“When we look backwards, every phase in the process of development seems to us to have proceeded in a strictly causal manner from physico-chemical processes. But when we turn to look forward, it is certain that the physico-chemical processes if left to their own causality must immediately bring about the destruction of the organism. In fact, the clearest definition we can give of dying is to say of an organism that its processes now go on no longer teleologically (_zweckmässig_) but only causally.”[11]
Yet the modern Paley would be rash in arguing from facts like these (supposing them fully established) to the conscious, intelligent contrivance of a single foreseeing Mind. For very few things in this universe appear to be done as a presiding, conscious intelligence would do them. Conscious intelligence would not have evolved the giant armadillo only that the whole species might be destroyed by the sabre-toothed tiger, and would not have armed the sabre-toothed tiger for the attack on the armadillo in such a way that when he had exterminated the victim-species the formation of his teeth rendered it impossible for him to prey on any other animal.[12] Conscious intelligence would not have allowed the relic of a disused organ, in the shape of the vermiform appendix, to be a constant source of danger and suffering to countless generations of men—danger against which no exercise of prudence or energy can secure them.
Let us examine a couple of other crucial cases. The embryo of every mammalian animal is prepared in the womb for the life it is to live under wholly different conditions. Lungs are formed when there is no air for them to breathe, eyes when there is no light, a digestive system when nourishment is derived as yet direct from the mother’s blood. This capacity for anticipatory development during a period of gestation or incubation becomes absolutely necessary for the maintenance of life as soon as animals, ceasing to multiply by merely dividing in two, become more highly organized and have to devote special germ-cells to reproductive purposes. Here is certainly purpose, or, as I should prefer to call it, _directivity_—here we recognize what Reinke calls the X-factor in nature. But conscious, intelligent contrivance? We must recollect how many of these embryos are destined to perish at birth or before attaining any appreciable degree of independent life. Would not intelligence foresee that, and bring to birth only what was destined to endure?