[Footnote 892: ][ (return) ] "Banquet," § 35.
(3.) The Teleological proof, or the argument based upon the principle of intentionality or Final Cause, and is presented in the following form:
The choice and adaptation of means to the accomplishment of special ends supposes an intelligent purpose, a Designing Mind.
In the universe we see such choice and adaptation of means to ends.
Therefore, the universe is the product of an intelligent, personal Cause.
This is peculiarly the Socratic proof. He recognized the necessity and the irresistibility of the conviction that the choice and adaptation of means to ends is the effect of Purpose, the expression of Will. [893] There is an obviousness and a directness in this mode of argument which is felt by every human mind. In the "Memorabilia" Xenophon has preserved a conversation of Socrates with Aristodemus in which he develops this proof at great length. In reading the dialogue [894] in which Socrates instances the adaptation of our organization to the external world, and the examples of design in the human frame, we are forcibly reminded of the chapters of Paley, Whewell, and M'Cosh. Well might Aristodemus exclaim: "The more I consider it, the more it is evident to me that man must be the masterpiece of some great Artificer, carrying along with it infinite marks of the love and favor of Him who has thus formed it." The argument from Final Causes is pursued by Plato in the "Timæus;" and in Aristotle, God is the Final Cause of all things. [895]
[Footnote 893: ][ (return) ] "Canst thou doubt, Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts like this (in the human body) should be the work of chance, or of wisdom and contrivance?"--"Memorabilia," bk. i. ch. iv.
[Footnote 894: ][ (return) ] "Memorabilia," bk. i. ch. iv.
[Footnote 895: ][ (return) ] Aristotle clearly recognizes that an end or final cause implies Intelligence. "The appearance of ends and means is a proof of Design."--"Nat. Ausc.," bk. ii. ch. viii.
(4.) The Ontological or Ideological proof, or the argument grounded on necessary and absolute ideas, which may be thrown into the following syllogism:
Every attribute or quality implies a subject, and absolute modes necessarily suppose an Absolute Being. Necessary and absolute truths or ideas are revealed in human reason as absolute modes.
Therefore universal, necessary, and absolute ideas are modes of the absolute subject--that is, God, the foundation and source of all truth.