stence of our moral sense to the _character_ of a God already
believed to exist remain unaffected by the foregoing considerations.[17]

* * * * *

CHAPTER III.

THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN.

Sec. 23. The argument from Design, as presented by Mill, is merely a
resuscitation of it as presented by Paley. True it is that the logical
penetration of the former enabled him to perceive that the latter had "put
the case much too strongly;" although, even here, he has failed to see
wherein Paley's error consisted. He says:--"If I found a watch on an
apparently desolate island, I should indeed infer that it had been left
there by a human being; but the inference would not be from the marks of
design, but because I already know by direct experience that watches are
made by men." Now I submit that this misses the whole point of Paley's
meaning; for it is evident that there would be no argument at all unless
this author be understood to say what he clearly enough expresses, viz.,
that the evidence of design supposed to be afforded by the watch is
supposed to be afforded by examination of its mechanism only, and not by
any previous knowledge as to how that particular mechanism called a watch
is made. Paley, I take it, only chose a watch for his example because he
knew that no reader would dispute the fact that watches are constructed by
design: except for the purpose of pointing out that mechanism is in some
cases admitted to be due to intelligence, for all the other purposes of his
argument he might as well have chosen for his illustration any case of
mechanism occurring in nature. What the real fallacy in Paley's argument
is, is another question, and this I shall now endeavour to answer; for, as
Mill's argument is clearly the same in kind as that of Paley and his
numberless followers, in examining the one I am also examining the other.

Sec. 24. In nature, then, we see innumerable examples of apparent design: are
these of equal value in testifying to the presence of a designing
intelligence as are similar examples of human contrivance, and if not, why
not? The answer to the first of these questions is patent. If such examples
were of the same value in the one case as they are in the other, the
existence of a Deity would be, as Paley appears to have thought it was,
demonstrated by the fact. A brief and yet satisfactory answer to the second
question is not so easy, and we may best approach it by assumi