Sec. 27. We have come then to this:--Apparent intellectual adaptations are
perfectly valid indications of design, so long as their authorship is known
to be confined to human intelligence; for then we know from experience what
are our relations to these laws, and so in any given case can argue _a
posteriori_ that such an adaptation to such a set of laws by such an
intelligence can only have been due to such a process. But when we overstep
the limits of experience, we are not entitled to argue anything _a priori_
of any other intelligence in this respect, even supposing any such
intelligence to exist. The analogy by which the unknown relations are
inferred from the known is "infinitely precarious;" seeing that two of the
analogous terms--to wit, the divine intelligence and the human--may differ
to an immeasurable extent in their properties--nay, are supposed thus to
differ, the one being supposed omniscient, omnipotent, &c., and the other
not. And, as a final step, we may now see that the argument from Design, in
its last resort, resolves itself into a _petitio principii_. For,
ultimately, the only point which the analogical argument in question is
adduced to prove is, that the relations subsisting between an Unknown Cause
and certain physical forces are so far identical with the relations known
to subsist between human intelligence and these same forces, that similar
intellectual processes are required in the two cases to account for the
production of similar effects--and hence that the Unknown Cause is
intelligent.
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