Internalism and Laws of Form 265
a superfluity and an incumbrance. But observe the event. The animal sleeps
standing; and, in order to support its head, hooks its upper tusks on the
branches of trees (pp. 270-271).More in the Panglossian mode, pain (an adaptation, Paley argues, for
signaling distress to the mind so that we may care for our bodies) also shows God's
benevolence on the theme of the old moron joke—we feel so good when the
suffering stops! (On the subject of good in apparent noxiousness, compare John
Ray (1735, p. 309) on why God made lice: "I cannot but look upon the strange
instinct of this noisome and troublesome creature a louse, of searching out foul and
nasty clothes to harbor and breed in, as an effect of divine providence, designed to
deter men and women from sluttishness and sordidness, and to provoke them to
cleanliness and neatness. God Himself hateth uncleanliness, and turns away from
it." Or, as Robert Burns would later generalize the lesson in "To a Louse": "Oh
wad some power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!") "A man resting
from a fit of the stone or gout, is, for the time, in possession of feelings which
undisturbed health cannot impart. They may be dearly bought, but still they are to
be set against the price. And, indeed, it depends upon the duration and urgency of
the pain, whether they be dearly bought by suffering a moderate interruption of
bodily ease for a couple of hours out of the four and twenty" (pp. 523-533).
To complete the picture of joyous nature made by a loving God, signs of non-
utility in sheer behavioral exuberance, particularly in the play of young creatures,
testify to the sheer pleasure of being alive on such a wondrous planet:
Swarms of newborn flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive
motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual
change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exultation
which they feel in their lately discovered faculties... Other species are
running about with an alacrity in their motions which carries with it every
mark of pleasure. Large patches of ground are sometimes half covered with
these brisk and sprightly natures. If we look to what the waters produce,
shoals of the fry of fish frequent the marshes of rivers, of lakes, and of the
sea itself. These are so happy, that they know not what to do with
themselves (pp. 490-491).(Paley's prose may be purple, but his purpose is sanguine. He argues, in stating his
primary case, that organic adaptation proves the personhood of God. But we want
to know more. God could, after all, be a consummate craftsman, but a crabby
character. Paley's arguments on pain and natural happiness indicate that God is not
only skillful, but also benevolent as well.)
These statements, taken out of context (as usually done), promote an unfair
caricature of a subtle argument. Paley cannot be dismissed as an intellectual
slouch. His Evidences of Christianity (1794) remained a required text for entrance
to Cambridge University until the 20th century, and Darwin would never have
chosen a cardboard dogmatist for a hero or, later, for an opponent