But perhaps the immense change which these considerations must logically be
regarded as having produced in the speculative standing of the argument
from teleology will be better appreciated if I continue to quote from
Professor Flint's very forcible and thoroughly logical exposition of the
previous standing of this argument. He says:--
"To ascribe the origination of order to _law_ is a manifest evasion of the
real problem. Law is order. Law is the very thing to be explained. The
question is--Has law a reason, or is it without a reason? The unperverted
human mind cannot believe it to be without a reason."
I do not know where a more terse and accurate statement of the case could
be found; and to my mind the question so lucidly put admits of the direct
answer--Law clearly has a reason of a purely physical kind. And therefore I
submit that the following quotation which Professor Flint makes from
Professor Jevons, logical as it was when written, must now be regarded as
embodying an argument which is obsolete.
"As an unlimited number of atoms can be placed in unlimited space in an
unlimited number of modes of distribution, there must, even granting matter
to have had all its laws from eternity, have been at some moment in time,
out of the unlimited choices and distributions possible, that one choice
and distribution which yielded the fair and orderly universe that now
exists.
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