He can’t believe that two letters can be adjusted to each other without
design, and yet he can believe all the foregoing incredibilities.
I might swell the list to a vast extent. I might bring into view the
verdure of the earth as being the most agreeable of all colors to the eye;
the general diffusion of the indispensibles and necessaries of life, such
as air, light, water, food, clothing, fuel, while less necessary things,
such as spices, gold, silver, tin, lead, zinc, are less diffused; also,
the infinite variety in things—in men, for instance—by which we can
distinguish one from another. But I forbear. Is it reasonable to conclude
that, where there are possible appearances of design, still no design is
there? or even that it is probable there is none?
I have said that there is as much evidence of purpose in the works of
nature as in those of art. I now say that there is more, _infinitely_
more. Should the wheels of nature stop their revolutions, and her energies
be palsied, and life and motion cease, even then would she exhibit
incomparably greater evidence of design, in her mere construction and
adaptation, than do the works of art. Shall we then be told that when she
is in full operation, and daily producing millions upon millions of
useful, of intelligent, of marvelous effects, she still manifests no marks
of intelligence! In nature we not only see all the works of art infinitely
exceeded, but we see, as it were, those works self-moved and performing
their operations without external agency. To use a faint comparison, we
see a factory in motion without water, wind or steam, its cotton placing
itself within the reach of the picker, the cards, the spinning-frame and
the loom, and turning out in rolls or cloth. Such virtually, nay, far more
wonderful, is the universe. Not a thousandth part so unreasonable would it
be to believe a real factory of this description, were one to exist, to be
a chance existence, as to believe this universe so. Sooner could I suppose
nature herself possessed of intelligence than admit the idea that there is
_no_ intelligence concerned in her organization and operations. There must
be a mind within or without her, or else we have no data by which to
distinguish mind. There must be a mind, or all the results of mind are
produced without any. There must be a mind, or chaos produces order, blind
power perfects effects, and non-intelligence the most admirable
correspondence and harmony imaginable. Skeptics pride themselves much on
their reason. They can’t believe, they say, because it is unreasonable.
_What_ is unreasonable? To believe in a mind where there is every
appearance thereof that can be? Is it more reasonable to believe, then,
that every appearance of mind is produced without any mind at all?
Skeptics are the last men in all this wide world to pretend reason. They
doubt against infinite odds; they believe without evidence against
evidence, against demonstration, and then talk of reason!—_Origin
Bachelor’s Correspondence with R. D. Owen._