But it is evident that the analogy itself can have no
existence, except upon the presupposition that these two sets of relations
_are_ thus identical. The point which the analogy is adduced to prove is
therefore postulated by the fact of its being adduced at all, and the whole
argument resolves itself into a case of _petitio principii_.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV.
THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL LAWS.
Sec. 28. Turning now to an important error of Mr. Mill's in respect of
omission, I firmly believe that all competent writers who have ever
undertaken to support the argument from Design, have been moved to do so by
their instinctive appreciation of the much more important argument, which
Mill does not mention at all and which we now proceed to consider--the
argument from General Laws. That is to say, I cannot think that any one
competent writer ever seriously believed, had he taken time to analyse his
beliefs, that the cogency of his argument lay in assuming any knowledge
concerning the _process_ of divine thought; he must have really believed
that it lay entirely in his observation of the _product_ of divine
thought--or rather, let us say, of divine intelligence. Now this is the
whole difference between the argument from Design and the argument from
General Laws. The argument from Design says, There must be a God, because
such and such an organic structure must have been due to such and such an
intellectual _process_.
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