[27] "Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth," pp. 183-4.
[28] See the work last quoted, pp. 287-9. The Professor substantially agrees with Lord Brougham's censure before referred to, and considers Dr. Turton's defence of Paley an insufficient apology.
[29] "Essays and Reviews," 8vo. p. 125.
[q] The general reader may reasonably feel a difficulty in assigning their proper meaning to terms used in senses so technical. He may possibly be assisted by looking over the field of view thus:—A Force is visible to us as a movement in Nature;—when we try to formulate it intelligently to ourselves, its mental equivalent is Law. If, then, we wish to describe an intelligent præ-conception of Law (such as distinctly involves the Foresight of its operation) we call the Law a Creative Idea, or (less definitely) a Design. Tracing the chain of causation in the reverse or downward direction, the Idea when put in movement appears to our mind's eye as Law; and when we wish to include its actual working upon the realm of Nature we term it a Force.
Both James Mill and his son (a truly affectionate annotator), are careful to point out that the essence of moral causation involves Intention—that is (as Mr. Mill explains), Foresight, or expectation of consequences.—"Analysis of the Human Mind," II., 400, 401.
It should be observed that in many branches of Natural Science the word Law is so employed as to include the conception of Force. Law is in this usage not merely a logical formula expressive of realized facts, but it involves the idea of the coercion or impellent motion which brought those facts into being. "Thus, then," says Dr. Carpenter, "whilst no Law, which is simply a generalisation of phenomena, can be considered as having any coercive action, we may assign that value to Laws which express the universal conditions of the action of a Force, the existence of which we learn from the testimony of our own consciousness." He had before remarked that "it is the substitution of the Dynamical for the mere Phenomenal idea, which gives their highest value to our conceptions of the Order of Nature."—Address to British Association at Brighton, August, 1872. This Order of Nature, as the learned President says in conclusion, is no "sufficient account of its Cause."
[30] See how the matter appears to a Satirist:—"By the great variety of theories here alluded to, every one of which, if thoroughly examined, will be found surprisingly consistent in all its parts; my unlearned readers will perhaps be led to conclude that the creation of a world is not so difficult a task as they at first imagined. I have shown at least a score of ingenious methods in which a world could be constructed; and I have no doubt that had any of the philosophers above quoted the use of a good manageable comet, and the philosophical warehouse, chaos, at his command, he would engage to manufacture a planet as good, or, if you will take his word for it, better than this we inhabit." Such is the dictum of the profound Knickerbocker,—"History of New York," 8vo, p. 16. His variety of theories concludes with that of "the renowned Dr. Darwin," of Lichfield. If the history were brought down to our day, additional variety might be given to this part of it.
[r] It is upon this confusion that Powell charges Pantheistic theories in which physical speculations are mistakenly supposed to have their natural termination. See Additional Note [D], where the passage to which more than one reference has already been made, is given in extenso. Compare also our Chapter VI. on Causation.
[31] Essay as above, p. 165.
[32] The signification attached by the Professor to Law and Cause may be most readily explained by a similitude. Let the physical series of antecedents and consequents be represented by a chain of which we see the present links, but both its beginning and its end are invisible. Physical law is this chain. Cause must not be considered its first link, for Cause differs in kind from the series, is in truth sui generis, and can be illustrated by no physical phenomenon, but by the fact of our own Moral Volition. Cause, therefore, is external to the chain, and originates, not only the first, but every link of it. Each and all—nay, the universal chain in its entirety—may be viewed as owing its existence to one single fiat of an absolute moral Cause. Compare on this subject Chapters VI. and VII. ensuing.