My reverend friend is wrong in supposing that _I admit design_, and yet refuse to admit the force of the _design argument_."[281] And what is the reason which now induces him to deny the existence of _design_ in Nature, and to withdraw all the admissions he had previously made?
Why, simply because he conceives that, by a legitimate extension of the same analogy, the design argument may be pushed to a _reductio ad absurdum_, so as to prove first the existence of an _organized person_, "an animal God," and, secondly, an infinite series of such organized persons, since one such must necessarily presuppose another, and that again another, and so on _in infinitum_.

For there are two stages in his extension of the analogy.

In the first, it is extended so far as to show that the person to whom design is ascribed must necessarily be an organized Being: in the _second_, it is still further extended, so as to show that, being organized, that person must also have had a designer or maker, since organization is held to imply design, and design to imply a designer.

And thus the analogy, when extended, does not lead up to one Supreme Mind, the Infinite and Eternal Creator of all things, but to an organized being, himself exhibiting marks of design in his organization, and requiring therefore, like every organism, a prior cause, and, by parity of reason, an eternal succession or infinite series of such causes.
The following extracts will place the progressive steps of his argument in a clear, if not convincing light: "By reasoning from analogy, Paley infers that there is a personal, intelligent being, the author of all design, whom he christens Deity.

But what kind of a person is a Deity?
If a person, is it organized like a person?
Whence came it?
How did it originate?
Was it formed, as it is said to have formed us ?...