Chapter XV. Final Causes; Universal Order.
106. Two Conceptions of Experience, the Mechanical and the Teleological.—We have seen that all change in the universe demands for its explanation certain real principles, viz. passive potentiality, actualization, and active power or efficiency; in other words that it points to material, formal and efficient causes. Do these principles suffice to explain the course of nature to the inquiring mind? Mechanists say, Yes; these principles explain it so far as it is capable of explanation. Teleologists say, No; these principles do not of themselves account for the universe of our experience: this universe reveals itself as a cosmos: hence it demands for its explanation real principles or causes of another sort, final causes, the existence of which implies purpose, plan or design, and therefore also intelligence.
The problem whether or not the universe manifests the existence and influence of final causes has been sometimes formulated in this striking fashion: Is it that birds have wings in order to fly, or is it merely that they fly because they have wings? Such a graphic statement of the problem is misleading, for it suggests that the alternatives are mutually exclusive, that we must vote either for final causes or for efficient causes. As a matter of fact we accept both. Efficient causes account for the course of nature; but they need to be determined by the influence of final causes. Moreover, the question how far this influence of final causes extends—finality (finalitas), as it is technically termed—is a secondary question; nor does the advocate of final causality in the universe undertake to decide its nature and scope in every instance and detail, any more than the physical scientist does to point out all the physical laws embodied in an individual natural event, or the biologist to say whether a doubtful specimen of matter is organic or inorganic, or whether a certain sort of living cell is animal or vegetable. The teleologist's thesis, as against that [pg 405] of mechanism, is simply that there are final causes in the universe, that the universe does really manifest the presence and influence of final causes.[501]
There are two ways, however, of conceiving this influence as permeating the universe. The conception of final causality in general is, as we shall see, the conception of acting for an end, from a motive, with a purpose, plan or design for the attainment of something. It implies arrangement, ordination, adaptation of means to ends ([55]). Now at least there appears to be, pervading the universe everywhere and directing its activities, such an adaptation. The admirable equilibrium of forces which secures the regular motions of the heavenly bodies; the exact mixture of gases which makes our atmosphere suitable for organic life; the distance and relative positions of the sun and the earth, which secure conditions favourable to organic life; the chemical transformations whereby inorganic elements and compounds go to form the living substance of plants and are thus prepared for assimilation as food by animal organisms; the wonderfully graded hierarchy of living species in the animate world, and the mutual interdependence of plants and animals; the endless variety of instincts which secure the preservation and well-being of living individuals and species; most notably the adaptability and adaptation of other mundane creatures to human uses by man himself,—innumerable facts such as these convince us that the things of the universe are useful to one another, that they are constituted and disposed in relation to one another as if they had been deliberately chosen to suit one another, to fit in harmoniously together in mutual co-ordination and subordination so that by their interaction and interdependence they work out a plan or design and subserve as means to definite ends. This suitability of things relatively to one another, this harmony of the nature and activity of each with the nature and activity of every other, we may designate as extrinsic finality. The Creator has willed so to arrange and dispose all creatures in conditions of space and time that such harmonious but purely extrinsic relations of mutual adaptation do de facto obtain and continue to prevail between them under His guidance.
But are these creatures themselves, in their own individual natures, equally indifferent to any definite mode of action, so that the orderly concurrence of their activities is due to an initial collocation [pg 406] and impulse divinely impressed upon them from without, and not to any purposive principle intrinsic to themselves individually? Descartes, Leibniz and certain supporters of the theory of atomic dynamism regarding the constitution of matter, while recognizing a relative and extrinsic finality in the universe in the sense explained, seem to regard the individual agencies of the universe as mere efficient causes, not of themselves endowed with any immanent, intrinsic directive principle of their activities, and so contributing by mere extrinsic arrangement to the order of the universe. Scholastic philosophers, on the contrary, following the thought of Aristotle,[502] consider that every agency in the universe is endowed with an intrinsic principle of finality which constantly directs its activities towards the realization of a perfection which is proper to it and which constitutes its intrinsic end ([45-46]). And while each thus tends to its own proper perfection by the natural play of its activities, each is so related to all others that they simultaneously realize the extrinsic purpose which consists in the order and harmony of the whole universe. Thus the extrinsic and relative finality whereby all conspire to constitute the universe a cosmos is secondary and posterior and subordinate to the deeper, intrinsic, immanent and absolute finality whereby each individual created nature moves by a tendency or law of its being towards the realization of a good which perfects it as its natural end.
In order to understand the nature of this intrinsic and extrinsic finality in the universe, and to vindicate its existence against the philosophy of Mechanism, we must next analyse the concept, and investigate the influence, of what are called final causes.
107. The Concept of Final Cause; its Objective Validity in all Nature. Classification of Final Causes.—When we speak of the end of the year, or the end of a wall, we mean the extreme limit or ultimate point; and the term conveys no notion of a cause. Similarly, were a person to say “I have got to the end of my work,” we should understand him to mean simply that he had finished it. But when people act deliberately and as intelligent beings, they usually act for some conscious purpose, with some object in view, for the achievement or attainment of something; they continue to act until they have attained this object; when they have attained it they cease to act; its attainment synchronizes with the end of their action, taking this term in the sense just illustrated. Probably this is the reason why the term [pg 407] end has been extended from its original sense to signify the object for the attainment of which an intelligent agent acts. This object of conscious desire induces the agent to seek it; and because it thus influences the agent to act it verifies the notion of a cause: it is a final cause, an end in the causal sense. For instance, a young man wishes to become a medical doctor: the art of healing is the end he wishes to secure. For this purpose he pursues a course of studies and passes certain examinations; these acts whereby he qualifies himself by obtaining a certain fund of knowledge and skill are means to the end intended by him. He need not desire these preparatory labours for their own sake; but he does desire them as useful for his purpose, as means to his end: in so far as he wills them as means he wills them not for their own sake but because of the end, propter finem. He apprehends the end as a good; he intends its attainment; he elects or selects certain acts or lines of action as means suitable for this purpose. An end or final cause, therefore, may be defined as something apprehended as a good, and which, because desired as such, influences the will to choose some action or line of action judged necessary or useful for the attainment of this good. Hence Aristotle's definition of end as τὸ οὖ ἕνεκα: id cujus gratia aliquid fit: that for the sake of which an agent acts.
The end understood in this sense is a motive of action; not only would the action not take place without the agent's intending the end, showing the latter to be a conditio sine qua non; but, more than this, the end as a good, apprehended and willed, has a positive influence on the ultimate effect or issue, so that it is really a cause.
Man is conscious of this “finality,” or influence of final causes on his own deliberate actions. As an intelligent being he acts “for ends,” and orders or regulates his actions as means to those ends; so much so that when we see a man's acts, his whole conduct, utterly unrelated to rational ends, wholly at variance and out of joint with the usual ends of intelligent human activity, we take it as an indication of loss of reason, insanity. Furthermore, man is free; he chooses the ends for which he acts; he acts electivé propter fines.
But in the domain of animal life and activity is there any evidence of the influence of final causes? Most undoubtedly. Watch the movements of animals seeking their prey; observe the wide domain of animal instincts; study the elaborate and [pg 408] intricate lines of action whereby they protect and foster and preserve their lives, and rear their young and propagate their species: could there be clearer or more abundant evidence that in all this conduct they are influenced by objects which they apprehend and seek as sensible goods? Not that they can conceive in the abstract the ratio bonitatis in these things, or freely choose them as good, for they are incapable of abstract thought and consequent free choice; but that these sensible objects, apprehended by them in the concrete, do really influence or move their sense appetites to desire and seek them; and the influence of an object on sense appetite springs from the goodness of this object ([44], [45]). They tend towards apprehended goods; they act apprehensivé propter fines.[503]
Finally, even in the domains of unconscious agencies, of plant life and inorganic nature, we have evidence of the influence of final causes. For here too we witness innumerable varied, complex, ever-renewed activities, constantly issuing in results useful to, and good for, the agents which elicit them: operations which contribute to the development and perfection of the natures of these agents ([46]). Now if similar effects demand similar causes how can we refuse to recognize even in these activities of physical nature the influence of final causes? Whenever and wherever we find a great and complex variety of active powers, forces, energies, issuing invariably in effects which suit and develop and perfect the agents in question,—in a word, which are good for these agents,—whether the latter be conscious or unconscious, does not reason itself dictate to us that all such domains of action must be subject to the influence of final causes? Of course it would be mere unreflecting anthropomorphism to attribute to unconscious agencies a conscious subjection to the attracting and directing influence of such causes. But the recognition of such influence in this domain implies no naïve supposition of that sort. It does, however, imply this very reasonable view: that there must be some reason or ground in the nature or constitution of even an inanimate agent for its acting always in a uniform manner, conducive to its own development and perfection; that there must be in the nature of each and every one of the [pg 409] vast multitude of such agents which make up the whole physical universe a reason or ground for each co-operating constantly and harmoniously with all the others to secure and preserve that general order and regularity which enables us to pronounce the universe not a chaos but a cosmos. Now that ground or reason in things, whereby they act in such a manner—not indifferently, chaotically, capriciously, aimlessly, unintelligibly, but definitely, regularly, reliably, purposively, intelligibly—is a real principle of their natures, impressing on their natures a definite tendency, directive of their activities towards results which, as being suited to these natures, bear to these latter the relation of final causes. A directive principle need not itself be conscious; the inner directive principle of inanimate agents towards what is good for them, what perfects them, what is therefore in a true and real sense their end ([45], [46]), is not conscious. But in virtue of it they act as if they were conscious, nay intelligent, i.e. they act executivé propter fines.
Of course the existence of this principle in inanimate agencies necessarily implies intelligence: this indeed is our very contention against the whole philosophy of mechanism, positivism and agnosticism. But is this intelligence really identical with the agencies of nature, so that all the phenomena of experience, which constitute the cosmos or universe, are but phases in the evolution of One Sole Reality which is continually manifesting itself under the distinct aspects of nature and mind? Or is this intelligence, though virtually immanent in the universe, really distinct from it—really transcendent,—a Supreme Intelligence which has created and continues to conserve this universe and govern all its activities? This is a distinct question: it is the question of Monism or Theism as an ultimate interpretation of human experience.
We conclude then that what we call finality, or the influence of final causes, pervades the whole universe; that in the domain of conscious agents it is conscious, instinctive when it solicits sense appetite, voluntary when it solicits intelligent will; that in the domain of unconscious agencies it is not conscious but “natural” or “physical” soliciting the “nature” or “appetitus naturalis” of these agencies.
Before inquiring into the nature of final causality we may indicate briefly the main divisions of final causes: some of these concern the domain of human activity and are of importance to Ethics rather than to Ontology.
(a) We have already distinguished between intrinsic and extrinsic finality. An intrinsic final cause is an end or object [pg 410] which perfects the nature itself of the agent which tends towards it: nourishment, for instance, is an intrinsic end in relation to the living organism. An extrinsic final cause is not one towards which the nature of the agent immediately tends, but one which, intended by some other agent, is de facto realized by the tendency of the former towards its own intrinsic end. Thus, the general order of the universe is an extrinsic end in relation to each individual agency in the universe: it is an end intended by the Creator and de facto realized by each individual agency acting in accordance with its own particular nature.
(b) Very similar to this is the familiar distinction between the finis operis and the finis operantis. The former is the end necessarily and de facto realized by the act itself, by its very nature, independently of any other end the agent may have expressly intended to attain by means of it. The latter is the end expressly intended by the agent, and which may vary for one and the same kind of act. For instance, the finis operis of an act of almsgiving is the actual aiding of the mendicant; the finis operantis may be charity, or self-denial, or vanity, or whatever other motive influences the giver.
(c) Akin to those also is the distinction between an unconscious, or physical, or “natural” end, and a conscious, or mental, or “intentional” end. The former is that towards which the nature or “appetitus naturalis” of unconscious agencies tends; the latter is an end apprehended by a conscious agent.
(d) An end may be either ultimate or proximate or intermediate. An ultimate end is one which is sought for its own sake, as contrasted with an intermediate end which is willed rather as a means to the former, and with a proximate end which is intended last and sought first as a means to realizing the others. It should be noted that proximate and intermediate ends, in so far as they are sought for the sake of some ulterior end, are not ends at all but rather means; only in so far as they present some good desirable for its own sake, are they properly ends, or final causes. Furthermore, an ultimate end may be such absolutely or relatively: absolutely if it cannot possibly be subordinated or referred to any ulterior or higher good; relatively if, though ultimate in a particular order as compared with means leading up to it, it is nevertheless capable of being subordinated to a higher good, though not actually referred to this latter by any explicit volition of the agent that seeks it.
(e) We can regard the end for which an agent acts either objectively,—finis “objectivus,”—or formally,—finis “formalis”. The former is the objective good itself which the agent wishes to realize, possess or enjoy; the latter is the act whereby the agent formally secures, appropriates, unites himself with, this objective good. Thus, God Himself is the objective happiness (beatitudo objectiva) of man, while man's actual possession of, or union with, God, by knowledge and love, is man's formal happiness (beatitudo formalis).
(f) We may distinguish also between the real end (finis “qui” or “cujus”, and the personal end (finis “cui”). The former is the good which the agent desires, the good for the sake of which “cujus” gratia) he acts. The latter is the subject or person to whom he wishes this good, or for whom he wishes to procure it. Thus, a labourer may work to earn a sustenance for himself or also for his family. The real and the personal end are never willed separately, but always as one concrete good.
(g) The distinction between a principal end and an accessory end (motivum “impulsivum”) is obvious. The former can move to act of itself without the latter, but the latter strengthens the influence of the former. A really charitable person, while efficaciously moved to give alms by sympathy with the poor, may not be uninfluenced by vanity to let others know of his charity.
(h) Finally we may note the theological distinction between the natural end, and the supernatural end, of man as a rational and moral agent. The former is the end due to man's nature, the latter is an end which is gratuitous and undue to his nature. God might not have created the world or man, and in this sense even the natural end of man is a gratuitous gift of God; but granted that God did decree to create the world and man, an end corresponding to man's nature and powers was due to him: the knowledge, service and love of God as known to man by the light of natural reason. But as a matter of fact God, in His actual providence, has decreed for man an incomparably higher and purely gratuitous end, an end revealed to man by God Himself, an end entirely undue not only to man but to any and every possible creature: the Beatific Vision of the Divine Essence for ever in heaven.
108. Causality of the Final Cause; Relation of the Latter to Efficient, Formal, and Material Causes.—We can best analyse the influence of the final cause by studying this influence as exerted on conscious and intelligent agents. The final cause has a positive influence of some sort on the production, happening, actualization of effects. What is the nature of this influence? The final cause exerts its influence by being a [pg 412] good, an apprehended good; it exerts this influence on the appetite of the agent, soliciting the latter to perform certain acts for the realization, attainment, possession, or enjoyment of this good. But it must not be conceived as the efficient cause of this movement of the appetite, nor may its influence be conceived as action. An efficient cause must actually exist in order to act; but when the final cause, as an apprehended good, exerts its influence on the appetite it is not yet actual: not until the agent, by his action, has realized the end and actually attained it, does the end, as a good, actually exist. We must distinguish between the end as attained and the end as intended, between the finis in executione and the finis in intentione. It is not the end as attained that is a final cause; as attained it is an effect pure and simple. It is the end as intended that is a final cause; and as intended it does not yet actually exist: hence its influence cannot be by way of action. Perhaps it is the idea or cognition of the intended end that exerts the peculiar influence of final cause? No; the idea or cognition of the end actually exists, no doubt, in the conscious agent, but this is only a condition, a conditio sine qua non, for the apprehended good, the final cause, to exert its influence: nil volitum nisi praecognitum. It is not the cognition of the good, however, that moves the agent to act, it is not the idea of the good that the agent desires or strives for, but the good itself. It is the good itself, the known good, that exerts the influence, and this influence consists in the passive inclination or attraction or tendency of the appetite towards the good: a tendency which necessarily results from the very presence of the good (not really or physically of course, but representatively, mentally, “intentionally,” by “esse intentionale”; cf. [4]) in the agent's consciousness, and which is formally the actualization of the causal power or influence of the final cause. “Just as the efficient cause influences by acting,” says St. Thomas,[504] “so the final cause influences by being yearned for and desired”.
Looked at from the side of the agent that undergoes it, this influence is a passive yielding: this next becomes an active motion of appetite; and in the case of free will a deliberate act of intending the end, followed by acts of choosing means, and finally by acts commanding the executive faculties to employ these means.
Looked at from the side of the final cause, the influence consists in an attraction of appetite towards union with itself as a good. The matter cannot be analysed much further; nor will imagination images help us here any more than in the case of efficient causality. It must be noted, however, that the influence of the final cause is the influence not of a reality as actual, or in its esse actuale, but of a reality as present to a perceiving mind, or in its esse intentionale. At the same time it would be a mistake to infer from this that the influence of the final cause is not real. It is sometimes described as “intentional” causality, “causalitas intentionalis”; but this must not be taken to mean that it is not real: for it is not the “esse intentionale” of the good, i.e. the cognition of the good, its presence in the mind or consciousness of the agent, that moves the latter's appetite: it is the apprehended good, apprehended as real, as possible of actual attainment, that moves the agent to act. The influence may not be physical in the sense of being productive of, or interchangeable with, or measurable by, corporeal energy, or in terms of mechanical work; nor is it; but it is none the less real.
But if the influence of a final cause really reaches to the effect of the agent's actions only through the medium of the latter's appetite, and therefore through a link of “intentional” causality, does it not at once follow that the attribution of final causality to the domain of unconscious and inorganic activities, can be at best merely metaphorical? The attribution to such agencies of an “appetitus naturalis” is intelligible indeed as a striking and perhaps not unpoetic metaphor. But to contend that it is anything more than a metaphor, to claim seriously that inanimate agencies are swayed and influenced by “ends,”—is not this really to substitute mysticism and mystery for rational speculation and analysis?
Mechanists are wont to dismiss the doctrine of final causes in the physical universe with offhand charges of this kind. They are but too ready to attribute it to a mystical attitude of mind. Final causes, they say, are not discovered in inanimate nature by the cold, calculating, unemotional analysis to which reason submits its activities, but are read into it by minds which allow themselves to be prompted by the imagination and emotions to personify and anthropomorphize inanimate agencies. The accusation is as plausible as it is unjust. It is plausible because the attribution of final causes to inanimate nature, and of an “appetitus naturalis” to [pg 414] its agencies, seems to imply the recognition of conscious, mental, “intentional” influence in this domain. But it really implies nothing of the sort; and hence the injustice of the charge. What it does imply is the existence of a genuine analogy between the nature and natural activities of physical agencies on the one hand and the appetite and appetitive activities of conscious agencies on the other. The existence of this analogy is absolutely undeniable. The orderly, invariable and uniformly suitable character of physical activities, simply forces our reason to recognize in physical agencies natures which tend towards their development, and which by their activities attain to what is good for them, to what perfects them. In other words we have to recognize that each by its natural line of activity attains to results that are good and useful to it just as if it apprehended them as such and consciously tended towards them. The analogy is there; and the recognition of it, so far from being a “mystic” interpretation of facts, is an elementary logical exercise of our reasoning faculty. The scholastics emphasized their recognition of the analogy by calling the nature of an unconscious agent,—the principle of its active tendencies towards the realization of its own perfection—an “appetitus naturalis”: an expression into which no one familiar with scholastic terminology would venture to read any element of mysticism.[505]
Every separate agency in nature has a uniform mode of activity; by following out this line of action each co-operates with all the others in maintaining the orderly course of nature. These are facts which call for explanation. They are not explained by the supposition of mechanists that these agencies are mere efficient causes: efficient causality does not account for order, it has got simply nothing to do with order or regularity. Consequently the last word of the mechanical philosophy on the fact of order in the universe is—Agnosticism. In opposition to this attitude we are far from contending that there is no mystery, or that all is clear either in regard to the fact of change or the fact of regularity. Just as we cannot explain everything in efficient causality, so neither can we explain everything in final causality. But we do contend that the element of order, development, evolution, even in the physical universe, can be partially explained [pg 415] by recognizing in its several agencies a nature, a principle of development, a passive inclination implanted in the very being of these agencies by the Intelligent Author of their being.
In conscious agencies this inclination or tendency to actions conformable or connatural to their being is not always in act; it is aroused by conscious cognition, perception, or imagination of a good, and operates intermittently. In unconscious agencies it is congenital and constantly in act, i.e. as a tendency, not as actually operative: for its actual development due conditions of environment are required: the seed will not grow without a suitable soil, temperature, moisture, etc. In conscious agencies the tendency, considered entitatively or as a reality in them, is an accidental form; in unconscious agencies it is their forma substantialis, the formative substantial principle, which determines the specific type to which their nature belongs.[506]
In all agencies the inclination or appetite or tendency to action arises from a form; an elicited appetite from an “intentional” form, a natural appetite from a “natural” form: Omnis inclinatio seu appetitus consequitur formam; appetitus elicitus formam intentionalem, appetitus naturalis formam naturalem. The scholastic view that final causality pervades all things is expressed in the aphorism, Omne agens agit propter finem: Every agency acts for an end.
From our analysis of final causality it will be seen that the “end” becomes a cause by exercising its influence on the agent or efficient cause, and thus initiating the action of the latter. We have seen already that material and formal causes exercise their causality dependently on the efficient cause of the change or effect produced by the latter. We now see that the final cause, the end as intended, determines the action of the efficient cause; hence its causality holds the primacy as compared with that of the other causes: it is in this sense the cause of causes, causa causarum.[507] But while the end as intended is the starting point of [pg 416] the whole process, the end as attained is the ultimate term of the latter. Hence the scholastic aphorism: Finis est primus in intentione et ultimus in executione. And this is true where the process involves a series of acts attaining to means subordinate to an end: this latter is the first thing intended and the last attained.
The final cause, the end as intended, is extrinsic to the effect. It is intrinsic to the efficient cause. It is a “forma” or determinative principle of the latter: a forma intentionalis in conscious agents, a forma naturalis in unconscious agents.
109. Nature and the Laws of Nature. Character and Grounds of their Necessity and Universality. Scientific Determinism and Philosophic Fatalism.—By the term nature we have seen that Aristotle and the scholastics meant the essence or substance of an agent regarded as inner principle of the latter's normal activities, as determining the bent or inclination of these, and therefore as in a real sense their final cause. Hence Aristotle's definition of nature as a certain principle or cause of the motion and rest of the thing in which that principle is rooted fundamentally and essentially and not merely accidentally.[508] The scholastics, recognizing that this intentio naturae, this subjection to finality, in unconscious agencies must be the work and the index of intelligence, in other words that this analogical finality in inanimate things must connote a proper finality, a properly purposive mode of action, in the author of these things, conceived this nature or intentio naturae as the impression of a divine art or plan upon the very being of all creatures by the Creator Himself. Hence St. Thomas's profound and well-known description of nature as “the principle of a divine art impressed upon things, in virtue of which they move towards determinate ends”. Defining art as the just conception [pg 417] of external works to be accomplished,[509] he observes that nature is a sort of art: “as if a ship-builder were to endow his materials with the power of moving and adapting themselves so as to form or construct a ship”.[510] And elsewhere he remarks that nature differs from art only in this that the former is an intrinsic, the latter an extrinsic, principle of the work which is accomplished through its influence: so that if the art whereby a ship is constructed were intrinsic to the materials, the ship would be constructed by nature as it actually is by art.[511]
Such, then, is the teleological conception of the nature of each individual agency in the universe. When we speak of “universal nature,” “external nature,” “physical nature,” “the course of nature,” “the laws of nature,” etc. we are using the term in a collective sense to signify the sum-total of all the agencies which constitute the whole physical universe; and furthermore in all such contexts we usually understand by nature the world of corporeal things as distinct from the domain of mind or spirit.
The proof of this view,—that the agencies of the physical universe are not merely efficient causes, but that they act under the influence of ends; that they have definite lines of action which are natural to them, and whereby they realize their own individual development and the maintenance of the universe as a cosmos; that by doing so they reveal the influence of intelligent purpose,—the proof of this view lies, as we have seen, in the fact that their activities are regular, uniform, and mutually useful, or, in other words, that they are productive of order ([110]). Bearing this in mind let us inquire into the various meanings discernible in the very familiar expressions, “laws of nature,” “physical laws,” “natural laws”.[512]
We may understand firstly by a law of nature this innate tendency we have been describing as impressed upon the very being of all created things by the Creator. It is in this sense we speak of a thing acting “naturally,” or “according to the law of its nature,” or “according to its nature,” when we see it acting according to what we conceive to be the end intended for it, acting in a manner conducive to the development of its own individuality, the preservation of its specific type or kind, and the fulfilment of its rôle in the general scheme of things. What this “natural” mode of action is for this particular kind of thing, we gather from our experience of the regular or normal activity of things of its kind. Thus, we say it is a law of oxygen and hydrogen to combine in definite proportions, under suitable conditions, to form water; a law of all particles of matter in the universe to tend to move towards one another with a definite acceleration; a law of living organisms to reproduce their kind. This usage comes nearest to the original meaning of the term law: a precept or command imposed on intelligent agents by a superior. For we conceive this natural tendency impressed on physical agencies by the Creator after the analogy of a precept or command. And we have good reason to do so: because uniformity of conduct in intelligent agents is the normal result of their obedience to a law imposed upon them; and we see in the activities of the physical universe an all-pervading feature of regularity.
Secondly, we transfer the term law to this result itself of the natural tendency of the being, of the convergence of its activities towards its end. That is to say, we call the uniform mode of action of an agent a law of nature, a natural or physical law. This usage, which is common in the positive sciences, implies a less profound, a more superficial, but a perfectly legitimate mode of apprehending and studying the changes and phenomena of the physical universe.
Thirdly, since the several agencies of the universe co-exist in time and space, since they constantly interact on one another, since for the exercise of the natural activities of each certain extrinsic conditions of relationship with its environment must be fulfilled, an accurate knowledge and exact formulation of these relations are obviously requisite for a scientific and practical insight into the mode of activity of any natural agency. In fact the physical scientist may and does take for granted the natural [pg 419] tendency and the uniformity of action resulting therefrom, and confines himself to discovering and formulating the relations between any given kind of action and the extrinsic conditions requisite for its exercise. Such, for instance, would be any chemical “law” setting forth the measure, and the conditions of temperature, pressure, etc., in which certain chemical elements combine to form a certain chemical compound. To all such formulae scientists give the title of physical laws, or laws of physical nature. These formulae, descriptive of the manner in which a phenomenon takes place, setting forth with the greatest possible quantitative exactness the phenomenal factors[513] that enter into and precede and accompany it, are laws in a still more superficial and still less philosophical sense, but a sense which is most commonly—and justly—accepted in the positive or physical sciences.
Before examining the feature and characteristic of necessity and universality which enters into all these various conceptions of a “physical law” we have here to observe that it would make for clearness, and for a better understanding between physics and metaphysics, between science and philosophy, between the investigator who seeks by observation and experiment for the proximate phenomenal conditions and “physical” causes of phenomena, and the investigator who seeks for the ultimate real ground and explanation of these latter by speculative analysis of them, and by reasoning from the scientist's discoveries about them,—if it were understood and agreed that investigation into the scope and significance and ultimate ground of this feature of stability in the laws of physical nature belongs to the philosopher rather than to the scientist. We have already called attention to the fact that the propriety of such an obviously reasonable and intelligible division of labour is almost universally admitted in theory both by scientists and by philosophers; though, unfortunately, it is not always remembered in practice ([100]).
In theory the scientist assumes, and very properly assumes, that the agencies with which he deals are not capricious, unreliable, irregular, but stable, reliable, regular in their mode of action, that in similar sets of conditions and circumstances they will act uniformly. Without inquiring into the ultimate grounds of this assumption he premises that all his conclusions, all his inductive generalizations about the activity of these agencies, will hold good of these latter just in so far as they do act according to his general postulate as to their regularity. He then proceeds, by the inductive processes of hypothesis and experimental verification, to determine what agencies produce such or such an event, under what conditions they bring this about, what are all the phenomenal conditions, positive and negative, antecedent and concomitant, in the absence of any one of which this event will not happen, and in the presence of all of which it will happen. These are, in accordance with his assumption, determining causes of the event; the knowledge of them is from the speculative point of view extremely important, and from the practical standpoint of invention and applied science extremely useful. As a [pg 420] scientist he has no other knowledge in view: he aims at discovering the “how,” the quomodo, of natural phenomena,—how, for instance, under what conditions and in what measure, water is produced from oxygen and hydrogen. When he has discovered all these positive and negative conditions his scientific knowledge of the formation of water is complete.
But there are other questions in regard to natural phenomena to which the experimental methods of the positive sciences can offer no reply. They can tell us nothing about the wider “how” which resolves itself into a “why.” They can give no information about the ultimate causes, origins, reasons, or essences, of those phenomena. As Pasteur and other equally illustrious scientists have proclaimed, experimental science is essentially positive, i.e. confined to the proximate phenomenal conditions and causes of things; it has nothing to say, nor has it any need or any right to say anything, about the ultimate nature, or first origin, or final destiny, of the things and events of the universe.
Yet such questions arise, and clamour insistently for solution. How is it, or why is it, that natural phenomena are uniformly linked to certain other phenomenal antecedents or “physical” causes? Is it absolutely impossible, inconceivable, that this sequence should be found not to obtain in even a single individual instance? Why should there be such uniform “sequences” or “laws” at all? Are there exceptions, or can there be exceptions to these “laws of physical nature”? What is the character and what are the grounds of the necessity of these laws? Every living organism comes from a living cell—not from any living cell, but from some particular kind of living cell. But why are there such kinds of cells? Why are there living cells at all? Whence their first origin? Again, granted that there are different kinds or types of living cells, why should a particular kind of cell give rise, by division and evolution, to an organism of the same kind or type as the parent organisms? Why does it not always do so? Why are what biologists describe as “monsters” in the organic kingdom possible? And why, since they are possible, are they not as numerous as what are recognized as the normal types or kinds of living organisms?
Now these are questions in regard to which not only every professing physical scientist and every professing metaphysician, but every thinking man, must take up some attitude or other. A refusal to consider them, on the plea that they are insoluble, is just as definite an attitude as any other; nor by assuming this attitude does any man, even though he be a specialist in some department of the positive or physical sciences, escape being a “metaphysician” or a “philosopher,” however much he may deprecate such titles; for he is taking up a reasoned attitude—we presume it is such, and not the outcome of mere prejudice—on ultimate questions. And this is philosophy; this is metaphysics. When, therefore, a physical scientist either avows or insinuates that because the methods of physical science, which are suitable for the discovery of the proximate causes of phenomena, can tell him nothing about ultimate questions concerning these phenomena, therefore there is nothing to be known about these questions, he is not only committing himself, nolens volens, to definite philosophical views, but he is doing a serious disservice to physical science itself by misconceiving and mis-stating its rightful scope and limits. He has just an equal right with any other man to utilize the established [pg 421] truths of physical science to help him in answering ultimate questions. Nay, he may even use the unverified hypotheses and systematic conceptions[514] of physical science for what they are worth in helping him to determine his general world-view. But his competence as a specialist in physical science does not confer upon him any special qualification for estimating the value of these truths and hypotheses as evidence in the domain of ultimate problems. Nor can he, because he is a scientist, or even because he may go so far as to assert the right of speaking in the name of “science,” claim for his particular interpretation the privilege of exemption from criticism; and this is true no matter what his interpretation may be—whether it be agnosticism, mechanism, teleologism, monism, or theism. These observations may appear elementary and obvious; but the insinuation of positivism and phenomenism, that whatever is not itself phenomenal and verifiable by the experimental methods of the physical sciences is in no wise knowable, and the insinuation of mechanists that their world-view is the only one compatible with the truths of science and therefore the only “scientific” philosophy, justify us in reiterating and emphasizing even such obvious methodological considerations. Bearing them in mind, let us now examine the uniformity and necessity of the laws of physical nature.
Understanding by natural law the natural inclination or tendency of the creature to a definite line of activity, this law is of itself determining or necessitating. Moreover, it is absolutely inseparable from the essence of the creature. Granted that the creature exists, it has this tendency to exert and direct all its forces and energies in a definite, normal way, for the realization of its end. This nisus naturae is never absent; it is observable even where, as in the generation of “monsters” by living organisms, it partially fails to attain its end. A law of nature, taken in this sense, is absolutely necessary to, and inseparable from, the created agent; it admits of no exceptions; no agent can exist without it; for it is identical with the very being of the agent
But the uniformity of action resulting from this natural tendency, the uniform series of normal operations whereby it realizes its end, is not absolutely necessary, inviolable, unexceptional. In the first place the Author of Nature can, for a higher or moral purpose, prevent any created agency supernaturally, miraculously, from actually exercising its active powers in accordance with its nature for the prosecution of its natural end. But apart altogether from this, abstracting from all special interference of the First Cause, and confining our attention to the natural order itself, we have to consider that for any physical agency to act in its natural or normal manner certain extrinsic conditions are always requisite: oxygen and hydrogen, for instance, [pg 422] will combine to produce water, but only under certain conditions of contact, pressure, temperature, etc. This general requirement arises from the fact already mentioned, that physical agencies co-exist in time and space and are constantly interacting. These extrinsic conditions are, of course, not expressly stated in the formulation of those uniformities and quantitative descriptions called “laws of nature” in the second and third interpretations of this expression as explained above. It is taken as understood that the law applies only if and when and where all such conditions are verified. The law, therefore, as stated categorically, does not express an absolutely necessary, universal, and unexceptional truth. It may admit of exceptions.
In the next place, when we come to examine these exceptions to uniformity, these failures or frustrations of the normal or natural activities of physical agencies, we find it possible to distinguish roughly, with Aristotle, between two groups of such “uniformities” or “laws”. There are firstly those which, so far as our experience goes, seem to prevail always (ἀεὶ), unexceptionally; and secondly, those which seem to prevail generally, for the most part (ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ), though not unexceptionally. The former would be the outcome of active powers, energies, forces, de facto present and prevalent always and everywhere in all physical agencies, and of such a character that the conditions requisite for their actual operation would be always verified. Such, for instance, would be the force of gravity in all ponderable matter; and hence the law of gravitation is regarded as all-pervading, universal, unexceptional. But there are other natural or normal effects which are the outcome of powers, forces, energies, not all-pervading, but restricted to special groups of agencies, dependent for their actual production on the presence of a great and complex variety of extrinsic conditions, and liable therefore to be impeded by the interfering action of numerous other natural agencies. Such, for instance, would be the natural powers and processes whereby living organisms propagate their kind. The law, therefore, which states it to be a uniformity of nature that living organisms reproduce offspring similar to themselves in kind, is a general law, admitting exceptions.
Operations and effects which follow from the nature of their causes are called natural (καθ᾽ ἁυτό, καὶ μὴ κατὰ συμβεβηκός).[515] Some causes produce their natural effects always (τὰ ἐξ ἀνάνκης [pg 423] καὶ ἀεὶ γιγνομένα), others produce their natural effects usually, as a general rule (τὰ ὡς ἐπι πολὺ γιγνόμενα).[516] Operations and effects which are produced by the interfering influence of extrinsic agencies (τὸ βίαιον “violent,” as opposed to natural), and not in accordance with the nature of their principal cause, are called by Aristotle accidental (τὰ κατὰ συμβεβηκός, τὰ ἐνδεχόμενα γυγνέσθαι); and these, he remarks, people commonly describe as due to chance (καὶ ταῦτα πάντες φασὶν εἰναι ἀπο τύχης).[517]
All are familiar with events or happenings described as “fortuitous,” “accidental,” “exceptional,” “unexpected,” with things happening by “chance,” by (good or bad) “luck” or “fortune”.[518] There are terms in all languages expressive of this experience—casus, sors, fortuna, τύχη, etc. The notion underlying all of them is that of something occurring unintentionally, praeter intentionem agentis. Whether chance effects result from the action of intelligent agents or from the operation of physical causes they are not “intended,”—by the deliberate purpose of the intelligent agent in the one case, or by the natural tendency, the intentio naturae, of the mere physical agency in the other. Such an effect, therefore, has not a natural cause; hence it is considered exceptional, and is always more or less unexpected. Nature, as Aristotle rightly observes,[519] never produces a chance effect. His meaning is, that whenever such an effect occurs it is not brought about in accordance with the natural tendency of any physical agency. It results from a collision or coincidence of two or more such agencies, each acting according to its nature. The hunter's act of firing at a wild fowl is an intentional act. The boy's act of coming into the thicket to gather wild flowers is an intentional act. The accidental shooting of the boy is the result of a coincidence of the two intentional acts. Similarly, each of all the various agencies which bring about the development of an embryo in the maternal womb has its own immediate and particular natural effect, and only mediately contributes to the general effect of bringing the embryo to maturity. As a rule these particular effects are favourable to the general effect. But sometimes the immediate ends do not subserve this ulterior purpose. The result is accidental, exceptional, a deviation from the normal type, an anomaly, a “monster” in the domain of living organisms.
Aristotle's analysis, correct so far, is incomplete. It assigns no ultimate explanation of the fact that there are such encounters of individual natural tendencies in the universe, such failures in the subordination of particular ends to wider ulterior ends. As a matter of fact these chance effects, although not “intended” by the natures of individual created agencies, are not wholly and entirely unintended. They are not wholly aimless. They enter into the general plan and scheme of things as known and willed by the Author of Nature. They are known to His Intelligence, and willed and ruled by His Providence. For Him there can be no such thing as chance. Effects that are accidental in relation to created causes, effects that run counter to the nature or intentio naturae of these, are foreseen and willed by Him and made to subserve that wider and more general end which is the universal order of the world that He has actually willed to create. It is only in relation to the natures of individual agencies, and to the limited horizon of our finite intelligences, that such phenomena can present the aspect of fortuitous or chance occurrences.
Before passing on to deal, in our concluding section, with the great fact of order, let us briefly compare with the foregoing explanation of nature and its laws the attempt of mechanists to explain these without recognizing in the physical universe any influence of final causes, or any indication of a purposive intelligence. We have ventured to describe their attitude as philosophic fatalism.[520] According to their view there is no ground for the distinction between phenomena that happen “naturally” and phenomena that happen “accidentally” or “by chance”. All alike happen by the same kind of general necessity: the generation of a “monster” is as “natural” as the generation of normal offspring; the former, when it occurs, is just as inevitably the outcome of the physical forces at work in the particular case as the latter is the outcome of the particular set of efficient causes which do actually produce the normal result: the only difference is that [pg 425] the former, occurring less frequently and as the result of a rarer and less known conjunction of “physical” causes than the latter, is not expected by us to occur, and is consequently regarded, when it does occur, as exceptional. Now it is quite true that what we call “chance” effects, or “exceptional” effects, result just as inevitably from the set of forces operative in their case, as normal effects result from the forces operative in theirs. But this leaves for explanation something which the mechanist cannot explain. He regards a physical law merely as a generalization, beyond experience, of some experienced uniformity; and he holds that all our physical laws are provisional in the sense that a wider and deeper knowledge of the actual conditions of interaction among the physical forces of the universe would enable us to eliminate exceptions—which are all apparent, not real—by restating our laws in such a comprehensive way as to include all such cases. We may, indeed, admit that our physical laws are open to revision and restatement in this sense, and are de facto often modified in this sense by the progress of science. But the important point is this, that the mechanist does not admit the existence, in physical agencies, of any law in the sense of a natural inclination towards an end, or in any sense in which it would imply intelligence, design, or purpose. On the contrary, claiming as he does that all physical phenomena are reducible to mechanical motions of inert masses, atoms, or particles of matter in space, he is obliged to regard all physical agencies as being, so far as their nature is concerned, wholly indifferent to any particular form of activity.[521] Committed to the indefensible view that all qualitative change is reducible to quantitative ([11]), and all material differences to differences in the location of material particles and in the velocity and direction of the spatial motion impressed upon each by others extrinsic to itself, he has left himself no factors wherewith to explain the actual order and course of the universe, other than the purely indifferent factors of essentially or naturally homogeneous particles of inert matter endowed with local motion. We emphasize this feature of indifference; for the conception of an inert particle of matter subject to mechanical motion impressed upon it from without, is the very type of an indifferent agency. What such an entity will do, whether or not it will move, with what velocity and in what direction it will move—in a word, its entire conduct, its rôle in the universe, the sum-total of its functions—nothing of all this is dependent [pg 426] on itself; everything depends on agencies extrinsic to it, and on its extrinsic time-and-space relations to these agencies; and these latter in turn are in the same condition as itself. Now is it conceivable that agencies of this kind, of themselves absolutely indifferent to any particular kind of effect, suitable or unsuitable, regular or irregular, orderly or disorderly, could actually produce and maintain the existing order of the universe? If they were themselves produced by an All-Wise and All-Powerful Being, and definitely arranged in spatial relations to one another, and initial mechanical motion in definite directions and velocities impressed on the different parts of the system, there is no denying that Infinite Wisdom and Power could, by Divine concurrence even with such indifferent agencies, realize and maintain a cosmos, or orderly universe. Such purely extrinsic finality ([106]) could, absolutely speaking, account for the existence of order, uniformity, regularity, system; though all the evidence furnished by the universe of our actual experience points to the existence of intrinsic finality also as understood by Aristotle and the scholastics. But the mechanist will not allow even extrinsic finality; he will not recognize in the actual universe of our experience any evidence of a Ruling Intelligence realizing a plan or design for an intelligent purpose; he denies the necessity of the inference from the data of human experience to the existence of a Guiding Intelligence. And what are his alternatives? He may choose one or other of two.
He may restate in the more scientific and imposing terminology of modern mechanics the crude conception of the ancient Greek atomists: that the actual order of the universe is the absolutely inevitable and fatal outcome of a certain collocation of the moving masses of the physical universe, a collocation favourable to order, a collocation which just happened to occur by some happy chance from the essentially aimless, purposeless, indifferent and chaotic motions of those material masses and particles. We say “chaotic,” for chaos is the absence of cosmos; and order is the fact that has got to be explained. In the concept of indifferent, inert atoms of matter moving through space there is emphatically no principle of order;[522] and hence the mechanist who will not admit the necessity of inferring an Intelligence to give these moving masses or atoms the collocation favourable to order is forced to “explain” [pg 427] this supposed collocation by attributing it to pure chance—the concursus fortuitus atomorum of the ancient Greeks. When, however, we reflect that the more numerous these atoms and the more varied and complex their motions, the smaller is the chance of a collocation favourable to order; that the atoms and motions are supposed actually to surpass any assignable number; that therefore the chance of any such favourable collocation occurring is indefinitely smaller than any measurable proportion,—we can draw our own conclusions about the value of such a speculation as a rational “explanation” of the existing cosmos. And this apart altogether from the consideration that the fact to be explained is not merely the momentary occurrence of an orderly collocation, but the maintenance of an orderly system of cosmic phenomena throughout the lapse of all time. No orderly finite system of mechanical motions arranged by human skill can preserve its orderly motions indefinitely without intelligent human supervision: the neglected machine will get out of order, run down, wear out, if left to itself; and we are asked to believe that the whole universe is one vast machine which not only goes on without intelligent supervision, but which actually made itself by chance![523]
Naturally such an “explanation” of the universe does not commend itself to any man of serious thought, whatever his difficulties may be against the argument from the fact of order in the universe to the existence of an Intelligent Designer. Add to this the consideration that the mechanist theory does not even claim to account for the first origin of the universe: it postulates the existence of matter in motion. In regard to this supreme problem of the first origin of the universe the attitude of the mechanist is avowedly agnostic; and in view of what we have just remarked about the “chance” theory as an “explanation” of the existing order of the universe, it is no matter for surprise that most mechanists reject this theory and embrace the agnostic attitude in regard to this latter problem also. Whether the agnostic attitude they assume be negative or positive, i.e. whether they are content to say that they themselves at least fail to find any satisfactory rational explanation of the origin and nature of the cosmos, or contend further that no rational solution of these problems is within the reach of the human mind, their [pg 428] teaching is refuted in Natural Theology, where the theistic solution of these problems is set forth and vindicated.
110. The Order of the Universe; A Fact and its Implications.—The considerations so far submitted in this chapter, as pointing to the existence and influence of final causes in the universe, will be strengthened and completed by a brief analysis of order and its implications.
We have seen already ([55]) that the apprehension of order in things implies the recognition of some unifying principle in what is manifold. What, in general, is the nature of this principle? It is the point of view, the standpoint from which the unifying arrangement or disposition of the manifold is carried out; in other words it is the end, object, or purpose, of the orderly arrangement. The arrangement, and the order resulting from it, will vary according to the end in view—whether, for instance, it be an arrangement of books in a library, of pictures in a gallery, of materials in an edifice, of parts in a machine. Hence St. Thomas's definition of order as the due adaptation of means to ends: recta ratio rerum ad finem. When this adaptation is the work of human intelligence the order realized is artificial, when it is the work of nature the order realized is natural. Art is an extrinsic principle of order, nature implies indeed also an intelligent extrinsic principle of order, but is itself an intrinsic principle of order: the works of nature and those of art have this feature in common, that they manifest adaptation of means to ends.[524]
The subordination of means to ends realizes an order which has for its unifying principle the influence of an end, a final cause. The group of dynamic relations thus revealed constitutes what is called teleological order, the order of purpose or finality. The realization or execution of such an order implies the simultaneous existence of co-ordinated parts or members in a system, a realized whole with complex, co-ordinated, orderly parts, the principle of unity in this system being the form of the whole. This realized, disposed, or constituted order, is called the esthetic [pg 429] order ([55]), the order of co-ordination, composition, constitution. In ultimate analysis, however, these two orders, the teleological and the esthetic, having as respective unifying principles the final cause and the formal cause, are not two really distinct orders, but rather two aspects of one and the same order: we have seen that in the things of nature the intrinsic end or final cause of each is identical with its forma substantialis or formal cause ([108]). But the final cause is naturally prior to the formal cause, and consequently the teleological order is more fundamental than the esthetic.
St. Augustine's definition of order as “the arrangement of a multiplicity of things, similar and dissimilar, according its proper place to each,”[525] reveals the material cause of order in the multiplicity of varied elements, the formal cause of order in the group of relations resulting from the arrangement or dispositio, and the efficient cause of order in the agent that disposes or arranges them. The final cause, though not directly mentioned, is implied in the fact that the place of each factor in the system is necessarily determined by the function it has to fulfil, the part it is suited by its nature to play, in contributing to the realization of the end or purpose of the arrangement.
If, then, order is the right arrangement or disposition of things according to their destination, or in the mutual relations demanded by their ends, it necessarily follows that the very existence of natural order in the universe implies that this universe is not a work of chance but a purposive work, just as the existence of artificial order in products of human art implies that these products are not the result of chance but of activity influenced by final causes.[526]
It is in fact impossible to conceive order except as resulting from the influence of final causes. Right reason rejects as an utterly inadequate explanation of the natural order of the universe the fantastic and far-fetched supposition of a chance collocation of indifferent, undetermined and aimless physical agencies.[527] If we find in the actual physical universe difficulties against the view that this universe reveals the influence of final causes, such difficulties [pg 430] do not arise from the fact that there is order in the universe, but rather from the fact that with this order there seems to coexist some degree of disorder also. In so far forth as there is natural order there is cogent evidence of the influence of final causes. And so necessary is this inference that even one single authentic instance of natural order in an otherwise chaotic universe would oblige us to infer the existence and influence of a final cause to account for that solitary instance. We mean by an authentic instance one which evidences a real and sustained uniformity, regularity, mutual co-ordination and subordination of factors in the behaviour of any group of natural agencies; for we allow that transient momentary collocations and concurrences of indifferent agencies, acting aimlessly and without purpose as a matter of fact, might present to our minds, accustomed to seek for orderly and purposive phenomena, the deceptive appearance of order.
Order, then, we take it, necessarily implies the existence and influence of final causes. This in turn, as we have already observed, implies with equal necessity the existence of Intelligent Purpose. If, then, there is natural order in the universe, there must exist an Intelligent Will to account for this natural order.
Leaving the development of this line of argument to its proper place in Natural Theology, there remains the simple question of fact: Is the physical universe a cosmos? Does it reveal order—a natural order distinct from the artificial order realized by the human mind in the mechanical and fine arts, an order, therefore, realized not by the human mind but by some other mind, by the Divine Mind? The evidences of such order superabound. We have already referred to some of them ([106]), nor is there any need to labour the matter. Two points, however, in connexion with this universally recognized fact of order in the universe, call for a brief mention before we conclude. They are in the nature of difficulties against the ordinary, reasonable view of the matter, the view on which the theistic argument from order is based.
In accordance with the Kantian theory of knowledge it is objected that the order which we apprehend, or think we apprehend, in the universe, is not really in the universe of our experience, but is as it were projected into this universe by our own minds in the very process of cognition itself. It is therefore not real but only apparent, not noumenal but only phenomenal. It is simply a product of the categorizing, unifying, systematizing activity of [pg 431] our minds. It is a feature of the phenomenon or mental product, i.e. of the noumenal datum as invested with a category of thought. But whether or not it is a characteristic of the real universe itself man's speculative reason is by its very constitution essentially incapable of ever discovering. The theory of knowledge on which this difficulty is based can be shown to be unsound and erroneous. For a criticism of the theory we must refer the reader to scholastic works on Epistemology. It may be observed, however, apart from the merits or demerits of the theory, that the experienced fact of order is by no means demolished or explained away by any questions that may be raised about the exact location of the fact, if we may so express it. Order is a fact, an undeniable, experienced fact; and it looms just as large, and cries out just as insistently for explanation, with whichever of the imposing adjectives “noumenal” or “phenomenal” a philosopher may choose to qualify it; nor do we diminish its reality by calling it phenomenal one whit more than we increase that reality by calling it noumenal.
The other difficulty arises from the existence of disorder in the universe. Pessimists of the type of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche concentrate their attention so exclusively on the evidences of disorder, the failures of adaptation of means to ends, the defects and excesses, the prodigality and penury, the pain and suffering, which abound in physical nature—not to speak of moral evil,—that they become blind to all evidences of order, and proclaim all belief in order an illusion.
The picture of
Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine[528]
is, however, the product of a morbid and distraught imagination rather than a sane view of the facts. The undeniable existence of disorder, of physical evils, defects, failures, frustrations of natural tendency in the universe, does not obscure or conceal from the normal, unbiassed mind the equally undeniable evidences of a great and wide and generally prevailing order. Nor does it conceal from such a mind the fact that the existence of order in any measure or degree implies of necessity the existence of plan or design, and therefore of intelligent purpose also. Inferring from this fact of order the existence of a Supreme Intelligence, and inferring by other lines of reasoning from the [pg 432] data of experience the dependence of the universe on this Intelligence as Creator, Conserver and Ruler, the theist is confronted with the reality of moral and physical evil ([52]), i.e. of disorder in the universe. But he does not see in this disorder anything essentially incompatible with his established conclusion that the universe is a finite creation of Infinite Wisdom, and a free manifestation of the latter to man. If the actual universe is imperfect, he knows that God created it freely and might have created a more perfect or a less perfect one. Knowing that God is All-Powerful as He is All-Wise, he knows that the actual universe, though imperfect absolutely, is perfect relatively, in that it infallibly reveals the Divine Wisdom and Goodness exactly in the measure in which God has willed to reveal Himself in His works. Conscious on the one hand that his finite mind cannot trace in detail all the purposes of God in nature, or assign to all individual events their divinely appointed ends, he is confident on the other hand that the whole universe is intelligible only as the working out of a Divine plan, and not otherwise. To his mind as a theist these lines are a clearer expression of rationally grounded optimism than they were perhaps even to the poet who penned them:—
I trust in nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God—the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while He endures;
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward, Nature's good
And God's.[529]
We have seen that the agencies which constitute the universal order have each its own inner principle of finality; that these agencies are not isolated but mutually related in such ways that the ends of each subserve an extrinsic and remoter end which is none other than this universal order whereby we recognize the world as a cosmos. The maintenance of this order is the intrinsic end of the universe as a whole: an end which is immanent in the universe, an end which is of course a good. But this universal order itself is for an end, an extrinsic, transcendent end, distinct from itself; and this end, too, must be a good. “The universe,” says St. Thomas,[530] “has the good of order and another distinct [pg 433] good.” The universal order, says Aristotle, has itself an end, a good, which is one, and to which all else is ordained: “πρὸς ἕν ἅπαντα συντέτακται”.[531] What can this Supreme Good be, this absolutely Ultimate End, this Transcendent Principle of all nature, and of all nature's tendencies and activities? Whence comes this universal tendency of all nature, if not from the Being who is the One, Eternal, Immutable Prime Mover,[532] and whose moving influence is Love?[533] Such is the profound thought of Aristotle, a thought re-echoed so sublimely by the immortal poet of Christian philosophy in the closing line of the Paradiso:—
L'amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stelle.
The immediate factors of the universal order of nature, themselves devoid of intelligence, must therefore be the work of Intelligent Will. To arrange these factors as parts of one harmonious whole, as members of one orderly system, Supreme Wisdom must have conceived the plan and chosen the means to realize it. The manifestation of God's glory by the realization of this plan, such is the ultimate transcendent end of the whole created universe. “The whole order of the universe,” writes St. Thomas, developing the thought of Aristotle,[534] “is for the Prime Mover thereof; this order has for its purpose the working out in an orderly universe of the plan conceived and willed by the Prime Mover. And hence the Prime Mover is the principle of this universal order.”
The truths so briefly outlined in this closing chapter on the order and purpose of the universe have nowhere found more apt and lucid philosophical formulation than in the monumental writings of the Angel of the Christian Schools; nor perhaps have they ever elsewhere appeared in a more felicitous setting of poetic imagery than in these stanzas from the immortal epic of the Poet of the Christian Schools:—
... Le cose tutte quante
Hann' ordine tra lora; e questa è forma
Che l'universo a Dio fa simigliante.
Qui veggion l'alte creature l'orma
Dell'eterno Valore, il quale è fine
Al quale è fatta la toccata norma.
Nell' ordine ch'io dico sono accline
Tutte nature per diverse sorti
Più al Principio loro e men vicine;
Onde si muovono a diversi porti
Per lo gran mar dell'essere, e ciascuna
Con instinto a lei dato che la porti.
Questi ne porta il fuoco inver la Luna:
Questi ne' cuor mortali è permotore;
Questi la terra in se stringe ed aduna.
Nè pur le creature, che son fuore
D'intelligenza, quest' arco saetta
Ma quelle ch' hanno intelletto ed amore.
La Providenza, che cotanto assetta,
Del suo lume fa il ciel sempre quieto,
Nel qual si volge quel ch'ha maggior fretta:
Ed ora li, com' a sito decreto,
Cen porta la virtù di quella corda,
Che ciò che scocca drizzo in segno lieto.[535]