it is the _fact_ and not the _method_ of Evolution which is
subversive of Teleology in its Paleyerian form.

Sec. 27. We have come then to this:--Apparent intellectual adaptations are
perfectly valid indications of design, so long as their authorship is known
to be confined to human intelligence; for then we know from experience what
are our relations to these laws, and so in any given case can argue _a
posteriori_ that such an adaptation to such a set of laws by such an
intelligence can only have been due to such a process. But when we overstep
the limits of experience, we are not entitled to argue anything _a priori_
of any other intelligence in this respect, even supposing any such
intelligence to exist. The analogy by which the unknown relations are
inferred from the known is "infinitely precarious;" seeing that two of the
analogous terms--to wit, the divine intelligence and the human--may differ
to an immeasurable extent in their properties--nay, are supposed thus to
differ, the one being supposed omniscient, omnipotent, &c., and the other
not. And, as a final step, we may now see that the argument from Design, in
its last resort, resolves itself into a _petitio principii_. For,
ultimately, the only point which the analogical argument in question is
adduced to prove is, that the relations subsisting between an Unknown Cause
and certain physical forces are so far identical with the relations known
to subsist between human intelligence and these same forces, that similar
intellectual processes are required in the two cases to account for the
production of similar effects--and hence that the Unknown Cause is
intelligent. But it is evident that the analogy itself can have no
existence, except upon the presupposition that these two sets of relations
_are_ thus identical. The point which the analogy is adduced to prove is
therefore postulated by the fact of its being adduced at all, and the whole
argument resolves itself into a case of _petitio principii_.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.

THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL LAWS.

Sec. 28. Turning now to an important error of Mr. Mill's in respect of
omission, I firmly believe that all competent writers who have ever
undertaken to support the argument from Design, have been moved to do so by
their instinctive appreciation of the much more important argument, which
Mill does not mention at all and which we now proceed to consider--the
argument from Gen