what if that too should fail us? Let us at least try it. This unsatisfactory view says: “What powers there may be in the world we can never wholly know. But we think that there is evidence that they that be for the moral law are more than they that be against it. And this evidence is given us by the empirically discerned marks of benevolent design about us in the world.” This view, whatever its religious worth, is at all events capable only of empirical proof, and pretends only to such a rank. And it is in discussing this hypothesis, in the dim light of the weary centuries of dispute about it, that one comes at last fully to feel the bitterness of the doubt that, like a tormenting disease, assails and eternally must assail one who tries to be content with this dreary visible world in which we have been so far vainly seeking for comfort. Wrangle upon wrangle, ceaseless balancing of probabilities this way and that, opinions and ridicule and abuse forever, and no result: such is this empirical teleology that seeks a world-manufacturer, and cannot discover him. Let us take up the miserable business just where we happen to find it.
There is no doubt about this, that the doctrine of evolution has rendered the popular empirical proof of a special designing power much harder than we used to suppose. And when we pass to this aspect of our question, we must confess at once that we have nothing to say which can be new to any reader of modern discussion. This empirical teleology will always remain a doubtful subject for human inquiry. Any dogmatic disproof of intelligent finite powers
