But if it is said, How fortunate that the outcome,
being unconditionally necessary, has happened to be so good as it is; I
answer that the remark is legitimate enough if it is not intended to convey
an implication that the general quality of the outcome points to beneficent
design as to its cause. Such an implication would not be legitimate,
because, in the first place, we have no means of knowing in how many cases,
whether in planets, stars, or systems, the course of evolution has failed
to produce life and mind--the one known case of this earth, whether or not
it is the one success out of millions of abortions, being of necessity the
only known case. In how vastly greater a number of cases the course of
evolution may have been, so to speak, deflected by some even slight, though
strictly necessary, cause from producing self-conscious intelligence, it is
impossible to conjecture. But this consideration, be it observed, is not
here adduced in order to _disprove_ the assertion that telluric evolution
has been effected by Intelligence; it is merely adduced to prove that such
an assertion cannot rest on the single known result of telluric evolution,
so long as an infinite number of the results of evolution elsewhere remain
unknown.
And now, lastly, it must be observed that even in the one case with which
we are acquainted, the net product of evolution is not such as can of
itself point us to _beneficent_ design.
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