It should be noticed, moreover, that in one respect evolution rather _increases_ the evidence of design. For if, to take a single example, a human hand has been evolved from a monkey's foot merely by the monkey using it as a hand, and taking hold of things; it increases the amount of design which must have been spent on the foot to enable it to do so. And if _all_ the organs in nature have been evolved in this way from simpler ones, it increases the amount of design which must have been spent on those simpler ones to an extent which is practically infinite.
Thus Evolution implies a previous _Involution_; since all forms of life must have been involved in the first form before they could be evolved from it; so that creation by evolution is more wonderful than creation by direct manufacture. And it seems to many to be a far nobler conception of the Creator that He should obtain all the results He desired, by one grand system of evolution, rather than by a large number of separate creations. For then the _method_ in which the results were obtained would be as marvellous, and show as much wisdom and foresight as the results themselves; and each would be worthy of the other. Evolution, then, seems to be the highest form of creation; and so far from destroying the present argument, it only destroys its difficulties, by showing that every single part of every single organism may have been _designed_, and yet in a manner worthy of the great Creator.
Nor is the conclusion altered if we carry back the process of evolution, and assume that the earliest form of life was itself evolved from some previous form of inanimate matter; and this again from a simpler one, and so on till we get back to the original form of matter, whatever that may have been. For if the results as we now see them show design, then the argument for a Designer is not weakened, but our ideas of His skill are still further increased, if we believe that they were already secured when our earth was merely a nebula.
We have, lastly, to consider the other, and more important objection, that arising from _Free Will_. Why, it is urged, may not all organisms in nature have possessed free will within certain limits, and have selected those forms which suited them best? For example, referring to the case of a watch, if telling the time were of any advantage to the watch itself, and if the spring, wheels, and hands possessed free will; then it might be thought that they had formed themselves into that arrangement which suited them best. And if so, the idea that the watchmaker foresaw and intended them to adopt this arrangement seems unnecessary.