Design In Nature.
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 [pg 133] 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, [pg 134] 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 [pg 135] 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 [pg 136] 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 [pg 137] 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.