Civilization, Modern -- 19th century; Literature -- History and criticism
The theory of "natural selection" does not enable us to dispense with
final causes. This theory requires the existence of forces working
according to the law of heredity and the law of variation, together
with a suitable environment. But whence came this arrangement, by
which a law of heredity was combined with a law of variation, and
both made to act in a suitable environment? Here we find again the
three marks of a designing intelligence: preparation, combination,
adaptation. That intelligence which combines and adapts means to ends
is merely remanded to the initial step of the process, instead of being
allowed to act continuously along the whole line of evolution. Even
though you can explain by the action of mechanical forces the whole
development of the solar system and its contents from a nebula, you
have only accumulated all the action of a creative intelligence in the
nebula itself. Because I can explain the mechanical process by which a
watch keeps time, I have not excluded the necessity of a watchmaker.
Because, walking through my neighbor's grounds, I come upon a water-ram
pumping up water by a purely mechanical process, I do not argue that
this mechanism makes the assumption of an inventor superfluous. In
human industry we perceive a power capable of using the blind forces
of Nature for an intelligent end; which prepares beforehand for the
intended result; which combines various conditions suited to produce
it, and so creates order, system, use. But we observe in Nature exactly
similar examples of order, method, and system, resulting from a vast
number of combinations, correlations, and adaptations of natural
forces. Man himself is such a result. He is an animal capable of
activity, happiness, progress. But innumerable causes are combined and
harmonized in his physical frame, each necessary to this end. As the
human intelligence is the only power we know capable of accomplishing
such results, analogy leads us to assume that a similar intelligence
presides over the like combinations of means to ends in Nature. If any
one questions the value of this argument from analogy, let him remember
how entirely we rely upon it in all the business of life. We _know_
only the motives which govern our own actions; but we infer by analogy
that others act from similar motives. Knowing that we ourselves combine
means designed to effect ends, when we see others adapting means to
ends, we assume that they act also with design. Hence we have a right
to extend the argument further and higher.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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