It suffices
us to know that they are not new nor peculiar difficulties,--that, as
Darwin's theory and our reasonings upon it did not raise these
perturbing spirits, they are not bound to lay them. Meanwhile, that
the doctrine of design encounters the very same difficulties in the
material that it does in the moral world is just what ought to be
expected.
So the issue between the skeptic and the theist is only the old one,
long ago argued out,--namely, whether organic Nature is a result of
design or of chance. Variation and natural selection open no third
alternative; they concern only the question, How the results, whether
fortuitous or designed, may have been brought about. Organic Nature
abounds with unmistakable and irresistible indications of design, and,
being a connected and consistent system, this evidence carried the
implication of design throughout the whole. On the other hand, chance
carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a
consistent system; but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or
beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all
computation. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The
alternative is a designed Cosmos.
It is very easy to assume, that, because events in Nature are in one
sense accidental, and the operative forces which bring them to pass
are themselves blind and unintelligent, (all forces are,) therefore
they are undirected, or that he who describes these events as the
results of such forces thereby assumes that they are undirected.
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