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Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism by Asa Gray
page 311 of 342 (90%)
experience of chaos before he can predicate anything of order.

But is it true that man has all that he conceives of, or thinks would be
useful, and has no "negative evidence of design afforded by the absence of
a faculty" to set against the positive evidence afforded by its presence?
He notes that he lacks the faculty of flight, sometimes wants it, and in
dreams imagines that he has it, yet as thoroughly believes that he was
designed not to have it as that he was designed to have the faculties and
organs which he possesses. He notes that some animals lack sight, and so,
with this negative side of the testimony to the value of vision, he is "apt
to infer creative wisdom" both in what he enjoys and in what the lower
animal neither needs nor wants. That man does not miss that which he has no
conception of, and is by this limitation disqualified from judging rightly
of what he can conceive and know, is what the Westminster Reviewer comes
to, as follows:


"We value the constitution of our world because we live by it, and because
we cannot conceive ourselves as living otherwise. Our conceptions of
possibility, of law, of regularity, of logic, are all derived from the same
source; and as we are constantly compelled to work with these conceptions,
as in our increasing endeavors to better our condition and increase our
provision we are constantly compelled to guide ourselves by Nature's
regulations, we accustom ourselves to look upon these regularities and
conceptions as antecedent to all work, even to a Creator's, and to judge of
the origin of Nature as we judge of the origin of inventions and utilities
ascribable to man. This explains why the argument of design has enjoyed
such universal popularity. But that such popularity is no criterion of the
argument's worth, and that, indeed, it is no evidence of anything save of
an unhappy weakness in man's mental constitution, is abundantly proved by
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