case, yet the repetition of the result, and from different positions and under varied circumstances, showed that there must have been design.

Moreover, in the way your case is stated, it seems to concede the most important half of the question, and so affords a presumption for the rest, on the side of design. For you seem to assume an actor, a designer, accomplishing his design in the first instance. You-a bystander infer that the player effected his design in sending the first ball to the pocket before him. You infer this from observation alone. Must you not from a continuance of the same observation equally infer a common design of the two players in the complex result, or a design of one of them to frustrate the design of the other? If you grant a designing actor, the presumption of design is as strong, or upon continued observation of instances soon becomes as strong, in regard to the deflection of the balls, or variation of the species, as it was for the result of the first impulse or for the production of the original animal, &c.

But in the case to be illustrated, we do not see the player. We see only the movement of the balls. Now, if the contrivances and adaptations referred to (p. 229,) really do "prove a designer as much as the palace or the watch prove an architect or a watchmaker,”—as Paley and Bell argue, and as your skeptic admits, while the alternative is between design and chance, then they prove it with all the proof the case is susceptible of, and with complete conviction. For we cannot doubt that the watch had a watchmaker. And if they prove it on the supposition that the unseen operator acted immediately,―i. e., that the player directly impelled the balls in the directions we see them moving, I insist that this proof is not impaired by our ascertaining that he acted mediately, i. e., that the present state or form of the plants or animals, like the present position of the billiard-balls, resulted from the collision of the individuals with one another, or with the surroundings. The original impulse, which we supposed was in the line of the observed movement, only proves to have been in a different direction; but the series of movements took place with a series of results, each and all of them none the less determined, none the less designed.

Wherefore, when, at the close, you quote Laplace, that "the discoveries of science throw final causes farther back," the most you can mean is, that they constrain us to look farther back for the impulse. They do not at all throw the argument for design farther back, in the sense of furnishing evidence or presumption that only the primary impulse was designed, and that all the rest followed from chance or necessity.

Evidence of design, I think you will allow, every where is drawn from the observation of adaptations and of results, and

has really nothing to do with any thing else, except where you can take the word for the will. And in that case you have not argument for design, but testimony. In nature we have no testimony; but the argument is overwhelming.

Now, note that the argument of the olden time,-that of Paley, &c., which your skeptic found so convincing,-was always the argument for design in the movement of the balls after deflection. For it was drawn from animals produced by generation, not by creation, and through a long succession of generations or deflections. Wherefore, if the argument for design is perfect in the case of an animal derived from a long succession of individuals as nearly alike as offspring is generally like parents and grand-parents, and if this argument is not weakened when a variation, or series of variations, has occurred in the course, as great as any variations we know of among domestic cattle, how then is it weakened by the supposition, or by the likelihood, that the variations have been twice or thrice as great as we formerly supposed, or because the variations have been picked out,' and a few of them preserved as breeders of still other variations, by natural selection?

Finally let it be noted that your element of necessity, has to do, so far as we know, only with the picking out and preserving of certain changing forms, i. e., with the natural selection. This selection, you may say, must happen under the circumstances. This is a necessary result of the collision of the balls; and these results can be predicted. If the balls strike so and so, they will be deflected so and so. But the variation itself is of the nature of an origination. It answers well to the original impulse of the balls, or to a series of such impulses. We cannot predict what particular new variation will occur from any observation of the past. Just as the first impulse was given to the balls at a point out of sight, so the impulse which resulted in the variety or new form was given at a point beyond observation, and is equally mysterious or unaccountable, except on the supposition of an ordaining will. The parent had not the peculiarity of the vari ety, the progeny has. Between the two is the dim or obscure region of the formation of a new individual, in some unknown part of which, and in some wholly unknown way, the difference is intercalated. To introduce necessity here is gratuitous and unscientific; but here you must have it to make your argument valid.

I agree that judging from the past-it is not improbable that variation itself may be hereafter shown to result from physical causes. When it is so shown you may extend your necessity into this region, but not till then. But the whole course of scientific discovery goes to assure us that the discovery of the cause of variation will be only a resolution of variation into two

AM. JOUR. SCL-SECOND SERIES, VOL. XXX, No. 89.–SEPT., 1860.

factors,-one, the immediate secondary cause of the changes, which so far explains them; the other an unresolved or unexplained phenomenon, which will then stand just where the product, variation, stands now, only that it will be one step nearer to the efficient cause.

This line of argument appears to me so convincing, that I am bound to suppose that it does not meet your case. Although you introduced players to illustrate what design is, it is probable that you did not intend, and would not accept, the parallel which your supposed case suggested. When you say that the proof of design in the eye and the hand, as given by Paley and Bell, was convincing, you mean, of course, that it was convincing, so long as the question was between design and chance, but that now another alternative is offered, one which obviates the force of those arguments, and may account for the actual results without design. I do not clearly apprehend this third alternative.

Will you be so good, then, as to state the grounds upon which you conclude that the supposed proof of design from the eye, or the hand, as it stood before Darwin's theory was promulgated, would be invalidated by the admission of this new theory.

FIRST READER.-As I have ever found you, in controversy, meeting the array of your opponent, fairly and directly, without any attempt to strike the body of his argument through an unguarded joint in the phraseology, I was somewhat surprised at the course taken in your answer to my statement on Darwin's theory. You there seem to suppose that I instanced the action of the billiard balls and players as a parallel, throughout, to the formation of the organic world. Had it occurred to me that such an application might be supposed to follow, legitimately, from my introduction of this action, I should certainly have stated that I did not intend, and should by no means accede to, that construction. My purpose in bringing the billiard table upon the scene was to illustrate, by example, design and necessity, as different and independent sources from which results, it might indeed be identical results, may be derived. All the conclusions therefore that you have arrived at through this misconception or misapplication of my illustration, I cannot take as an answer to the matter stated or intended to be stated by me. Again, following this misconception, you suppose the skeptic (instanced by me as revealing through the evidence of design, exhibited in the structure of the eye, for its designer, God,) as bringing to the examination a belief in the existence of design in the construction of the animals as they existed up to the moment when the eye was, according to my supposition, added to the heart, stomach, brain, &c. By skeptic I, of course, intended one who doubted the existence of design in every organic struc

ture, or at least required proof of such design. Now as the watch may be instanced as a more complete exhibition of design than a flint knife or an hour-glass; I selected, after the example of Paley, the eye, as exhibiting by its complex but harmonious arrangements a higher evidence of design and the designer, than is to be found in a nerve sensitive to light, or any mere rudimentary part or organ. I could not mean by skeptic one who believed in design so far as a claw, or a nerve sensitive to light was concerned, but doubted all above. For one who believes in design at all will not fail to recognize it in a hand or an eye. But I need not extend these remarks, as you acknowledge in the sequel to your argument that you may not have have suited it to the case as I had stated it.

You now request me to "state the grounds upon which I conclude that the supposed proof of design from the eye and the hand, as it stood before Darwin's theory was promulgated, is invalidated by the admission of that theory." It seems to me that a sufficient answer to this question has already been made in the last part of my former paper; but as you request it I will go over the leading points as there given with more minuteness of detail.

Let us then suppose a skeptic, one who is yet considering and doubting of the existence of God, having already concluded that the testimony from any and all revelation is insufficient, and having rejected what is called the a priori arguments brought forward in natural theology, and pertinaciously insisted upon by Dr. Clark and others, turning as a last resource to the argument from design in the organic world. Voltaire tells him that a palace could not exist without an architect to design it. Dr. Paley tells him that a watch proves the design of a watchmaker. He thinks this very reasonable, and although he sees a difference between the works of nature and those of mere human art, yet if he can find in any organic body, or part of a body, the same adaptation to its use that he finds in a watch, this truth will go very far towards proving, if it is not entirely conclusive, that in making it, the powers of life by which it grew were directed by an intelligent, reasoning master. Under the guidance of Paley he takes an eye, which, although an optical, and not a mechanical, instrument like the watch, is as well adapted to testify to design. He sees, first that the eye is transparent, when every other part of the body is opaque. Was this the result of a mere Epicurean or Lucretian "fortuitous concourse" of living "atoms?" He is not yet certain it might not be so.. Next he sees that it is spherical and that this convex form alone is capable of changing the direction of the light which proceeds from a distant body, and of collecting it so as to form a distinct image within its globe. Next he sees at the exact place where this image must

be formed a curtain of nerve work, ready to receive and convey it, or excite from it, in its own mysterious way, an idea of it in the mind. Last of all, he comes to the crystalline lens. Now he has before learned that without this lens an eye would by the aqueous and vitreous humors alone form an image upon the retina, but this image would be indistinct from the light not being sufficiently refracted, and likewise from having a colored fringe round its edges. This last effect is attributable to the refrangibility of light, that is, to some of the colors being more refracted than others. He likewise knows that more than a hundred years ago Mr. Dollond having found out, after many experiments, that some kinds of glass have the power of dispersing light, for each degree of its refraction, much more than other kinds, and that on the discovery of this fact, he contrived to make telescopes in which he passed the light through two objectglasses successively, one of which he made of crown and one of flint glass, so ground and adapted to each other that the greater dispersion produced by the substance of one should be corrected by the smaller dispersion of the other. This contrivance corrected entirely the colored images which had rendered all previous telescopes very imperfect. He finds in this invention all the elements of design, as it appeared in the thought and action of a human designer. First, conjecture of certain laws or facts in optics. Then, experiment proving these laws or facts. Then, the contrivance and formation of an instrument by which those laws or facts must produce a certain, sought, result.

Thus enlightened, our skeptic turns to his crystalline lens to see if he can discover the work of a Dollond in this. Here he finds that an eye, having a crystalline lens placed between the humors, not only refracts the light more than it would be refracted by the humors alone, but that in this combination of humors and lens, the colors are as completly corrected as in the combination of Dollond's telescope. Can it be that there was no design, no designer, directing the powers of life in the formation of this wonderful organ? Our skeptic is aware that in the arts of man, great aid has been, sometimes, given by chance, that is, by the artist or workman observing some fortuitous combination, form, or action around him. He has heard it said that the chance arrangement of two pairs of spectacles, in the shop of a Dutch optician, gave the direction for constructing the first telescope. Possibly, in time, say a few geological ages, it might in some optician's shop, have brought about a combination of flint and crown glass which, together, should have been achromatic. But the space between the humors of the eye is not an optician's shop where object-glasses of all kinds, shapes, and sizes are placed by chance, in all manner of relations and positions. On the hypothesis under which our skeptic is making his examina