not intend, and should by no means accede to, that construction.  My purpose in bringing the billiard-table upon the scene was to illustrate, by example, design and necessity, as different and independent sources from which results, it might indeed be identical results, may be derived All the conclusions, therefore, that you have arrived at through this misconception or misapplication of my illustration, I cannot take as an answer to the matter stated or intended to be stated by me.  Again, following this misconception, you suppose the skeptic (instanced by me as revealing through the evidence of design, exhibited in the structure of the eye, for its designer, God) as bringing to the examination a belief in the existence of design in the construction of the animals as they existed up to the moment when the eye was, according to my supposition, added to the heart, stomach, brain, etc.  By skeptic I, of course, intended one who doubted the existence of design in every organic structure, or at least required proof of such design.  Now, as the watch may be instanced as a more complete exhibition of design than a flint knife or an hour-glass, I selected, after the example of Paley, the eye, as exhibiting by its complex but harmonious arrangements a higher evidence of design and a designer than is to be found in a nerve sensitive to light, or any mere rudimentary part or organ.  I could not mean by skeptic one who believed in design so far as a claw, or a nerve sensitive to light, was concerned, but doubted all above.  For one who believes in design at all will not fail to recognize it in a hand or an eye.  But I need not extend these remarks, as you acknowledge in the sequel to your argument that you may not have suited it to the case as I have stated it.

You now request me to “state the grounds upon which I conclude that the supposed proof of design from the eye and the hand, as it stood before Darwin’s theory was promulgated, is invalidated by the admission of that theory.”  It seems to me that a sufficient answer to this question has already been made in the last part of my former paper; but, as you request it, I will go over the leading points as there given, with more minuteness of detail.

Let us, then, suppose a skeptic, one who is yet considering and doubting of the existence of God, having already concluded that the testimony from any and all revelation is insufficient, and having rejected what is called the a priori arguments brought forward in natural theology, and pertinaciously insisted upon by Dr. Clark and others, turning as a last resource to the argument from design in the organic world.  Voltaire tells him that a palace could not exist without an architect to design it.  Dr. Paley tells him that a watch proves the design of a watchmaker.  He thinks this very reasonable, and, although he sees a difference between the works of Nature and those of mere human art, yet if he can find in any organic body, or part of a body, the same adaptation to its