“The plain argument for the existence of the Deity, obvious to all and carrying irresistable conviction with it, is from the evident contrivance and fitness of things for one another, which we meet with throughout all parts of the universe. There is no need of nice and subtle reasonings in this matter: a manifest contrivance immediately suggests a contriver. It strikes us like a sensation; and artful reasonings against it may puzzle us, but it is without shaking our belief. No person, for example, that knows the principles of optics, and the structure of the eye, can believe that it was formed without skill in that science; or that the ear was formed, without the knowledge of sounds:”—“All our accounts of nature are full of instances of this kind. The admirable and beautiful order of things, for final causes, exalt our idea of the Contriver: the unity of design shews him to be One. The great motions in the system, performed with the same facility as the least, suggest his Almighty Power; which gave motion to the earth and the celestial bodies, with equal ease as to the minutest particles. The subtilty of the motions and actions in the internal parts of bodies, shews that His influence penetrates the inmost recesses of things, and that He is equally active and present every where. The simplicity of the laws that prevail in the world, the excellent disposition of things, in order to obtain the best ends, and the beauty which adorns the works of nature, far superior to any thing in art, suggest His consummate Wisdom. The usefulness of the whole scheme, so well contrived for the intelligent beings that enjoy it, with the internal disposition and moral structure of those beings themselves, shew His unbounded goodness. These are arguments which are sufficiently open to the views and capacities of the unlearned, while at the same time they acquire new strength and lustre from the discoveries of the learned. The Deity’s acting and interposing in the universe, shew that He governs it, as well as formed it; and the depth of His counsels, even in conducting the material universe, of which a great part surpasses our knowledge, keeps up an inward veneration and awe of this great Being, and disposes us to receive what may be otherwise revealed to us, concerning Him.”
[25]. Mr. Cotes, in his preface to the second edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia, exposes the folly of those depraved dreamers in philosophy, “the sordid dregs of the most impure part of mankind,” who strive to maintain, that the constitution of the world is not derived from the will of God, but from a certain necessity of nature; that all things are governed by fate, not by Providence; and that matter, by necessity of nature, has existed always and every where, and is infinite and eternal. He then adds:—“We may now, therefore, take a nearer view of nature in her glory, and contemplate her in a most entertaining manner: and withal, more zealously than ever, pay our worship and veneration to the Creator and Lord of the Universe; which is the principal advantage of philosophy. He must be blind who, from the most excellent and most wise structure of the creatures, does not presently see the infinite wisdom and goodness of their Creator: and he must be mad, who will not own those attributes.”
[26]. “A man would deceive himself,” says Lalande, “in believing he could be a philosopher, without the study of the natural sciences. To be wise, not by weakness, but by principles, it is necessary that, to be able to reflect and think with vigour, we be freed from those prejudices which deceive the judgment, and which oppose themselves to the development of reason and of genius. Pythagoras[Pythagoras] would not have any disciples, who had not studied Mathematics: over his door was to be read, that “no one was to enter, unless he were a geometrician.”—Morals would be less sure, and less attractive for us, if they were to be founded on ignorance or on error.
“Ought we,” he asks, “to consider as of no importance the advantage of being freed from the misfortunes of ignorance? Is it possible to observe, without a feeling of compassion and even of shame, the stupidity of those, who formerly believed, that by making a great vociferation, during an eclipse of the Moon, they furnished relief to the sufferings of that (imagined) goddess; or, that these eclipses were produced by enchantment?”
“Cum frustra resonant æra auxiliaria Lunæ.”
Met. iv. 333.
Reyas, in the dedication of his Commentaries on the Planisphere to the Emperor Charles V. mentions a curious historical fact, in illustration of the effects of that superstition, derived from ignorance, which astronomy has banished from the civilized world. It is thus related by Lalande:—“Christopher Columbus, when commanding the army which Ferdinand, king of Spain, had sent to Jamaica, some short time after the discovery of that island, experienced so great a scarcity of provisions, that no hope remained of saving his army, which he expected to be soon at the mercy of the savages. An approaching eclipse of the moon furnished this able man with the means of extricating himself from his embarrassment: he let the chief of the savages know, that if they should not, in a few hours, send him all he asked for, he would oppress them with the greatest calamities; and that he would begin by depriving the moon of her light. At first, they contemned his menaces; but, when they saw that the moon began, in reality, to disappear, they were seized with terror; they carried all they had to the general, and came themselves to implore forgiveness.”
Comets were formerly, even in civilized nations, another great cause of consternation among the people; and one, also, which a knowledge of astronomy has at length divested of its terrors, by removing the source of those superstitious errors, a grossly mistaken notion of the nature of those phænomena. “We are sorry to find,” says Lalande, “such strange prejudices, not only in Homer [Iliad iv. 75.] but even in the most beautiful poem of the sixteenth century; whereby means are furnished of perpetuating our errors—
“Qual con le chiome sanguinose orrende
Splender Cometa suol per l’aria adusta,