Hence the term "scientific teleology" is without
question applicable to the Paleyerian system.
Nor is the case essentially different with the more refined form of the
teleological argument which we have had to consider--the argument, namely,
from General Laws. For here, likewise, we have clearly seen that the
inference from the ubiquitous operation of General Laws to the existence of
an omniscient Law-maker is quite as illegitimate as is the inference from
apparent Design to the existence of a Supreme Designer. In other words,
science, by establishing the doctrine of the persistence of force and the
indestructibility of matter, has effectually disproved the hypothesis that
the presence of Law in nature is of itself sufficient to prove the
existence of an intelligent Law-giver.
Thus it is that scientific teleology in any form is now and for ever
obsolete. But not so with what I have termed metaphysical teleology. For as
we have seen that the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge precludes us
from asserting, or even from inferring, that beyond the region of the
Knowable Mind does not exist, it remains logically possible to institute a
metaphysical hypothesis that beyond this region of the Knowable Mind does
exist. There being a necessary absence of any positive information whereby
to refute this metaphysical hypothesis, any one who chooses to adopt it is
fully justified in doing so, provided only he remembers that the purely
metaphysical quality whereby the hypothesis is ensured against disproof,
likewise, and in the same degree, precludes it from the possibility of
proof.
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