[Footnote 366: ][ (return) ] Id., ib., vol. i. p. 273.
To this assertion that the connection of things visible and things invisible, finite and infinite, objects of sense and objects of faith, is utterly imperceptible to human thought, we might reply by quoting the words of that Sacred Book whose supreme authority our author is seeking, by this argument, to establish. "The invisible things of God, even his eternal power and god-head, from the creation, are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made." We may also point to the fact that in every age and in every land the human mind has spontaneously and instinctively recognized the existence of an invisible Power and Presence pervading nature and controlling the destinies of man, and that religious worship--prayer, and praise, and sacrifice--offered to that unseen yet omnipresent Power is an universal fact of human nature. The recognition of an immediate and a necessary "connection" between the visible and the invisible, the objects of sense and the objects of faith, is one of the most obvious facts of consciousness--of universal consciousness as revealed in history, and of individual consciousness as developed in every rational mind.
That this connection is "not perceptible to human observation," if by this our author means "not perceptible to sense," we readily admit. No one ever asserted it was perceptible to human observation. We say that this connection is perceptible to human reason, and is revealed in every attempt to think about, and seek an explanation of, the phenomenal world. The Phenomenal and the Real, Genesis and Being, Space and Extension, Succession and Duration, Time and Eternity, the Finite and the Infinite, are correlatives which are given in one and the same indivisible act of thought. "The conception of one term of a relation necessarily implies that of the other; it being the very nature of a correlative to be thinkable only through the conjunct thought of its correlative; for a relation is, in truth, a thought one and indivisible; and whilst the thinking of one relation necessarily involves the thought of its two terms, so it is, with equal necessity, itself involved in the thought of either." [367] Finite, dependent, contingent, temporal existence, therefore, necessarily supposes infinite, self-existent, independent, eternal Being; the Conditioned and Relative implies the Unconditioned and Absolute--one is known only in and through the other. But inasmuch as the unconditioned is cognized solely à priori, and the conditioned solely à posteriori, the recognition by the human mind of their necessary correlation becomes the bridge whereby the chasm between the subjective and the objective may be spanned, and whereby Thought may be brought face to face with Existence.
[Footnote 367: ][ (return) ] Hamilton's "Metaphysics," vol. ii. pp. 536, 537.
The reverence which, from boyhood, we have entertained for the distinguished author of the "Institutes" restrains us from speaking in adequate terms of reprobation of the statement that "the First Cause" may be known, and yet not conceived "as eternal, self-existent, immortal, and independent". Surely that which is the ground and reason of all existence must have the ground and reason of its own existence in itself. That which is first in the order of existence, and in the logical order of thought, can have nothing prior to itself. If the supposed First Cause is not necessarily self-existent and independent, it is not the first; if it has a dependent existence, there must be a prior being on which it depends. If the First Cause is not eternal, then prior to this Ultimate Cause there was nothingness and vacuity, and pure nothing, by its own act, became something. But "Ex nihilo nihil" is a universal law of thought. To ask the question whether the First Cause be self-existent and eternal, is, in effect, to ask the question "who made God?" and this is not the question of an adult theologian, but of a little child. Surely Mr. Watson must have penned the above passage without any reflection on its real import [368].
[Footnote 368: ][ (return) ] In an article on "the Impending Revolution in Anglo-Saxon Theology" Methodist Quarterly Review, (July, 1863), Dr. Warren seems to take it for granted that the "aiteological" and "teleological" arguments for the existence of God are utterly invalidated by the Dynamical theory of matter. "Once admit that real power can and does reside in matter, and all these reasonings fail. If inherent forces of matter are competent to the production of all the innumerable miracles of movement in the natural world, what is there in the natural world which they can not produce. If all the exertions of power in the universe can be accounted for without resort to something back of, and superior to, nature, what is there which can force the mind to such a resort?" (p. 463). "Having granted that power, or self-activity, is a natural attribute of all matter, what right have we to deny it intelligence?" (p. 465). "Self-moving matter must have thought and design" (p. 469).
It is not our intention to offer an extended criticism of the above positions in this note. We shall discuss "the Dynamical theory" more fully in a subsequent work. If the theory apparently accepted by Dr. Warren be true, that "the ultimate atoms of matter are as uniformly efficient as minds, and that we have the same ground to regard the force exerted by the one innate and natural as that exerted by the other" (p. 464), then we grant that the conclusions of Dr. Warren, as above stated, are unavoidable. We proceed one step farther, and boldly assert that the existence of God is, on this hypothesis, incapable of proof, and the only logical position Dr. Warren can occupy is that of spiritualistic Pantheism.
Dr. Warren asserts that "the Dynamical theory of matter" is now generally accepted by "Anglo-Saxon naturalists." "One can scarcely open a scientific treatise without observing the altered stand-point" (p. 160). We confess that we are disappointed with Dr. Warren's treatment of this simple question of fact. On so fundamental an issue, the Doctor ought to have given the name of at least one "naturalist" who asserts that "the ultimate atoms of matter are as uniformly efficient as minds." Leibnitz, Morrell, Ulrici, Hickok, the authorities quoted by him, are metaphysicians and idealists of the extremest school. At present we shall, therefore, content ourselves with a general denial of this wholesale statement of Dr. Warren; and we shall sustain that denial by a selection from the many authorities we shall hereafter present. "No particle of matter possesses within itself the power of changing its existing state of motion or of rest. Matter has no spontaneous power either of rest or motion, but is equally susceptible to each as it may be acted on by external causes" (Silliman's "Principles of Physics," p. 13). The above proposition is "a truth on which the whole science of mechanical philosophy ultimately depends" (Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Dynamics," vol. viii. p. 326). "A material substance existing alone in the universe could not produce any effects. There is not, so far as we know, a self-acting material substance in the universe" (M'Cosh, "Divine Government, Physical and Moral," p. 78). "Perhaps the only true indication of matter is inertia." "The cause of gravitation is not resident in the particles of matter merely," but also "in all space" (Dr. Faraday on "Conservation of Force," in "Correlation and Conservation of Force." (p. 368). He also quotes with approbation the words of Newton, "That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, is so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it" p. 368). "The 'force of gravity' is an improper expression" (p. 340). "Forces are transformable, indestructible, and, in contradistinction from matter, imponderable" (p. 346). "The first cause of things is Deity" (Dr. Mayer, in "Correlation and Conservation of Force," p. 341). "Although the word cause may be used in a secondary and subordinate sense, as meaning antecedent forces, yet in an abstract sense it is totally inapplicable; we can not predicate of any physical agent that it is abstractedly the cause of another" (p. 15). "Causation is the will," "creation is the act, of God" Grove on "Correlation of Physical Forces," (p. 199). "Between gravity and motion it is impossible to establish the equation required for a rightly-conceived causal relation" ("Correlation and Conservation of Force," p. 253). See also Herschel's "Outlines of Astronomy," p. 234.
It certainly must have required a wonderful effort of imagination on the part of Dr. Warren to transform "weight" and "density," mere passive affections of matter, into self-activity, intelligence, thought, and design. Weight or density are merely relative terms. Supposing one particle or mass of matter to exist alone, and there can be no attractive or gravitating force. There must be a cause of gravity which is distinct from matter.
3d. The validity of "the principle of unity" is also discredited by Watson. "If, however, it were conceded that some glimmerings of this great truth, the existence of a First Cause, might, by induction, have been discovered, by what means could they have demonstrated to themselves that the great collection of bodies which we call the world had but one Creator." [369]
[Footnote 369: ][ (return) ] "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. p. 275.
We might answer directly, and at once, that the oneness or unity of God is necessarily contained in "the very notion of a First Cause"--a first cause is not many causes, but one. By a First Cause we do not, however, understand the first of a numerical series, but an ἀρχή--a principle, itself unbeginning, which is the source of all beginning. Our categorical answer, therefore, must be that the unity of God is a sublime deliverance of reason--God is one God. It is a first principle of reason that all differentiation and plurality supposes an incomposite unity, all diversity implies an indivisible identity. The sensuous perception of a plurality of parts supposes the rational idea of an absolute unity, which has no parts, as its necessary correlative. For example, extension is a congeries of indefinitesimal parts; the continuity of matter, as empirically known by us, is never absolute. Space is absolutely continuous, incapable of division into integral parts, illimitable, and, as rationally known by us, an absolute unity. The cognition of limited extension, which is the subject of quantitative measurement, involves the conception of unlimited space, which is the negation of all plurality and complexity of parts. And so the cognition of a phenomenal universe in which we see only difference, plurality, and change, implies the existence of a Being who is absolutely unchangeable, identical, and one.