In the last resort, he takes refuge in the plea of _ignorance_.

His only answer is, "I do not know, I am not in the secrets of Nature." But how does his extension of Paley's argument justify the position which he now assumes?
Or how can it invalidate the admissions which he had previously made?
That extension of the argument, even were it supposed to be legitimate, amounts simply to this, that a designer must be an organized being, and, as such, must have had a cause.

But what analogy suggests, or what law of reason requires, an _infinite series_ of such causes?
And what is there in this extension of the argument that should exclude the idea of a First Cause?
It is thought, indeed, that by connecting intelligence with organization, we may succeed at least in excluding His infinity, His omnipresence, and other attributes which are ascribed to the Most High: but the main stress of the argument rests not on the fact of organization, but on the supposed necessity of _an endless series_ of contrivers to account for the existence of any one intelligent being, whether organized or not is of little moment.

Now, this is a mere assumption, an assumption entirely destitute of proof, an assumption which is not necessarily involved even in the proposed extension of the analogy: for all that the analogy, however extended, can possibly require is a cause adequate to the production of designing minds, and that cause may be a self-existent, underived, and eternal Being.

Let the analogy be extended ever so far, it must reach a point at which we are compelled, by the fundamental law of _causality_, to rise to a self-existent Being, exempt from all conditions of time, space, and causality.