Thus there is clearly nothing to be gained on the side of teleology by
going back to the dim and dismal birth of the nebula; for no "thoroughgoing
evolutionist" would for one moment entertain the supposition that natural
law in the simplest phases of its development partook any more of a
miraculous character than it does in its more recent and vastly more
complex phases. The absence of knowledge must not be used as equivalent to
its presence; and if analogy can be held to justify any inference
whatsoever, surely we may conclude with confidence that if existing general
laws admit of being conceivably attributed to a natural genesis, the
primordial laws of a condensing nebula must have been the same.
There is another passage in Professor Flint's work to which it seems
desirable to refer. It begins thus: "There is the law of heredity: like
produces like. But why is there such a law? Why does like produce like?...
Physical science cannot answer these questions; but that is no reason why
they should not both be asked and answered. I can conceive of no other
intelligent answer being given to them than that there is a God of wisdom,
who designed that the world should be for all ages the abode of life," &c.
Now here we have in another form that same vicious tendency to take refuge
in the more obscure cases of physical causation as proofs of supernatural
design--the obscurity in this case arising from the _complexity_ of the
causes and work, as in the former case it arose from their _remoteness_ in
time.
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