In my proof of the invalidity of that argument--it being indeed what
is called "the Argument from Design"--I point out that our experience
simultaneously informs us of two modes of producing order, otherwise
called arrangement, relation of parts to each other and to the whole
direction of means towards some recognisable end; or, to describe
the phenomenon in the most summary, as well as the most practical,
way--two modes of producing effects identical with those that proceed
from design. I explain that, of these two principles of order, the one
is Design itself, a modus operandi of intelligence (such as we find
it here below, of which the human mind affords the best examples),
while the other is something to which no name has been assigned,
and which, consequently, we can only shortly describe by saying that
it is not design. It becomes necessary, therefore, to give a farther
periphrastic account of it as follows:--
This nameless principle of order, considered as a vague popular
surmise, is as familiar to our experience as design. We all
see, for instance, that water has a tendency to form a perfectly
level and horizontal surface, that heavy bodies fall to the earth
perpendicularly, that the plummet performs a straight line in just
the same direction, that dew-drops and soap-bubbles assume a globular
shape, that crystallisation observes similar artist-like rules,
and so on. We are accustomed to say, "It is the nature of things,"
and we ground our daily actions on a confidence in this regularity of
proceeding, without generally attempting to explain it. Science comes
to our help, and shows us that this orderly action of things around
us may be traced to, and is the necessary result of, the operation of
certain powers or properties inherent in these natural things. Grant
that the property called gravitation belongs to moving bodies,
and an innumerable quantity of orderly phenomena may be predicated
as springing of their own accord by inevitable consequence from
this datum; which same phenomena, moreover, intelligence is able
coincidently to reproduce in its own special mental way.
Here, then, is a principle of order, less popularly appreciated,
but not less certainly evidenced and known, than design. It is, no
doubt, a principle infinitely inferior in dignity, for it is blind
and unintelligent, while design sees and understands, but this is
not the question. The question, superseded by an answer derived from
human experience, is to this effect--that nature and natural things
are, with no less propriety, assignable as the doers of a certain
non-designing kind of order, than man is assignable as the doer of
the designing kind; that we just as truly perceive that nature,
in the exercise of certain powers that we find to be inherent in
her, produces order in a dew-drop or in a crystal, as that man, in
the exercise of certain powers that we find to be inherent in him,
produces order in a poem or in a cathedral, and that, consequently,
the argument from design, based as it is on the assertion that our
experience assures us of only one principle of order, is invalid.
Mr. F. W. Newman's argument is one of this erroneous class. He points
to "Animal Instincts" as an effect, which, owing to our knowing of
no other agency by which it could have been produced, can alone
be accounted for by reference to a designer, and consequently as
manifesting the objective existence of that designer, who could only be
the theistic God. The question that Mr. F. Newman's adduced instance
required him to consider was, whether the non-designing principle of
order, which, we are aware, is in many cases able to produce the same
effects as the other, could have been thus operative here, and he had
got to prove that it could not have been so, that there was something
in the nature of the case that forced us exclusively to have recourse
to the intelligent principle of order, and resisted any solution from
the other principle. The result of a proof so conducted would have
been, that Mr. F. Newman was entitled to conclude that (granting our
earthly experience was a sufficient test of the matter) Design must
have been the sole worker of the debated phenomenon. He would then
have established his theistic argument. Instead of doing this, he
simplifies his proceeding by being incognisant of a notorious fact,
and ignoring the non-designing principle altogether.
1. The fact is, that there is not one way only of producing the
phenomena of design (I am here using an ordinary elliptical mode
of speaking, since literal metaphysical correctness is sometimes
cumbrous)--but there are two ways: one, the mind of a designer, and
the other (whatever may be its nature, which the present question
does not call upon me to define) not the mind of a designer.
2. The shortest way of proving this theorem, is to state that there
are two ways of your obtaining a facsimile of your own person. One
is to have your portrait taken, and the other is to stand before
a looking-glass, and that of these two ways the former is that of
design, and the latter confessedly not design, being the well-known
necessary effect of certain so-called second causes, whose operation
in this instance is familiar to modern science.
3. Consequently, S. D. Collet is incorrect in the principle which
she makes the foundation of her argument at p. 27, where it is said,
"What the Theist maintains is this, that when we see the exercise of
Force in the direction of a purpose, we, by an inevitable inference,
attribute the phenomenon to some conscious agent."
4. Force is seen to be exercised in the direction of a purpose--the
purpose being that of producing similitude--with equal evidence in
the two cases just compared; for though the force exercised in said
direction is less in the case of the painter than it is in that of the
looking-glass (for the resemblance produced by the former is in less
degree a resemblance than that produced by the latter), the evidence
cannot be said to be less, since it is no less able to convince. We
are as perfectly sure that the painter could not have produced that
lesser similitude of a man, and a particular man, by chance (the
alternative of this supposition, according to our experience, being
that he must have used design) as we are that the looking-glass could
not have produced that greater similitude of a man, and a particular
man, by chance (the alternative of this supposition, according to
our experience, being that it must have used certain so-called laws
of nature); this collective experience of ours, equally assuring us
on the one hand, that the only way of the painter's achieving these
effects is by design, and on the other, that the only way of the
looking-glass's doing so, is by the natural agencies referred to.
5. The human experience on which the decision of this question must
be founded--though not at the present era essentially different--may
yet be said to be considerably so from what it was in certain former
periods. In no times could mankind think and observe without becoming
aware of these two principles of order--whether you call them facts
or inferences--as a portion of their familiar experience. And so far
as they might have compared them, they must have abundantly seen that
the natural one is more powerful than the artificial one, and that the
straight line or the circle must seek its perfection much rather from
the plummet or the revolving radius, than from the pencil of Apelles.
6. Thus the essential point of the existence of the two principles
has always been known, but the idea of their respective spheres and
limits, of the efficient prevalence of each within our experience, has
fluctuated in society. Art and handicraft are, of course, peculiarly
competent to appreciate the artificial principle of order, while
physical science is especially conversant with the natural one. As the
ancients were equal to the moderns in the former pursuits, but vastly
inferior to them in the latter, they must so far have had a tendency to
think more of the designing principle, and less of the other principle
than we do. But it must be remembered, that one or other of these two
principles, or at least the arbitrament between them, is the animating
basis of all religion, and of all religious sects and persuasions;
and further, that of these two principles, the religion founded on
the artificial one, which is the one traditionally derived to us,
is liable to be, and is wont to be, a far more powerful religion
(because it deals far more intensely in personification, having
reference singly to some supposed artist) than either the religion
that is constituted by the natural principle, or that which results
from a mixture of the two principles. And indeed, I will incidentally
say that this last kind of religion seems to me to have much analogy
on its side, and that the old idea of "the two principles" might,
on several grounds besides the present one, and in several respects,
perhaps, be found to shadow forth a certain amount of most important
truth and applicability.
7. To return. By considering the state of religion and of religious
belief in the times of Socrates and Cicero, in connection with
the state of art, handicraft, and science, in the same time, and
coincidently taking care not to forget that religious sentiment
(that at least of the kind which had in their era already been,
and much more since has been, communicated from the east to the
west) is an incomparably more vigorous impeller of opinion, than
reason and argument; we shall have some of the principal data, and
in a main matter shall be prepared to use them judiciously in any
inquiry we might make, why it was that Socrates and Cicero, having
their attention arrested by the artificial principle of order and
arrangement, seemed absolutely to forget the existence of the natural
one, and why in consequence it was, that the latter wrote to this
effect: "He who can look up to the heavenly vault, and doubt the
existence of a one personal God, the designer and governor of all
things, is equivalent to a madman"; and why, further, we, spite of
our vast physical science, are prone to the same fallacy.
8. Having thus proved that the argument of the Theist generally,
as well as the particular one advanced by S. D. C. at p. 27, is, by
being based on the erroneous statement that there is only one means
known to human experience, of producing phenomena identical with those
that are the product of design, and that this one is design itself;
there being, on the contrary, two such means, one of which is not
design; having, I say, proved that your argument, by being so based,
is invalid, I find I must fully agree with you, that there is evidence
of "an unmistakable cosmical unity."
9. The true inquiry, therefore, is, which of those two principles
of order is, in the agency inquired into, the agent under these
circumstances, and whether both, and how far, under our ignorance of
what may be (a most important point that is carefully to be considered)
we are entitled to affirm as indubitable, to denounce as contradictory,
to advance as probable, to conjecture, to surmise, or to speculate
on this question.