m design is that behind the
manufactured article which we recognise as such, there are other
articles or other things that are not manufactured. The traveller, says
Paley, who comes across a watch recognises in the relation of its parts
evidences of workmanship. But he does not see in the breaking of a wave
on the shore, or in the piling up of sand in the desert, or in a pebble
on the beach, the same tokens of workmanship. In the very act of
attempting to prove that _some_ things _are_ made, the theist is
compelled to assume that _all_ things are not made. He can only gain a
victory at the price of confessing a defeat.

But is there any real analogy between the works of man and the universe
at large? Let us take a familiar example. It is, we are told in a very
familiar illustration, as absurd to imagine that the world as it exists
is the work of unguided natural forces, as it would be to believe that
the rows of letters in a compositor's "stick" had of their own
contained force arranged themselves in intelligible sentences. The
absurdity of the last supposition is admitted, but why is that so?
Obviously because we have the previous knowledge that the type itself is
a manufactured thing, and that its arrangement in orderly sentences is
the work of intelligent men. Thus, what occurs when we come across a
particular example of type setting is that we compare our present
experience with other experiences and recognise it as belonging to a
particular class. So with the watch. The only reason we have for
believing that a watch is made is that of our previous knowledge that
such things are made. The present judgment is based upon past
experience. But the case of animal forms, and still more the universe at
large, offers no such analogy. We know nothing of world makers nor of
animal makers. We have no previous experience to go upon, nor have we
any things of a similar kind, known to be made, with which we can
compare them. Instead of the points of resemblance between the two
things being so numerous as to compel belief, they agree in one
particular only, that of existence. At most all we are left with is the
palpably absurd position that because man selects and adjusts means to a
given end, therefore any combination of forces in nature which produce a
certain result must also be the expression of conscious intention.

Some apparent force even to this flimsy conclusion might be given if
nature could be said to be working toward