Isaac Watts; his life and writings, his homes and friends

by Edwin Paxton Hood

In the same manner, also, he replies to the modern doctrine of traducianism in his remarks on

CREATION OR CONSERVATION.

“It has been a very famous question in the schools, whether conservation be a continual creation, i.e., whether that action, whereby God preserves all creatures in their several ranks and orders of being, is not one continued act of His creating power or influence, as it were, giving being to them every moment? Whether creatures, being formed out of nothing, would relapse again into their first estate of nonentity if they were not, as it were, perpetually reproduced by a creating act of God? How there is one plain and easy argument whereby, perhaps, this controversy may be determined, and it may be proposed in this manner. In whatsoever moment God creates a substance, He must create with it all the properties, modes, and accidents which belong to it in that moment; for in the very moment of creation the creature is all passive, and cannot give itself those modes. Now if God every moment create wicked men and devils, and cause them to exist such as they are, by a continued act of creation, must He not, at the same time, create or give being to all their sinful thoughts and inclinations, and even their most criminal and abominable actions? Must He not create devils, together with the rage and pride, the malice, envy, and blasphemy of their thoughts? Must He not create sinful men in the very acts of lying, perjury, stealing, and adultery, rapine, cruelty, and murder? Must He not form one man with malice in his heart? Another with a false oath on the tongue? A third with a sword in his hand, plunging it into his neighbour’s bosom? Would not these formidable consequences follow from the supposition of God’s conserving providence being a continual act of creation? But surely these ideas seem to be shocking absurdities, whereas, if conservation be really a continued creation, the modes must be created together with their substances every moment, since it is not possible that creatures, who every moment are supposed to be nothing but the immediate products of the Divine will, should be capable in every one of those very moments in which they are produced or created to form their own modes in simultaneous co-existence with their subjects. I own there are difficulties on the other side of the question; but the fear of making God the author of sin has bent my opinion this way. We must always inviolably maintain it for the honour of the blessed God, that all spirits, as they come out of His hand, are created pure and innocent; every sinful act proceeds from themselves, by an abuse of their own freedom of will, or by a voluntary compliance with the corrupt appetites and inclinations of flesh and blood. We must find some better way, therefore, to explain God’s providential conservation of things than by representing it as an act of proper and continual creation, lest we impute all the iniquities of all men and devils, in all ages, to the pure and holy God, who is blessed for evermore.”

There are two other pieces well worth a study—his remarks on Mr. Locke’s “Essay on the Human Understanding,” and a “Brief Scheme of Ontology.” The essay on ontology, like that on logic, is a most interesting handbook and guide to thought. Watts thought so clearly that it often seems as if he were only putting things neatly. Sometimes, as in his “Philosophic Essays,” and in his pieces on the Trinity, he is eminently translucent; you see that there is light behind. This is the impression conveyed by his dissertation on “Space,” “Substance,” and “Concerning Spirits, their Place and Motion;” but in his Ontology and Logic he is transparent, the objects are brought distinctly into view. When he presents before you his greater thoughts his style is indeed clear, but you feel that it is as when “morning is spread upon the mountains” before sunrise, or as when evening lingers in the soft and rosy light after sunset, there is something somewhere behind, some orb of light which spreads out all that roseate glow; in his Ontology and Logic he is concise and distinct, as we have said; you may almost call him a neat writer. He has a wonderful power of accumulating particulars, a singular felicity in discriminating ideas. This gives to him a very nice sense of words, as he says, “We must search the sense of words. It is for want of this that men quarrel in the dark, and that there are so many contentions in the several sciences, and especially in divinity.” His power of discrimination is so nice that it often becomes as amusing as it is instructive; regarded thus, his Logic is a most interesting book, we suppose quite the most delightful to read of any treatise on logic in our language. Of this amusing cumulative power let the reader take the following:

NAMES AND NAMING THINGS.

“Do not suppose that the natures or essences of things always differ from one another as much as their names do. There are various purposes in human life for which we put very different names on the same thing, or on things whose natures are near akin; and thereby oftentimes, by making a new nominal species, we are ready to deceive ourselves with the idea of another real species of beings, and those whose understandings are led away by the mere sound of words fancy the nature of those things to be very different whose names are so, and judge of them accordingly. I may borrow a remarkable instance for my purpose out of every garden which contains a variety of plants in it. Most of all plants agree in this, that they have a root, a stalk, leaves, buds, blossoms, and seeds: but the gardener ranges them under very different names, as though they were really different kinds of beings, merely because of the different use and service to which they are applied by men, as for instance those plants whose roots are eaten shall appropriate the name of roots to themselves, such as carrots, turnips, radishes, etc. If the leaves are of chief use to us then we call them herbs, as sage, mint, thyme; if the leaves are eaten raw they are termed salad, as lettuce, purslane; if boiled they become pot-herbs, as spinage, coleworts; and some of those same plants which are pot-herbs in one family are salads in another. If the buds are made our food they are called heads or tops; so cabbage heads, heads of asparagus, and artichokes. If the blossom be of most importance we call it a flower, such as daisies, tulips, and carnations, which are the mere blossoms of those plants. If the husks or seeds are eaten they are called the fruits of the ground, as peas, beans, strawberries, etc. If any part of the plant be of known or common use to us in medicine we call it a physical herb, as cardamus, scurvy-grass; but if we count no part useful we call it a weed, and throw it out of the garden; and yet perhaps our next neighbour knows some valuable property and use of it, he plants it in his garden and gives it a title of an herb or a flower. You see here how small is the real distinction of these several plants considered in their general nature as the lesser vegetables, yet what very different ideas we vulgarly form concerning them, and make different species of them, chiefly because of the different names given to them.”

Exactly the same characteristics meet us in his Ontology, but here there is yet more of this kind of amusement; its pages are crowded with illustrations. It was perhaps in the nature of the subject that he scarcely mentions a particular for which he does not furnish one or twenty illustrative examples: take his curious discrimination of causes into the deficient, the permissive, and the conditional:

CLASSIFICATION OF CAUSES.

“A deficient cause is when the effect owes its existence in a great measure to the absence of something which would have prevented it, so that this may be reckoned a negative rather than a positive cause: the negligence of a gardener, or the want of rain, are the deficient causes of the withering of plants; and the carelessness of the pilot, or the sinking of the tide, is the cause of a ship’s splitting on a rock; the forgetfulness of a message is the cause of a quarrel among friends, or of the punishment of servants; the not bringing a reprieve in time is the cause of a criminal’s being executed; and the want of education is the cause why many a child runs headlong into vice and mischief; the blindness of a man, or the darkness of the night, are the causes of stumbling; a leak in a boat is a deficient cause why the water runs in and the boat sinks; and a hole in a vessel is called a deficient cause why the liquor runs out and is lost. Man is the deficient cause of all his sins of omission, and many of these carry great guilt in them.

“A permissive cause is that which actually removes impediments, and thus it lets the proper causes operate. Now this sort of cause is either natural or moral. A natural permissive cause removes natural impediments or obstructions, and this may be called a deobstruent cause. So opening the window shutters is the cause of the light entering the room; cleaning the ear may be the cause of a man’s hearing music who was deaf before; breaking down a dam is the cause of the overflowing of water and drowning a town; letting loose a rope is the cause of a ship’s running adrift; leaving off a garment is the cause of a cold and a cough; and cutting the bridle of the tongue may be the cause of speech to the dumb.