Accordingly the design argument may be thrown either into the _analogical_ or the _inductive_ form.

Stated _analogically_, it stands thus: "There is an ascertained partial resemblance between organs seen in art and organs seen in nature; as, for instance, between the telescope and the eye.
"It is probable from analogy that there is in some further respect a partial resemblance between organs seen in art and organs seen in nature: in art the telescope has been produced by a _contriver_, analogy makes it probable that in nature the eye also will have been produced by a _contriver_." But stated inductively, it stands thus: "If there be in nature the manifestation of supernatural contrivance, there _must_ exist a supernatural contriver.
"There is in nature the manifestation of supernatural contrivance.
"Therefore a supernatural contriver,--God,--must exist."[284] Combine the perfection of analogy with the principle of causality, and you have not only the _verisimilitude_ or _likelihood_ which prepares the way for belief, but also a positive proof resting on a fundamental law of reason.

The inference of intelligence from marks of design in nature is not one of analogy, but of strict and proper _induction_; and accordingly we must either deny that there are marks of _design_ in nature, thereby discarding the _analogy_, or do violence to our own reason by resisting the fundamental law of causality, thereby discarding the inductive inference.

And of these two unavoidable alternatives, Mr.
Holyoake seems to prefer the former: he will venture to deny the existence of design in nature, rather than admit the existence of design and resist the inevitable inference of a designing cause; for he is compelled in the long run to come round to this desperate confession, "What I supposed to be _design_ in the opening of my argument is _no longer design_.

My reverend friend is wrong in supposing that I _admit design_, and yet refuse to admit the force of the _design argument_." But if he mistakes the general nature and conditions of the argument when he speaks of it as if it were a mere argument from analogy, his _extension of the analogy_, and the reasonings founded on it, are equally unjustifiable and inconclusive.