THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN.
§ 23. The argument from Design, as presented by Mill, is merely a
resuscitation of it as presented by Paley. True it is that the logical
penetration of the former enabled him to perceive that the latter had "put
the case much too strongly;" although, even here, he has failed to see
wherein Paley's error consisted. He says:--"If I found a watch on an
apparently desolate island, I should indeed infer that it had been left
there by a human being; but the inference would not be from the marks of
design, but because I already know by direct experience that watches are
made by men." Now I submit that this misses the whole point of Paley's
meaning; for it is evident that there would be no argument at all unless
this author be understood to say what he clearly enough expresses, viz.,
that the evidence of design supposed to be afforded by the watch is
supposed to be afforded by examination of its mechanism only, and not by
any previous knowledge as to how that particular mechanism called a watch
is made. Paley, I take it, only chose a watch for his example because he
knew that no reader would dispute the fact that watches are constructed by
design: except for the purpose of pointing out that mechanism is in some
cases admitted to be due to intelligence, for all the other purposes of his
argument he might as well have chosen for his illustration any case of
mechanism occurring in nature. What the real fallacy in Paley's argument
is, is another question, and this I shall now endeavour to answer; for, as
Mill's argument is clearly the same in kind as that of Paley and his
numberless followers, in examining the one I am also examining the other.
§ 24. In nature, then, we see innumerable examples of apparent design: are
these of equal value in testifying to the presence of a designing
intelligence as are similar examples of human contrivance, and if not, why
not? The answer to the first of these questions is patent. If such examples
were of the same value in the one case as they are in the other, the
existence of a Deity would be, as Paley appears to have thought it was,
demonstrated by the fact. A brief and yet satisfactory answer to the second
question is not so easy, and we may best approach it by assuming the
existence of a Deity. If, then, there is a God, it by no means follows that
every apparent contrivance in nature is an actual contrivance, in the same
sense as is any human contrivance. The eye of a vertebrated animal, for
instance, exhibits as much apparent design as does a watch; but no one--at
the present day, at least--will undertake to affirm that the evidence of
divine thought furnished by one example is as conclusive as is the evidence
of human thought furnished by the other--and this even assuming a Deity to
exist. Why is this? The reason, I think, is, that we know by our personal
experience what are our own relations to the material world, and to the
laws which preside over the action of physical forces; while we can have no
corresponding knowledge of the relations subsisting between the Deity and
these same objects of our own experience. Hence, to suppose that the Deity
constructed the eye by any such process of thought as we know that men
construct watches, is to make an assumption not only incapable of proof,
but destitute of any assignable degree of likelihood. Take an example. The
relation in which a bee stands to the external world is to a large extent a
matter of observation, and, therefore, no one imagines that the formation
of its scientifically-constructed cells is due to any profound study on the
bee's part. Whatever the origin of the cell-making instinct may have been,
its nature is certainly not the same as it would have been in man,
supposing him to have had occasion to construct honeycombs. It may be said
that the requisite calculations have been made for the bees by the Deity;
but, even if this assumption were true, it would be nothing to the point,
which is merely that even within the limits of the animal kingdom the
relations of intelligence to the external world are so diverse, that the
same results may be accomplished by totally different intellectual
processes. And as this example is parallel to the case on which we are
engaged in everything save the _observability_ of the relations involved,
it supplies us with the exact measure of the probability we are trying to
estimate. Hence it is evident that so long as we remain ignorant of the
element essential to the argument from design in its Paleyerian form--viz.,
knowledge or presumption of the relations subsisting between an
hypothetical Deity and his creation--so long must that argument remain, not
only unassignably weak, but incapable of being strengthened by any number
of examples similar in kind.
§ 25. To put the case in another way. The root fallacy in Paley's argument
consisted in reasoning from a particular to an universal. Because he knew
that design was the cause of adaptation in some cases, and because the
phenomena of life exhibited more instances of adaptation than any other
class of phenomena in nature, he pointed to these phenomena as affording an
exceptional kind of proof of the presence in nature of intelligent agency.
Yet, if it is admitted--and of this, even in Paley's days, there was a
strong analogical presumption--that the phenomena of life are throughout
their history as much subject to law as are any other phenomena
whatsoever,--that the method of the divine government, supposing such to
exist, is the same here as elsewhere; then nothing can be clearer than that
any amount of observable adaptation of means to ends within this class of
phenomena cannot afford any different kind of evidence of _design_ than is
afforded by any other class of phenomena whatsoever. Either we know the
relations of the Deity to his creation, or we do not. If we do, then we
must know whether or not _every_ physical change which occurs in accordance
with law--_i.e._, every change occurring within experience, and so, until
contrary evidence is produced, presumably every change occurring beyond
experience--was separately planned by the Deity. If we do not, then we have
no more reason to suppose that any one set of physical changes rather than
another has been separately planned by him, unless we could point (as Paley
virtually pointed) to one particular set of changes and assert, These are
not subject to the same method of divine government which we observe
elsewhere, or, in other words, to law. If it is retorted that _in some way
or other_ all these wonderful adaptations must ultimately have been due to
intelligence, this is merely to shift the argument to a ground which we
shall presently have to consider: all we are now engaged upon is to show
that we have no right to found arguments on the assumed _mode_, _manner_,
or _process_ by which the supposed intelligence is thought to have
operated. We can here see, then, more clearly where Paley stumbled. He
virtually assumed that the relations subsisting between the Deity and the
universe were such, that the exceptional adaptations met with in the
organised part of the latter cannot have been due to the same intellectual
_processes_ as was the rest of the universe--or that, if they were, still
they yielded better evidence of having been due to these processes than
does the rest of the universe. And it is easy to perceive that his error
arose from his pre-formed belief in special creation. So long as a man
regards every living organism which he sees as the lineal descendant of a
precisely similar organism originally struck out by the immediate fiat of
Deity, so long is he justified in holding his axiom, "Contrivance must have
had a contriver." For "adaptation" then becomes to our minds the synonym of
"contrivance"--it being utterly inconceivable that the numberless
adaptations found in any living organism could have resulted in any other
way than by intelligent contrivance, at the time when this organism was in
the first instance _suddenly_ introduced into its complex conditions of
life. Still, as an argument, this is of course merely reasoning in a
circle: we adopt a hypothesis which presupposes the existence of a Deity as
the first step in the proof of his existence. I do not say that Paley
committed this error expressly, but merely that if it had not been for his
pre-formed conviction as to the truth of the special-creation theory, he
would probably not have written his "Natural Theology."
§ 26. Thus let us take a case of his own choosing, and the one which is
adduced by him as typical of "the application of the argument." "I know of
no better method of introducing so large a subject than that of comparing a
single thing with a single thing; an eye, for example, with a telescope. As
far as the examination of the instrument goes, there is precisely the same
proof that the eye was made for vision as there is that the telescope was
made for assisting it. They are both made upon the same principles, both
being adjusted to the laws by which the transmission and refraction of rays
of light are regulated. I speak not of the origin of the laws themselves;
but these laws being fixed, the construction in both cases is adapted to
them. For instance: these laws require, in order to produce the same
effect, that the rays of light, in passing through water into the eye,
should be refracted by a more convex surface than when it passes out of air
into the eye. Accordingly we find that the eye of a fish, in that part of
it called the crystalline lens, is much rounder than the eye of terrestrial
animals. What plainer manifestation of design can there be than this
difference?" But what, let us ask, is the proximate cause of this
difference? 'The immediate volition of the Deity, manifested in special
creation,' virtually answers Paley; while we of to-day are able to reply,
'The agency of natural laws, to wit, inheritance, variation, survival of
the fittest, and probably of other laws as yet not discovered.' Now, of
course, according to the former of these two premises, there can be no more
legitimate conclusion than that the difference in question is due to
intelligent and special design; but, according to the other premise, it is
equally clear that no conclusion can be more unwarranted; for, under the
latter view, the greater rotundity of the crystalline lens in a fish's eye
no more exhibits the presence of any special design than does the
adaptation of a river to the bed which it has itself been the means of
excavating. When, therefore, Paley goes on to ask:--"How is it possible,
under circumstances of such close affinity, and under the operation of
equal evidence, to exclude contrivance from the case of the eye, yet to
acknowledge the proof of contrivance having been employed, as the plainest
and clearest of all propositions, in the case of the telescope?" the answer
is sufficiently obvious, namely, that the "evidence" in the two cases is
_not_ "equal;"--any more than is the existence, say, of the Nile of equal
value in point of evidence that it was designed for traffic, as is the
existence of the Suez Canal that it was so designed. And the mere fact that
the problem of achromatism was solved by "the mind of a sagacious optician
inquiring how this matter was managed in the eye," no more proves that
"this could not be in the eye without purpose, which suggested to the
optician the only effectual means of attaining that purpose," than would
the fact, say, of the winnowing of corn having suggested the
fanning-machine prove that air currents were designed for the purpose of
eliminating chaff from grain. In short, the real substance of the argument
from Design must eventually merge into that which Paley, in the
above-quoted passage, expressly passes over--viz., "the origin of the laws
themselves;" for so long as there is any reason to suppose that any
apparent "adaptation" to a certain set of "fixed laws" is itself due to the
influence of other "fixed laws," so long have we as little right to say
that the latter set of fixed laws exhibit any better indications of
intelligent adaptation to the former set, than the former do to that of the
latter--the eye to light, than light to the eye. Hence I conceive that Mill
is entirely wrong when he says of Paley's argument, "It surpasses analogy
exactly as induction surpasses it," because "the instances chosen are
particular instances of a circumstance which experience shows to have a
real connection with an intelligent origin--the fact of conspiring to an
end." Experience shows as this, but it shows us more besides; it shows us
that there is no _necessary_ or _uniform_ connection between an
"intelligent origin" and the fact of apparent "means conspiring to an
[apparent] end." If the reader will take the trouble to compare this
quotation just made from Mill, and the long train of reasoning that
follows, with an admirable illustration in Mr. Wallace's "Natural
Selection," he will be well rewarded by finding all the steps in Mr. Mill's
reasoning so closely paralleled by the caricature, that but for the
respective dates of publication, one might have thought the latter had an
express reference to the former.[18] True, Mr. Mill closes his argument
with a brief allusion to the "principle of the survival of the fittest,"
observing that "creative forethought is not absolutely the only link by
which the origin of the wonderful mechanism of the eye may be connected
with the fact of sight." I am surprised, however, that a man of Mr. Mill's
penetration did not see that whatever view we may take as to "the adequacy
of this principle (_i.e._, Natural Selection) to account for such truly
admirable combinations as some of those in nature," the argument from
_Design_ is not materially affected. So far as this argument is concerned,
the issue is not Design _versus_ Natural Selection, but it is Design
_versus_ Natural Law. By all means, "leaving this remarkable speculation
(_i.e._, Mr. Darwin's) to whatever fate the progress of discovery may have
in store for it," and it by no means follows that "in the present state of
knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability
in favour of creation by intelligence." For whatever we may think of this
special theory as to the _mode_, there can be no longer any reasonable
doubt, "in the present state of our knowledge," as to the truth of the
general theory of _Evolution_; and the latter, if accepted, is as
destructive to the argument from _Design_ as would the former be if proved.
In a word, it is the _fact_ and not the _method_ of Evolution which is
subversive of Teleology in its Paleyerian form.
§ 27. We have come then to this:--Apparent intellectual adaptations are
perfectly valid indications of design, so long as their authorship is known
to be confined to human intelligence; for then we know from experience what
are our relations to these laws, and so in any given case can argue _à
posteriori_ that such an adaptation to such a set of laws by such an
intelligence can only have been due to such a process. But when we overstep
the limits of experience, we are not entitled to argue anything _à priori_
of any other intelligence in this respect, even supposing any such
intelligence to exist. The analogy by which the unknown relations are
inferred from the known is "infinitely precarious;" seeing that two of the
analogous terms--to wit, the divine intelligence and the human--may differ
to an immeasurable extent in their properties--nay, are supposed thus to
differ, the one being supposed omniscient, omnipotent, &c., and the other
not. And, as a final step, we may now see that the argument from Design, in
its last resort, resolves itself into a _petitio principii_. For,
ultimately, the only point which the analogical argument in question is
adduced to prove is, that the relations subsisting between an Unknown Cause
and certain physical forces are so far identical with the relations known
to subsist between human intelligence and these same forces, that similar
intellectual processes are required in the two cases to account for the
production of similar effects--and hence that the Unknown Cause is
intelligent. But it is evident that the analogy itself can have no
existence, except upon the presupposition that these two sets of relations
_are_ thus identical. The point which the analogy is adduced to prove is
therefore postulated by the fact of its being adduced at all, and the whole
argument resolves itself into a case of _petitio principii_.
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