These are but a few out of countless similar examples. "We are constantly discovering," says Lord Grimthorpe, "new complications and processes, and what to all common sense appear contrivances, in the organs of all living things, and indeed we can find no limit to them." In all these cases an instrument is fashioned precisely adapted to the performance of a certain function, and it is therefore obvious on first principles that there must exist some power capable of producing such instruments.
It will probably be answered that there are forces enough in Nature to account for everything, and that these furnish the needful explanation. But, as Mr. Croll rightly insists,[135] Force by itself explains nothing. Its mere exercise has no tendency whatever to produce such effects. There must likewise be Determination of Force in the one definite direction required, and it is in the source of this Determination that the true cause must be sought to which the result is due. It is not simply because[{95}] iron is hammered and filed that a railway-engine is produced; nor is it sufficient that a block of marble be chipped with mallet and chisel in order to obtain a statue of Apollo. Unless some influence comes in to direct the forces in such cases to their respective results, the results will never by any possibility be secured. And in the processes of Nature such direction or determination must be exercised in particulars inconceivably intricate, to which the works of man furnish no parallel. As Mr. Croll writes:
If a tree is to be formed, the lines of least resistance must all be determined and adjusted in relation to the objective idea of the tree; of the root; of the branches; of the leaves; of the bud; of the fruit; and of every part of the tree. But this is not all: the tree is built up molecule by molecule, each of which requires a special determination, and, beyond all this, we have the structureless protoplasm, which must be differentiated according to the objective idea of the whole. What produces this marvellous adjustment of means to ends?
And as he insists in another passage:
The determinations which take place in nature occur not at random, but according to a plan—an objective idea. Thus the question is not simply what causes a body to take some direction, but what causes it to take, among the infinite number of possible directions, the proper direction in relation to the idea. In the formation of, say, the leaf of a tree, no two molecules move in identically the same direction or take identically the[{96}] same path. But each molecule must move in relation to the objective idea of the leaf, or no leaf would be formed. The grand question, therefore, is, What is it that selects from among the infinite number of possible directions the proper one in relation to this idea?
And this sort of thing is going on in every blossom and leaf and blade of grass, in every hair and every feather over the surface of the earth.
Truly does our author find here "The Grand Question," for in it we touch the very heart of our whole problem, and are forced to consider more closely than we have hitherto done of what character must be the ultimate Cause which alone can explain the world.
It is, as we have seen, a first principle of Science, that in enquiries such as this, we must proceed from experience to inference, from the known to the unknown. Arguing thus, we may legitimately gather from observed phenomena, that something exists, which even though it be not directly within the range of our senses, must certainly be capable of producing such phenomena: just as the perturbations of one planet have revealed the existence of another; and the lines in their spectra have taught us the chemical constitution of the sun and stars.
This principle being borrowed by Science from common-sense, has instinctively been ever adopted by those who set themselves to enquire of what kind must be that unseen Power at the back of Nature to which the fact of law and order may[{97}] be ascribed. And as there is but one force or power within the range of our experience capable of producing such an effect, it is but natural that this should have been constantly assumed to represent, at least by analogy, the nature of the power required. That there is but one cause known to us experimentally, which can determine the operation of force towards the attainment of a preconditioned result, none will deny—namely the purposive action of an intelligent will, as known to us in ourselves and in our fellow-men;—and to Will accordingly, immensely more intelligent than ours, has been ascribed the establishment of those laws which the highest intellects of our race are able partially and dimly to apprehend.
It is thus that we are led to the fundamental doctrine of Theism, to belief in an intelligent First Cause, according to whose design the universe has been fashioned; a cause which must have all that is found in the universe or any part of it, including man, and more—for it has of itself what all else derives from it—whose purposes necessarily transcend our mental grasp—but whose modes of thought are reflected in our own, by which they can in some measure be followed through a study of their results.