eral Laws. That is to say, I cannot think that any one
competent writer ever seriously believed, had he taken time to analyse his
beliefs, that the cogency of his argument lay in assuming any knowledge
concerning the _process_ of divine thought; he must have really believed
that it lay entirely in his observation of the _product_ of divine
thought--or rather, let us say, of divine intelligence. Now this is the
whole difference between the argument from Design and the argument from
General Laws. The argument from Design says, There must be a God, because
such and such an organic structure must have been due to such and such an
intellectual _process_. The argument from General Laws says, There must be
a God, because such and such an organic structure must _in some way or
other have been ultimately due to_ intelligence. Nor does this argument end
here. Not only must such and such an organic structure have been ultimately
due to intelligence, but every such structure--nay, every phenomenon in the
universe--must have been the same; for all phenomena are alike subject to
the same method of sequence. The argument is thus a cumulative one; for as
there is no single known exception to this universal mode of existence, the
united effect of so vast a body of evidence is all but irresistible, and
its tendency is clearly to point us to some _one_ explanatory cause. The
scope of this argument is therefore co-extensive with the universe; it
draws alike upon all phenomena with which experience is acquainted. For
instance, it contains all the phenomena covered by the Design argument,
just as a genus contains any one of its species; it being manifest, from
what was said in the last section, that if the general doctrine of
Evolution is accepted, the argument from Design must of necessity merge
into that from General Laws. And this wide basis, we may be sure, must be
the most legitimate one whereon to rest an argument in favour of Theism. If
there is any such thing as such an argument at all, the most unassailable
field for its display must be the universe as a whole, seeing that if we
separate any one section of the universe from the rest, and suppose that we
here discover a different kind of testimony to intelligence from that which
we can discover elsewhere, we may from analogy be abundantly sure that on
the confines of our division there must be second causes and general laws
at work (whether discoverable or not), which are the immediate a