The argument from design is one which appeals perhaps more than any other to the average man. As he looks around and reflects, he feels that there must be design, and, therefore, a Designer. He feels also that God must be constantly present directing the carrying out of His design. He is in accord with the Theist who maintains that purpose and plan are manifest throughout the cosmos, and that, although it might be conceded that every step of the process has been achieved by the forces of Evolution, it is impossible to exclude the presiding activity of a mind which has planned the whole and predetermined the movements of every portion. We are to believe, then, that the Designer Himself put the forces in motion for the first time, that He knew exactly what would be the product of those forces down to the minutest detail and for all time, and yet, in face of the undeviating law-regulated cosmos which He has created, He in some way continues to guide these forces. From the very first step, the making of the electron and thence the atom, to the last, the making of man’s brain, the Theist sees the finger of God. The mystery of life is thus taken to be explained or diminished by asserting that it is produced and controlled by some other mystery. The only alternative to this belief, so he maintains, is a universe of random chance and capricious disorder. But “Haeckel and his colleagues hold that the direction which the evolutionary agencies take is not ‘fortuitous’; that they never could take but the one direction which they have actually taken.”7 While “the Theist says the ultimate object must have been foreseen and the forces must have been guided, or they would never have worked steadily in this definite direction, the Monist says that these forces no more needed guiding than does a tramcar; there was only one direction possible for them.”8 To refute this the apologist gravely replies that, “if you cast to the ground an infinite (or a finite) number of letters, they might after infinite gyrations make a word here and there; but we should think the man an enthusiast who expected even a short sentence, and a fool if he ever expected them to make a poem.” We are expected, it seems, to regard it as a miracle that natural forces should not lose their uniform character, and act miraculously! Evidently, either the question is begged or the analogy is absurd. An argument of this kind is worse than useless, for it only serves to demonstrate the hopelessness of the teleologist’s position. Spinoza’s position is more reasonable; for he conceives that all is the outcome of inexorable necessity—that neither chance nor purpose governs the eternal and the infinite.

Directivity has hitherto been insisted upon by Theists. It would not conform with our ideas of God that He should remain a passive observer so soon as He had invented a machine that would never stop, and had started it going. Yet interference with the machinery is inconceivable, the universe being ruled by eternal, immutable, and irrefragable laws. “The only possible conception of telic [purposeful] action on a cosmic scale is that, from the start, the matter-force reality was of such a nature that it would infallibly evolve into the cosmos we form part of to-day. Any other conception of ‘guidance’ and ‘control’ is totally unthinkable. And, as a fact, Theists are settling down to formulate their position in that way. The interference, as Ward says, took place before the process began.”9 A Law Maker can be postulated, but there is not a particle of evidence that He is also a Law Breaker.

Attempts are still made, however, by clerical scientists to prove that there is directivity. The Rev. Professor George Henslow, in his book, Present-Day Rationalism Critically Examined, argues that the tendency which living organisms show to develop in one direction rather than another, and their capacity to respond to environment, betoken a directing Mind. Granting, for the moment, that the doctrine of Natural Selection is false or inadequate, it seems to me that the acknowledged facts of the “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest” sufficiently dispose of this new apology. Organisms do not all adapt themselves to environment, and their fate, in consequence, is first one of increasing misery, and finally of extinction. Only those that do adapt themselves survive. It appears that a scientist when he turns apologist is conveniently able to forget all but the more fortunate organisms.

If the evidence for a directing Mind has to be given up, the difficulties of a Theist are certainly increased. There would be difficulties, for instance, regarding the utility of prayer. Still, he could think with Father Waggett that “the interaction of forces inherent in the whole produces the infinite variety of living beauty which we see.”10 And he can still join with Dr. Flint in exclaiming: “Every atom, every molecule, must, even in what is ultimate in it, bear the impress of a Supernatural Power and Wisdom; must reflect the glory of God, and proclaim its dependence upon Him.”11 To remain a Theist, however, one must have not only evidence of design, but of the benevolent intention of the Designer. Before considering the latter question, I venture to offer a few further remarks about the former. Is there consistent evidence of design?

Beauty.—As a proof of design we are asked by the Theist to contemplate the beauty and sublimity which the universe exhibits. Let us contemplate, then, the beauty of the Bay of Naples. Is it not purely accidental, purely the outcome of natural agencies, of effects produced by position, distance, etc.? Again, “the beauty of the diatoms that are brought from the lowest depths of the ocean, the beauty of the radiolaria that swarm about the coast, and the beauty of a thousand minute animal structures, are obviously not designed and purposed beauties. They were unknown until the microscope was invented; the polariscope reveals yet further beauties; the telescope yet more. The idea of these being designed for our, or for God’s, entertainment belongs, as Mr. Mallock says, ‘to a pre-scientific age.’”12 It is sometimes urged that the tendency of evolution is towards greater beauty. Is it? That all depends upon what your idea of beauty may be—whether you will consider the structure best suited to its environment beautiful or otherwise. We are told that there are signs that the human race will one day be toothless. At present we admire pretty teeth; perhaps our descendants will go into raptures over a toothless gum. That their sense of beauty may not be outraged, let us hope it may be so. The hideous pigmies of Central Africa probably think themselves beautiful, and in the distant future, when the conditions of existence on this globe have radically changed, and when its inhabitants have adapted themselves to those conditions, the new “beauties” may possibly be quite as ugly as “missing links.” After all, beauty is a matter of taste. The sufficient objection to the “beauty” argument is, to my mind, contained in a very few words: “Look at the ugliness! Who designed that?”

Harmony.—But, it will be urged, if beauty is a poor argument, at least you must grant that the general harmony in Nature still remains to be accounted for. Beauty is only one of its countless harmonies. The objection to this argument is a very simple one. Nature is full of discords. Ugliness is by no means the only discord. It is because this is so little realised that M. Elie Metchnikoff has devoted nearly the whole of his book, The Nature of Man, to the discussion of the disharmonies in man’s nature alone. There are disharmonies in the organisation of the digestive system, in the organisation and activities of the reproductive apparatus, in the family and social instincts, and in the instinct of self-preservation, etc. For instance, in the human body there are disharmonies of the wisdom teeth, the bête-noire of dentistry; of the useless vermiform appendage, the seat of the disease appendicitis; of the large intestine, which could very well be dispensed with, and is the seat of many grave diseases, such as dysentery, and so on. The perversions of instinct among human beings (another disharmony) are likely to be attributed by the conservative Theist to the Devil, and by the liberal to Dr. Gore’s “Fall from Without,” so it will be better to take an example from the animal world. Darwin informs us that the “female of one of the emus (Dromœus irroratus), as soon as she catches sight of her progeny, becomes violently agitated, and, notwithstanding the resistance of the father, appears to use her utmost endeavours to destroy them” (Descent of Man, vol. ii., chap, xvi., pp. 204–205). To those who still hold by this argument I can only recommend a perusal of Professor Metchnikoff’s book of disharmonies, and would beg them to remember that it has been written by a man whose profession and attainments entitle his opinions on such a subject to the highest consideration. The cruelty attending the process by which harmony is attained has already been commented upon by me in § 2 of the previous chapter.

I have finally to call attention to the fact that even among the apologists themselves there is considerable difference of opinion as to the value of these arguments for Theism. Dr. Flint exclaims: “Strange as it may seem, there are many Theists at the present day who represent it [revelation of God in the whole of nature external to us] as insufficient, or even worthless, and who join the Atheists in denying that God’s existence can be proved, and in affirming that all the arguments for His existence are inconclusive and sophistical. Such Theists seem to me not only the best allies of Atheists, but even more effective labourers in the cause of unbelief than Atheists themselves.”13 Since Dr. Flint wrote these words the number of “such Theists” has vastly increased. It is owned on all sides by the advanced school of apologists that God’s existence cannot be proved by an appeal to the reasoning faculties; and, among other arguments, that from design is gradually being discarded.

Father Waggett offers us interesting information regarding this argument in his little book, Religion and Science.14 He considers that Paley and others of the old teleologists were wrong in leaning upon a narrow argument from design. “It need not here be repeated,” he says, “that the evidence of such workmanship cannot prove God in the true sense of an infinite and all-wise Cause; but only a cause possessed of immense wisdom and immense though limited power, a Demiurgus of the greatest force and the most minute care, but not a Creator in the sense of theology.”15 Father Waggett, who is a biologist, and, therefore, necessarily an Evolutionist, would not be disconcerted if living things were manufactured in the laboratory to-morrow. In his opinion, “If anywhere we catch nature in the making, if we surprise the sequence by which even man himself gained his difference from other things, we shall not by this find reverence lowered.... It is a theological readjustment which is required, and not one in ‘natural science.’”16 The position here taken up is wise, and one that all who remain Theists will eventually have to adopt. But for most of us these theological readjustments are no easy matter. We reason that Paley’s Evidences have in their time assisted men to be Theists, and now his arguments are condemned by the better informed. How do we know that the same fate may not await the new arguments of the Christian evolutionist? How is it that God allowed earnest and learned divines to commit themselves to arguments in proof of His existence, the subsequent overthrow of which has been a potent cause for unbelief?