The Philosophy of Natural Theology / An Essay in confutation of the scepticism of the present day

by William Jackson

ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER II.

A.—ON THE ABSTRACT REASONINGS INVOLVED IN NATURAL THEOLOGY.

In his discourse on Natural Theology, Lord Brougham writes thus (p. 78):—"The whole reasoning proceeds necessarily upon the assumption that there exists a being or thing separate from, and independent of, matter, and conscious of its own existence, which we call mind. For the argument is, 'Had I to accomplish this purpose, I should have used some such means'; or, 'Had I used these means, I should have thought I was accomplishing some such purpose.' Perceiving the adaptation of the means to the end, the inference is, that some being has acted as we should ourselves act, and with the same views. But when we so speak, and so reason, we are all the while referring to an intelligent principle or existence; we are referring to our mind, and not to our bodily frame." ... "The belief that mind exists is essential to the whole argument by which we infer that the Deity exists. This belief ... is the foundation of Natural Theology in all its branches; and upon the scheme of materialism no rational, indeed no intelligible, account can be given of a first cause, or of the creation or government of the universe."

In a foot-note, Lord Brougham adds:—"It is worthy of observation that not the least allusion is made in Dr. Paley's work to the argument here stated, although it is the foundation of the whole of Natural Theology. Not only does this author leave entirely untouched the argument à priori (as it is called), and also all the inductive arguments derived from the phenomena of mind, but he does not even advert to the argument upon which the inference of design must of necessity rest—that design which is the whole subject of his book. Nothing can more evince his distaste or incapacity for metaphysical researches. He assumes the very position which alone sceptics dispute. In combating him they would assert that he begged the whole question; for certainly they do not deny, at least in modern times, the fact of adaptation. As to the fundamental doctrine of causation, not the least allusion is ever made to it in any of his writings,—even in his Moral Philosophy."

It is when reviewing this last-named treatise that Dr. Whewell remarks (History of Moral Philosophy, p. 169):—

"The fact is that Paley had no taste, and therefore we may be allowed to say that he had little aptitude, for metaphysical disquisitions. In this there would have been no blame, if he had not entered into speculations which, if they were not metaphysically right, must be altogether wrong. We often hear persons declare that they have no esteem for metaphysics, and intend to shun all metaphysical reasonings; and this is usually the prelude to some specimen of very bad metaphysics: for I know no better term by which to designate the process of misunderstanding and confounding those elements of truth which are supplied by the relations of our own ideas. That Paley had no turn or talent for the reasoning which depends on such relations, is plain enough."

The reader may with little trouble collect for himself what is meant by bad metaphysics from the following extracts. The first is Lord Macaulay's criticism on the metaphysics of the Schools, which he introduces into his essay on Francis Bacon, as follows:—

"By stimulating men to the discovery of useful truth, he" (Bacon) "furnished them with a motive to perform the inductive process well and carefully. His predecessors had been, in his phrase, not interpreters, but anticipators of nature. They had been content with the first principles at which they had arrived by the most scanty and slovenly induction. And why was this? It was, we conceive, because their philosophy proposed to itself no practical end—because it was merely an exercise of the mind. A man who wants to contrive a new machine or a new medicine has a strong motive to observe accurately and patiently, and to try experiment after experiment. But a man who merely wants a theme for disputation or declamation has no such motive. He is therefore content with premises grounded on assumption, or on the most scanty and hasty induction. Thus, we conceive, the schoolmen acted. On their foolish premises they often argued with great ability; and as their object was "assensum subjugare, non res" (Nov. Org. I. Aph. 29), to be victorious in controversy, not to be victorious over nature, they were consistent. For just as much logical skill could be shown in reasoning on false as on true premises."[44] Of course, if any genuine metaphysical philosophy exists at all, its right and real object must be to try and discover true premises of the more abstract sort—premises, the truth of which affects the procedure of all the ancillary series.[45]

Our next quotation contains Hume's sentence of execution rather than critique upon metaphysics as he saw them in connection with dogmatic theology. First, for his fiery anathema:—

"When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or School metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." (Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, § XII.) Alas for certain of Hume's own speculations!

The student of Positivism knows how this fierce invective was echoed and re-echoed by Comte and his followers. They, however, omitted the qualifying word "School," which Hume prefixed to metaphysics. With Comte, metaphysic of every kind was "anathema maranatha"; and even psychology got excommunicated, by way of making "a clean sweep."

Hume, on the contrary, had an idea of what philosophy ought to be, and thus outlined his preparation for a Metaphysic of the Future:—

"The only method of freeing learning, at once, from these abstruse questions, is to inquire seriously into the nature of human understanding, and show, from an exact analysis of its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse subjects. We must submit to this fatigue in order to live at ease ever after: and must cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to destroy the false and adulterate. Indolence, which, to some persons, affords a safeguard against this deceitful philosophy, is, with others, overbalanced by curiosity; and despair, which at some moments prevails, may give place afterwards to sanguine hopes and expectations. Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.

"Besides this advantage of rejecting, after deliberate inquiry, the most uncertain and disagreeable part of learning, there are many positive advantages, which result from an accurate scrutiny into the powers and faculties of human nature. It is remarkable concerning the operations of the mind, that though most intimately present to us, yet, whenever they become the object of reflection, they seem involved in obscurity; nor can the eye readily find those lines and boundaries which discriminate and distinguish them. The objects are too fine to remain long in the same aspect or situation, and must be apprehended, in an instant, by a superior penetration, derived from nature, and improved by habit and reflection. It becomes, therefore, no inconsiderable part of science barely to know the different operations of the mind, to separate them from each other, to class them under their proper heads, and to correct all that seeming disorder in which they lie involved, when made the object of reflection and inquiry. This task of ordering and distinguishing, which has no merit when performed with regard to external bodies, the objects of our senses, rises in its value when directed towards the operations of the mind, in proportion to the difficulty and labour which we meet with in performing it. And if we can go no farther than this mental geography, or delineation of the distinct parts and powers of the mind, it is at least a satisfaction to go so far; and the more obvious this science may appear (and it is by no means obvious), the more contemptible still must the ignorance of it be esteemed, in all pretenders to learning and philosophy." Ibid. Section I.

It seems worth while to consider what the effects might have been, had Hume been faithful to his own idea.[46] In the first place he would have remedied the weakness pointed out by Macaulay in the premises of the schoolmen, which were in fact little better than sententious maxims often derived from mistranslated passages of Scripture, one-sided opinions of the Fathers, and other sources of doubtful value. These, Hume would have abscided altogether, and rested his "true metaphysics" upon such principles as survived a searching inquiry into the conditions of Human knowledge. Hence, secondly, he would have rendered a great service to Divinity itself, which can never be benefited by such arguments as have been described, but must look for a safe alliance to a synthesis of Faith and Reason. And in the third place he might have probably given to his country a critical Philosophy adapted to English modes of Thought. Kant's mind was fired by a spark of Hume's kindling, but when we think what might have been the shape and acceptance of Kant in this country had Hume heralded him by a critique of Reason, it is impossible to read the great Scotchman's writings without a feeling of disappointment.[47]

It would however be unjust to omit the fact that Hume did really entertain a serious intention of dealing with these difficult questions. Thus much is expressed in his earliest work, and we may conjecture that literary disappointment was at least one cause of that later preference for "easy philosophy" which contrasts so strongly with the programme of his treatise on Human Nature. Few programmes were ever more vigorously outlined, than the ensuing.

"From hence," he says, "in my opinion, arises that common prejudice against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds, even amongst those who profess themselves scholars, and have a just value for every other part of literature. By metaphysical reasonings, they do not understand those on any particular branch of science, but every kind of argument, which is any way abstruse, and requires some attention to be comprehended. We have so often lost our labour in such researches, that we commonly reject them without hesitation, and resolve, if we must for ever be a prey to errors and delusions, that they shall at least be natural and entertaining. And, indeed, nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For, if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, 'tis certain it must lie very deep and abstruse; and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very easy and obvious."—Treatise on Human Nature, Introduction, p. 12.

In these sentences Hume has sufficiently condemned the vulgar objections brought against abstract reasoning. Deep and difficult questions can be discussed in no other manner; and what is often called a popular treatise on some subject of philosophic inquiry can never be more than a statement of its writer's opinions, or possibly of his sentimental prejudices.

The next paragraph contains Hume's earliest[48] sketch of that critical inquiry into Human Nature on which he proposed to base all future philosophy. It is of course deeply interesting.

"'Tis evident that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of Man; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties.

"'Tis impossible to tell what changes and improvements we might make in these sciences were we thoroughly acquainted with the extent and force of human understanding, and could explain the nature of the ideas we employ, and of the operations we perform in our reasonings. And these improvements are the more to be hoped for in natural religion, as it is not content with instructing us in the nature of superior powers, but carries its views further, to their disposition towards us, and our duties towards them; and consequently we ourselves are not only the beings that reason, but also one of the objects concerning which we reason."

"If, therefore, the sciences of mathematics, natural philosophy, and natural religion, have such a dependence on the knowledge of man, what may be expected in the other sciences, whose connection with human nature is more close and intimate?... In these four sciences of Logic, Morals, Criticism, and Politics, is comprehended almost everything which it can any way import us to be acquainted with, or which can tend either to the improvement or ornament of the human mind.

"Here then is the only expedient, from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches, to leave the tedious lingering method, which we have hitherto followed, and instead of taking now and then a castle or village on the frontier, to march up directly to the capital or centre of these sciences, to human nature itself; which being once masters of, we may everywhere else hope for an easy victory. From this station we may extend our conquests over all those sciences which more intimately concern human life, and may afterwards proceed at leisure to discover more fully those which are the objects of pure curiosity. There is no question of importance, whose decision is not comprised in the science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science. In pretending, therefore, to explain the principles of human nature, we in effect propose a complete system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security."[49] Ibid. pp. 13-14.

The present writer has a special interest in citing these passages, because they do in fact defend as well as describe the procedure of his very next chapter.

Such then at an early age was Hume's keen-edged critical appreciation of those intellectual conditions required for a Philosophy of the Sciences, or as he calls it, the "true Metaphysics." In order to supplement his clever and clear idea by a very practical delineation of the metaphysical territory, we turn to another great thinker, the founder of our modern natural science, the great Lord Verulam.[50]

Bacon divides Philosophy according to its objects, which are three,—God, Nature, Man. Take, then, Natural Philosophy; it is well said that the truth of nature lies deeply hidden, and it is also well said that the Producer imitates Nature. Natural Philosophy divides itself accordingly into the inquisition of causes and the production of effects; it is both speculative and operative. There is indeed an intercourse between causes and effects, and both these kinds of knowledge. All true and fruitful Natural Philosophy has a double scale or ladder,—ascendent and descendent; ascending from experiment to first causes; descending thence to fresh experiment and always fresh productiveness.[51]

The ascending half is divided into two moieties, of which one is the science of Physics, the other of Metaphysics. In distinguishing these two, Bacon so far agrees with antiquity as to say,—"That Physic supposes in nature only a being and moving and natural necessity; whereas Metaphysic supposes also a Mind and Idea. For that which I shall say comes perhaps to this."[52] Or, to put it in another light, he writes elsewhere:—"Physique, taking it according to the derivation, and not according to our idiom for medicine, is situate in a middle term or distance between natural history and Metaphysique. For natural history describeth the variety of things; Physique, the causes, but variable or respective causes; and Metaphysique, the fixed and constant causes."[53]

In order to clear the way for his Metaphysic of the future, Bacon subjects what had been called by that name to a critical process. He separates from it a kind of theoretical philosophy, the attainment of which he considered doubtful, though he desired that it should be attempted, as the ultimate goal of human wisdom. The object of the separation is, therefore, to leave his metaphysical science within the limits of what is certainly attainable,—a fact not to be lost sight of in its relation to the abstract subjects in which we are now specially interested. The separated realm of knowledge Bacon calls "First and Summary Philosophy"; it is a "common ancestor to all knowledge,"[54] whereas Metaphysic belongs to the philosophy of Nature. It is at the apex of his pyramid of knowledges,[55]—the basis being a collection of natural facts—the "stage next the basis," (an investigation of causes variable and immersed in material existence,) is called "Physique—the stage next the vertical point is Metaphysique."[56] To enter clearly into Bacon's meaning, two questions should be answered: one, what was the wisdom that older Metaphysicians pursued, respecting which he did not himself feel sanguine? and the other, what remained in his thought the province of practical Metaphysique?

It is obvious that a wisdom which shall gather up all that every other realm of wisdom produces, cast it into Thought's winepress, and extract the rarest vintage of Truth, has been the vision of every age since men began to inquire and to reason. If this wisdom were possible, it would become to us an alphabet of the Universe; we should obtain a clear insight into the world as it is, and the foregone work of its Creator. Each of us might truthfully say:—

"Der du die Welt umschweifst,

Geschäftiger Geist, wie nah' fühl ich mich dir!"

It needs but a glance at Bacon's indefinite outline of a First and Summary Philosophy,[57] to see that it must always be greeted by two opposite sentences of condemnation. A large section of its censors will pronounce the meagreness of its contents "a gentle riddance," or perhaps describe the contents themselves still more harshly as "rubbish shot here." Another section may compare all that it leaves for Metaphysics to the year without its spring, or Shakespeare's masterpiece of philosophy with the part of Hamlet left out.

Let us see then how the reserved province was parcelled out.—Bacon himself remarks:—"It may fairly therefore now be asked, what is left remaining for Metaphysic? Certainly nothing beyond nature; but of nature itself much the most excellent part." Most excellent because "Physic handles that which is most inherent in matter and therefore transitory, and Metaphysic that which is more abstracted and fixed. And again, that Physic supposes in nature only a being and moving and natural necessity: whereas Metaphysic supposes also a mind and idea."[58]

This search into the Mind of Nature is divided into the investigation of two kinds of causes, still called the Formal and the Final. Bacon's doctrine of Forms—the Philosophy in which is embraced "Natura naturans"—nature engendering nature—the Queen of Art—and the Regent of Production, constitutes one of the most difficult parts of the Novum Organum, the Advancement, and the De Augmentis; and may have been one chief provocative to King James' irreverent similitude. It might, according to some writers, even now prove a veritable "peace of God" could we only grasp its full meaning. "From the discovery of Forms," says Bacon, "results truth in speculation and freedom in operation."[59] And his latest commentator believes that this field of discovery has not been truly explored, because its very idea has been only imperfectly apprehended. The whole question, however, belongs to a future Chapter of this Essay, where we propose examining the Law of Production in its most refined and abstract shape. Yet one further remark may be allowed here. According to Francis Bacon, one "respect which ennobles this part of Metaphysic, is that it enfranchises the power of men to the greatest liberty, and leads it to the widest and most extensive field of operation.... For physical causes give light and direction to new inventions in similar matter. But whosoever knows any Form, knows also the utmost possibility of superinducing that nature upon every variety of matter, and so is less restrained and tied in operation, either to the basis of the matter or to the condition of the efficient."[60]

We are more concerned, at the present stage of this Essay, with the second portion of Bacon's Metaphysique—the Inquiry into Final Causes. They are described in the Advancement as not having been neglected before its great Author's time, but as having been "misplaced." "For they are," he writes in the De Augm. (E. & S. iv. p. 363) "generally sought for in Physic, and not in Metaphysic. And yet if it were but a fault in order I should not think so much of it; for order is matter of illustration, but pertains not to the substance of sciences. But this misplacing has caused a notable deficience, and been a great misfortune to Philosophy. For the handling of final causes in Physics has driven away and overthrown the diligent inquiry of physical causes." ... "And I say this, not because those final causes are not true and worthy to be inquired in metaphysical speculations; but because their excursions and irruptions into the limits of physical causes has bred a waste and solitude in that track. For otherwise, if they be but kept within their proper bounds, men are extremely deceived if they think there is any enmity or repugnancy at all between the two." (Ibid. p. 364.) Bacon's meaning is indeed clear enough to those who consider his examples. We do not learn how clouds are produced by being told they serve for watering the earth. It is no history of our earth itself, to say that its "solidness is for the station and mansion of living creatures." "To know the actual nature of a thing," observes an Oxford commentator on the Organum, "we must investigate it in and for itself, not for its results."[61]

Perhaps one of the most curious facts relating to the "misplacement" of Final Causes is that few more flagrant instances of that abuse can be found than some which occur in the field, not of physical but of moral science. The following remarkable example is from an argument framed by Mr. James Mill against Sir J. Macintosh, which appears all the more worthy of quotation, because it is reproduced and approved by Mr. J. Stuart Mill. The whole argument deserves perusal as showing how easily an acquired and customary kind of association will sometimes predominate over free thought; but for our present object a few passages will suffice. The italics are not Mr. Mill's, but are here marked for the purpose of guiding the reader's eye to those steps which lead from final cause (or motive) to interest, from interest to Utility in its grossest form, the artificial creation, namely, of our spur to interested action, dignified by this author with the sacred name of Morality, both in essence, i.e., what makes an act to be moral—and in respect of our moral sense, i.e., what are the sentiments with which we regard our own actions and those of other persons.

"Men make classifications, as they do everything else, for some end. Now, for what end was it that men, out of their innumerable acts, selected a class, to which they gave the name of moral, and another class, to which they gave the name of immoral? What was the motive of this act? What its final cause?

"Assuredly the answer to this question is the first step, though Sir James saw it not, towards the solution of his two questions, comprehending the whole of ethical science; first, what makes an act to be moral? and, secondly, what are the sentiments with which we regard it?

"We may also be assured, that it was some very obvious interest which recommended this classification; for it was performed, in a certain rough way, in the very rudest states of society.

"Farther, we may easily see how, even in very rude states, men were led to it, by little less than necessity.... They had no stronger interest than to obtain the repetition of the one sort, and to prevent the repetition of the other.... And here we clearly perceive the origin of that important case of classification, the classification of acts as moral and immoral. The acts, which it was important to other men that each individual should perform, but in which the individual had not a sufficient interest to secure the performance of them, were constituted one class. The acts, which it was important to other men that each individual should abstain from, but in regard to which he had not a personal interest sufficiently strong to secure his abstaining from them, were constituted another class. The first class were distinguished by the name moral acts; the second by the name immoral.

"The interest which men had in securing the performance of the one set of acts, the non-performance of the other, led them by a sort of necessity to think of the means. They had to create an interest, which the actor would not otherwise have, in the performance of the one sort, the non-performance of the other. And in proceeding to this end, they could not easily miss their way. They had two powers applicable to the purpose. They had a certain quantity of good at their disposal, and they had a certain quantity of evil.... And this is the scheme which they adopted; and which, in every situation, they have invariably pursued. The whole business of the moral sentiments, moral approbation, and disapprobation, has this for its object,—the distribution of the good and evil we have at command, for the production of acts of the useful sort, the prevention of acts of the contrary sort. Can there be a nobler object?"[62]

Some people may think that all nobleness is here taken away from moral distinctions. Others may wonder how such refined calculation could take place "in the very rudest states of Society." Many more will feel that this factitious interest is not the moral sentiment of which they are themselves conscious. We defer these points, however, to a future chapter, and are satisfied now with calling attention to the "misplacement" of final causes. To any modern versed (as Bacon was) in the wisdom of the mediæval schools, the following parallel might appear complete. Ask two questions—what are clouds?—what are moral distinctions?—let a "why" be substituted for the "what." Both are classified by men, both may be defined by their subserviency to human interests,—it is sufficient to discover some use in each. Moral distinctions exist for the benefit of society, clouds are for watering the earth. An earth-watering contrivance describes not only one use but the whole nature of a cloud; and for morality can a nobler definition be found than that of a notion invented and named on Utilitarian principles and promoting a public interest?[63] Doubtless morality does benefit mankind—doubtless clouds do water the earth. But in either case is the good effect its full and comprehensive "why?"—to say nothing of the desiderated "what?"

Francis Bacon (as we have seen) strongly affirmed that between Physical Causes and Final Causes "kept within their proper bounds, men are extremely deceived if they think there is any enmity or repugnancy at all." The manner in which, according to the Baconian doctrine, these two sets of causes harmonize and supplement each other, so as conjointly to subserve the highest purpose of Natural Theology, cannot be better explained than in the words of Bacon's late lamented Editor, Mr. R. Leslie Ellis:—

"It is not sufficiently remarked that final causes have often been spoken of without any reference to a benevolent intention. When it is said that the final cause of a stone's falling is 'locus deorsum,' the remark is at least but remotely connected with the doctrine of an intelligent providence. We are to remember that Bacon has expressly censured Aristotle for having made use of final causes without referring to the fountain from which they flow, namely the providence of the Creator. And in this censure he has found many to concur.

"Again, in any case in which the benevolent intention can be perceived, we are at liberty to ask by what means and according to what laws this benevolent intention is manifested and made efficient. If this question is not to be asked, there is in the first place an end of physical science, so far as relates to every case in which a benevolent intention has been or can be recognised; and in the second, the argument à posteriori founded on the contrivance displayed in the works of creation is entirely taken away.

"This is, in effect, what Bacon says in the passage of the De Augmentis, in which he complains of the abuse of final causes. If, he affirms, the physical cause of any phenomenon can be assigned as well as the final, so far is this from derogating from our idea of the divine wisdom, that on the contrary it does but confirm and exalt it."[64]

Before passing from this subject the reader's attention may be drawn to two notes by the same eminent commentator. Bacon remarks (Nov. Org. I. 48) that Final Causes are "ex naturâ hominis" i.e., have relation to the nature of Man. "It is difficult," writes Mr. Ellis, "to assent to the assertion that the notion of the final cause, considered generally, is more ex naturâ hominis than that of the efficient. The subject is one of which it is difficult to speak accurately; but it may be said that wherever we think that we recognise a tendency towards a fulfilment or realisation of an idea, there the notion of the final cause comes in. It can only be from inadvertence that Professor Owen has set the doctrine of the final cause as it were in antithesis to that of the unity of type: by the former he means the doctrine that the suitability of an animal to its mode of life is the one thing aimed at or intended in its structure. It cannot be doubted that Aristotle would have recognised the preservation of the type as not less truly a final cause than the preservation of the species or than the well-being of the individual. The final cause connects itself with what in the language of modern German philosophy is expressed by the phrase 'the Idea in Nature.'"[65]

The epigrammatic comparison of a Final Cause to a consecrated Virgin[66] has been reviewed by numberless disciples as well as critics of our author. Mr. Ellis annotates the Latin text thus:—"Nihil parit, means simply, non parit opera, which though it would have been a more precise mode of expression would have destroyed the appositeness of the illustration. No one who fairly considers the context can, I think, have any doubts as to the limitation with which the sentence in question is to be taken. But it is often the misfortune of a pointed saying to be quoted apart from any context, and consequently to be misunderstood." And this seems to be a scholarly explanation.[67]

To complete the sketch of Baconian Metaphysic it appears only needful to add that his respect for the science of Quantity is sufficient to make him class under this higher philosophy—this near approach to the apex of his Pyramid—the whole circle of Mathematics.

Our long note will not have been written in vain if the reader bears its contents in mind when considering the abstract arguments advanced throughout this Essay. It is well to see what very great authorities have thought concerning the true use of Metaphysics;—it is well also to see how they ought to be applied in questions of physical science, and for the purpose of grounding a science of Natural Theology.

B.—ON THE PHRASE "DESIGN IMPLIES A DESIGNER."

"It has been contended," says Professor Baden Powell, "that in one sense it is mere tautology to say that Design implies a Designer." (Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth, p. 183.)

As a matter of fact there can be no doubt that verbal-sounding phrases, however useful in a system of Mnemonics, and much in favour as political war-cries, always tend to discredit the sober course of a philosophic argument. But Paley, though writing popularly, did not intend a mere ad captandum effect, as may be seen by a reference to his second chapter. He meant by Design and Contrivance to express in brief the conditions he had laid down as characteristic of the intentional adaptation of means to definitely purposed ends,—with which conditions he appears to have been fully satisfied.

In his 23rd and 24th chapters, where some hasty writer might have said "law implies a lawgiver," the Archdeacon prefers to state that "a law pre-supposes an agent," and proceeds to argue the statement on its merits. "Law," he says, "is only the mode according to which an agent proceeds: it implies a power, for it is the order according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the 'law' does nothing; is nothing." (Chapter 23.) He is well satisfied with this argument also, and repeats it (slightly varied in form) during the course of his next chapter.

In our comparison of Powell with Paley we were led to remark on the diverse meanings of the word Design, and the facility with which some authors have glided from one to another among its significations. If any thinker believes that the examples he adduces are distinctly instances of Foresight, Intention, and Will, he has the Designer full in mind before he employs the term Design. But if his instances fall short of thus much implicit force, the argument founded on them is a worthless verbality.[68]

Those who protest against the popular phrase, "Design proves a Designer," say it is a temptation to assume this point—(the one point at issue)—over which it skims with such secure ease. But to any person in earnest, few things are more irritating than a piece of cool, thorough-going assumption. It is like catching a cat and persistently calling it a hare. Many visitors at certain Roman Hotels are aware that when deprived of ears and tail more Italico and well roasted, the resemblance between these two animals may give rise to questions of disputed identity. Imagine, now, a party of cat-catchers, who not only assume the Identity, but persevere in calling their mongrel curs harehounds, and themselves huntsmen. No truer claim in reality do a multitude of Design-hunters possess to any higher title than the leguleii of Natural Theology. And the blame of their discredit must in a great degree be laid upon their words. It is easy to say, "A thrown-stone implies a thrower." But suppose the stone about which you and I are talking was thrown by the fiery force of a volcano? Must we hence infer the existence of a Cyclops or a Titan?

This mode of popular speech reached the climax of absurdity when it was gravely argued that "Evolution implies an Evolver." So it might appear to the peculiar mind of the speaker; but how about the mind of him who promulgated the evolution-hypothesis? Stones (as we may observe) fly from more than one cause, and there is more than one account to be given of the theory of Evolution.

Enough has been said to show that the phrase commented on in this note, prejudices the argument it is intended to assist. It wears the appearance of embodying a foregone conclusion; and gives trouble to the honest inquirer, who, in order to estimate reasonings at their true value, must translate them into accurate forms of speech.

We may aptly finish these remarks by a quotation from Whewell's Aphorisms on the Language of Science. (Aphorism I., Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, II. 483.) "Words borrowed from common language, and converted by scientific writers into technical terms, have some advantages and some disadvantages. They possess this great convenience, that they are understood after a very short explanation, and retained in the memory without effort. On the other hand they lead to some inconvenience; for since they have a meaning in common language, a careless reader is prone to disregard the technical limitation of this meaning, and to attempt to collect their import in scientific books, in the same vague and conjectural manner in which he collects the purpose of words in common cases. Hence the language of science, when thus resembling common language, is liable to be employed with an absence of that scientific precision which alone gives it value. Popular writers and talkers, when they speak of force, momentum, action, and reaction, and the like, often afford examples of the inaccuracy thus arising from the scientific appropriation of common terms."

A similar line of reflection led Coleridge to remark (Biog. Lit., Chap. x.) that "the language of the market would be in the schools as pedantic, though it might not be reprobated by that name, as the language of the schools in the market. The mere man of the world, who insists that no other terms but such as occur in common conversation should be employed in a scientific disquisition, and with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant as the man of letters, who, either over-rating the acquirements of his auditors, or misled by his own familiarity with technical or scholastic terms, converses at the wine-table with his mind fixed on his museum or laboratory." And such pedantry is, we may add, not uncommonly just as perspicuous as the definition which, says old Glanvill, "was lately given of a Thought in a University Sermon—viz. A Repentine Prosiliency jumping into Being." (Defence of the Vanity of Dogmatizing, Actio Decima, p. 61, ed. 1.)

C.—HUME ON THE ANALOGIES OF ART AND NATURE.

[Referred to in footnote (e) in the preceding Chapter.]

The statement in the text is shaped as a not unfairly urged scientific objection of the kind which might be raised by some actual craftsman or producer. An objection identical in essence is thrown by Hume into a refined semi-metaphysical shape, and made to turn upon our general acquaintance with Human nature contrasted with our general ignorance of the Divine. It runs as follows:—

"The infinite difference of the subjects, replied he," (Hume's dramatic Epicurus,) "is a sufficient foundation for this difference in my conclusions. In works of human art and contrivance, it is allowable to advance from the effect to the cause, and returning back from the cause, to form new inferences concerning the effect, and examine the alterations which it has probably undergone, or may still undergo. But what is the foundation of this method of reasoning? Plainly this; that man is a being, whom we know by experience, whose motives and designs we are acquainted with, and whose projects and inclinations have a certain connection and coherence, according to the laws which nature has established for the government of such a creature. When, therefore, we find that any work has proceeded from the skill and industry of man; as we are otherwise acquainted with the nature of the animal, we can draw a hundred inferences concerning what may be expected from him; and these inferences will all be founded in experience and observation. But did we know man only from the single work or production which we examine, it were impossible for us to argue in this manner; because our knowledge of all the qualities, which we ascribe to him, being in that case derived from the production, it is impossible they could point to anything farther, or be the foundation of any new inference....

"The case is not the same with our reasonings from the works of nature. The Deity is known to us only by his productions, and is a single being in the universe, not comprehended under any species or genus, from whose experienced attributes or qualities, we can, by analogy, infer any attribute or quality in him." (Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Section xi.)

Hume himself gives in his own character a reply partially veiled by the same half-metaphysical style which characterises the objection:—

"There occurs to me (continued I), with regard to your main topic, a difficulty which I shall just propose to you without insisting on it, lest it lead into reasonings of too nice and delicate a nature. In a word, I much doubt whether it be possible for a cause to be known only by its effect (as you have all along supposed), or to be of so singular and particular a nature, as to have no parallel and no similarity with any other cause or object that has ever fallen under our observation. It is only when two species of objects are found to be constantly conjoined, that we can infer the one from the other: and were an effect presented which was entirely singular, and could not be comprehended under any known species, I do not see, that we could form any conjecture or inference at all concerning its cause. If experience and observation and analogy be, indeed, the only guides which we can reasonably follow in inferences of this nature; both the effect and cause must bear a similarity and resemblance to other effects and causes which we know, and which we have found, in many instances, to be conjoined with each other. I leave it to your own reflection to pursue the consequences of this principle." (Ibid.)

The consequences which ought in fairness to be deduced may be stated thus. The effect we contemplate, (i.e. Nature,) is not singular but can be compared with other effects—those of Art. The comparison is made in respect of certain specific attributes or properties upon which the Design analogy turns, so that we may reason upwards to certain specific analogies of Causation. Art manifests the foreseeing attributes of the human artist, and from comparison of these we infer in the Creator like attributes,—what Hume elsewhere calls the natural attributes of the Deity. But this likeness is properly termed analogical, because of the vast difference in the magnitude of the effects from which we thus reason, and of the causes to which we reason. As our wisdom and power are proportionable to our earthly works, so are the Divine wisdom and power proportionable to the whole majestic Universe. There is, then, a comparison in species, but not in grandeur—the attributes are not similar, but analogical. As the Heavens are high above the Earth, so are His thoughts higher than our thoughts.

D.—THE PANTHEISTIC CONSEQUENCES CHARGED UPON PHYSICAL SPECULATIONS.

The following is the passage from Professor Baden Powell referred to in note ([h]) of the preceding chapter. Some short extracts were also made from it on a previous page.

"Nothing but the common confused and mistaken notions as to laws and causes, could give any colour to the assertion that ... physical speculations tend to substitute general physical laws in the place of the Deity; and that scientific statements of the conclusions of Natural Theology are nothing but ill-disguised Pantheism.

"The utter futility of such inferences is at once seen, when the smallest attention is given to the plain distinctions above laid down between 'moral' and 'physical' causation; and to the proper force of the conclusions from natural science establishing the former by means of the latter.

"This distinction obviously points to the very reverse of the assertion that physical action is identical with its moral cause; the essential difference and contrast between them is the very point which the whole argument upholds and enforces.

"Of all forms of philosophical mysticism, the idea of Pantheism seems to me one of the most extravagant. Ever-present mind is a direct inference from the universal order of nature, or rather only another mode of expressing it. But of the mode of existence of that mind we can infer nothing.

"To assert, then, that this universally manifested mind is co-existent, or even to be identified, with matter, is at best a mere gratuitous hypothesis, and as such wholly unphilosophical in itself, and leading to many preposterous consequences. But if further supposed to apply in any higher sense as to an object of worship, trust, love, obedience, or the like (as is implied in the term Pantheism), it appears to involve moral contradictions of the most startling kind.

"There are, however, many who, though rejecting Pantheism as untrue, do not conceive it absurd or contradictory. Much, however, will, in all such cases, depend on the precise sense in which it is maintained. With some it seems to have been upheld on a fanciful analogy with the conception of the human frame animated by an indwelling spirit; as if in a somewhat similar manner the supreme mind might animate nature. Without disputing this in a certain sense, the cases surely cannot be considered at all parallel: we do not infer the existence of the human mind, from the arrangement and adaptation of the bodily organs, nor is it the moral cause of their organisation.

"If Pantheism were asserted merely in the sense of a kind of vital or animating principle pervading the material world, I would admit that such an idea involves no absurdity, or contradiction, but still I should regard it as visionary and unphilosophical. I could but class it with the 'vital forces' which Kepler fancied necessary for keeping up the motions of the planets, with the 'plastic powers of nature,' 'her abhorrence of a vacuum,' and the like chimæras. But it is when men elevate such a supposed animating principle into a Deity, a being of supreme wisdom, power, beneficence, and goodness, yet residing in every atom of matter, and participating directly in every form and case of material action, that the contradiction arises." Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, pp. 176-9.

E.—THE EXTENT AND DIVISIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.

The following passages from Professor Powell's Essay "on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy" will go far to justify the praise and blame bestowed upon his mode of procedure in the text of the foregoing chapter. But we would recommend his own pages to the student's discriminative perusal.

In extract No. 1, Baden Powell shows with equal truth and force that universal Law must be contemplated as a manifestation of one supreme Intelligence presiding over the whole Universe. A philosopher who looks on Nature with this majestic breadth of view does not need for his own deepest convictions to follow Design through a multitude of smaller evidences.

If extract No. 2 could be admitted as a full account of the conditions and limitations of Natural Theology, our science would seem to result in an obscuration of the magnificently Supreme Power already accepted. So far as its letter goes, the Creator of the Universe might appear to be shut out from the world which He has made. We cannot (as has been said) consent to this narrow consideration of Natural Theology, nor yet of Powell's meaning.

Extract No. 3 acknowledges what all physical investigators ought to acknowledge,—that although their sciences contribute very much towards solving the problem of the Universe, and although their results readily harmonize with the solution maintained by the Theist—yet there rests over that vast problem a cloud which the physical sciences cannot completely dispel. This (as we shall see in Chapter V.) is indeed the confession of the greatest minds at present engaged upon the philosophy of Natural Science.

Extract No. 1.—"From the inductive philosophy we derive our belief in the harmony, order, and uniformity of natural causes, perpetually maintained in a universally connected chain of dependence. And hence it is, that we arrive at those sublime ideas of a presiding Intelligence of which law and uniformity, universal mechanism once for all adjusted, are the proper external manifestations.

"To the truly inductive philosopher, fate and chance, necessity and accident, are words without meaning. To him, the world is made up of recondite combinations of physical laws, and the existence and maintenance of those laws are the very indication of a Supreme Mind. But chance is irreconcilable with laws, fate with mind, regulated and fixed order with blind destiny, fortuitous accident, or arbitrary interruption.

"All rational natural theology advances by tracing the immediate mechanical steps and particular processes in detail, and the physical causes in which the influences of the Great Moral Cause or Supreme Mind are manifested. The greater the number and extent of such secondary steps and intermediate processes through which we can trace it, the greater the complexity and wider the ramifications of the chain of causes, the more powerful and convincing the instruction they convey as to the existence and operation of the Divine wisdom and power.

"Yet it is a common mode of illustration to speak of the chain of secondary causes reaching up to the First Cause. Or, again, fears are entertained of tracing secondary causes too far, so as to intrench on the supremacy of the First Cause. But this is an erroneous analogy: the maker or designer of a chain is no more at one end of it than at the other. The length of the chain in no way alters our conviction of its skilful structure, except to enhance it. If the number of links were truly infinite, so much the more infinite the skill of its framer.

"Mr. F. Newman observes,[69] I think most truly, that the common arguments from what are called 'secondary causes' to the 'First Cause' are unsatisfactory: and I would trace this to the confused sense in which those terms are commonly used, as already explained; and which, I think, might be entirely removed by attention to the distinctions above laid down. While, on the other hand, I fully acknowledge that those arguments, when correctly understood, lead only to a very limited conclusion; and one which falls infinitely short of those high moral and spiritual intuitions on which Mr. F. Newman grounds his religious system, yet in no way discredits or supersedes them." Essay, pp. 151-4.

Extract No. 2.—"In the present state of knowledge, law and order, physical causation and uniformity of action, are the elevated manifestations of Divinity, creation and providence. Interruptions of such order (if for a moment they could be admitted as such) could only produce a sort of temporary concealment of such manifestations, and involve the beautiful light shed over the natural world in a passing cloud. We do not indeed doubt that the sun exists behind the cloud, but we certainly do not see it; still less can we call the obscuration a special proof of its presence. The main point in the system of order and law is its absolute universality. Exceptions, if real, must pro tanto imply a deficiency in the chain of connexion, and might, to a sceptical disposition, offer a ground of doubt.

"But so overwhelming is the mass and body of proof, that no philosophic mind would allow such exceptions for a moment to weigh against it; they would be as dust in the balance. A supreme moral cause manifested through law, order, and physical causes, is the confession of science: conflicting operations, arbitrary interruptions, abrupt discontinuities, are the idols of ignorance, and, if they really prevailed, would so far be to the philosopher only the exponents of chaos and atheism; the obscuration (as far as they extend) of the sensible manifestation of the Supreme Intelligence." Ibid. 165, 6.

Extract No. 3.—"The whole tenor of the preceding argument is directed to show that the inference and assertion of a Supreme Moral Cause, distinct from and above nature, results immediately from the recognition of the eternal and universal maintenance of the order of physical causes, which are its essential external manifestations.

"Of the mode of action or operation by which the Supreme Moral Cause influences the universal order of physical causes, we confess our utter ignorance. But the evidence of such operation, where nature exists, can never be lost or interrupted. And in proportion as our more extended researches exhibit these indications more fully and more gloriously displayed, we cannot but believe that our contemplations are more nearly and truly approaching their Source." Ibid. 179.

The reader will not grudge the time he may have bestowed upon this note if it leads him to a distinct apprehension of the true breadth and compass of our science.

"Natural Theology," says Kant, "infers the attributes and the existence of an author of the world, from the constitution of, the order and unity observable in this world, in which two modes of Causality, together with their laws, must be accepted—that is to say, Nature and Freedom. Thus Natural Theology rises from this world to a supreme Intelligence, whether as to the principle of all natural or of all moral order and perfection. In the former case it is termed Physico-Theology, in the latter Ethical or Moral Theology." This last term he explains by adding, "Not theological ethics; for this latter science contains ethical laws, which presuppose the existence of a Supreme Governor of the world; while Moral Theology, on the contrary, is an evidence of the existence of a Supreme Being, an evidence founded upon ethical laws." Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft Transscendental Elementarlehre, s. 7.

It was from the fulness and depth of a personal conviction on this topic that the present writer ventured to assert in 1870 that "The conditions under which Natural Theology becomes scientifically possible, are found when it supplements Natural Science by a science of Right and Wrong," and also that "for the future Natural Theology ought to follow this path and no other—unless it wishes to commit suicide." These assertions were made in a University Sermon[70] on the question, "Under what Conditions is a Science of Natural Theology possible?" and they were censured as novel and unprecedented by critics who ought to have known better.

F.—ON TELEOLOGY.

One consequence of the principle on which this Essay has been framed is an endeavour to place before the reader's eye different modes of reasoning in the language of their several authors. The method of looking at any subject-matter in a diversity of lights naturally leads to copiousness of quotation. There can, it is evident, be no varieties of thought so undeniably distinct as those which are the actual products of diverse minds.

The maxim which has governed the following selection is what Bacon would call a marshalling Idea. They posit one central thought and throw light upon it from a circle of separate reflectors.

Let it be observed that such a collection of opinions implies no appeal to authority in the narrow sense of the word. There is indeed a manifest distinction between authority and authorities—and our present appeal is to the latter. No man's ipse dixit can dogmatically settle questions which belong to an inquirer's responsible self; but it is surely the wisdom of every one who acknowledges the awful sense of accountability attendant on the determination of questions affecting his central beliefs, to weigh the reasonings of others who have felt the same deep impression of their paramount importance. If any one is reluctant so to do from an idea that by doing thus much he pays a wrongful deference to prejudices, he has in truth assumed the whole issue which he is bound to examine. How otherwise can he certainly allege that the prejudice is not inherent within himself?

Reluctance of this kind would on the present occasion be thoroughly misplaced. Authorities as here quoted are neither more nor less than the opinions of experts who have a title to be heard each in his own proper department. Throughout the practical conduct of life we all experience the benefit of laying aside our private spectacles from time to time and of looking through the glasses of other men. And in questions such as the one now before us, is it possible to do better than try whether we can see for ourselves what has been pronounced discernible by men who contemplated this world of ours with more than ordinary powers of vision?

The present writer has a personal interest in bringing together the reflections of many who have reached the same resting-place along various lines of approach, and who have expressed their conclusions with some diversity of language. He has ventured himself on viewing the evidences of Natural Theology from a position by no means identical with that most commonly occupied by Natural Theologians. The student, therefore, who takes a wide survey of the field will be the critic best prepared to examine the latter part of this Essay.

The first authority quoted among our ample citations is Hume, whose appearance as a witness for Natural Theology may surprise some readers. As, however, is remarked by an eminent writer in the Quarterly, Hume's hard common sense "enabled him when he liked, to control the excesses of a speculative imagination and subject it to practical reason, as he understood reason's verdict." He even went so far as to say that "The whole frame of Nature bespeaks an Intelligent Author; and no rational inquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion." (Natural History of Religion, Introduction.) Indeed, according to Cucheval Clarigny,[71] Hume was an "almost Christian" at certain periods of his life. The repellant forces that kept him back, are "not far to seek."

The following passages refer to the illative analogy which forms the proper shape of the argument from Design.

"That the works of Nature bear a great analogy to the productions of art, is evident; and according to all the rules of good reasoning, we ought to infer, if we argue at all concerning them, that their causes have a proportional analogy. But as there are also considerable differences, we have reason to suppose a proportional difference in the causes; and in particular ought to attribute a much higher degree of power and energy to the supreme cause than any we have ever observed in mankind. Here then the existence of a DEITY is plainly ascertained by reason: and if we make it a question whether, on account of these analogies, we can properly call him a mind or intelligence, notwithstanding the vast difference which may reasonably be supposed between him and human minds; what is this but a mere verbal controversy? No man can deny the analogies between the effects: To restrain ourselves from inquiring concerning the causes, is scarcely possible: From this inquiry, the legitimate conclusion is, that the causes have also an analogy: And if we are not contented with calling the first and supreme cause a GOD or DEITY, but desire to vary the expression; what can we call him but MIND or THOUGHT, to which he is justly supposed to bear a considerable resemblance?" Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Part xii. in Essays, Vol. II. p. 526.[72]

"If the whole of Natural Theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence. If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication; if it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance; and if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence, and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind: If this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs; and believe that the arguments on which it is established, exceed the objections which lie against it?" Ibid. p. 538.

The following is the opinion of Cleanthes, upon whom Hume confers the palm in the dialogue;—"Take care, Philo, replied Cleanthes; take care; push not matters too far: allow not your zeal against false religion to undermine your veneration for the true. Forfeit not this principle, the chief, the only great comfort in life; and our principal support amidst all the attacks of adverse fortune. The most agreeable reflection, which it is possible for human imagination to suggest, is that of genuine Theism, which represents us as the workmanship of a Being perfectly good, wise, and powerful; who created us for happiness; and who, having implanted in us immeasurable desires of good, will prolong our existence to all eternity, and will transfer us into an infinite variety of scenes, in order to satisfy those desires, and render our felicity complete and durable. Next to such a Being himself (if the comparison be allowed), the happiest lot which we can imagine, is that of being under his guardianship and protection." Ibid. p.535.[73]

The next three extracts give Hume's opinion on the prevailing principle disclosed by the analogy—design, purpose, and the recognition of final causes:—

"Though the stupidity of men, barbarous and uninstructed, be so great, that they may not see a sovereign author in the more obvious works of nature, to which they are so much familiarized; yet it scarce seems possible, that any one of good understanding should reject that idea, when once it is suggested to him. A purpose, an intention, a design is evident in everything; and when our comprehension is so far enlarged as to contemplate the first rise of this visible system, we must adopt, with the strongest conviction, the idea of some intelligent cause or author. The uniform maxims, too, which prevail throughout the whole frame of the universe, naturally, if not necessarily, lead us to conceive this intelligence as single and undivided, where the prejudices of education oppose not so reasonable a theory. Even the contrarieties of nature, by discovering themselves everywhere, become proofs of some consistent plan, and establish one single purpose or intention, however inexplicable and incomprehensible." Natural History of Religion XV.—General Corollary, in Essays II. pp. 422, 3.

"In many views of the universe, and of its parts, particularly the latter, the beauty and fitness of final causes strike us with such irresistible force that all objections appear (what I believe they really are) mere cavils and sophisms; nor can we then imagine how it was ever possible for us to repose any weight on them." Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Part X. in Essays, II. 509.

"The order and arrangement of nature, the curious adjustment of final causes, the plain use and intention of every part and organ; all these bespeak in the clearest language an intelligent cause or author. The heavens and the earth join in the same testimony. The whole chorus of nature raises one hymn to the praises of its Creator.... I have found a Deity; and here I stop my enquiry. Let those go farther who are wiser or more enterprising." Ibid. Part IV. p. 467.

Hume is conspicuous amongst reasoners on Natural Theology for having distinctly comprehended Human Nature along with Nature in the cycle of its evidences. "This sentence at least," he writes, "Reason will venture to pronounce, That a mental world, or universe of ideas, requires a cause as much as does a material world, or universe of objects; and, if similar in its arrangement, must require a similar cause. For what is there in this subject which should occasion a different conclusion or inference? In an abstract view, they are entirely alike; and no difficulty attends the one supposition which is not common to both of them." Ibid. Part IV. p. 464.

This statement brings us to the impediments which withheld Hume from forming a sublime idea of the Divine Being, such an idea as kindles the enthusiasm of devout men, and inspires even timidly sensitive souls with deathless confidence in the final triumph of a self-sacrificing virtue destined to survive the grave. These causes were the opinions he maintained respecting human nature. We may lay it down as a universal rule that every one who sees the animal, but not the heaven-aspiring moral element in his own nature, and in our common nature, will fail to represent to himself the lineaments or reflection of the Divine attributes. An acknowledged kinship with brutal passions, the lowering of society and wedlock to animal gregariousness, of moral principle and the rule of Right and Wrong to a perception of Utility, are fatal hindrances in the search after God;—a search arduous to the best of us, since deep as the far translucent heavens, are the majestic thoughts of Him after Whom we strive to feel. Now Hume failed to discern the Godlike in Man. "Human life," he remarks in his Sceptic, "is more governed by fortune than by reason; is to be regarded more as a dull pastime than as a serious occupation; and is more influenced by particular humour than by general principles." Morality is no fixed star in Hume's firmament. To omit the laxity of many moral maxims he lays down, the very nature and foundations of morality were imperilled by his analytics.[74]

"He has," writes Mackintosh, "altogether omitted the circumstance on which depends the difference of our sentiments regarding moral and intellectual qualities. We admire intellectual excellence, but we bestow no moral approbation on it." And again—"He entirely overlooks that consciousness of the rightful supremacy of the moral faculty over every other principle of human action, without an explanation of which, ethical theory is wanting in one of its vital organs." Ethical Philosophy, pp. 182, 4. "If," says Hume in the Sceptic, "we can depend upon any principle which we learn from philosophy, this, I think, may be considered as certain and undoubted, that there is nothing in itself valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but that these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection." And half a dozen pages afterwards—"Good and ill, both natural and moral, are entirely relative to human sentiment and affection." So too, "The necessity of justice to the support of society is," he tells us, "the Sole foundation of that virtue;" usefulness, he explains, "is the Sole source of the moral approbation paid to fidelity, justice, veracity, integrity, and those other estimable and useful qualities and principles." It is also "the source of a considerable part of the merit ascribed to humanity, benevolence, friendship, public spirit, and other social virtues of that stamp." Principles of Morals, Sect. III. sub fin. With these sentiments it is not surprising that while he insists on the analogy between human workmanship and the natural universe he cannot argue analogically from moral Truth to the Divine attributes—and even goes so far as to decide that the first causes of the Universe "have neither goodness nor malice."

The student of Natural Theology cannot direct his attention too soon or too steadily to the vast share possessed by our moral sentiments in our apprehension of the Divine nature. It is from our sense of Responsibility attached to each act of Will and Choice that we deduce the idea of causation. It is from our intuitions of immutable moral truth and the irreconcilable antithesis between Right and Wrong that we behold the Martyr as one who has not lived in vain, but lives truly and for ever; and are sure that there exists a God who has regard to the righteous, the oppressed, the fatherless, and the widow. Clear moral insight appears in Socrates, who chose to die rather than offend against the eternal laws. But ought the man to be styled moral or immoral who should balance together two comparative utilities,—that of preserving his father's life and that of acquiring by a judicious neglect, without risk to himself, a property which he resolved to expend usefully? Of one thing we may be sure, God could not be in all his thoughts whilst making such a calculation.

It is thus that a pure Morality and an elevated conception of the Divine Being act and react upon each other. And in this way our speculative and practical Reason become interlaced—the former giving to the logical understanding an account of those ideas which form the essential sublimity and moving influence of our practical beliefs—the springs of our daily and hourly behaviour. There is no more certain characteristic of a mind so ordered than its ability to deal with a moral doubt which casuists might long debate, to solve the enigma within the compass of a moment's thought, and to defend the solution by fair and honest argument. As regards our present question it makes no difference by what means such a condition of mind may have been brought about, but it is plain that a sense of accountability has much to do with this condition. And the connexion between Responsibility and our belief in a life immortal, and in a just and veracious God, will form a subject for future consideration.

Meantime, the reader must take Hume's acceptance of the doctrine of final causes and the Design-analogy, for what it is worth. No candid person ought to condemn Hume as he has often been condemned without remembering the allowance to be made for his excessive vanity,[75] his extreme love of paradoxical speculation, and the dramatic irony which runs throughout his writings. These are in fact some of the qualities which make him an unfit schoolmaster for the young, and a shrewd exercise for elder men. One useful lesson we gather just now is learned from the fact that he places a wide gulf between the natural and moral attributes of the Deity, and draws a veil over the latter, because the alleged poverty of our moral ideas precludes any analogy to reason upon, however remote that analogy may appear. Hence Hume's God of Nature becomes a shadow like Wordsworth's Laodamia, scarce fit for the Elysian bowers; He is no longer felt by us to be the God of Human Nature.

We cannot here omit to observe that Hume had no thought of worshipping the Order of the World, or of erecting a temple to immutable Laws, blind Force, or any other blank impersonal Necessity. The limit of his inquiry was what to human reason might appear the easiest and most probable interpretation of nature.[76] This question he asked and answered. Whether modern science has added important data on which to found a more conclusive reply is a further inquiry which we shall have to consider, but meantime it appears certain that if the most sceptical theory of the most sceptical scientist were held true, there would still remain the same necessity for asking Hume's question. For neither our life, nor the world we live in, nor the wide universe, have any real cause or aim scientifically assigned them. We should still have to inquire by what agency and to what purpose we and the All exist? That we really are is a fact for you, O reader, and for me; and we cannot but want to discover whether we shall yet be, when this brief yet tedious life is done; and if so, whether our present acts and choosings must influence our Hereafter? Science has said nothing to annihilate our interest concerning these topics, nor yet to finally decide them.

For the truth of what is contained in this last paragraph, we may cite as witness amongst scientific men, the distinguished President of the British Association for 1872. Dr. Carpenter spoke at Brighton in these words:—"There is a great deal of what I cannot but regard as fallacious and misleading Philosophy—'oppositions of Science falsely so called'—abroad in the world at the present time. And I hope to satisfy you, that those who set up their own conceptions of the Orderly Sequence which they discern in the Phenomena of Nature, as fixed and determinate Laws, by which those phenomena not only are within all Human experience, but always have been, and always must be, invariably governed, are really guilty of the Intellectual arrogance they condemn in the Systems of the Ancients, and place themselves in diametrical antagonism to those real Philosophers, by whose comprehensive grasp and penetrating insight that Order has been so far disclosed." And again towards the close of his Address:—"With the growth of the Scientific Study of Nature, the conception of its Harmony and Unity gained ever-increasing strength. And so among the most enlightened of the Greek and Roman Philosophers, we find a distinct recognition of the idea of the Unity of the Directing Mind from which the Order of Nature proceeds; for they obviously believed that, as our modern Poet has expressed it—

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the Soul."

The Science of Modern times, however, has taken a more special direction. Fixing its attention exclusively on the Order of Nature, it has separated itself wholly from Theology, whose function it is to seek after its Cause. In this, Science is fully justified, alike by the entire independence of its objects, and by the historical fact that it has been continually hampered and impeded in its search for the Truth as it is in Nature, by the restraints which Theologians have attempted to impose upon its inquiries. But when Science, passing beyond its own limits, assumes to take the place of Theology, and sets up its own conception of the Order of Nature as a sufficient account of its Cause, it is invading a province of Thought to which it has no claim, and not unreasonably provokes the hostility of those who ought to be its best friends."

Our next extract is from Sir Benjamin Brodie, and it, too, considers the absolute permanence of the laws of Nature in relation to Design:—

Crites. "There have been sceptics who have believed that the laws of nature were, if I may use the expression, self-existent; and that what we now see around us is but a continuation of a system that has been going on from all eternity—thus dispensing with the notion of a great creative Intelligence altogether."

Eubulus. "Under any view of the subject, it seems to me that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for any of us practically to separate the marks of design, and of the adaptation of means to ends, which the universe affords, but which are more especially conspicuous in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, from the notion of an intelligent Cause. There is not one of the sceptics to whom you have alluded, who would not, if he were asked the question, "What is the use of the eye?" answer, "that it is intended to be the organ of vision, as the ear is intended to be that of hearing, and as the nostrils are constructed for the purpose of smell." But what I said just now requires some further explanation. When I stated that at the present time there is no evidence of any deviation from certain established laws of nature—that if we could thoroughly know and thoroughly appreciate what those laws really are, we should be able to account for all the phenomena around us—I was far from intending to say that there has never been a period when other laws than those which are now in force were in operation, or that the time may not arrive when the present order of things will be in a similar manner superseded. Looking at the structure of the globe, and the changes in its surface which have been disclosed to the observation of geologists, we recognize the probability that there was a time when this planet of ours was no better than a huge aërolite, and in a state quite incompatible with animal or even vegetable life. The existence of living beings, then, must have had a beginning; yet we have no evidence of any law now in force which will account for this marvellous creation."[77] Psychological Inquiries, Part II., pp. 193-4-5.

The great surgeon next discusses the question of "Equivocal Generation" now known by the terms Archebiosis and Abiogenesis. His opinion, together with some later information on the topic, will be found in our additional notes to Chapter III.

When writing his first series of "Inquiries" Sir Benjamin recorded his judgment regarding our knowledge and conception of the Divine Existence and in terms which show how closely he connected the general subject of Mind and its Essence with his idea of the Creator.

Eubulus. "When I contemplate the evidence of intention and design which present themselves everywhere around us, but which, to our limited comprehensions, is more especially manifested in the vegetable and animal creations, I cannot avoid attributing the construction and order of the universe to an intelligent being, whose power and knowledge are such that it is impossible for me to form any adequate conception of them, any more than I can avoid referring the motions of the planets and stars to the same law of gravitation as that which directs the motions of our own globe. But no one, I apprehend, will maintain that the mind of the Deity depends on a certain construction of brain and nerves; and Dr. Priestley, the most philosophical of the advocates of the system of materialism, ventures no further than to say that we have no knowledge on the subject. But, to use the words of Sir Isaac Newton, 'This powerful ever-living agent being in all places, is more able to move the bodies within his boundless uniform sensorium, and thereby to form and reform the parts of the universe, than we are, by our will, to move the parts of our own bodies.' The remainder of the passage from which I have made this quotation, is not without interest, as indicating the view which Newton took of the matter in question:—'And yet we are not to consider the world as the body of God, or the several parts thereof as the parts of God. He is an uniform being, void of organs, members, or parts, and they are his creatures, subordinate to him, and subservient to him, and he is no more the soul of them than the soul of man is the soul of the species carried through the organs of sense into the place of its sensation, where it perceives them by its immediate presence, without the intervention of any third thing. The organs of sense are not for enabling the soul to perceive the species of things in its sensorium, but only for conveying them thither; and God has no need of any such organs, he being everywhere present to the things themselves.'"

Ergates. "I entirely agree with you in the opinion that we must admit the existence of the Deity as a fact as well established as that of the law of gravitation, and that in doing so we must further admit that mind may and does exist, independently of bodily organization. Be it also remembered that mind, in its humblest form, is still mind, and that, immeasurable as the distance between them may be, it must nevertheless be regarded as being of the same essence with that of the Deity himself. For my own part I find no difficulty in conceiving the existence of mind independently of corporeal organs." (p. 39, seq.)

Those who have read Professor Huxley's article on the Metaphysics of Sensation,[78] will feel much interested in the passages selected from Newton by Sir Benjamin. It seems almost a pity that the accomplished Professor did not cite any of Dr. Clarke's explanatory remarks addressed to Leibniz respecting Sir Isaac Newton's expressions. The similitude above quoted, Clarke explains thus:—"Mr. Newton considère le cerveau et les organes des sens, comme le moyen par lequel ces images sont Formées et non comme le moyen par lequel l'âme voit ou aperçoit ces images, lorsqu'elles sont ainsi formées. Et dans l'Univers, il ne considère pas les choses, comme si elles étaient des images formées par un certain moyen ou par des organes; mais comme des choses réelles, que Dieu lui-même a formées, et qu'il voit dans tous les lieux où elles sont, sans l'intervention d'aucun moyen. C'est tout ce que Mr. Newton a voulu dire par la comparaison, dont il s'est servi, lorsqu'il suppose que l'Espace infini est, pour ainsi dire, le Sensorium de l'Etre qui est présent partout."

A simpler way of putting the case may be to point out that the comparison of a Sensorium is intended, like other similitudes we have reviewed, to hold in only one point. Newton uses it apparently to localize the idea of immediate intuition. In this way all Space, the whole Universe, with its moving contents, which transcend the farthest flight of human imagination are,—not distantly,—but immediately present to the mind of God.

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Passing from these thoughts which may illustrate, but cannot explain, a subject dark with excess of splendour, we now enter on a series of extracts so chosen as to furnish an ample examination of the several ideas involved in the philosophy of Design, and an estimate of their several values. It is evidently important that the reader should possess some means of forming clear conceptions respecting the nature of these ideas, and the collection now appended, aims at saving him the trouble of a tedious search. Any points which may have appeared perplexing or obscure in the preceding Chapter will, it is hoped, be made sufficiently plain by a perusal of the following pages.

The first in this class of passages is taken from Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. No one probably was ever much better fitted by training and attainment than that eminent writer for the investigation he here undertakes. We must, however, caution the reader against supposing that Dr. Whewell means to introduce him into a world of Platonism. The ideas he speaks of may be illustrated in this way. Suppose a person constructs a right line according to Euclid's definition and draws it evenly between its extreme points, his mind has immediately an impression of rightness or straightness, which he attaches to all lines actually so constructed or conceived of as theoretically possible. This idea of straightness is absolute and universal. So, again, looking at two such lines, he knows that they, cannot, in the nature of things inclose a space, and this idea likewise is universal and absolutely true.

With the nature of these ideas as a psychological question, the reader need not concern himself for our present purpose. It is sufficient to observe they are brought into activity by a practical occasion. Whether they were wholly or partially pre-existent—or whether they represent a state of our Reason evoked by the occasion—are points which make no difference to their exact strength of validity. We find as a matter of fact in going through life that this particular class of ideas is so very true that it enables us to gauge the material universe. Yet notably enough, Hume in his Treatise (I. 247, seq.) reduces applied mathematics to a species of probability.

Other ideas having various degrees of validity and practical necessity are involved in the diverse processes which pertain to the inductive sciences. Dr. Whewell's work was written for the purpose of elucidating them, which he does at great length. To some such ideas, principles, and beliefs we shall advert by and bye.

All that seems now necessary is to remark that the distinguished author's general division (Book IX.) where our extract will be found, is concerned with the Philosophy of Biology, and that the paragraphs quoted are sections of its chapter VI., "On the Idea of Final Causes."

"1. By an examination of those notions which enter into all our reasonings and judgments on living things, it appears that we conceive animal life as a vortex or cycle of moving matter in which the form of the vortex determines the motions, and these motions again support the form of the vortex: the stationary parts circulate the fluids, and the fluids nourish the permanent parts. Each portion ministers to the others, each depends upon the other. The parts make up the whole, but the existence of the whole is essential to the preservation of the parts. But parts existing under such conditions are organs, and the whole is organized. This is the fundamental conception of organization. 'Organized beings,' says the physiologist,[79] 'are composed of a number of essential and mutually dependent parts.'—'An organized product of nature,' says the great metaphysician,[80] 'is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means.'

"2. It will be observed that we do not content ourselves with saying that in such a whole, all the parts are mutually dependent. This might be true even of a mechanical structure; it would be easy to imagine a framework in which each part should be necessary to the support of each of the others; for example, an arch of several stones. But in such a structure the parts have no properties which they derive from the whole. They are beams or stones when separate; they are no more when joined. But the same is not the case in an organized whole. The limb of an animal separated from the body, loses the properties of a limb and soon ceases to retain even its form.

"3. Nor do we content ourselves with saying that the parts are mutually causes and effects. This is the case in machinery. In a clock, the pendulum by means of the escapement causes the descent of the weight, the weight by the same escapement keeps up the motion of the pendulum. But things of this kind may happen by accident. Stones slide from a rock down the side of a hill and cause it to be smooth; the smoothness of the slope causes stones still to slide. Yet no one would call such a slide an organized system. The system is organized, when the effects which take place among the parts are essential to our conception of the whole; when the whole would not be a whole, nor the parts, parts, except these effects were produced; when the effects not only happen in fact, but are included in the idea of the object; when they are not only seen, but foreseen; not only expected, but intended: in short when, instead of being causes and effects, they are ends and means, as they are termed in the above definition.

"Thus we necessarily include, in our idea of Organization, the notion of an End, a Purpose, a Design; or, to use another phrase which has been peculiarly appropriated in this case, a Final Cause. This idea of a Final Cause is an essential condition in order to the pursuing our researches respecting organized bodies....

"5. This has already been confirmed by reference to fact; in the History of Physiology, I have shown that those who studied the structure of animals were irresistibly led to the conviction that the parts of this structure have each its end or purpose;—that each member and organ not merely produces a certain effect or answers a certain use, but is so framed as to impress us with the persuasion that it was constructed for that use;—that it was intended to produce the effect. It was there seen that this persuasion was repeatedly expressed in the most emphatic manner by Galen;—that it directed the researches and led to the discoveries of Harvey;—that it has always been dwelt upon as a favourite contemplation, and followed as a certain guide, by the best anatomists;—and that it is inculcated by the physiologists of the profoundest views and most extensive knowledge of our own time. All these persons have deemed it a most certain and important principle of physiology, that in every organized structure, plant or animal, each intelligible part has its allotted office:—each organ is designed for its appropriate function:—that nature, in these cases, produces nothing in vain: that, in short, each portion of the whole arrangement has its final cause; an end to which it is adapted, and in this end, the reason that it is where and what it is.

"6. This Notion of Design in organized bodies must, I say, be supplied by the student of organization out of his own mind: a truth which will become clearer if we attend to the most conspicuous and acknowledged instances of design. The structure of the eye, in which the parts are curiously adjusted so as to produce a distinct image on the retina, as in an optical instrument;—the trochlear muscle of the eye, in which the tendon passes round a support and turns back, like a rope round a pulley;—the prospective contrivances for the preservation of animals, provided long before they are wanted, as the milk of the mother, the teeth of the child, the eyes and the lungs of the fœtus:—these arrangements, and innumerable others, call up in us a persuasion that Design has entered into the plan of animal form and progress. And if we bring in our minds this conception of Design, nothing can more fully square with and fit it, than such instances as these. But if we did not already possess the Idea of Design;—if we had not had our notion of mechanical contrivance awakened by inspection of optical instruments, or pulleys, or in some other way;—if we had never been conscious ourselves of providing for the future;—if this were the case, we could not recognize contrivance and prospectiveness in such instances as we have referred to. The facts are, indeed, admirably in accordance with these conceptions, when the two are brought together: but the facts and the conceptions come together from different quarters—from without and from within.

"7. We may further illustrate this point by referring to the relations of travellers who tell us that when consummate examples of human mechanical contrivance have been set before savages, they have appeared incapable of apprehending them as proofs of design. This shows that in such cases the Idea of Design had not been developed in the minds of the people who were thus unintelligent: but it no more proves that such an idea does not naturally and necessarily arise, in the progress of men's minds, than the confused manner in which the same savages apprehend the relations of space, or number, or cause, proves that these ideas do not naturally belong to their intellects. All men have these ideas; and it is because they cannot help referring their sensations to such ideas, that they apprehend the world as existing in time and space, and as a series of causes and effects. It would be very erroneous to say that the belief of such truths is obtained by logical reasoning from facts. And in like manner we cannot logically deduce design from the contemplation of organic structures; although it is impossible for us, when the facts are clearly before us, not to find a reference to design operating in our minds."

It seems well to add here the practical comments made by Müller and Kant on the passages quoted from them by Dr. Whewell in his first Paragraph. Professor Müller writes thus (Baly's translation, Vol. I., p. 19):—"The manner in which their elements are combined, is not the only difference between organic and inorganic bodies; there is in living organic matter a principle constantly in action, the operations of which are in accordance with a rational plan, so that the individual parts which it creates in the body, are adapted to the design of the whole; and this it is which distinguishes organism. Kant says, 'The cause of the particular mode of existence of each part of a living body resides in the whole, while in dead masses each part contains this cause within itself.' This explains why a mere part separated from an organized whole generally does not continue to live; why, in fact, an organized body appears to be one and indivisible."

Before proceeding to the great Metaphysician, it may be interesting to place in connection with this extract from Müller, certain views of other distinguished physiologists. Sir C. Bell states his own opinions on the connection of Life and Organization in this manner (Appendix to Paley's Natural Theology by Sir Charles Bell, commencing with pp. 211-13):—"Archdeacon Paley has, in these two introductory chapters, given us the advantage of simple, but forcible language, with extreme ingenuity, in illustration. But for his example, we should have felt some hesitation in making so close a comparison between design, as exhibited by the Creator in the animal structure, and the mere mechanism, the operose and imperfect contrivances of human art.

"Certainly, there may be a comparison; for a superficial and rapid survey of the animal body may convey the notion of an apparatus of levers, pulleys, and ropes—which maybe compared with the spring, barrel, and fusee, the wheels and pinions, of a watch. But if we study the texture of animal bodies more curiously, and especially if we compare animals with each other—for example, the simple structure of the lower creatures with the complicated structure of those higher in the scale of existence—we shall see, that in the lowest links of the chain animals are so simple, that we should almost call them homogeneous; and yet in these we find life, sensibility, and motion. It is in the animals higher in the scale that we discover parts having distinct endowments, and exhibiting complex mechanical relations. The mechanical contrivances which are so obvious in man, for instance, are the provisions for the agency and dominion of an intellectual power over the materials around him.

"We mark this early, because there are authors who, looking upon this complexity of mechanism, confound it with the presence of life itself, and think it a necessary adjunct—nay, even that life proceeds from it: whereas the mechanism which we have to examine in the animal body is formed with reference to the necessity of acting upon or receiving impressions from, things external to the body—a necessary condition of our state of existence in a material world.

"Many have expressed their opinion very boldly on the necessary relation between organization and life, who have never extended their views to the system of nature. To place man, an intelligent and active being, in this world of matter, he must have properties bearing relation to that matter. The existence of matter implies an agency of certain forces;—the particles of bodies must suffer attraction and repulsion; and the bodies formed by the balance of these influences upon their atoms or particles must have weight or gravity, and possess mechanical properties. So must the living body, independently of its peculiar endowments, have similar composition and qualities, and have certain relations to the solids, fluids, gases, heat, light, electricity, or galvanism, which are around it. "Without these, the intellectual principle could receive no impulse—could have no agency and no relation to the material world. The whole body must gravitate or have weight; without which it could neither stand securely, nor exert its powers on the bodies around it. But for this, muscular power itself, and all the appliances which are related to that power, would be useless. When, therefore, it is affirmed that organization or construction is necessary to life, we may at least pause in giving assent, under the certainty that we see another and a different reason for the construction of the body. Thus we perceive, that as the body must have weight to have power, so must it have mechanical contrivance, or arrangement of its parts. As it must have weight, so must it be sustained by a skeleton; and when we examine the bones, which give the body height and shape, we find each column (for in that sense a bone may be first taken) adjusted with the finest attention to the perpendicular weight that it has to bear, as well as to the lateral thrusts to which it is subject in the motions of the body."... Again p. 405, seq.

... "Mr. Hunter illustrated the subject thus:—Death is apparent or real. A man dragged out of the water, and to appearance dead, is, notwithstanding, alive, according to the definition we have given. The living endowments of the individual parts are not exhausted. The sensibility may be yet roused; the nerves which convey the impression may yet so far retain their property, that other motor nerves may be influenced through them; the muscles may be once more concatenated, and drawn into a simultaneous action. That vibratory motion which we have just said may be witnessed in a muscle recently cut out of the body, may be so excited in a class of muscles—for example, in the muscles of inspiration—that the apparently dead draws an inspiration. Here is the first of a series of vital motions which excites the others, and the heart beats, and the blood circulates, and the sensibilities are restored; and the mind, which was in the condition of one asleep, is roused into activity and volition, and all the common phenomena of life are resuscitated. Such is the series of phenomena which is presented in apparent death from suffocation; but, if the death has been from an injury of some vital part, the sensibilities and properties of action in the rest of the body, though resident for a time, have lost their relations, and there is a link wanting in that chain of vital actions which restores animation. Here, then, there can be no resuscitation; and the death of the individual parts of the body rapidly succeeds the apparent death of the body.

"We perceive now that our original conception of life and the terms we use respecting it, in common parlance, are but ill-adapted to this subject when philosophically considered. We early associate life and motion so intimately that the one stands for the other. If we then investigate by anatomy, we find a curious and minute mechanism in operation, an engine and tubes for circulation, and, in short, an internal motion of every particle of the frame; and the anatomist is also led into the error of associating in his mind life with motion and organization. But when we consider the subject more closely, and divest ourselves of habits and prejudices associated with words, we perceive that, without making any vain and even dangerous attempt at definition, life is first to be contemplated as the peculiarity distinguishing one of two classes into which all matter must be arranged; the one class, which embraces all living matter, is subject to a controlling influence which resists the chemical agents, and produces a series of revolutions, in an order and at periods prescribed; the other, dead matter, is subject to lapse and change under chemical agency and the common laws of matter.

"Let us examine the body of a perfect or a complicated animal. We find each organ possessed of a different power. But there is as yet no conventional language adapted to our discourse on this subject, and that is the source of many mistakes; for when a man even like Mr. Hunter had his mind illuminated upon this science, how was he to frame his language, when every word that he used had already a meaning which had no reference to the discovery he had made—to the distinct qualities which he had ascertained to belong to the living parts?...

"The difference between dead and living matter will appear to be, that in the one instance the particles are permanently arranged and continue to exhibit their proper character, as we term it, until by ingenuity and practice some means are found to withdraw the arranging or uniting influence; and then the matter is chemically dissolved: resolves into its elements, and forms new combinations: whilst the life continues, not simply to arrange the particles, and to give them the order or organization of the animal body, but to whirl them in a series of revolutions, during all which the material is passive, the law being in the life. The order and succession of these changes and their duration do not result from the material of the frame, which is the same in all animals, but from that influence which we term life, and which is superadded to the material." (Ibid. 408.)

Writing on Function Mr. Herbert Spencer discusses the following question. Its interest to our argument is unmistakable.

"Does Structure originate Function, or does Function originate Structure? is a question about which there has been disagreement. Using the word Function in its widest signification, as the totality of all vital actions, the question amounts to this—Does Life produce Organization, or does Organization produce Life?

"To answer this question is not easy, since we habitually find the two so associated that neither seems possible without the other; and they appear uniformly to increase and decrease together.... There is, however, one fact implying that Function must be regarded as taking precedence of Structure. Of the lowest Rhizopods, which present no distinctions of parts, and nevertheless feed and grow and move about, Prof. Huxley has remarked that they exhibit Life without Organization....

"It may be argued that on the hypothesis of Evolution, Life necessarily comes before organization. On this hypothesis, organic matter in a state of homogeneous aggregation, must precede organic matter in a state of heterogeneous aggregation. But since the passing from a structureless state to a structured state, is itself a vital process, it follows that vital activity must have existed while there was yet no structure: structure could not else arise. That function takes precedence of structure, seems also implied in the definition of Life. If Life consists of inner actions so adjusted as to balance outer actions—if the actions are the substance of Life, while the adjustment of them constitutes its form; then, may we not say that the actions to be formed must come before that which forms them—that the continuous change which is the basis of function, must come before the structure which brings function into shape? Or again, since throughout all phases of Life up to the highest, every advance is the effecting of some better adjustment of inner to outer actions; and since the accompanying new complexity of structure is simply a means of making possible this better adjustment; it follows that function is from beginning to end the determining cause of structure."—Principles of Biology, by Mr. Herbert Spencer, p. 153, seq.

We now return to Kant, from whom Dr. Whewell quoted the sentence—"An organized product of nature is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means." Passing by a metaphysical paragraph expressed in a manner too technical for the general reader, Kant's practical comment on this sentence runs as follows:—

"Dass die Zergliederer der Gewächse und Thiere, um ihre Structur zu erforschen und die Gründe einsehen zu können, warum und zu welchem Ende solche Theile, warum eine solche Lage und Verbindung der Theile und gerade diese innere Form ihnen gegeben worden, jene Maxime: dass nichts in einem solchen Geschöpf UMSONST sey, als unumgänglich nothwendig annehmen und sie eben so, als den Grundsatz der allgemeinen Naturlehre: dass Nichts von ungefähr geschehe, geltend machen, ist bekannt. In der That können sie sich auch von diesem teleologischen Grundsatze eben so wenig lossagen, als dem allgemeinen physischen, weil, so wie bei Veranlassung des letzteren gar keine Erfahrung überhaupt, so bei der des ersteren Grundsatzes kein Leitfaden für die Beobachtung einer Art von Naturdinge, die wir einmal teleologisch unter dem Begriffe der Naturzwecke gedacht haben, übrig bleiben würde.

"Denn dieser Begriff führt die Vernunft in eine ganz andere Ordnung der Dinge, als die eines blossen Mechanism der Natur, der uns hier nicht mehr genug thun will. Eine Idee soll der Möglichkeit des Naturproducts zum Grunde liegen. Weil diese aber ein absolute Einheit der Vorstellung ist, statt dessen die Materie eine Vielheit der Dinge ist, die für sich keine bestimmte Einheit der Zusammensetzung an die Hand geben kann, so muss, wenn jene Einheit der Idee, sogar als Bestimmungsgrund a priori eines Naturgesetzes der Causalität einer solchen Form des Zusammengesetzten dienen soll, der Zweck der Natur auf ALLES, was in ihrem Producte liegt, erstreckt werden; weil, wenn wir einmal dergleichen Wirkung im Ganzen auf einen übersinnlichen Bestimmungsgrund über den blinden Mechanism der Natur hinaus beziehen, wir sie auch ganz nach diesem Princip beurtheilen müssen und kein Grund da ist, die Form eines solchen Dinges noch zum Theil vom letzteren als abhängig anzunehmen, da alsdann bei der Vermischung ungleichartiger Principien, gar keine sichere Regel der Beurtheilung übrig bleiben würde." Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Section 65.

For the benefit of those who find Kant's German difficult we subjoin a neat French Translation from the pen of M. Barni.

"On sait que ceux qui dissèquent les plantes et les animaux pour en étudier la structure, et pouvoir reconnaître pourquoi et à quelle fin telles parties leur ont été données, pourquoi telle disposition et tel arrangement des parties, et précisément cette forme intérieure, admettent comme indispensablement nécessaire cette maxime que rien n'existe en vain dans ces créatures, et lui accordent une valeur égale à celle de ce principe de la physique générale, que rien n'arrive par hasard. Et en effet ils ne peuvent pas plus rejeter ce principe téléologique que le principe universel de la physique; car, de même qu'en l'absence de ce dernier il n'y aurait plus d'expérience possible en général, de même, sans le premier, il n'y aurait plus de fil conducteur pour l'observation d'une espèce de choses de la nature, que nous avons une fois conçues téléologiquement sous le concept des fins de la nature.

"En effet ce concept introduit la raison dans un tout autre ordre de choses que celui du pur mécanisme de la nature, qui ne peut plus ici nous satisfaire. Il faut qu'une idée serve de principe à la possibilité de la production de la nature. Mais comme une idée est une unité absolue de réprésentation, tandis que la matière est une pluralité de choses qui par elle-même ne peut fournir aucune unité déterminée de composition, si cette unité de l'idée doit servir, comme principe a priori, à déterminer une loi naturelle à la production d'une forme de ce genre, il faut que la fin de la nature s'étende à tout ce qui est contenu dans sa production. En effet, dès que pour expliquer un certain effet, nous cherchons, au-dessus de l'aveugle mécanisme de la nature, un principe supra-sensible et que nous l'y rapportons en général, nous devons le juger tout entier d'après ce principe; et il n'y a pas de raison pour regarder la forme de cette chose comme dépendant encore en partie de l'autre principe, car alors, dans le mélange de principes hétérogènes, il ne resterait plus de règle sûre pour le jugement." Critique du Jugement, Section 65.

Kant is not in any dress the easiest of thinkers to follow—a result possibly consequent upon the resemblance which his writings bear to trains of reasoning as they pass from the lips of one who thinks aloud. The following paragraph from another work of Dr. Whewell's may be useful to some minds as a comment upon this portion of Kant's teleology.

"There is yet one other Idea which I shall mention, though it is one about which difficulties have been raised, since the consideration of such difficulties may be instructive: the Idea of a purpose, or as it is often termed, a Final Cause, in organized bodies. It has been held, and rightly, that the assumption of a Final Cause of each part of animals and plants is as inevitable as the assumption of an efficient cause of every event. The maxim, that in organized bodies nothing is in vain, is as necessarily true as the maxim that nothing happens by chance. I have elsewhere shown fully that this Idea is not deduced from any special facts, but is assumed as a law governing all facts in organic nature, directing the researches and interpreting the observations of physiologists. I have also remarked that it is not at variance with that other law, that plants and that animals are constructed upon general plans, of which plans, it may be, we do not see the necessity, though we see how wide is their generality. This Idea of a purpose,—of a Final Cause,—then, thus supplied by our minds, is found to be applicable throughout the organic world. It is in virtue of this Idea that we conceive animals and plants as subject to disease; for disease takes place when the parts do not fully answer their purpose; when they do not do what they ought to do. How is it then that we thus find an Idea which is supplied by our own minds, but which is exemplified in every part of the organic world? Here perhaps the answer will be readily allowed. It is because this Idea is an Idea of the Divine Mind. There is a Final Cause in the constitution of these parts of the universe, and therefore we can interpret them by means of the Idea of Final Cause. We can see a purpose, because there is a purpose. Is it too presumptuous to suppose that we can thus enter into the Ends and Purposes of the Divine Mind? We willingly grant and declare that it would be presumptuous to suppose that we can enter into them to any but a very small degree. They doubtless go immeasurably beyond our mode of understanding or conceiving them. But to a certain extent we can go. We can go so far as to see that they are Ends and Purposes. It is not a vain presumption in us to suppose that we know that the eye was made for seeing and the ear for hearing. In this the most pious of men see nothing impious: the most cautious philosophers see nothing rash. And that we can see thus far into the designs of the Divine Mind, arises, we hold, from this:—that we have an Idea of Design and of Purpose which, so far as it is merely that, is true; and so far, is Design and Purpose in the same sense in the one case and in the other."[81]

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It will be well worth while to close this present series of illustrations by a review of Professor Huxley's last published and best considered positions on Teleology. He printed, in 1871, an article on Haeckel's "Natürliche Schöpfungs Geschichte," and has now entitled it "The Genealogy of Animals," and included it in his recent volume of Critiques. We may therefore assume that we here find the distinguished Biologist's deliberate opinions. He says, p. 305, "The Teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or one of the higher Vertebrata,[82] was made with the precise structure which it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless it is necessary to remember that there is a wider Teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day.

"Consider a kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours, minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries 'cuckoo!' and perhaps shows the phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever clockmaker could predict all it will do after an examination of its structure.

"If the evolution theory is correct, the molecular structure of the cosmic gas stands in the same relation to the phenomena of the world as the structure of the clock to its phenomena."

Mr. Huxley's comparisons[83] are always amusing, partly because they are of an unlooked for description. They also keep up the attention of his readers or hearers. But they have one great fault—the fault we noticed in explaining the nature of analogical argument—they carry away the mind too far, and lead the reader often, sometimes the writer himself, into very serious oversights. Let us take notice how the Professor carries out his present similitude. "Now let us suppose a death-watch, living in the clock-case, to be a learned and intelligent student of its works. He might say, 'I find here nothing but matter and force and pure mechanism from beginning to end,' and he would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous 'tick! tick!' so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism to the pendulum, to the fact that the one thing the clock did always and without intermission was to tick, and that all the rest of its phenomena were intermittent and subordinate to ticking! For all this, it is certain that kitchen clocks are not contrived for the purpose of making a ticking noise.

"Thus the teleological theorist would be as wrong as the mechanical theorist, among our death-watches; and, probably, the only death-watch who would be right would be the one who should maintain that the sole thing death-watches could be sure about was the nature of the clock-works and the way they move; and that the purpose of the clock lay wholly beyond the purview of beetle faculties.

"Substitute 'cosmic vapour' for 'clock,' and 'molecules' for 'works,' and the application of the argument is obvious." (pp. 306, 7.)

One thing is very obvious here—and that is a flaw. State the case as a proposition thus—One or both of the two beetles is to the clock and its maker, as man is to the world and its Maker. A tremendous assumption—surely as sufficient to have startled Francis Bacon as the apparition of a new Idol. Is there any possible reason for elevating a death-watch—thinking in character as a death-watch—into a capable interpreter of clocks? Moreover, the ground principle of our human Teleology is that Man holds a lofty relation, not to the Universe only, but to its Maker likewise. He claims, in a word, the most sublime of all earthly kinships. The very fact that he can look with intelligent and admiring appreciation upon the works of God, justifies his belief that he has a real insight into their excellence, and is so far at least akin to the mind of God. If Mr. Huxley meant that a proportionate degree of insight into clock-making was possessed by his beetles, they would surely have been able to read the clock's dial-plate and understand the lesson conveyed by its pointers. The death-watch would at least say "labuntur horæ"—and comprehend that time was being registered—although he might even then fall far short of our human belief "pereunt et imputantur," and fail of knowing that time registers itself in a record of moral good and evil.

The truth is that all mixing up manlike attributes with brute animality, and what seems ten times worse, with machines of wood and metal, can be nothing better than an attempt to produce a sound and prolific offspring from some ill-assorted and heterogeneous hybridism.

We have adverted to this peculiarity of style before and venture upon doing so again, because all admirers of Mr. Huxley's great powers (and who can read his writings without such admiration?) may surely be justified in wishing that he would discard it at once and for ever. Its practical effect is apparently to assume the real point at issue and to cover up the tacit assumption. That he is really no chance offender in this respect may be gathered from a few instances noted at random. We have just had a couple of philosophic death-watches[84]—one a Teleologist, the other a Mechanicist—the lucubrations of both being neither exactly human, nor yet Coleopterous. We observed before a righteous clock[85]—regularly moral if regularly wound up. He has besides a machine, undescribed but endued with a gift of ratiocination[86]—and more curious still a piano[87] which listens when it is played upon, and though possessed of only one sense (hearing) succeeds in building up "endless ideas" of a certain cast and cogency. From this self-educated instrument much may of course be looked for, and accordingly we find

"Its cogitative faculties immersed

In cogibundity of cogitation,"

till it evolves from the depth of its consciousness something like an idealistic theory of sound. This hypothesis, Mr. Huxley in reply to his piano, refutes, first by an appeal to the material substance of the instrument itself; and secondly to the existence of a musician who plays upon it. Will he permit us to accept in like manner the fact of our own nobler subsistence, and also the being of One Who attunes its secret heart-strings to notes of sublime melody?

The monsters aforecited irresistibly remind us of a repartee of Goldsmith's. He wittily said that Dr. Johnson would make little fishes talk like great whales. Had they done so it may be doubted whether the Doctor's idolatrous biographer would have discovered a minnowy mind beneath their Johnsonian utterances. And we confess to a difficulty of our own. The righteous clock is indeed genuinely Huxleian, but what shall we say of his mechanical logic, his piano, and his death-watches? By way of illustrating our perplexity let us suppose some rural sexton to mix up his own instincts with those of a biological burying beetle. The destiny of all flesh would naturally be determined in the first place by a decent covering of earth. But what about its final end? Would that be an aldermanic beetle feast or a Resurgam?

Think again how a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might breathe a benevolent spirit into a much employed dissecting knife. The sharp thing would certainly entertain a repugnance to the horrors of vivisection. There might also be a denial of its utility based on the scalpel's personal experience, or perhaps a moral doubt as to whether such means are justified by the ends proposed. Would Mr. Huxley listen to the remonstrance and undertake to lift up his powerful voice at Paris or at Berlin besides a few other remote places which need not be particularized?

Or finally what ear would he lend to a magnifying glass accustomed to habits of observation and possessed by the soul of Spurzheim. Suppose it should affirm that a slice of Destructiveness is recognizably different in structure from a section of Benevolence; and Acquisitiveness in like manner distinguishable from Ideality! Yet a humanitarian scalpel or Spurzheim magnifying glass may be thought a Huxleian phenomenon.

A truce to such mongrel meditations. We gladly turn away from them and continue our quotations from the Professor's sentiments delivered in propria persona, recommencing at the place where our last extract broke off. (p. 307.)

"The teleological and the mechanical views of nature, are not necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe."

We quite agree with Mr. Huxley that Mechanism never can exclude final causes, and that a thorough-going theory of Evolution (taken apart from its excrescences) disables the theorist from all real disproof of intention or Design. As we said before, the question of how the theorist's primordial arrangement began, is left unprovided for. And if a beginning, so certainly an end. The more steadily the first state of the Universe conceivable by Science is contemplated, the wider and more determinate the view thus taken, the more evident it becomes that the ground occupied by Natural Theology is not fenced off by the iron pale of Mechanism. The fencer is (as Huxley says) "at the mercy of the Teleologist."

The Professor's next sentence deserves careful consideration—"On the other hand, if the teleologists assert that this, that, or the other result of the working of any part of the mechanism of the universe is its purpose and final cause, the mechanist can always inquire how he knows that it is more than an unessential incident—the mere ticking of the clock, which he mistakes for its function."

How far this criticism holds good of many well-meant treatises filled with special instances of Design is a question for candid consideration. Meantime the whole sentence amounts to this conclusion:—We must distinguish between such wide arguments as Baden Powell's, and the details of certain writers who have dealt with what they thought good examples and illustrations of a grand universal principle. And that such is Mr. Huxley's meaning we may perceive from another paragraph immediately preceding our first extract. (p. 305.)

"In more than one place, Professor Haeckel enlarges upon the service which the Origin of Species has done, in favouring what he terms the 'causal or mechanical' view of living nature as opposed to the 'teleological or vitalistic' view. And no doubt it is quite true that the doctrine of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and coarser forms of Teleology. But perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer."

Now, such being the state of facts, we may refuse to say with Huxley that the following question (asked p. 307) is "not irrational." "Why trouble oneself about matters which are out of reach, when the working of the mechanism itself, which is of infinite practical importance, affords scope for all our energies?"

We cannot forego our trouble, for two reasons. First, according to the statements before quoted, Mr. Darwin's researches have improved the case for Teleology. Advocates of Design may therefore take courage, they have gained a potent alliance. Secondly, "the practical working of the Mechanism itself" is very far, we think, from being our All—so far, indeed, that it sinks into insignificance compared with the hope of Immortality. Our highest interest lies in gathering such information as we can regarding Him with Whom we have to do as the Arbiter of our future existence. Above all things, we desire Him to be our Father and our Friend. Perchance His attributes are not matters out of reach. He may be very near to every one of us, if we are indeed His Offspring.

Another opinion of Professor Huxley's is of great auxiliary value to the argument from Design. The structures mentioned have to some minds appeared as its most serious difficulties. "Professor Haeckel," he explains, "has invented a new and convenient name, 'Dysteleology,' for the study of the 'purposelessnesses' which are observable in living organisms—such as the multitudinous cases of rudimentary and apparently useless structures. I confess, however, that it has often appeared to me that the facts of Dysteleology cut two ways. If we are to assume, as evolutionists in general do, that useless organs atrophy, such cases as the existence of lateral rudiments of toes, in the foot of a horse, place us in a dilemma. For, either these rudiments are of no use to the animal, in which case, considering that the horse has existed in its present form since the Pliocene epoch, they surely ought to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which case they are of no use as arguments against Teleology." (p. 307.) It would be hard to overestimate the value of this opinion, still more hard to overrate its genuine and outspoken honesty.

Mr. Huxley places at the end of his recent volume a passage from Bishop Berkeley which we will venture to borrow by way of conclusion to this lengthy note:—

"You see, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain, how it is forced upwards in a round column to a certain height, at which it breaks and falls back into the basin from whence it rose; its ascent as well as its descent proceeding from the same uniform law or principle of gravitation. Just so, the same principles which, at first view, lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense."

Adsit omen! May it be even thus with our large-minded Professor and with all other sovereign princes of Biology—Ἵλεως Ἀσκληπίος !

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[CHAPTER III.]

CONDITIONS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

"The words which the great German poet put into the mouth of Mephistopheles when describing himself to Faust, afford perhaps the most concise and forcible statement of what we may call the anti-scientific spirit:—

'Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint,

Dem alles, was entsteht, zuwider ist.'

The true spirit of science is certainly affirmative, not negative; for, as I mentioned just now, its history teaches us that the development of our knowledge usually takes place through two or more simultaneous ideas of the same phenomenon, quite different from one another, both of which ultimately prove to be parts of some more general truth; so that a confident belief in one of those ideas does not involve or justify a denial of the others."—Address of the President of the British Association, 1873-4. p. 13.

"Philosophy is but wise and disciplined thought upon the subjects on which all men think. The minds of men, left to their own natural working, will never cease to think on these things; and if Philosophy should cease to attempt to think wisely on them, she abandons her position as a guide. She has been to blame for the carelessness of her procedure, for the overweeningness of her pretensions. But the remedy is soberness, not scepticism. Is it, after all, an evil, that in some directions we fail to attain certainty by mere thinking?... As in nature, the picture you see is not broad light and dark, but a thousand tender tones and hues melting into each other, and vibrating together between the light and dark: so is the mind of man." Archbishop of York—on The limits of Philosophical Inquiry, pp. 25-26.

"To the knowledge of the most contemptible effect in nature, 'tis necessary to know the whole Syntax of Causes, and their particular circumstances, and modes of action. Nay, we know nothing, till we know ourselves, which are the summary of all the world without us, and the Index of the Creation." Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing, Chap. xxii. Ed. 1. p. 217.

"A branching channel, with a mazy flood?

The purple stream that through my vessels glides,

Dull and unconscious flows, like common tides:

The pipes through which the circling juices stray,

Are not that thinking I, no more than they:

This frame compacted with transcendent skill,

Of moving joints obedient to my will,

Nurs'd from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree,

Waxes and wastes; I call it mine, not me."

Dr. Arbuthnot.

"'To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, 'what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears Clothes. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He feels; power has been given him to Know, to Believe; nay does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, "the true Shekinah is Man:" where else is the God's-Presence manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow man?'"—Sartor Resartus, Chap. x. Pure Reason.

SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER III.

This Chapter may be characterized as a parallel between the difficulties alleged to be fatal against Theism, and the difficulties attaching to very various departments of human knowledge, embracing its most necessary and its most certainly accepted kinds. From this parallel the conclusion becomes evident, that whoever accepts one set of truths cannot be debarred by these or similar difficulties from accepting the higher truth likewise. That such an acceptance is natural and valid appears further evident from the fact that a knowledge of God belongs to the class of Practical beliefs, and is enforced by the same reasonable necessity. This topic forms the transition to Chapter IV. on "Our Reasonable Beliefs."

The same inferences are also stated in a destructive form, e.g., Should a thinker choose to deny the possibility of Theism, he ought (if consistent) to deny all those truths which stand or fall by a parallel set of reasonings. But by doing this he lands himself in a state of doubt, so extreme and thorough, that the whole Universe becomes a rayless blank.

A corollary is added on Materialism.

Analysis—Man the interpreter of Nature. Nature gives by answering our interrogations; these must depend on our powers of assimilating knowledge. Some questions inevitable, e.g., What are the first grounds of Truth?

Has Man any faculty of apprehending the Infinite? Can we know our own Personality or that of others?—or any Thing in itself? Inference against Scepticism based on human ignorance.

Fallacy of the Unthinkable or Inconceivable. Ideas of Self and not-Self, inexplicable, yet undoubted. From things as they are, let us turn to things as they appear. How do we perceive, hear, see?

Perception as an instrument of Intelligence, inscrutable. We acknowledge the insoluble mystery but accept the fact.

Marvels of eyesight, and their problems. How much and what do we see? Comparison with Sound;—Form, Colour, Tone. Evidence on which we receive sense impressions. Comparison between healthy and diseased sensations,—between our organs of sense and those of animals. We soon arrive at a twilight territory of knowledge and can explain no more.

Imperfections in our powers of Verification. How great is the subjective Element in our perceptions? Idealism,—most difficult to answer when most extreme. Philosophic denial of all proof of external things as distinguished from Mind (e.g., by Mill). Fact-knowledge, and absurdities involved in the ordinary method of defining and alleging Facts. Polar tendencies of Phenomenalism which take the shapes of Idealism and Positivism, resulting in Nihilism or Indifferentism. The end of these things! Mr. Herbert Spencer on Theology, compared with Mr. Huxley, and criticized by Mr. J. Martineau, who denies that the Unknowable can be any object of religious feeling,—a protest strongly maintained by Mr. J. S. Mill.

The difficulties attending every kind of knowledge paralleled with the difficulties alleged against Theism. If the Inexplicable be also the Unknowable, there is an end to all knowledge. We cannot predicate veracity of our human Mind, we cannot even know that we know anything. Mr. J. S. Mill accepts Mind as an inexplicable Fact underlying all other Facts and Beliefs. We must accept ultimate Truths.

Transition to Chapter IV. on the affirmative evidence for our Reasonable Beliefs.

Corollary on Materialism. Far more difficult than its antithesis. Conclusion to be drawn from these difficulties.

Additional Notes and Illustrations.

A.—Account of some theories respecting our Personal Identity.

B.—Helmholtz, Popular Lectures on Recent Progress of the Theory of Vision.

C.—Helmholtz on Specialties of Sensibility.

D.—Popular account of Pure Idealism with critical remarks.

E.—On the Relations of Fact and Theory.

F.—On the "Unknowable."

G.—Mr. J. S. Mill as an Independent Moralist.

Additions to Corollary.

Note H.—Archebiosis, or Spontaneous Generation. I.—On Materialism.

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CHAPTER III.

CONDITIONS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

Is the great Book of Nature—the world we live in—a closed or open book to Man? On this question all have thought often,—and many have written much,—students—men of science—religious teachers—poets, and philosophers.

We ask this question of ourselves variously circumstanced, and under various impulses. We ask it if, like Æschylus' watchman, we contemplate

"The congress of the nightly stars

Bright potentates, set proudly in the sky."

Or when we sail upon a sea made solemn by its vastness, dying in far distance, with no boundary except itself, as each swelling wave rises against the sky. We ask it, on some stately mountain top looking down over light and shadow,—over the rest and the motion of the landscape. More earnestly still, perhaps, while from the depth of a twilight valley we admire the sunset lingering upon inapproachable alpine snows;—rosy heights unveiling their loveliness, yet soon to be hidden till the Light of this lower world shall shine afresh amongst their clefts and pinnacles.

And who is not in earnest, as sunset and sunrise remind him how the majestic clock of Time moves on? Yonder glorious luminary has warmed with form and life countless organisms, scattered over mountain summits, in ocean depths, through wild savannahs and forests;—organisms throughout regions of earth, water, air, so remote and inaccessible that their wonderful excellence of beauty has never been beheld by Man's perishable eye. Knowing, as we cannot but know, how soon our own eyelids must close beneath the sun, we yearn within our soul, longing for a truer insight into the great Universe above and beyond us; and for a firmer feeling that we ourselves are an imperishable part of it. Somewhere in this Universe, must surely be contained things brighter and better than those we now possess. Else, why is it clothed so lavishly with half-revealed charms, adapted to touch our most delicate sympathies, to win us from our worse selves, and allure us on like willing captives to its loveliness? Awakened in our senses, awakened in our souls, we desire to know, to feel, and to attain;—these three impulses become our fixed and enduring aspirations.

But, how? We all remember that Undine sought a soul and found a sorrow;—a sorrow the more intolerable, because through its burden she first realized her hard-earned dower of coveted immortality. Yet, as she truly says, every creature cannot but strive after that which is naturally higher than itself.

One secret of progress we soon discover. What Nature can give us depends on what she can tell us. And here is a prevailing motive for the endeavour to unclose fair Nature's book.

Another step in thought is early taken in our day, though the civilized world was slow in reaching it. We soon perceive that Nature's answers must catch their tone and compass from our interrogations. In numerous sciences, this axiom carries the whole theory and practice of experiment;—that grand distinction between Bacon's inductive process, and the induction of the ancient world. In other walks of inquiry, intellectual and moral, the same truth has grown up and blossomed with a ruling idea of the crucial or prerogative question: slow in being framed, and difficult often in the asking, but, when asked, certain to elicit a reply.

A third postulate is also quickly apparent. Our inquiries must be subject, for utility's sake, to our power of assimilating knowledge. And thus our faculty for asking questions is governed by our faculties for apprehending answers.

The last and paramount requirement is forced upon us. Beyond and over all, comes the pressure of our own need and private anxiety. There are many truths which we discern afar off, like features of a smiling land of promise; and, knowing that they must become one day the heritage of mankind, we tend towards them without haste, yet without forgetfulness, and in this temper of mind wait contentedly. But, there are some truths for which we cannot afford to wait. They concern our destinies too closely; they are too near our hearts; too influential on our lives and happiness.

The old question asked in the youth of human philosophy, is the one we all begin by asking in our first confidence and eagerness of pursuit. Ask it in what words we may, it always comes to much the same thing; and if we could answer it, we should answer all questions in one. For, though we clothe our query with various shapes, and seldom put it in the form following, its true meaning is, "what are the realities of the Universe, and what the essential ground of all we see and think?"

It is always worth a thinker's while to look this human problem more than once in the face. Suppose a faculty[88] for such insight granted, it must be different in kind, rather than degree, from our logic of ordinary life. It cannot proceed discursively, abstracting, generalizing, connecting, deducing. It must know—or look at its object directly, just as genius knows, images and conveys to other minds, not through a train of explanatory definition, but by kindling within them a spark of its own light. If there be such a faculty, it will work, (as Aristotle[89] says of the Supreme Intellect,) by what seems to us most like an act of touch; a figure half-shadowed out when we say we grasp or apprehend a truth; and much as St. Paul speaks, in bidding men to seek and feel after and find the Lord.

We are not all conscious of such a faculty. But if dim to some, is it certainly dim to all? Did Plato see farther than Herschel could when he burst the barriers of the sky? Did Schelling at any time behold what Hamilton pronounced invisible?[90]

Or again, if not actually ours now,—if those who have asserted it have spoken in error,—is there a hope that in the Future of Man individual or collective, he will ever grow up to it? The thought is not unknown to physicists as well as moralists. In both camps hopeful minds have conceived the possibility. And, then Mankind will look the secret of the Universe face to face.

Meanwhile, thinking men have laid siege to the absolute Truth by aid of such powers as they commonly call into action. For centuries past, the nature of things in themselves,—and along with (or perhaps above) all other natures, the "Self" within every man has been among the most fascinating of objects pursued by human thought. Yet, how far do we really know the life throbbing in every pulse? Can we tell the secret of our own individuality? We feel it every day;—it endues us with a separate existence, distinctly several, and apart from others, and so intensely vivid to ourselves, that we seem in our own eyes like small centres of the Universe, with men and women,—nay, worlds and stars,—revolving round us.[91] Yet, strange to say, our bodies are at all times undergoing change, sufficient in a few years to eliminate their present frame, and remould a future compound of gradually assimilated elements. And it seems stranger still, that while the law of Change rules supreme in these fabrics,—(built to be continually dissolved and continually built again),—each rude mark and scar maintains its place; no old wound forgets to ache; no cicatrice even, nor superficial blemish, dies quite away. We are always changing, always being transformed; yet, to each of our bodies continues its one individual configuration; within each of our minds its self-collection, its memories, its expectations, and its individual consciousness.[t]

Weighing these inconsistencies together, shall we say that, in any proper sense, we know our own selves? And, if not, can we expect truly to know the self of anything? May we not travel further, and inquire whether we can conceive a self-ness of any kind,—whether the very idea is not to us absolutely inconceivable? And, when this question is answered as it must be answered, need we feel surprised if we fall short of conceiving the self-subsistent God? At what value, therefore, shall we rate sceptical arguments drawn from our failure; and resting on the fallacious consequence, that the inconceivable (or unthinkable as some prefer to call it) is likewise the impossible?[]

That a fallacy really lurks beneath these words,—that the contrary is true, we know as a matter of fact.[92] We entertain really no doubt whatever of our own continued sameness, and individual existence. We are quite sure that our self-ness has, gone on throughout the years of our natural life. How it first became clear to our inward sense, is a point confessedly disputable. Some suppose that it existed as a principle of consciousness,—a kind of primordial instinct in our minds. Others—that our internal impressions, one and all, formed a panoramic scene; impressions from without and impressions from within evenly painted on the retina of the mental eye. Time and comparison were needful to give us the true distinction. Those who think thus usually take another step; and add that resistance to our self-ness first informs us of its being. There is resistance to a muscular sense, somewhat akin to touch, but specialized to feel the kind of impact given by things impenetrable. There is also a resistance which thwarts our desires, endeavours, and determinations. Be this as it may, we never doubt our own identity of being; we never doubt the other-ness and outer-ness of beings like ourselves, and of objects beyond number. Yet, that which makes ourselves and them, what we and they are,—our self-ness and their self-ness—raises a question we cannot answer; here is, we feel, a something which overpasses our means of investigation. Men, however, do not stay to discuss such questions, or to test the origin and limits of intellectual conceptions before accepting the fact. They do not even ask whether Philosophical victory sits on the banner of Idealism, pure or constructive; Realism materialistic or natural;—or whether it crowns any other imaginable variety of cosmological theorem. We are perfectly sure of our facts; and no array of possible difficulties whatsoever can prevail to shake our assurance.

Let us leave for the present, in its native shadows, the central point of our own self; the original centre of our earliest apparent universe. Yet, if we cannot know this first growing-point of our individual life, it may be useful to inquire what can we know about it? can we learn, for example, how that inner vitality, once begun, is maintained and fed?—By a process of receiving into itself, (we are told), the aliment which flows through our senses. We are also told, (as appeared in the last chapter), how very requisite is a knowledge of natural processes. Let us, then, look at this process of sense-alimentation, narrowing the problem as much as possible. We have already cut off one end of it—the germ-point of the self-stimulated; and will now cut off another piece—the assimilation of mental ideas when elaborated. We simply ask how does this food from without, get into us? The widest avenue of entrance is proverbially our sense of eyesight. Its information, (as people in general agree, from Horace down to Mr. Mill), being gathered through many definite impressions, and received from all distances, is at once the most significant, and the most commanding. The first step is clear. We see by impinging rays of light,—movements in a luminiferous ether, making images on the sensitive network of the eye; a circumstance ascertained by the same sense of sight which receives the image. From this delicate surface, begins a second series of movements;—they take place this time in an organized nerve-material, and are carried, like telegraph-currents, to the Sensory. Arrived there, we may next suppose that they excite some new motions, or corpuscular changes. Do we know—can we know any more? Is the grammar or dictionary written which translates them into the language of the mind; or teaches us how we have, since our infancy, worked a perpetual miracle of speech respecting each of them? The eye, as an optical instrument,[v] is a marvel of science displayed; the eye as an instrument of intelligence, especially of human intelligence, is a marvel of inscrutable mystery.

The mysteries of every-day life are the last things dreamed of in every-day philosophy. When we wake up to their existence, it is astonishing to find how continually, without being able to explain things, we can feel, and know them;—know them that is in the sense of acting intelligently (without theorizing) upon them.

The example we have taken, teaches us several good and important lessons. There is in it much we can understand; much that we cannot understand; and a twilight territory between the intelligible and the non-intelligible. All three are, of course, mixed together when we speak of sight,—in itself, a matter of every-day experience. So far as the mechanical construction of an optical chamber goes, everything seems obvious. We can, likewise, perceive how well contrived is the apparatus for washing and wiping the outside transparent surface. Also, the value of its arched hedge against irritants dropping upon the eyeball from above; and of the arrangements for altering both axis and focus instantaneously. But what does this instrument enable us to see? Not the rays of light themselves,—only objects which they illuminate. The space traversed by rays from all suns and all stars, remains itself unseen. The ether which fills space is invisible,—yet its motions make the light of the world.[93] Then, too, the nervous screen on which these ray movements are received, is not sensitive to all transmitted undulations. Red excites the optic nerve by striking it with four hundred and seventy-four millions of millions of wave-impacts in a single second. Violet strikes it in the same time with six hundred and ninety-nine millions of millions of impulses.[94] These two colours are the extremes of the light octave. In an octave of sound, the highest note vibrates twice as quickly as the lowest. So too, the shortest wave of violet is half the length of the longest red wave, and its motion is twice as rapid. But the curious point is that the human ear receives eleven octaves in the scale of sound;[95]—the human eye has a range over only one octave in the scale of light.

Our remarks have carried us over the borders of the twilight territory,—a circumstance we may ascertain by putting into words what we think we know, and our reasons for thinking that we know it. If the eye be in focus, (but not otherwise), a line of light—that is to say moving imponderable matter of extreme tenuity—so passes through its transparent liquids as to strike a sensitive spot, and there produce what is called an image. We apprehend in our minds this image-producing function as a relation between light and the effect realized. A relation definite and exact,—in scientific language a "constant"; which we can formulate into optical laws, and thus express with useful nicety. Taking advantage of the laws thus obtained, and employing that light-power which everywhere blesses our world, we reproduce the like, image upon a screen. Its likeness we gather from comparison, by looking into an eye from without. Both images, thus seen by us, are in point of fact similar sensations.

A philosophic reader may at once perceive what the Idealist will infer respecting this act of comparison. Neither image—on retina or on screen—exists apart from the eye. So far as we know, if there were no eyes there would be no images; and some writers (e.g., Schleiden) have positively affirmed that without eyes all would be, not only to us, but in itself, darkness;—the world absolutely void of Light. But the truth may be summed in a sentence. Light is not for the eye in the same sense that the eye is for light. Light is for other things besides. It exerts its activity on life, animal and vegetable;—on inorganic substances;—and in other ways likewise.—Going no further than our screen, we can so manage matters as to engrave and otherwise fix the image thrown upon it;—in other words our moving line of imponderable matter will produce further effects, chemical and mechanical, visible and palpable.

Proceeding to a cross-examination of the knowledge with which we have credited ourselves, our next business is to try whether we can verify the objectivity of our optical image. Now it impresses sight in two respects,—as superficial form—and as colour. The family of forms is, we are aware widely connected. Sound evokes them. Draw a violin bow across a string stretched over finely silted sand, and the different notes will be correlated by a diversity of shapes,[96] into which the sand will arrange itself. Therefore, we ought to find means of verifying Form without much difficulty. Indeed we do so every day satisfactorily; our hands are perpetually demonstrating the general accuracy of our eyes, and even those delicate instruments our finger-ends, do not always add much to the information sight has given us.

But about colour? Distinct colour-waves have (as we said before) distinct velocities, and are therefore objectively distinguished even in the inorganic universe. They also act differently upon the growth of animals and plants,—and other distinctions might be added. The sensation is, however, our point,—the special thing called colour both by careful speakers and in child parlance,—what do we really know about this? Little indeed except as an impression received by sight. The man born in complete blindness taking a piece of red cloth to examine, described the fabric minutely; but, when asked if he could say anything about its redness, likened that "hue angry and brave" to the sound of a trumpet. A simile most conclusive,—suggested probably by his having often heard of certain "scarlet-coated gentry";—and proving beyond doubt that colour is non-existent in the sensory of a person affected from birth by a deep-seated lesion. To one less thoroughly blind, spectra are possible, and red light may be produced under pressure. It thus appears, that colour must be perceived by a nervous substratum, called the rod and cone layer; and hence we explain our power of distinctly seeing the blood-vessels of the retina lying immediately before that structure.[97]

These curiosities, of vision shew that our powers of verifying shape are superior to our powers of verifying colour;[98] add, too, that the latter sensation, (as an idealist might maintain,) is known to be sometimes unreal, since it occurs without a coloured object. We can produce it, for instance, by gazing at the sun—a phenomenon mentioned by Aristotle. But then, this ideal sense-affection ranges with a variety of others, which taken together constitute a very much wider law. Not to mention many superinduced mental states, we see light under the influence of a touch or blow,—of electricity,—of chemicals, such as narcotic medicines, which attack the nervous system. We hear sound under like appliances stimulating the auditory nerve. And the whole of these affections are to be explained by another Aristotelian doctrine, extended and pushed to its consequences. Special senses have their own proper faculties, and when called into action each exerts its power within its special province. Had Aristotle dissected out nerve-fibres, he might have discovered the larger empire of specialty now known to our anatomists.[99]

Idealism easily widens its doubt, to correspond with the dimensions of the wider nervous law. Does not an aptitude for special impressions, so stringently determined as to translate the antecedent "blow" into the consequent, "light" or "sound," disqualify our senses for giving evidence respecting supposed facts of the outer world? As for the "distinctive impressibility of the eye," as Mr. Bain[100] describes colour, it need not be held real except for our own sensorium,[w] and if colour be a questionable reality, other alleged realities become questionable too. The world we live in, may be a totally different world from what we are taught, generation after generation, to believe it. Who can lay down the limits of what our minds create for themselves outside us?[101] The mental disease of the madman causes his eye to see that which is not. Guilt and sickness fill bedchambers with unreal spectres. Putting disease aside, and taking the case of healthy eye and healthy mind, it is confessedly difficult to define the exact province of each. A boy couched by Cheselden[102] saw all things in one plane; there was no perspective, and objects in the room seemed to touch his eyeballs. The mind creates perspective, how much then may it not create? The mind also refuses to surrender its own associations at the bidding of optical laws. Mr, Wheatstone's ingenious instrument called the Pseudoscope, brings into play laws which reverse the impressions of solidity and hollowness. A person looking through it steadily at the face of a statue sees a hollow mask. The convexity of feature is gone, and a concave set of features (representing the bust reversed) is perceived in its stead. But, let the same person gaze through his pseudoscope ever so long at the face of a human being, and he will look for a like reversal in vain. The flesh and blood features refuse to change;—in other words, the mind refuses to yield its long-accustomed impression.[103] If these things and others like them are fairly considered, what becomes of our readings in the unclosed book of Nature? The nature we see is our own thought reflected back again. Nature's answers take not only tone and compass, but meaning and utterance from our own interrogations. We think that we are assimilating knowledge, when we are actually engaged in manufacturing aliments to suit our own intellectual digestions. The most inward of all things,—our essential self,—at once retired into shadow when we pursued it; and now, in trying to show how self is fed by substance from without, we have learned to suspect that all its food is unsubstantial.[x]

We may henceforth consider ourselves face to face with Sphinx; and it is well to take the true measure of her lineaments. If the above reasoning be sound, to know, is to make a mirror and reflect ourselves back from it. To verify, is to put ourselves in new postures before our infallible mirror. Each fresh item of induction, is a freshly reflected phantom. At all events, the contrary position will never be established. Ignorant as we are, respecting the true centre of our mental firmament, we must necessarily be always more ignorant respecting all possibilities which seemingly outlie its glowing horizon. No one who rationally weighs the worth of a fact, or who decomposes it into its elementary constituents, will ever be absurd enough to imagine that he can disprove the ideal theory by proving the truth of its opposite.

The strongest strain of Idealism comes upon the last sentence. Some years ago, English philosophers had agreed in the conclusion that all debates must for the future be settled by an appeal to facts. Could there be a more happily chosen ground for arbitration?—or one better suited to the calibre of everybody concerning whose business-like reflections we might say, with King Henry,—

"His thinkings are below the moon"?

Some inquiring spirits preferred "law," but then they agreed with all others, (except transcendentalists,) that a law to be valid must also be a fact.

A belief in this settlement still pervades most non-philosophic circles. A fact is now-a-days an infallible remedy for the disturbed mind; just as once

"the sovereign'st thing on earth

Was parmaceti for an inward bruise."

A mind too disturbed to abstain from logical litigation when this receipt is administered, must certainly be afflicted with monomania. Nobody, of course, (whether Idealist or Transcendentalist,) need feel much aggrieved by being called mad. At some time or other, it is the common lot of all, from a murderer proud of being caught red-handed in our day, to a Jewish Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, long ago departed to his rest. Besides, some madnesses are so fortunate as to justify themselves, an event now happening to Idealists.[104] In Germany, France and England, the persuasion gains ground that no tasks are so difficult as first to define, and secondly to establish a fact.

Now the task of a Natural Theologian, is to establish, (if he can), the greatest and most solemn of all facts. In order to do his work honestly, he must ascertain as far as possible the conditions of proof, the ground on which fact-knowledge reposes. And it will be admitted that the problem of evidence raised by Idealism, is difficult, crucial, and underlies all other problems. "The most fundamental questions in philosophy," says Mr. Mill, "are those which seek to determine what we are able to know of external objects, and by what evidence we know it."[105]

This field of inquiry is therefore of the most supreme interest to us. Idealism possesses an additional attraction for any one who argues under a belief in the final victory of truth. Both sides of the argument may be placed in high relief, without incurring the imputation of bad faith, or worse morality; and thus Idealism furnishes what used to be sought for during the days of tournaments,—a strictly neutral, ground.

In this ordeal let no one think a single effort directed

"To crush a butterfly or brain a gnat."

Reasoners on "hard texts" seldom commit any error between premises and conclusion;—granted the former, the other will surely follow. Most oversights occur—or are slipped in—over the first postulates.[106] These generally appear very simple and very true, and pass unquestioned. Yet, no primary truth can ever be very simple to man, else why so many conscientious doubters?

What indeed can seem more simply true than the admission of a fact? Yet facts are often inspissated theories, while many theories are merely explained facts. One of the greatest authorities on Inductive Philosophy writes thus (Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. Ed. 2. Vol. I. p. 45)—"We are often told that such a thing is a Fact; A Fact and not a Theory, with all the emphasis which, in speaking or writing, tone or italics or capitals can give. We see from what has been said, that when this is urged, before we can estimate the truth, or the value of the assertion, we must ask to whom is it a Fact? what habits of thought, what previous information, what Ideas does it imply, to conceive the Fact as a Fact? Does not the apprehension of the Fact imply assumptions which may with equal justice be called Theory and which are perhaps false Theory? in which case, the Fact is no Fact. Did not the ancients assert it as a Fact, that the earth stood still, and the stars moved? and can any Fact have stronger apparent evidence to justify persons in asserting it emphatically than this had?"

The generality of English jurymen might be expected to give an affirmative verdict. For have they not seen with their own eyes the Sun rise up in the East, ascend to the top of the sky, and go down in the West? And is not seeing, believing?

The question, what elements are required to yield the product of trustworthy perception, phenomenon, or fact, is investigated by Dr. Whewell through several pages preceding the one from which we have quoted. After discussing it at length, he writes (p. 42): "And thus, we have an intelligible distinction of Fact and Theory, if we consider Theory as a conscious, and Fact as an unconscious inference, from the phenomena which are presented to our senses."

The subject is in itself so singularly interesting that a few more extracts are added in our Additional Notes.[y] Let the reader, while perusing them, remember that Idealism once so sovereign in its empire, is only the other pole of a line of thought which just now happens to be in the ascendant. Both poles strongly resemble half-truths. And what is more delusive in evidence than a half-truth, or more perilously sophisticating to the mind of him who utters it?

The thorough-paced Idealist deals with the presentations of his inner consciousness, precisely as the Positivist deals with the presentations of his outer senses. They are his phenomena, his facts. Beyond the circumstances of their inward occurrence and succession he knows and can know nothing. You may arrange them into series of antecedents and consequents,—and then the observation becomes a law,—a law of association, uniform order, or necessary connection: whichever you may choose to call it. In one respect, he has an advantage over the Positivist. No thinker equidistant from both, is likely to deny that primary facts are for every man, the phenomena most immediately apparent to his own consciousness.

Amongst ordinary men, however, the reasoning Idealist seldom appears; the Idealist in feeling and temper is by no means rare. A man weary and worn by sorrow or old age, thinks and speaks of his life as very like a dream. And numbers who have exhausted the strength of self-controlling will, loiter along their way, regardless whether a moving panorama on each hand is or is not, an unreality. Like travel-tired travellers down the Danube, or the Rhine, they interweave scenes bright and dark, as they float by, in one endless train of dimly felt reverie.

The same characteristic holds good in regard to many a Positivist. Very few people have ever examined those iron wheels, on which the conclusions of Positively-inclined writers seem to run so rapidly. They may be flawed—they may be true—hardly any one has thought of sounding them. But common life has its Positivism, as well as its Chemistry; and the Positivism of common life is everywhere. It saves labour,—you may take facts as you find them. It troubles no one,—a Pyrrhonic posture is the easiest of attitudes. It frees busy people from moral anxieties, ideal terrors, the shadows of futurity. In short, to men of the world it is neither more nor less than Indifferentism.

The comparison between these two Nihilistic tendencies might be pushed farther, but it has been carried far enough for our purpose. Both sorts, when viewed as principles of practical life, coincide in yielding the conclusion we now wish to deduce. It is folly to be deterred from the pursuit of ultimate truth, by any amount of speculative difficulty whatsoever. And the reason is plain. Practical truths—the beliefs which affect our hearts and lives—are always ultimate truths. To give them up, is to give up our highest and best,—perhaps our all. It is worse than useless to quail before intellectual obstacles. The Difficult soon begins to appear the Impossible.

And soon the result ensues, which might naturally be expected. Is it possible to imagine any discouragement heavier, than the feeling that we can effect little to acquire a knowledge of truth, goodness, and God;—a feeling, that do what we will, all we want most—all that is truly Divine—must remain to us a darkness or a dream? Let any man think in his heart, that what ought to rule his life, and raise him higher than his lower self, is a secret unknowable, and he loses the fear of doing wrong;—for how can he help it?—and the hope of a brighter and better future;—for how shall he attain it? Then, he sits down to wrap himself in cynical self-sufficingness. Inevitable ignorance is soon developed into intellectual Pessimism. The death of hope and fear, makes the man himself a moral Pessimist. Our conscience, sympathy, devotion, happiness in higher and in lower things alike,—if unstirred by vivid emotions—must become dull and blunted. Next follows

"The waveless calm, the slumber of the dead;"—

a state of suspended animation, broken only by fierce stimulants—the galvanisms of, our lower life. These are succeeded, in due course, by spasmodic susceptibilities, which demand at no distant day the anodyne and the narcotic. And—

"Oh, that way madness lies!"—

Therefore we repeat it,—and it cannot too often or too earnestly be repeated,—let no man excuse himself from the pursuit of practical truth[z] by any amount of speculative difficulty whatsoever. It would be a false optimism to say there is no difficulty in thinking truly;—to represent its difficulties as trifles;—or to forget the painful fact that they beset our age of cold erudite criticism, like pitfalls in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. But, must not all things really great and good be toilsome to men who are neither very good nor very great? And have we not, every one of us, who tries to be good, our proper fields of hard yet repaying work? The bee gathers honey where one idle schoolboy sees only thorns and briers—and where another sucks poison.

In our days, Doubt is thorough. So thorough, that it soon ceases to be doubt, and the mind passes quickly from its dim twilight to a rayless blank. Mr. Herbert Spencer puts the case of Theology as follows (First Principles p. 43): "Criticising the essential conceptions involved in the different orders of beliefs, we find no one of them to be logically defensible. Passing over the consideration of credibility, and confining ourselves to that of conceivability, we see that Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism, when rigorously analysed, severally prove to be absolutely unthinkable." These three conceptions the writer does in fact analyse after his own fashion,—briefly first, pp. 30-36,—and further on argues the whole question in extenso. The result, of course, is that all three "beliefs" must finally be abandoned. What then becomes of the Absolute ground, or First Cause of all things? Spencer is too clear-sighted not to acknowledge that there must in reason be a First, and an Absolute. "M. Herbert Spencer," says Ravaisson,[107] "en proclamant la grande maxime que nous ne connaissons rien que de relatif, a fait cependant une réserve importante. L'idée même du relatif, remarque-t-il, ne saurait se comprendre sans celle à laquelle elle est opposée. Et nous concevons, en effet, au delà de toutes les relations de phénomènes, l'absolu: c'est ce quelque chose qui est placé au delà de toute science, et qui est l'objet de la religion; quelque chose seulement de mystérieux, d'obscur, sur quoi on ne peut avoir, selon M. Spencer, aucune lumière." The last negative clause is amply justified on p. 113 of "First Principles." "By continually seeking to know, and being continually thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as The Unknowable." And this closing word becomes with Spencer, the constant name of a Power, the consciousness, of which is "manifested to us through all phenomena."[108]

Such a position, maintained by such a writer, has of course met with ample consideration. Mr. Huxley appears to have arrived at a somewhat similar conclusion. Of Religion he says,[109] "Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has become more scientific than that of the past; because it has not only renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs, and of cherishing the noblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship 'for the most part of the silent sort' at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable."

Concerning this general idea (or negation of Idea) Mr. J. Martineau has made antagonistic observations, by way of criticism on Mr. Spencer's book. "To say," he writes,[110] "that the First Cause is wholly removed from our apprehension is not simply a disclaimer of faculty on our part; it is a charge of inability against the First Cause too.... And in the very act of declaring the First Cause incognizable, you do not permit it to remain unknown. For that only is unknown, of which you can neither affirm nor deny any predicate; here you deny the power of self-disclosure to the 'Absolute,' of which therefore something is known;—viz., that nothing can be known," And again with much force,[111] "You cannot constitute a religion out of mystery alone, any more than out of knowledge alone; nor can you measure the relation of doctrines to humility and piety by the mere amount of conscious darkness which they leave. All worship, being directed to what is above us and transcends our comprehension, stands in presence of a mystery. But not all that stands before a mystery is worship."[aa]

Mr. Mill (doing battle with another antagonist) denies every attribute claiming faith and worship, to the idea of a morally Unknowable God. The passage occurs in his Examination of Hamilton, pp. 123-4. "If, instead of the 'glad tidings' that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that 'the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving' does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him."[ab]

Now, suppose that instead of siding on this occasion with Mill and Martineau, we were to accept the alternative offered by Spencer and Huxley. Would this surrender of Natural Theology—or rather of all Theology—necessitate in reason any other vast surrender also? We have already answered in the affirmative. The surrender would penetrate every field of knowledge and of thought. We have already shewn this. For, the thread binding the present section into a connected whole runs thus: Survey the conditions of interrogating, first, nature; secondly, our own highest nature; next, our senses; finally, our consciousness; and add to them the enormous difficulties which attend every step taken in compliance with those indispensable conditions. Indispensable, that is, to our knowing anything, of any sort, in any way whatsoever. You have, then, no right to isolate Theism. It is false logic, to speak of the intellectual difficulties attaching to our apprehension of the Deity, as if they were substantial objections. In this respect, Theism stands within the same category of speculative perplexity, and reasonable necessity, as do other supreme truths.[112]

Put the case to the judgment of Reason, once for all. If we agreed to accept Herbert Spencer's position, we should consent to deny that anything can be known of an Absolute. And the denial would proceed upon this maxim:—"whatsoever is inexplicable is also unknowable." Consider, now, what other ultimate truths would fall into the same tomb-like Category. We must silence all human utterance respecting all first grounds;—our own individuality;—and every object of reason which becomes inconceivable, when we attempt to define it by the processes of ordinary logic. All utterance respecting our own senses and sensations;—our own existence, as beings distinct from a world of beings and things really existing outside us.

In fine, we could never know that we know either anything or nothing; for, we should have silenced the deepest of all utterances,—the one upon which all truth and reason depend. We should have relegated our Mind along with our God, to the same abysmal gulf of the Unknowable. Henceforth, we could predicate of Mind nothing essential to purposes of knowledge,—and least of all essentials,—Veracity.

Mr. Mill closes his laborious endeavours to explain our natural belief in Mind as follows: "The truth is, that we are here face to face with that final inexplicability, at which, as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive when we reach ultimate facts; and in general, one mode of stating it only appears more incomprehensible than another, because the whole of human language is accommodated to the one, and is so incongruous with the other, that it cannot be expressed in any terms which do not deny its truth. The real stumbling-block is perhaps not in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself. The true incomprehensibility perhaps is, that something which has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be in a manner, present: that a series of feelings, the infinitely greater part of which is past or future, can be gathered up, as it were, into a single present conception, accompanied by a belief of reality. I think, by far the wisest thing we can do, is to accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes place; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which assume a theory, to use them with a reservation as to their meaning."[113] Two pages further he ingenuously adds: "I do not profess to have adequately accounted for the belief in Mind." In other words, the perplexities remain on Mill's system as they do on all systems. But the Belief and the Fact remain likewise.

It is the same with our belief of other ultimate facts. We live an individual life,—we know not what. We see and perceive,—we know not how. Yet such are the facts, and we thoroughly believe and act upon them.

The pivot on which these and similar beliefs turn is a subject of the greatest interest and importance. On this same pivot turns our primary affirmative Argument for Natural Theism. To establish it will be the purpose of the next Chapter, and a succession of affirmative arguments, separate but convergent, will occupy the remainder of this Essay.

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Corollary:—If any reader of these pages has felt the fascination of some one among the many materializing hypotheses now in vogue, let him remember that, in fair debate, Materialism can never have the slightest chance against Idealism.

All materializing theories labour under an enormous weight of unverified postulates. They set out from neither the most natural, nor yet the surest, sources of our knowledge. Naturally, we start from self-ness, and learn to put outer things and beings in opposition to our own primary self-consciousness.

In after life, when we ask why we are sure of any kind of knowledge; the primary truths upon which all our reasonings proceed, are always the presentations of our own mind.

If we proceed to analyse accepted relativities, we soon perceive that Mind enters into our facts, and also into our sense-presentations. In particular, an examination of the noblest of all senses—the sense of sight—will convince any careful analyst that such is undeniably the case. The reader may recal Mr. Mill's words,[114]—"I do not believe that the real externality to us of anything, except other minds, is capable of proof." "For ourselves," says Professor Fraser, "we can conceive only—(1) An externality to our present and transient experience in our own possible experience past and future, and (2) An externality to our own conscious experience, in the contemporaneous, as well as in the past or future experience of other minds"[115] In this view Mr. Mill (who quotes Fraser), entirely acquiesces, and in this same spirit he writes, "Matter may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation;"[116]—and adds that he can accept no other definition.

Whether the reader can or cannot define Matter otherwise; he will, at all events, perceive that the Materialist assumes as his primary postulate, that which is by no means the primary fact accepted by Mankind. He starts with taking Matter for granted;—but, if he inquires, he will discover that Matter is known to him in the second place only; he really first knew Mind. When he questions sensation, or consciousness, he questions Mind; and, throughout his whole life, theoretical as well as practical, Mind is nearer to him, and more strongly evidenced, than any other "Possibility" whatsoever.

Such, then, is the first heavy burden of unauthorized postulation, which the Materialist's theory binds upon him. But, in the task of postulating without authority from Nature, it seems impossible to stop short. Mind, being an absolute necessity, must be got in some way—(from Matter of course)—evolved, correlated, secreted. No account is given how Matter could have been thus transformed and glorified. Yet, in default of such account, it is impossible to divine why that primary postulate ever existed at all.

The highest attenuation of Matter can no more help to explain Life or Mind, than to say that brain, (deprived of its vitality,) is composed of cerebrin, lecythin, and cholesterin, explains its sensibility, and other vital and intellectual endowments. And we encounter the same unbridged gulf at every turn of the materialistic hypothesis. There is a wide gap between the inorganic world and all organisms, vegetable or animal. We are, however, told that when certain inorganic elements are combined, under certain conditions, they form protoplasm,—a substance manifesting phenomena of vitality. The elements are known,—the conditions are unknown,—and until protoplasm has been produced by a chemical experimenter, instead of within a living laboratory, we may safely believe that the unknown conditions form the essential cause of the production. And we are given to understand by Professor Huxley,[117] that on this subject speculation has been premature.

The gap between Body and Mind is wider still. Body has its known properties,—measurable figure, weight, and other like specialties. Mind has its properties also,—such as intelligence, emotion, reason, will. Thinking has never been shown to be a property of Body; nor have weight and measure been applied to Mind. The laws of each differ as decisively as their properties. Body obeys gravitation, cohesion, and chemical affinity. Mind has its laws of reasoning, mathematically, logically, analogically. Now, what resemblance is here visible?[118] Body cannot compel Will,—but is moved by it; and there is no more verisimilitude known to us of Body to Will, than there exists between the noble thought of a high-souled Man and the paving-stone he walks upon. The foregoing is, as every honest materialist will acknowledge, but a slight specimen of the many difficulties of Materialism. So little does any materializing process of "resolution" really resolve anything, that any—even the most plausible—can only be pronounced an abortive attempt to bring something near and familiar to us, out of something unknowably remote.

The materialist's allegation is generally, that he wishes to accept as little as possible. But the accusation of the natural Theologian against Materialism, is that it accepts far too much. Mind being a necessary and indispensable fact, the one fact underlying all other facts,—whoever is bent on simplifying his beliefs, had better begin by believing in his own Soul. And if further bent on viewing all things as "resolvable," his surest wisdom will be to resolve Matter into Mind. It is really the easier alternative, and has a double merit,—it starts from the best-known fact, and it satisfies his desire for "simplification."

At all events, the consequences resulting from Materialism, are too serious to permit a disregard of Probability. We must, surely, find and follow the very best guide we can:—

"These are no school-points; nice philosophy

May tolerate unlikely arguments,

But heaven admits no jests."

Mr. Huxley,[119] who sees advantages (simplicity and unification) in employing a materialistic terminology, adds the very striking caution—"But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these" (materialistic) "formulæ and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake the x's and y's, with which he works his problems, for real entities—and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of a life."

The words italicized are remarkable. The materializing façons de parler do not embody a knowledge of "real entities" after all. And such is the language of one[120] who stands in the foremost rank of European Biologists.