To see our meaning clearly (add these objectors) take the instance of some marvellous work of man's art previously unknown to us. We could, if we perceived the _marks_ of human fabrication, reason from a watch, or some other well known machine, to the conclusion that some person had designed it. In other words, we should feel sure that we were looking at a new product of skill, which differed from what we had seen before in the degree of excellence attained. The difference we feel in our transition from Art to Nature appears, on the contrary, to be a difference not only between more or less perfect products or processes, but a thorough difference of kind in the whole _manner_ of bringing about the results placed before our eyes. Or put the case (they continue) as a piece of circumstantial evidence. We say positively of this or that machine, They are contrivances, things designed, because we know the _history_ of their manufacture. We feel positive, because we are arguing from a plain patent fact to a hidden but absolutely essential condition, without which the fact could not exist. As regards natural products we have not got the fact--we do not know the history of their production. We cannot say, Here is the process, because the processes of Nature are mostly unknown to us. Paley therefore would have us assume the fact and argue from it; first to design, next, to something more hidden still,--a Designer. Yet what we _do_ know of natural processes is not encouraging; there is visible about them more unlikeness than likeness to the processes employed by man. The truth may be surmised, that Paley was always seeing in his own examples the footprints, as he thought, of a Designer. Hence he affirmed Design, and then argued back again in a never-ending circle. There is really no reason why he should have travelled round such a circuit. If his argument shows anything, it shows a Designer at once.[n] With some risk of tediousness, this last attack on Paley has been detailed at great length, and placed (as the present writer believes) in several of its most formidable shapes[o]. But for additional security of fair dealing with the strongest of all objections--one which, if established, would be a death-blow to all argument on the subject (since its _ultimatum_ is unconditional surrender)--for these reasons, then, and in order to satisfy the most rigorous understanding, let it be finally rehearsed in the words of a most eminent physicist whom no one will accuse of haste, oversight, or credulity. To this rehearsal the Professor adds what is to us more important still,--his judgment on the point at issue. But before quoting Professor Baden Powell, it may be worth while to make two short notes on the few preceding paragraphs. Let us take the last paragraph first.