It is scarcely necessary to designate instances in the works of nature, in
which there is an appearance of purpose, for everything has this
appearance. I will, however, mention several cases as samples.
1. The adaptation of the covering of animals to the climates in which they
live. Northern animals have thicker and warmer coats of fur or hair than
Southern ones. And here it should be remarked that man, the only creature
capable of clothing himself, is the only one that is not clothed by
nature. Singular discrimination and care indeed for non-intelligence!
2. The adaptation of animals to the elements in which they live, the fish
to the water, other animals to the air. Would not an unintelligent energy
or power be as likely to form the organs of a fish for air as for water?
3. The necessity which man has for sustenance, and the supply of that
necessity by nature.
Here let it be noted how many things must act in unison to produce the
necessary result. The earth must nourish the seed, the sun must warm it,
the rain must moisten it, and man must have the strength to cultivate it,
and the organs to eat it, and the stomach to digest it, and the
blood-vessels to circulate it, and so on. Is it credible that all these
things should _happen_ without design?
4. The pre-adaptation of the infant to the state of things into which it
enters at birth. The eye is exactly suited to the light, the ear to sound,
the nose to smell, the palate to taste, the lungs to the air. How is it
possible to see no design in this pre-adaptation, so curious, so
complicated in so many particulars?
5. The milk of animals suitable for the nourishment of their young,
provided just in season, provided without contrivance on the part of the
parent, and sought for without instruction or experience on the part of
its offspring! _and all by chance!!_
6. The different sexes. In this case, as in the rest, there is perfect
adaptation, which displays evident design. And there is more. What, I ask,
is there _in nature_ to cause a difference in sexes? Why are not all
either males or females? or, rather, a compound? This case, then, I
consider not only an evidence of design, but likewise an evidence of the
special and continued _volition_ of the Creator.
7. The destitution of horns on the calf and of teeth in the suckling. All
other parts are perfect at the very first; but were calves and sucklings
to have teeth and horns, what sore annoyances would these appendages prove
to their dams and dames. How is it that all the necessary parts of the
young are thus perfect at the first, and their annoying parts unformed
till circumstances render them no annoyance—unformed at the time they are
not needed, and produced when they are, for defense and mastication? Who
can fail to see intelligence here?
8. The teats of animals. These bear a general proportion to the number of
young which they are wont to have at a time. Those that are wont to have
few young have few teats; those that have many young have many teats. Were
these animals to make preparations themselves in this respect, how could
things be more appropriate?
9. The pea and the bean. The pea-vine, unable to stand erect of itself,
has tendrils with which to cling to a supporter; but the bean-stalk,
self-sustained, has nothing of the kind.
10. The pumpkin. This does not grow on the oak; to fall on the tender head
of the wiseacre reposing in its shade, _reasoning_ that it should grow
there rather than where it does, because, forsooth, the oak would be able
to sustain it. And were he to undertake to set the other works of
Providence to rights which he now considers wrong, ’tis a chance if he
would not get many a thump upon his pate ere he should get the universe
arranged to his mind. And if, before completing his undertaking, he should
not find it the easier of the two to arrange his mind to the universe, it
would be because _what __ little_ brains he _has_ would get thumped out of
his cranium altogether!
11. The great energies of nature. To suppose the existence of _powers_ as
the cause of the operations of nature—powers destitute of life, and, at
the same time, self-moving, and acting upon matter without the
intervention of extrinsic agency, is just as irrational as to suppose such
a power in a machine, and is a gross absurdity and a self-contradiction.
But to suppose that these lifeless energies, even if possessed of such
qualities, could, void of intelligence, produce _such_ effects as _are_
produced in the universe, requires credulity capable of believing
anything.
12. The whole universe, whether considered in its elementary or its
organized state. From the simple grass to the tender plant, and onward to
the sturdy oak; from the least insect up to man, there is skill the most
consummate, design the most clear. What substance, useless as it may be
when uncompounded with other substances, does not manifest design in its
affinity to those substances, by a union with which it is rendered useful?
What plant, what shrub, what tree has not organization and arrangement the
most perfect imaginable? What insect so minute that contains not, within
its almost invisible exterior, adjustment of part to part in the most
exact order throughout all its complicated system, infinitely transcending
the most ingenious productions of art, and the most appropriate adaptation
of all those parts to its peculiar mode of existence? Rising in the scale
of sensitive being, let us consider the beast of the forest, in whose
case, without microscopic aid, we have the subject more accessible. Is he
a beast of prey? Has the God of nature given him an instinctive thirst for
blood? Behold, then, his sharp-sighted organs of vision for descrying his
victim afar, his agile limbs for pursuit, his curved and pointed claws for
seizing and tearing his prey, his sharp-edged teeth for cutting through
its flesh, his firm jaws for gripping, crushing, and devouring it, and his
intestines for digesting raw flesh. But is he a graminivorous animal? Does
he subsist on grass and herb? Behold, then, his clumsy limbs and his
clawless hoofs, his blunt teeth and his herb-digesting stomach. So perfect
is the correspondence between one part and another; so exactly adapted are
all the parts to the same general objects; so wonderful is the harmony and
so definite and invariable the purpose obtaining throughout the whole,
that it is necessary to see but a footstep, or even a bone, to be able to
decide the nature and construction of the animal that imprinted that
footstep or that possessed that bone. Ascending still higher in the scale,
we come at last to man—man, the highest, noblest workmanship of God on
earth—the lord of this sphere terrene—for whose behoof all earthly things
exist. In common with all animals, he has that perfect adaptation of part
to part, and of all the parts to general objects, which demonstrate
consummate wisdom in the Cause which thus adapted them. His eyes are so
placed as to look the same way in which his feet are placed to walk, and
his hands to toil. His feet correspond with each other, being both placed
to walk in the direction, and with their corresponding sides towards one
another, without which he would hobble, even if he could walk at all. His
mouth is placed in the forepart of the head, by which it can receive food
and drink from the hands.
But the hands themselves—who can but admire their wonderful utility? To
what purpose are they not adapted? Man, who has many ends to accomplish,
in common with the beast of the field; who has hunger to alleviate, thirst
to slake, and has likewise other and higher ends, for the attainment of
which he is peculiarly qualified by means of _hands_. Adapted by his
constitution to inhabit all climes, he has hands to adapt his clothing to
the same, whether torrid, temperate or frigid. Possessed of the knowledge
of the utility of the soil, he has hands to cultivate it. Located far
distant oftentimes from the running stream, these hands enable him to
disembowel the earth and there find an abundant supply of the
all-necessary fluid. Endowed with rational ideas, pen in _hand_ he can
transmit them to his fellows far away, or to generations unborn. Heir and
lord of earth and ocean, his hands enable him to possess and control the
same, without which, notwithstanding all his reason, he could do neither,
but would have to crouch beneath the superior strength of the brute, and
fly for shelter to crags inaccessible to his beastly sovereign.
The only creature that has the reason to manage the world, has the
physical organization to do it. No _beast_ with man’s reason could do
this, and no _man_ with the mere instinct of a brute could do it. How
marvellous, then this adaptation! How wondrous the adaptation of
everything, and how astonishing that any man, with all these things in
view, can for one moment forbear to admit a God. Let him try _a chance
experiment_. Let him take the letters of the alphabet and throw them about
promiscuously and then see how long ere they would move of their own
accord and arrange themselves into words and sentences. He may avail
himself of the whole benefit of his scheme; he may have the advantage of
an energy or power as a momentum to set them in motion; he may put these
letters into a box sufficiently large for the purpose, and then shake them
as long as may seem him good, and when, in this way, they shall have
become intelligible language, I will admit that he will have some reasons
for doubting a God. If this should seem too much like _artificial_ mind,
he may take some little animal, all constructed at his hands, and
dismember its limbs and dissect its body, and then within some vessel let
him throw its various parts at random, and seizing that vessel shake it
most lustily till bone shall come to bone, joint to joint, and the little
creature be restored to its original form. But if this could not be
accomplished by mere power, without wisdom to direct, how could the
original adjustment occur by chance? How could those very parts themselves
be _formed for_ adjustment one to another?
Mathematicians tell us wondrous things in relation to these hap-hazard
concerns. And they demonstrate their statements by what will not
lie—figures. Their rule is this: that, as one thing admits of but one
position, as, for example, _a_, so two things, _a_ and _b_, are capable of
two positions, as _ab_, _ba_. But if a third be added, instead of their
being susceptible of only one additional position, or three in all, they
are capable of six. For example, _abc_, _acb_, _bac_, _bca_, _cab_, _cba_.
Add another letter, _d_, and the four are capable of twenty-four positions
or variations. Thus we might go on. Merely adding another letter, _e_, and
so making _five_ instead of four, would increase the the number of
variations _five_-fold. They would then amount to one hundred and twenty.
A single additional letter, _f_, making _six_ in all, would increase this
last sum of one hundred and twenty _six_-fold, making seven hundred and
twenty. Add a _seventh_ letter, _g_, and the last-named sum would be
increased _seven_-fold, making the sum of five thousand and forty. If we
go on thus to the end of the alphabet, we have the astonishing sum of six
hundred and twenty thousand four hundred and forty-eight trillions, four
hundred and one thousand seven hundred and thirty-three billions, two
hundred and thirty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty-nine millions and
three hundred and sixty thousand!!! Hence it follows that, were the
letters of the alphabet to be thrown promiscuously into a vessel, to be
afterwards shaken into order by mere hap, their chance of being arranged,
not to say into words and sentences, but into their alphabetical order,
would be only as _one_ to the above number. All this, too, in the case of
only twenty-six letters! Take now the human frame, with its bones,
tendons, nerves, muscles, veins, arteries, ducts, glands, cartilages,
etc.; and having dissected the same, throw those parts into one
promiscuous mass; and how long, I ask, would it be ere Chance would put
them all into their appropriate places and form a perfect man? In this
calculation we are likewise to take into the account the chances of their
being placed bottom upwards, or side-ways, or wrong side out,
notwithstanding they might merely find their appropriate places. This
would increase the chances against a well-formed system to an amount
beyond all calculation or conception. In the case of the alphabet, the
chances for the letters to fall bottom up or aslant are not included. And
when we reflect that the blind goddess, or “unintelligent forces,” would
have to contend against such fearful odds in the case of a single
individual, how long are we to suppose it would be, ere from old Chaos she
could shake this mighty universe, with all its myriads upon myriads of
existences, into the glorious order and beauty in which it now exists.