There are two features in which all these productive men resemble each other. One, the creative influence of a purely human will, which not only sees what is not as though it is,—but also determines that it shall be. The other, a way of looking at, or rather, through Nature, as something more than an assemblage of facts or phenomena;—of penetrating to the mind of Nature,—her ideal laws legible by the intellectual eye of Man;—and finally, of putting each required law into motion,—that is to say, converting an idea into a force, by the movement of the producer's Will.
And the same is true of every useful producer, from the man who grows corn and wine, to the politician by whose foresight is arranged a treaty which gives Europe the blessing of half a century's peace. There is, probably, no example of production more definite than the work of a real statesman. A gifted human mind determines to pursue the thing that is just and right and good; sees where the means to be utilized may be found and enforced; touches the right spring of activity and power, and leads his fellow-men into a path of precedent or constitution for which ages may consecrate his memory.—But, let us suppose that he or any other true producer falls short of realizing his idea. Then, the act of Will would be in its essence as noble a reality as the deed itself. Yet the work intended,—the production must needs be lost. Creative will, as an efficient cause, would have moved within the moral sphere; but beyond, and into the outside world of men and things, its activity must have failed to penetrate.
When the case comes before us in this manner and is fairly weighed, we see that the man who wills a good choice, reflects to his fellows the image we are accustomed to call Divine. And that the man who produces a good act reflects to his fellows the further likeness and idea of a Creator. The will of man reflects a supreme will, when it refuses the evil and chooses the good;—the creative energy of man reflects a supreme energy, when it produces actual good; working and remaining effectual in the world. These human reflections may be feeble shadows, and far away from the Supreme;—as distant as earth and stars asunder, but they are typical images nevertheless. Man, in whom the Theist finds the impress of God, is by his power of Causality, as far raised beyond the laws of material existence, as animal life and movement are superior to the clods of soil on which the living creature walks, with a consciousness of being exalted above what he treads upon.
If these far away reflections, so striking to a Theist, are, by an unbeliever, pronounced insufficient proofs of Theism,—they remain still of very great value to the argument—Who shall, in the teeth of them, assert a reign of law in opposition to a reign of Causation, when we perceive that Causality is the grand endowment underlying the highest intelligence in this world, and distinguishing man from every inferior creature? A large class of objections dies in the fact that there is known to us a power which can truly originate actions;—a clear spring of volitional creativeness. And, as we have already seen, it is this human power which endows us with the faculty of self-education, and, at the same time, lays upon us the burden of responsibility. It exempts Man from what would otherwise be an iron chain of antecedents and consequents, linked together by mere mechanical laws. Man, we are sure, may interpolate in this chain; he may commence a new series within and over-riding it. The non-Theist would (if consistent), describe such an act of will as a miracle. Nevertheless, it is true to every-day life, and each guilty person, justly condemned, is a living example of this truth.
Any reader who has been deterred from admitting the arguments for Theism by the strength of objections apparently unanswerable, may feel, if he will thoughtfully reperuse this chapter, that many very formidable difficulties have melted away. He may also be inclined to admit that, if facts are to be considered the best grounds for reasoning with probability from the known to the unknown, the facts of nature, (including human nature,) make not against, but for, the conclusions of Natural Theology. And they do so all the more stringently, because they coincide with the higher and more spiritual tendencies of Man's being,—with the beliefs and aspirations of the most nobly endowed among his race.
Many readers will go further than this. They will perceive in the constitution of our distinctive nature, and more particularly in the movement of Volition, a really probable though far away similitude with the producing Cause of all things. At all events they will say that no other similitude or illustration has ever been conceived with so much probability. To such minds the argument would appear sufficiently convincing if shaped as a very wide application of the analogous reasoning stated in our Chapter on Design. The limitations there laid down should in this case be carefully observed; above all as regards the pivot on which such an argument must turn.
A larger class of readers may prefer to leave the field of this inviting analogy untouched; and remain content with having noted its resources in passing. They will thus prefer to pursue the more direct line of thought already adopted, especially since it has the merit of avoiding even the most shadowy apparent assumption of the principle invidiously termed Anthropomorphism. We therefore continue to place Man's causative nature side by side with external Force, and to set the powers he exercises as an inventor, artist, and producer, over against those natural powers we see elicited and brought to light by his activities. This is the aspect of the world to which the Relativity between Power and Function most obviously conducts us. Surveyed from this aspect it becomes plain that Nature is not entirely a soulless mechanism;—but that the Mind of Man finds something which corresponds to his human Thought, and which answers the touch of his idealizing impulse by implicitly obeying it. He is able, in this manner, to distinguish Nature's Mind from Nature's raw material.
Most of us are so accustomed to look at the world ab extrâ, and place ourselves in antithetical opposition to it, that we experience a kind of embarrassment in changing our point of view, and considering how much Nature and human nature correspond and harmonize together. There is something strange to many persons, in the thought that law is an idea put into operation;[as] that, when we speak of the dynamic agencies and living forces of nature, the dynamism is derived from intelligence; the life springs from mind. This is one of the puzzles and perplexities which hang a veil between God, who is pure Reason, and this outside world. No doubt there is much that appears dark and enigmatic in every attempted explanation of the subject. Yet it is clear that, whatever our conception of matter and mind may be, one of these two must be resolvably consequent upon the other; and the efforts of physicists have been strained for many years to diminish the distance between them. With these efforts, however, we have nothing to do beyond very distinctly adducing them[at] in order to shew where this particular difficulty really lies, and that it is by no means a special question of Natural Theology. The point for us, is rather to see how much we can discern respecting the action of Mind in and upon Nature. To see, that is, how many facts the realities of Production teach us. And throughout the whole realm of Productiveness (commencing from the steam-engine and ending with human self-formation), there is a certain sameness of procedure and of principle transparently discernible. And this truth, fairly examined, yields more than one kind of argument for Theism.
At the first blush of the subject, it is evident that the