I must refer to the Notes from XIII. to XX. inclusive, for the titles of recent works on the design argument.
"The assertion appears to be quite unfounded that, as science advances from point to point, final causes recede before it, and disappear one after the other. The principle of design changes its mode of application, indeed, but it loses none of its force. We no longer consider particular facts as produced by special interpositions; but we consider design as exhibited in the establishment and adjustment of the laws by which particular facts are produced. We do not look upon each particular cloud as brought near to us that it may drop fatness on our fields; but the general adaptation of the laws of heat and air and moisture to the promotion of vegetation does not become doubtful. We do not consider the sun as less intended to warm and vivify the tribes of plants and animals because we find that, instead of revolving round the earth as an attendant, the earth, along with other planets, revolves round him. We are rather, by the discovery of the general laws of nature, led into a scene of wider design, of deeper contrivance, of more comprehensive adjustments. Final causes, if they appear driven farther from us by such extension of our views, embrace us only with a vaster and more majestic circuit. Instead of a few threads connecting some detached objects, they become a stupendous network, which is wound round and round the universal frame of things."—Whewell, 'History of Scientific Ideas,' vol. ii. pp. 253, 254.
Note XXII., page [182].
Creation and Evolution.
Creation is the only theory of the origin of the universe. Evolution assumes either the creation or the self-existence of the universe. The evolutionist must choose between creation and non-creation. They are opposites. There is no intermediate term. The attempt to introduce one—the Unknowable—can lead to no result; for unless the Unknowable is capable of creating, it can account for the origin of nothing. All attempts to explain even the formation of the universe, either by the evolution of the Unknowable or by evolution out of the Unknowable, must be of a thoroughly delusive character. The evolution of what is known can alone have significance either to the ordinary or scientific mind. Nothing can be conceived of as subject to evolution which is not of a finite and composite nature. Nothing can be evolved out of a finite and composite existence which was not previously involved in it. And what gives to anything its limits and constitution must be more perfect than itself. Το πρωτον ου σπερμα εστιν, αλλα το τελειον.
"As many philosophers as adopt the supposition—such as the Pythagoreans and Spensippus—that what is best and most fair is not to be found in the principle of things, from the fact that though the first principles both of plants and animals are causes, yet what is fair and perfect resides in created things as results from these,—persons, I say, who entertain these sentiments, do not form their opinions correctly. For seed arises from other natures that are antecedent and perfect, and seed is not the first thing, whereas that which is perfect is."—Aristotle, 'Metaphysics,' xi. 7.
"It is manifest by the light of nature that there must at least be as much reality in the efficient and entire cause as in its effect; for whence can the effect draw its reality if not from its cause? And how could the cause communicate to it this reality unless it possessed it in itself? And hence it follows, not only that what is cannot be produced by what is not, but likewise that the more perfect—in other words, that which contains in itself more reality—cannot be the effect of the less perfect."—Descartes, 'Meditations,' iii.
"In not a few of the progressionists the weak illusion is unmistakable, that, with time enough, you may get everything out of next-to-nothing. Grant us, they seem to say, any tiniest granule of power, so close upon zero that it is not worth begrudging—allow it some trifling tendency to infinitesimal increment—and we will show you how this little stock became the kosmos, without ever taking a step worth thinking of, much less constituting a case for design. The argument is a mere appeal to an incompetency in the human imagination, in virtue of which, magnitudes evading conception are treated as out of existence; and an aggregate of inappreciable increments is simultaneously equated,—in its cause to nothing, in its effect to the whole of things. You manifestly want the same causality, whether concentrated on a moment or distributed through incalculable ages; only, in drawing upon it, a logical theft is more easily committed piecemeal than wholesale. Surely it is a mean device for a philosopher thus to crib causation by hair's-breadths, to put it out at compound interest through all time, and then disown the debt."—Martineau, 'Essays Philosophical and Theological,' pp. 141, 142.
"Think of it! An endless evolution, an eternal working, an infinite causation, and yet an effect so finite. Nature has been working upward from eternity, and has just passed the long-armed ape who begat prognathus, as prognathus begat the troglodyte homo. What becomes of our doctrine of progress? As sure as mathematics, it should have been all evolved, all that we now have, over and over again—all out, or far more out than has come out, incalculable ages ago. An eternal ante-past of progressive working. To what a height should it have arisen! It should have transcended all our ideals. The most exalted finite being should have been reached, the most exalted that our minds can conceive, instead of this creature man, so poor, so low; for you will bear in mind that I am speaking of him as measured by no higher scale of value than that afforded by this physical hypothesis—man evolved from nebular gas—man just coming out of darkness, and so soon to return to darkness again—e tenebris in tenebras. This all comes from that hideous υστερον προτερον, that inversion of all necessary thinking. Nature first, it says—matter first, an impalpable nebulous nihilism first, the lowest and most imperfect first; life, thought, reason, idea, their junior products, and God, therefore, the last product, if there be a God at all, or anything to which such a name can possibly be given. And we are asked to adopt this, and call it grand, whilst rejecting as narrow and soul-contracting the revelation which makes God first, reason first, idea first, the perfect first,—as has been said before—the imperfect and the finite ever a departure from it, whether in the scale of order or of time, whether as exhibited in processes of lapse and deterioration or the contrary seeming of recovery and restoration in cyclical rounds. The two schemes have two entirely different modes of speech. Says the mere physical hypothesis: In the beginning was the nebula, and all things were in the nebula, and all things were self-evolved from the nebula—even life, thought, consciousness, idea, reason itself, having no other source. The other speaks to us in language like this: Εν αρχη ην ο Λογοσ, "In the beginning was the Word," the Λογοσ, the Reason, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being by Him. In Him was life," Ζωη, and "from this life"—not from motions, or molecules, or correlated forces, or the vibration of fibres, or the arrangements of nebular atoms, but from this life of the Logos, the eternal Reason—"came the light of men"—the mind, reason, conscience of humanity—even "the light that lighteth" every rational being "coming into the cosmos."—Prof. Lewis, 'The Kingdom of God' (Dickinson's Theological Quarterly, No. 6).