This second charge is less usual amongst popular than scientific writers, and most of us may learn something by sifting it. Their position may be described in few words as standing thus:—
All examples which men can, of their own knowledge, connect with Design, fall under one sole class, and from this class alone they can argue. It contains the products of human workmanship and manufacture—and nothing else. By its characteristic processes (which together with their result make the sum of what we know about this class) it is so essentially dissociated from the products of Nature, that any appearance of design common between them must be pronounced superficial in the absence of stronger nexus. But since proof of such nexus remains wanting, Paley's analogy is worthless. It will be observed that the effect of this position is to sever between human works and natural things quite as completely as did the popular objection which we put first in our list of assaults upon Paley. Yet, though these conclusions may seem suspiciously coincident, the grounds of argument are really distinct. Scientific persons do not compare two objects natural and artificial, nor yet their two sets of constituents, and say, "These are unlike." They argue rather that the relative or proportionate likeness asserted is insufficiently made out, and that when it is said "Design implies a designer," people are speaking of design worked out in the known way of workmen. We (they observe) need not deny a designer of the world, but we desiderate evidence of his actual workmanship. By this we shall know that he first conceived and then realized the alleged design. We do not feel convinced by being shown certain organic somethings in their perfect state, and being told to observe how very like contrivances they are. They may be very like, certainly, but we want assurances that they can be nothing else. We want to have shown us some work being done, and to ascertain that it is carried on in a workmanlike manner. Then we shall say with confidence, Here is the active hand of a designer. To compress our requisition into a single sentence,—We want not only to catch Nature in the fact, but also to ascertain that Nature's way of performing the fact has something essentially humanlike about it.
To see our meaning clearly (add these objectors) take the instance of some marvellous work of man's art previously unknown to us. We could, if we perceived the marks of human fabrication, reason from a watch, or some other well known machine, to the conclusion that some person had designed it. In other words, we should feel sure that we were looking at a new product of skill, which differed from what we had seen before in the degree of excellence attained. The difference we feel in our transition from Art to Nature appears, on the contrary, to be a difference not only between more or less perfect products or processes, but a thorough difference of kind in the whole manner of bringing about the results placed before our eyes. Or put the case (they continue) as a piece of circumstantial evidence. We say positively of this or that machine, They are contrivances, things designed, because we know the history of their manufacture. We feel positive, because we are arguing from a plain patent fact to a hidden but absolutely essential condition, without which the fact could not exist. As regards natural products we have not got the fact—we do not know the history of their production. We cannot say, Here is the process, because the processes of Nature are mostly unknown to us. Paley therefore would have us assume the fact and argue from it; first to design, next, to something more hidden still,—a Designer. Yet what we do know of natural processes is not encouraging; there is visible about them more unlikeness than likeness to the processes employed by man. The truth may be surmised, that Paley was always seeing in his own examples the footprints, as he thought, of a Designer. Hence he affirmed Design, and then argued back again in a never-ending circle. There is really no reason why he should have travelled round such a circuit. If his argument shows anything, it shows a Designer at once.[n]
With some risk of tediousness, this last attack on Paley has been detailed at great length, and placed (as the present writer believes) in several of its most formidable shapes[o]. But for additional security of fair dealing with the strongest of all objections—one which, if established, would be a death-blow to all argument on the subject (since its ultimatum is unconditional surrender)—for these reasons, then, and in order to satisfy the most rigorous understanding, let it be finally rehearsed in the words of a most eminent physicist whom no one will accuse of haste, oversight, or credulity. To this rehearsal the Professor adds what is to us more important still,—his judgment on the point at issue.
But before quoting Professor Baden Powell, it may be worth while to make two short notes on the few preceding paragraphs. Let us take the last paragraph first.
It really does appear that marks of Design and the footprints of a Designer are in common sense very nearly one and the same thing. If we concentrate our attention on the former, we are looking at an object on the side of certain properties,—that is, of certain subjectively perceived relations. For instance, we may think of the eye only as an optical instrument wonderfully constituted, and enumerate the parts of its visual apparatus. But the moment we speak of this apparatus as a provision intentionally made for sight, we have introduced the idea of a Designer in the strongest sense of the word. Now, it is difficult to think of anything as an example of intelligent arrangement, and at the same time give no hint even to our own thoughts of arranging Intelligence. We can hardly look through a pane of glass and admire the perfect transparency of one surface to the exclusion of the other! We are not now speaking of what might be done, if attempted by a man so profoundly skilled in analytics that
"He could distinguish, and divide
A hair 'twixt south and south-west side."
We are rather speaking of what it is natural to do. And it may be doubted whether anybody thinks of a design as design very long without thinking also of the Designer.