The late Professor De Morgan demonstrated in his 'Essay on Probability,' when only eleven planets were known, that the odds against chance, to which in such a case intelligence is the only alternative, being the cause of all these bodies moving in one direction round the sun, with an inconsiderable inclination of the planes of their orbits, were twenty thousand millions to one. "What prospect," are his own words, "would there have been of such a concurrence of circumstances, if a state of chance had been the only antecedent? With regard to the sameness of the directions, either of which might have been from west to east, or from east to west, the case is precisely similar to the following: There is a lottery containing black and white balls, from each drawing of which it is as likely a black ball shall arise as a white one: what is the chance of drawing eleven balls all white?--answer 2047 to one against it. With regard to the other question, our position is this: There is a lottery containing an infinite number of counters, marked with all possible different angles less than a right angle, in such a manner that any angle is as likely to be drawn as another, so that in ten drawings the sum of the angles drawn may be anything under ten right angles: now, what is the chance of ten drawings giving collectively less than one right angle?--answer 10,000,000 to one against it. Now, what is the chance of both these events coming together?--answer, more than 20,000,000,000 to one against it. It is consequently of the same degree of probability that there has been something at work which is not chance in the formation of the solar system."
There are several departments of science as much, or even more, adapted than astronomy, to furnish proofs of the wisdom of God; but there is none which affords us such evidence of His power, or so helps us to realise His omnipresence, our own nothingness before Him, and the littleness of our earth in the system of His creation. Those who wish to have impressions of this kind deepened may be recommended to read the works of Proctor and Flammarion.
What is said in the paragraph to which this note refers must not be so understood as to be in consistent with the possibility or probability, if not demonstrated certainty, that the universe is not a perfectly conservative system, but one which is tending surely although slowly to the destruction of the present condition of things. This fact, if it be a fact, can no more affect the design argument in its relation to astronomy, than the decay of plants and the death of animals can affect it in relation to vegetable and animal physiology.