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PART II. 
Two h Aitema^ ^ we have had enough of Mr. Spencer for the present, 
tives. and we can reflect for ourselves on the phenomenon of the 
intellect of this scientific and conceited age accepting such 
attempts to find a substitute for the belief of all mankind (until 
lately), that nothing can have made itself or anything superior 
to itself; that manifest and admitted contrivances cannot have 
come without a contriver of them for the purpose which they 
serve, and of the means of producing them ; and that it is 
little short of lunacy to talk of intelligence being gene- 
rated out of self-existing matter with no properties by self- 
existing gravity — if such a force could be. We have now seen 
that nothing is too absurd, and no reasoning too ludicrous, to 
be swallowed by those who have abandoned that once uni- 
versal creed among all people capable of thinking of more 
than their appetites. I now propose to add a few words on the 
inference of creative design backwards, from things manifestly 
being what they would have been if they were designed by an 
inventor and a power infinitely superior to ourselves. 
Some anti- creationists deny that they are, and say that they 
could themselves have made some things better, though they 
prudently abstain from saying how, beyond repeating the 
general proposition that an omnipotent Creator ought, in their 
opinion, to have made a perfect world, with no evil in it. That 
proposition also I have discussed elsewhere, and of course do 
not pretend to explain why we have to wait for perfection in 
another world. All that has nothing to do with the alter- 
natives of design or no design in this. For again it is neces- 
sary to remind people that they have to choose between two 
only possible alternatives, according to the balance of proba- 
bilities. There is no middle way, between the world and all 
that is in it having been either designed or not designed; and 
therefore we ipso facto believe, and cannot but believe, one 
just so far as we disbelieve the other. A man may not have 
made up his mind which to believe, but that man's opinion is 
worth nothing. In fact he has none ; or an Agnostic must 
be wrong, whether theists or atheists are right. 
Therefore, also, a man who denies design, but cannot state 
any other rational mode of generating the universe, condemns 
himself. For unquestionably a designing Creator could 
produce the universe, and therefore must have done it, if 
