Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/143

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
MARKS OF DESIGN IN NATURE.
133

surely conclude that there must have been a watchmaker; and so from the marks of design in creation, which are like the adaptations to special purposes of each part in the watch, we must conclude that an intelligent Creator made the world." Aristotle, quite as strongly as Paley, admits the marks of design in nature. He says ('Phys.' II. viii. 14.): "The adaptation of means to ends which we see in the procedure of the animals makes some men doubt whether the spider, for instance, and the ant, do not work by the light of reason or an analogous faculty. In plants, moreover, manifest traces of a fit and wisely planned organisation appear. The swallow makes its nest and the spider its web by nature, and yet with a design and an end; and the roots of the plant gi'ow downward for the sake of providing it with nourishment in the best way. It is plain, then, that the origin of natural things must be attributed to design." He repudiates the notion that "the heavens and the divinest of visible things" ('Phys.' II. iv. 6) can have been the result of the workings of blind chance. Nor will he accept the theory of Empedocles (which was like the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection in its extremest form) that blind chance hit upon the production of life, and that whole races of monsters and imperfect beings perished before the moment came when—by mere accident and coincidence—a creature was attained sufficiently perfect to survive ('Phys.' II. viii. 4). So far from chance having been the chief force in producing the framework of the Universe, Aristotle considers chance to be a mere exception, a mere irregularity, thwarting the reason and the wis-