The rest of Paley’s Natural Theology is an application of this analogy to the question of the origin of the universe. Ranging over the whole field of animate and inanimate nature he points to instance after instance of what appears to be the minute and thoughtful adaptation of means to ends, the co-ordination of part with part in the interest of the whole, and he has no difficulty, from this point of view, in showing the world of nature to be a piece of mechanism far more wonderfully and ingeniously constructed than any watch, and bearing _prima facie_ evidence of the most convincing kind of its construction by a Being possessed of intelligence, purpose and foresight precisely resembling those attributes as displayed by man, but vastly heightened and enlarged. As the watch must have been made by man, so a manlike being, endowed with the necessary powers and faculties, must be postulated as the maker of the material universe. And thus the existence of a God made in the image of man appeared to have been demonstrated to the satisfaction of eighteenth-century theology. But minds of real philosophic depth have always shrunk from pressing home deductions of this sort. They have felt that the matter is probably not quite so simple as it might appear on the surface, and they have recognised that if one is allowed to argue from the phenomena of nature to the qualities of the author of nature one cannot draw an arbitrary line including only those facts which testify to wisdom, power and goodness, and excluding from view all those which reveal imperfection of design and execution, or which would convict a man, if he were their author, of inhumanity and injustice. If the universe is really analogous to a watch one is entitled to examine it throughout as one would examine a watch. All watches testify to intelligence and design, but besides good watches there are bad ones, there are those which are made of cheap materials, rudely put together, with showy exteriors and unreliable works. Every watch, if examined by experts in mechanism, in art, and so forth, would reveal the characteristics of its designer and maker, and these characteristics would not always be admirable. They would rarely, in fact, be altogether admirable. If we apply these methods of inquiry to a universe which contains malarial mosquitoes, slave-making ants, snakes, earthquakes, and all the pests which blight and deform life without calling forth any strong or noble qualities to carry on the contest with them, we shall go where Paley certainly never intended to lead us, but we shall go there by Paley’s road. The fact is that these methods are altogether fantastic and inapplicable. The universe is not made like a watch. When we observe a human being or one of the higher animals we say, ‘He has such and such qualities; he is faithful, false, brave, cowardly, diligent, indolent, strong, weak, beautiful or ugly,’ but we do not think of referring