Try to picture the meshwork of contending rhythms
which must have been before organic nature was built up, and then let us
ask, Is it conceivable, is it credible, that all this can have been the
work of blind fate? Must we not feel that had there not been intelligent
agency at work somewhere, other and less terrifically intricate results
would have ensued? And if we further try to symbolise in thought the
unimaginable complexity of the material and dynamical changes in virtue of
which that thought itself exists,--if we then extend our symbols to
represent all the history of all the orderly changes which must have taken
place to evolve human intelligence into what it is,--and if we still
further extend our symbols to try if it be possible, even in the language
of symbols, to express the number and the subtlety of those natural laws
which now preside over the human will;--in the face of so vast an
assumption as that all this has been self-evolved, I am content still to
rest in the faith of my forefathers.'
Sec. 45. Now I think it must be admitted that we have here a valid argument.
That is to say, the considerations which we have just adduced must, I
think, in fairness be allowed to have established this position:--That the
system of metaphysical teleology for which we have supposed a candid theist
to plead, is something more than a purely gratuitous system--that it does
not belong to the same category of baseless imaginings as that to which the
atheist at first sight, and in view of the scientific deductions alone,
might be inclined to assign it.
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