Bowne, Philos. Theism, 85—“Design is never causal. It is only ideal, and it demands an efficient cause for its realization. If ice is not to sink, and to freeze out life, there must be some molecular structure which shall make its bulk greater than that of an equal weight of water.” Jackson, Theodore Parker, 355—“Rudimentary organs are like the silent letters in many words—both are witnesses to a past history; and there is intelligence in their preservation.” Diman, Theistic Argument: “Not only do we observe in the world the change which is the basis of the Cosmological Argument, but we perceive that this change proceeds according to a fixed and invariable rule. In inorganic nature, general order, or regularity; in organic nature, special order or adaptation.”Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 113–115, 224–230: “Inductive science proceeds upon the postulate that the reasonable and the natural are one.” This furnished the guiding clue to Harvey and Cuvier; see Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences, 2:489–491. Kant: “The anatomist must assume that nothing in man is in vain.” Aristotle: “Nature makes nothing in vain.” On molecules as manufactured articles, see Maxfield, in Nature, Sept. 25, 1873. See also Tulloch, Theism, 116, 120; LeConte, Religion and Science, lect. 2 and 3; McCosh, Typical Forms, 81, 420; Agassiz, Essay on Classification, 9, 10; Bib. Sac., 1849:626 and 1850:613; Hopkins, in Princeton Review, 1882:181.
(a) Design, in fact that rivers always run by large towns? that springs are always found at gambling places? Plants made for man, and man for worms? Voltaire: “Noses are made for spectacles—let us wear them!” Pope: “While man exclaims ‘See all things for my use,’ ‘See man for mine,’ replies the pampered goose.” Cherries do not ripen in the cold of winter when they do not taste as well, and grapes do not ripen in the heat of summer when the new wine would turn to vinegar? Nature divides melons into sections for convenience in family eating? Cork-tree made for bottle-stoppers? The child who was asked the cause of salt in the ocean, attributed it to codfish, thus dimly confounding final cause with efficient cause. Teacher: “What are marsupials?” Pupil: “Animals that have pouches in their stomachs.”Teacher: “And what do they have pouches for?” Pupil: “To crawl into and conceal themselves in, when they are pursued.” Why are the days longer in summer than in winter? Because it is the property of all natural objects to elongate under the influence of heat. A Jena professor held that doctors do not exist because of disease, but that diseases exist precisely in order that there may be doctors. Kepler was an astronomical Don Quixote. He discussed the claims of eleven different damsels to become his second wife, and he likened the planets to huge animals rushing through the sky. Many of the objections to design arise from confounding a part of the creation with the whole, or a structure in the process of development with a structure completed. For illustrations of mistaken ends, see Janet, Final Causes.
(b) Alphonso of Castile took offense at the Ptolemaic System, and intimated that, if he had been consulted at the creation, he could have suggested valuable improvements. Lange, in his History of Materialism, illustrates some of the methods of nature by millions of gun barrels shot in all directions to kill a single hare; by ten thousand keys bought at haphazard to get into a shut room; by building a city in order to obtain a house. Is not the ice a little overdone about the poles? See John Stuart Mill's indictment of nature, in his posthumous Essays on Religion, 29—“Nature impales men, breaks men as if on a wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them with the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed.” So argue Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.
The doctrine of evolution answers many of these objections, by showing that order and useful collocation in the system as a whole is necessarily and cheaply purchased by imperfection and suffering in the initial stages of development. The question is: Does the system as a whole imply design? My opinion is of no value as to the usefulness of an intricate machine the purpose of which I do not know. If I stand at the beginning of a road and do not know whither it leads, it is presumptuous in me to point out a more direct way to its destination. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 20–22—“In order to counterbalance the impressions which apparent disorder and immorality in nature make upon us, we have to assume that the universe at its root is not only rational, but good. This is faith, but it is an act on which our whole moral life depends.” Metaphysics, 165—“The same argument which would deny mind in nature denies mind in man.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 264—“Fifty years ago, when the crane stood on top of the tower of unfinished Cologne Cathedral, was there no evidence of design in the whole structure?” Yet we concede that, so long as we cannot with John Stuart Mill explain the imperfections of the universe by any limitations in the Intelligence which contrived it, we are shut up to regarding them as intended to correspond with the moral state and probation of sinners which God foresaw and provided for at the creation. Evil things in the universe are symbols of sin, and helps to its overthrow. See Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 264, 265; McCosh, Christ. and Positivism, 82 sq.; Martineau, Essays, 1:50, and Study, 1:351–398; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 599; Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 366–371; Princeton Rev., 1878:272–303; Shaw, on Positivism.
2. Defects of the Teleological Argument. These attach not to the premises but to the conclusion sought to be drawn therefrom.
A. The argument cannot prove a personal God. The order and useful collocations of the universe may be only the changing phenomena of an impersonal intelligence and will, such as pantheism supposes. The finality may be only immanent finality.
There is such a thing as immanent and unconscious finality. National spirit, without set purpose, constructs language. The bee works unconsciously to ends. Strato of Lampsacus regarded the world as a vast animal. Aristotle, Phys., 2:8—“Plant the ship-builder's skill within the timber itself, and you have the mode in which nature produces.” Here we see a dim anticipation of the modern doctrine of development from within instead of creation from without. Neander: “The divine work goes on from within outward.” John Fiske: “The argument from the watch has been superseded by the argument from the flower.” Iverach, Theism, 91—“The effect of evolution has been simply to transfer the cause from a mere external influence working from without to an immanent rational principle.” Martineau, Study, 1:349, 350—“Theism is in no way committed to the doctrine of a God external to the world … nor does intelligence require, in order to gain an object, to give it externality.”
Newman Smyth, Place of Death, 62–80—“The universe exists in some all-pervasive Intelligence. Suppose we could see a small heap of brick, scraps of metal, and pieces of mortar, gradually shaping themselves into the walls and interior structure of a building, adding needed material as the work advanced, and at last presenting in its completion a factory furnished with varied and finely wrought machinery. Or, a locomotive carrying a process of self-repair to compensate for wear, growing and increasing in size, detaching from itself at intervals pieces of brass or iron endowed with the power of growing up step by step into other locomotives capable of running themselves and of reproducing new locomotives in their turn.” So nature in its separate parts may seem mechanical, but as a whole it is rational. Weismann does not “disown a directive power,”—only this power is “behind the mechanism as its final cause … it must be teleological.”
Impressive as are these evidences of intelligence in the universe as a whole, and increased in number as they are by the new light of evolution, we must still hold that nature