f being strengthened by any number
of examples similar in kind.

Sec. 25. To put the case in another way. The root fallacy in Paley's argument
consisted in reasoning from a particular to an universal. Because he knew
that design was the cause of adaptation in some cases, and because the
phenomena of life exhibited more instances of adaptation than any other
class of phenomena in nature, he pointed to these phenomena as affording an
exceptional kind of proof of the presence in nature of intelligent agency.
Yet, if it is admitted--and of this, even in Paley's days, there was a
strong analogical presumption--that the phenomena of life are throughout
their history as much subject to law as are any other phenomena
whatsoever,--that the method of the divine government, supposing such to
exist, is the same here as elsewhere; then nothing can be clearer than that
any amount of observable adaptation of means to ends within this class of
phenomena cannot afford any different kind of evidence of _design_ than is
afforded by any other class of phenomena whatsoever. Either we know the
relations of the Deity to his creation, or we do not. If we do, then we
must know whether or not _every_ physical change which occurs in accordance
with law--_i.e._, every change occurring within experience, and so, until
contrary evidence is produced, presumably every change occurring beyond
experience--was separately planned by the Deity. If we do not, then we have
no more reason to suppose that any one set of physical changes rather than
another has been separately planned by him, unless we could point (as Paley
virtually pointed) to one particular set of changes and assert, These are
not subject to the same method of divine government which we observe
elsewhere, or, in other words, to law. If it is retorted that _in some way
or other_ all these wonderful adaptations must ultimately have been due to
intelligence, this is merely to shift the argument to a ground which we
shall presently have to consider: all we are now engaged upon is to show
that we have no right to found arguments on the assumed _mode_, _manner_,
or _process_ by which the supposed intelligence is thought to have
operated. We can here see, then, more clearly where Paley stumbled. He
virtually assumed that the relations subsisting between the Deity and the
universe were such, that the exceptional adaptations met with in the
organised part of the latter cannot have been due to the same