gner must be a person, I am quite inclined to
admit. Thus far goes Paley, and, therefore, thus far I go with him. His
general position, that design proves a personal designer, is so
_natural_, so _easy_, and so _plausible_, that it invites one to admit
it.... Paley insists upon it as a legitimate inference from his
premises, nor would it be easy to disturb his conclusion.... This is
Paley's reasoning upon the subject, and it is too _natural_, too
_rigid_, and too _cogent_ to be escaped from." Now, what is there in the
proposed extension of the analogy that can invalidate either of these
admissions, or that should induce us to set aside both? Extend the
analogy ever so far, it is still true that _law and order_ prevail in
Nature, that design implies a _designer_, and that a designer must be a
_person_. And how does Mr. Holyoake save his consistency? Simply by
stretching the analogy till it snaps asunder; he begins by extending,
and ends in destroying it; he admits it at first, merely "to see where
it will lead and what it will prove," and finding that it must imply an
organized designer, and an endless series of such beings, "he gives it
up," and denies the existence of _design_ altogether. There is a
_hiatus,_ it would seem,--an impassable gulf,--between the admission
that _law and order_ prevail in Nature, and the conclusion that _law and
order_ are manifestations of _design_: "What I supposed to be design in
the opening of my argument is _no longer design_. My reverend friend is
wrong in supposing that I admit DESIGN, and yet refuse to admit the
force of the _design argument_," On the supposition, then, that _law and
order_ are manifestations of _design_, the design argument might be
valid and conclusive: but "_no conceivable order_" could prove the
existence of God; why? Because no conceivable order could be a
manifestation of _design_. But how is this proved by the extension of
the analogy? Does it not amount to a denial of the analogy itself? And
is it not an instructive fact that his abortive attempt to disprove the
design argument, results, not in the denial of the _inductive
inference_, but in the exclusion of the very _analogy_ which he proposed
to extend, not in shaking the validity of the proof, but in disputing
the fact on which it is based? The extension of the analogy cannot prove
either that law and order are _not_ manifestations of design, or that
there may be design without a personal designer; all that i