This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1870. Excerpt: ... tool-using animal; and it is certain that those who have attempted to apply the conception of end and means to the solution of the wonders of the physical world, bear no proportion at all to those--the whole race in fact--who are habitually applying the principle of design to practical concerns. The existence of the notion is, strictly speaking, a fact of nature; and though the evidences of its application to the sensible world may be denied, yet as a real principle of the human mind it demands an adequate explanation. It has too often been overlooked, that intelligence, reason, conscience, are as much phenomena of nature as light or heat; and it has thus been easy to deny the evidence of intelligence in nature's works, when that department, in which it is most clearly manifested, has been artificially excluded from the survey. 4. I cannot go so far as Sir William Hamilton in depreciation of the evidence of intelligent design which the material world presents. He considers that it is in the phenomena of mind alone that such evidence is given; and he adds, that the phenomena of matter, taken by themselves, "so far from warranting any inference to Lectures on "the existence of a God, would, on the contrary, ground sia, 1. pT-6. "even an argument to His negation." I shall endeavour to show that, though the evidence is in its nature such as establishes not a demonstration, but only a probability, it is yet such as we cannot afford to overlook; and further, that while Physical Science has shown many of the more obvious arguments to be worthless, it has suggested others deeper, and more trustworthy, derived both from the general character of nature which it unfolds, and also from some of the particular facts which its investigations have brought to light. ...