"How could matter of itself produce order, even if it were self-existent
and eternal? It is far more unreasonable to believe that the atoms or
constituents of matter produced of themselves, without the action of a
Supreme Mind, this wonderful universe, than that the letters of the English
alphabet produced the plays of Shakespeare, without the slightest
assistance from the human mind known by that famous name. These atoms
might, perhaps, now and then, here and there, at great distances and long
intervals, produce by a chance contact some curious collocation or
compound; but never could they produce order or organisation on an
extensive scale, or of a durable character, unless ordered, arranged, and
adjusted in ways of which intelligence alone can be the ultimate
explanation. To believe that these fortuitous and indirected movements
could originate the universe, and all the harmonies and utilities and
beauties which abound in it, evinces a credulity far more extravagant than
has ever been displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. Yet no
consistent materialist can refuse to accept this colossal chance
hypothesis. All the explanations of the order of the universe which
materialists, from Democritus and Epicurus to Diderot and Lange, have
devised, rest on the assumption that the elements of matter, being eternal,
must pass through infinite combinations, and that one of these must be our
present world--a special collocation among the countless millions of
collocations, past and future.
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