Mill's penetration did not see that whatever view we may take as to "the adequacy of this principle (_i.e._, Natural Selection) to account for such truly admirable combinations as some of those in nature," the argument from _Design_ is not materially affected. So far as this argument is concerned, the issue is not Design _versus_ Natural Selection, but it is Design _versus_ Natural Law. By all means, "leaving this remarkable speculation (_i.e._, Mr. Darwin's) to whatever fate the progress of discovery may have in store for it," and it by no means follows that "in the present state of knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation by intelligence." For whatever we may think of this special theory as to the _mode_, there can be no longer any reasonable doubt, "in the present state of our knowledge," as to the truth of the general theory of _Evolution_; and the latter, if accepted, is as destructive to the argument from _Design_ as would the former be if proved. In a word, it is the _fact_ and not the _method_ of Evolution which is subversive of Teleology in its Paleyerian form. Sec. 27. We have come then to this:--Apparent intellectual adaptations are perfectly valid indications of design, so long as their authorship is known to be confined to human intelligence; for then we know from experience what are our relations to these laws, and so in any given case can argue _a posteriori_ that such an adaptation to such a set of laws by such an intelligence can only have been due to such a process. But when we overstep the limits of experience, we are not entitled to argue anything _a priori_ of any other intelligence in this respect, even supposing any such intelligence to exist. The analogy by which the unknown relations are inferred from the known is "infinitely precarious;" seeing that two of the analogous terms--to wit, the divine intelligence and the human--may differ to an immeasurable extent in their properties--nay, are supposed thus to differ, the one being supposed omniscient, omnipotent, &c., and the other not. And, as a final step, we may now see that the argument from Design, in its last resort, resolves itself into a _petitio principii_. For, ultimately, the only point which the analogical argument in question is adduced to prove is, that the relations subsisting between an Unknown Cause and certain physical forces are so far identical with the relations known to subsist between human intelligence and these same forces, that similar intellectual processes are required in the two cases to account for the production of similar effects--and hence that the Unknown Cause is intelligent. But it is evident that the analogy itself can have no existence, except upon the presupposition that these two sets of relations _are_ thus identical. The point which the analogy is adduced to prove is therefore postulated by the fact of its being adduced at all, and the whole