, 

 method, law, and plan are but expressions of mind. In the 

 words of Mr. Darwin, I say, "that the understanding revolts 

 at such a conclusion, whether or not we are able to believe that 

 every slight variation of structure, — the union of each pair in 

 marriage, — the dissemination of each seed, — and other events, 

 have all been ordained for some special purpose.'* 



With regard, then, to the present aspect of the argument of 

 design, two important deductions have been made, — first that 

 design is never more than relative, and not absolute in nature ; 

 and secondly, that we must no longer adopt any such com- 

 parison between man's method and God's method of making, as 

 has been imphed in the argument of design ; for, while man 

 operates upon the materials furnished him by the world, com- 

 bines and adjusts the forces of nature, and so elaborates 



