Two cog-wheels, grasping each other, will be thought conclusive evidence of
design, quite independently of any use attaching to them. And the
inference, indeed, is perfectly correct; only it is an inference, not from
a mark of design, properly so called, but from a mark of human workmanship .
. . No more is needed for the watch-finder, since all the works of man are,
at the same time, products of design; but a great deal more is requisite
for us, who are called upon by Paley to recognize design in works in which
this stamp, this label of human workmanship, is wanting. The mental
operation required in the one case is radically different from that
performed in the other; there is no parallel, and Paley's demonstration is
totally irrelevant."[XIII-2] But, surely, all human doings are not
"products of design;" many are contingent or accidental. And why not
suppose that the finder of the watch, or of the watch-wheel, infers both
design and human workmanship? The two are mutually exclusive only on the
supposition that man alone is a designer, which is simply begging the
question in discussion. If the watch-finder's attention had been arrested by
a different object, such as a spider's web, he would have inferred both
design and non-human workmanship. Of some objects he might be uncertain
whether they were of human origin or not, with-out ever doubting they were
designed, while of others this might remain doubtful. Nor is man's
recognition of human workmanship, or of any other, dependent upon his
comprehending how it was done, or what particular ends it subserves. Such
considerations make it clear that "the label of human workmanship" is not
the generic stamp from which man infers design. It seems equally clear that
"the mental operation required in the one case" is not so radically or
materially "different from that performed in the other" as this writer
would have us suppose. The judgment respecting a spider's web, or a
trap-door spider's dwelling, would be the very same in this regard if it
preceded, as it occasionally might, all knowledge of whether the object met
with were of human or animal origin. A dam across a stream, and the