roved or of being disproved. Now, with these significations clearly
understood, it will be seen that the forms of teleology which we have
hitherto considered belong entirely to the scientific class. That the
Paleyerian form of the argument did so is manifest, first because this
argument itself treats the problem of Theism as a problem that is
susceptible of scientific demonstration, and next because we have seen that
the advance of science has proved this argument susceptible of scientific
refutation. In other words, from the supposed axiom, "There cannot be
apparent design without a designer," adaptations in nature become logically
available as purely scientific evidence of an intelligent cause; and that
Paley himself regarded them exclusively in this light is manifest, both
from his own "statement of the argument," and from the character of the
evidence by which he seeks to establish the argument when stated--witness
the typical passage before quoted (Sec. 26). On the other hand, we have
clearly seen that this Paleyerian system of natural theology has been
effectually demolished by the scientific theory of natural selection--the
fundamental axiom of the former having been shown by the latter to be
scientifically untrue. Hence the term "scientific teleology" is without
question applicable to the Paleyerian system.

Nor is the case essentially different with the more refined form of the
teleological argument which we have had to consider--the argument, namely,
from General Laws. For here, likewise, we have clearly seen that the
inference from the ubiquitous operation of General Laws to the existence of
an omniscient Law-maker is quite as illegitimate as is the inference from
apparent Design to the existence of a Supreme Designer. In other words,
science, by establishing the doctrine of the persistence of force and the
indestructibility of matter, has effectually disproved the hypothesis that
the presence of Law in nature is of itself sufficient to prove the
existence of an intelligent Law-giver.

Thus it is that scientific teleology in any form is now and for ever
obsolete. But not so with what I have termed metaphysical teleology. For as
we have seen that the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge precludes us
from asserting, or even from inferring, that beyond the region of the
Knowable Mind does not exist, it remains logically possible to institute a
metaphysical hypothesis that beyond this region of the Knowable Min