rgument of a really scientific
character," and, although he did not find the argument convincing, gave
it a most respectful dismissal. The purpose of the present chapter is to
show that the argument from design in nature is in the last degree
unscientific, that the analogy it seeks to establish is a false one,
that it is completely and hopelessly irrelevant to the point at issue,
and that one might grant nearly all it asks for, and even then show that
it does not prove what it sets out to prove. That such an argument
should have, and for so long, exerted so much influence over the human
mind, gives one anything but a flattering impression of the power of
reason in human affairs.

True it is that of late years the argument from design has felt the
influence of the growth of the idea of evolution, and the champions of
theism have used it with much greater caution, and under an obvious
sense that it no longer wielded its old authority. The fact that this
is so forms a commentary on the statement so often made that man's
craving for an ultimate cause leads to the belief in God. The truth
being that man--the average man--only seeks for an explanation of
immediate happenings. Once the immediate thing before him is explained
his curiosity is allayed. The average man lives mentally from hand to
mouth, and troubles as little about ultimate explanations as he does
about the exhaustion of the coal supply.

It is a point of some significance that the perception of design in
nature, as with the belief in deity, is, if one may use the expression,
pre-scientific in point of origin. What I mean by that is that it
originates at a time when no other explanation of the origin of natural
adaptations existed. It did not establish itself as one of several rival
explanations and in virtue of its own strength. It was established
simply because no other explanation was at the time conceivable. And so
soon as another explanation, such as that of natural selection, was
placed before the world, the origin of adaptations as a product of an
extra-natural designing intelligence became to most educated minds
simply impossible. The perception of design in nature was, as a matter
of fact, no more than a special illustration of the animistic frame of
mind which reads vitality into all natural happenings. It is impossible
to find in the statement that particular adaptations in nature are
designed anything more scientific than one can find in the belief t