The argument from Design in Nature has been made familiar to most readers in Natural Theology by Paley's well-known book. It is probable that no argument has ever been more praised, and at the same time more strongly controverted. Our business lies, of course, with the controversy; and we must say a few words on our present mode of dealing with it.
Nothing could be more useless than to repeat illustrative examples of Design already thrice told by an endless variety of treatises. Of so wide a subject everything may be quoted as an illustration, from a pebble to a world, if only the principle illustrated—the pivot on which the argument turns—be understood and admitted. In modern times, this turning-point is precisely the centre of the dispute. Untrained minds misapprehend the meaning of the word Design, and are further still from apprehending the real force of argument from analogy. And when these subjects come to be discussed by skilled writers, various questions are always raised which generally issue in irreconcilable differences of opinion.
Our plan here will be to take the argument in its best-known shape, and examine it from the points of view occupied by several classes of objectors, beginning, as is reasonable, with the most popular difficulties and misapprehensions. It does not seem necessary to load the page with references to controversialists of the ordinary sort, particularly as we endeavour to look at the whole question through their eyes.
Respecting the more philosophic questions it is necessary to observe, that the Evolution-theory will not form a topic of the present chapter. It is excluded for two reasons. One, that we are now trying to put a value on the argument from Design per se, and not to compare it with rival theories. The other reason springs from the subject of Evolution itself—it is too extensive to be thus briefly treated—and the sum of this Essay must be taken together as furnishing a counter statement to the manner in which it has been employed by certain of its ardent advocates.[14]
We hope for a further advantage from the method proposed. The cause of truth ought to gain from being looked at on more than one side; and, whatever be the worth and true effect of reasoning from Design, we may expect by this method to display it adequately.
The word itself, like all figurative terms—or words used in a secondary sense—is by no means free from ambiguity. It has, in common parlance, several shades of signification. Design being the centre of Paley's argument, and containing the one idea which gives force to all the rest: his first object was to fix the sense in which he employed it. He did so by using an illustration.
To explain by comparison is always a popular resource, some serious drawbacks notwithstanding. Almost every one prefers that an author should use a sparkling similitude which tells a great deal, rather than write what looks like a grammar and dictionary of his science. Analysis and induction require thought on the part of him who employs them—thought also on the part of a reader determined to understand what he reads. Paley saw all this thoroughly, and at the beginning of his book employed the now celebrated comparison taken from a watchmaker and a watch. His judgment received support from the popularity he enjoyed, and from the way in which everybody borrowed his illustration.[15]
Yet Paley's deference to the popular understanding gave rise to the first general misapprehension of his treatise. He sets out from a kind of surprise—the surprise his readers would feel at finding a watch upon a heath. Now this feeling was immediately alleged as a conclusive objection against Paley's comparison, and as a ground for distrusting the whole argument founded upon it. The world, it was said, cannot be likened to a watch, nor yet to any other sort of mechanism. Between things natural, and the things which men make, the difference is not a mere contrast of perfection with imperfection. The real reason why we are surprised to see Paley's watch lying on a moor—and not at all surprised to see Paley's stone lying beside it—springs from this very difference. And though the history of a stone, common, coarse, and worthless, is really more wonderful than the history of any watch, and though the stone has an infinitely longer pedigree, we should never speak or think of it in the same way. We feel that the objects are dissimilar, and our surprise testifies the fact. A heath is given up to nature, a watchmaker's shop to art. The watch is out of place among stones, the stone among watches. The idea raised at the outset, therefore, is that Art and Nature would seem to be thoroughly unlike.
At a first view of the subject, these remarks appear open to one obvious rejoinder. The sort of surprised feeling which Paley describes, is not in itself a proof of real unlikeness. A weed is a plant out of place; we do not expect thriving crops of cabbage or teazle in a carefully kept rose-garden, nor gooseberry bushes amongst azaleas. The proudest flower that blossoms is a weed in a vineyard, in a plot of opium-poppies, or mixed with other herbs medicinal. So, too, a rough diamond would not be out of place in a watchmaker's shop; but if we saw a stone of no selling value inside a case of watches we should certainly experience some surprise. And the feeling would remain even though we were quite unable to explain how the poor pebble differed chemically from the priceless gem. We know that the latter would appear to a jeweller's customers like a rose among flowers, but the former worthless as a weed. The jeweller would consider it a trespasser fit only to be turned out of doors.