Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology

by William Whewell

1. The Atmosphere is a mere mass of fluid floating on the surface of the ball of the earth; it is one of the inert and inorganic portions of the universe, and must be conceived to have been formed by the same Power which formed the solid mass of the earth and all other parts of the solar system. But how far is the atmosphere from being inert in its effects on organic beings, and unconnected with the world of life! By what wonderful adaptations of its mechanical and chemical properties, and of the vital powers of plants, to each other, are the developement and well-being of plants and animals secured! The creator of the atmosphere must have been also the creator of plants and animals: we cannot for an instant believe the contrary. But the atmosphere is not only subservient to the life of animals, and of man among the rest; it is also the vehicle of voice; it answers the purpose of intercourse; and, in the case of man, of rational intercourse. We have seen how remarkably the air is fitted for this office; the construction of the organs of articulation, by which they are enabled to perform their part of the work, is, as is well known, a most exquisite system of contrivances. But though living in an atmosphere capable of transmitting articulate sound, and though provided with organs fitted to articulate, man would never attain to the use of language, if he were not also endowed with another set of faculties. The powers of abstraction and generalization, memory and reason, the tendencies which occasion the inflexions and combinations of words, are all necessary to the formation and use of language. Are not these parts of the same scheme of which the bodily faculties by which we are able to speak are another part? Has man his mental powers independently of the creator of his bodily frame? To what purpose then, or by what cause was the curious and complex machinery of the tongue, the glottis, the larynx produced? These are useful for speech, and full of contrivances which suggest such a use as the end for which those organs were constructed. But speech appears to have been no less contemplated in the intellectual structure of man. The processes of which we have spoken, generalization, abstraction, reasoning, have a close dependence on the use of speech. These faculties are presupposed in the formation of language, but they are developed and perfected by the use of language. The mind of man then, with all its intellectual endowments, is the work of the same artist by whose hands his bodily frame was fashioned; as his bodily faculties again are evidently constructed by the maker of those elements on which their action depends. The creator of the atmosphere and of the material universe is the creator of the human mind, and the author of those wonderful powers of thinking, judging, inferring, discovering, by we are able to reason concerning the world in which we are placed; and which aid us in lifting our thoughts to the source of our being himself.

2. Light, or the means by which light is propagated, is another of the inorganic elements which forms a portion of the mere material world. The luminiferous ether, if we adopt that theory, or the fluid light of the theory of emission, must indubitably pervade the remotest regions of the universe, and must be supposed to exist, as soon as we suppose the material parts of the universe to be in existence. The origin of light then must be at least as far removed from us as the origin of the solar system. Yet how closely connected are the properties of light with the structure of our own bodies! The mechanism of the organs of vision and the mechanism of light are, as we have seen, most curiously adapted to each other. We must suppose, then, that the same power and skill produced one and the other of these two sets of contrivances, which so remarkably fit into each other. The creator of light is the author of our visual powers. But how small a portion does mere visual perception constitute of the advantages which we derive from vision! We possess ulterior faculties and capacities by which sight becomes a source of happiness and good to man. The sense of beauty, the love of art, the pleasure arising from the contemplation of nature, are all dependent on the eye; and we can hardly doubt that these faculties were bestowed on man to further the best interests of his being. The sense of beauty both animates and refines his domestic tendencies; the love of art is a powerful instrument for raising him above the mere cravings and satisfactions of his animal nature; the expansion of mind which rises in us at the sight of the starry sky, the cloud-capt mountain, the boundless ocean, seems intended to direct our thoughts by an impressive though indefinite feeling, to the Infinite Author of All. But if these faculties be thus part of the scheme of man’s inner being, given him by a good and wise creator, can we suppose that this creator was any other than the creator also of those visual organs, without which the faculties could have no operation and no existence? As clearly as light and the eye are the work of the same author, so clearly also do our capacities for the most exalted visual pleasures, and the feelings flowing from them, proceed from the same Divine Hand.

3. The creator of the earth must be conceived to be the author also of all those qualities in the soil, chemical and whatever else, by which it supports vegetable life, under all the modifications of natural and artificial condition. Among the attributes which the earth thus possesses, there are some which seem to have an especial reference to man in a state of society. Such are—the power of the earth to increase its produce under the influence of cultivation, and the necessary existence of property in land, in order that this cultivation may be advantageously applied; the rise, under such circumstances, of a surplus produce, of a quantity of subsistence exceeding the wants of the cultivators alone; and the consequent possibility of inequalities of rank, and of all the arrangements of civil society. These are all parts of the constitution of the earth. But these would all remain mere idle possibilities, if the nature of man had not a corresponding direction. If man had not a social and economical tendency, a disposition to congregate and co-operate, to distribute possessions and offices among the members of the community, to make and obey and enforce laws, the earth would in vain be ready to respond to the care of the husbandman. Must we not then suppose that this attribute of the earth was bestowed upon it by Him who gave to man those corresponding attributes, through which the apparent niggardliness of the soil is the source of general comfort and security, of polity and law? Must we not suppose that He who created the soil also inspired man with those social desires and feelings which produce cities and states, laws and institutions, arts and civilization; and that thus the apparently inert mass of earth is a part of the same scheme as those faculties and powers with which man’s moral and intellectual progress is most connected?

4. Again:—It will hardly be questioned that the author of the material elements is also the author of the structure of animals, which is adapted to and provided for by the constitution of the elements in such innumerable ways. But the author of the bodily structure of animals must also be the author of their instincts, for without these the structure would not answer its purpose. And these instincts frequently assume the character of affections in a most remarkable manner. The love of offspring, of home, of companions, are often displayed by animals, in a way that strikes the most indifferent observer; and yet these affections will hardly be denied to be a part of the same scheme as the instincts by which the same animals seek food and the gratifications of sense. Who can doubt that the anxious and devoted affection of the mother-bird for her young after they are hatched, is a part of the same system of Providence as the instinct by which she is impelled to sit upon her eggs? and this, of the same by which her eggs are so organized that incubation leads to the birth of the young animal? Nor, again, can we imagine that while the structure and affections of animals belong to one system of things, the affections of man, in many respects so similar to those of animals, and connected with the bodily frame in a manner so closely analogous, can belong to a different scheme. Who, that reads the touching instances of maternal affection, related so often of the women of all nations, and of the females of all animals, can doubt that the principle of action is the same in the two cases, though enlightened in one of them by the rational faculty: And who can place in separate provinces the supporting and protecting love of the father and the mother? or consider as entirely distinct from these, and belonging to another part of our nature, the other kinds of family affection? or disjoin man’s love of his home, his clan, his tribe, his country, from the affection which he bears to his family? The love of offspring, home, friends, in man, is then part of the same system of contrivances of which bodily organization is another part. And thus the author of our corporeal frame is also the author of our capacity of kindness and resentment, of our love and of our wish to be loved, of all the emotions which bind us to individuals, to our families, and to our kind.

It is not necessary here to follow out and classify these emotions and affections; or to examine how they are combined and connected with our other motives of action, mutually giving and receiving strength and direction. The desire of esteem, of power, of knowledge, of society, the love of kindred, of friends, of our country, are manifestly among the main forces by which man is urged to act and to abstain. And as these parts of the constitution of man are clearly intended, as we conceive, to impel him in his appointed path; so we conceive that they are no less clearly the work of the same great Artificer who created the heart, the eye, the hand, the tongue, and that elemental world in which, by means of these instruments, man pursues the objects of his appetites, desires, and affections.

5. But if the Creator of the world be also the author of our intellectual powers, of our feeling for the beautiful and the sublime, of our social tendencies, and of our natural desires and affections, we shall find it impossible not to ascribe also to Him the higher directive attributes of our nature, the conscience and the religious feeling, the reference of our actions to the rule of duty and to the will of God.

It would not suit the plan of the present treatise to enter into any detailed analysis of the connexion of these various portions of our moral constitution. But we may observe that the existence and universality of the conception of duty and right cannot be doubted, however men may differ as to its original or derivative nature. All men are perpetually led to form judgments concerning actions, and emotions which lead to action, as right or wrong; as what they ought or ought not to do or feel. There is a faculty which approves and disapproves, acquits or condemns the workings of our other faculties. Now, what shall we say of such a judiciary principle, thus introduced among our motives to action? Shall we conceive that while the other springs of action are balanced against each other by our Creator, this, the most pervading and universal regulator, was no part of the original scheme? That—while the love of animal pleasures, of power, of fame, the regard for friends, the pleasure of bestowing pleasure, were infused into man as influences by which his course of life was to be carried on, and his capacities and powers developed and exercised;—this reverence for a moral law, this acknowledgment of the obligation of duty,—a feeling which is every where found, and which may become a powerful, a predominating motive of action,—was given for no purpose, and belongs not to the design? Such an opinion would be much as if we should acknowledge the skill and contrivance manifested in the other parts of a ship, but should refuse to recognize the rudder as exhibiting any evidence of a purpose. Without the reverence which the opinion of right inspires, and the scourge of general disapprobation inflicted on that which is accounted wicked, society could scarcely go on; and certainly the feelings and thoughts and characters of men could not be what they are. Those impulses of nature which involve no acknowledgment of responsibility, and the play and struggle of interfering wishes, might preserve the species in some shape of existence, as we see in the case of brutes. But a person must be strangely constituted, who, living amid the respect for law, the admiration for what is good, the order and virtues and graces of civilized nations, (all which have their origin in some degree in the feeling of responsibility) can maintain that all these are casual and extraneous circumstances, no way contemplated in the formation of man; and that a condition in which there should be obligation in law, no merit in self-restraint, no beauty in virtue, is equally suited to the powers and the nature of man, and was equally contemplated when those powers were given him.

If this supposition be too extravagant to be admitted, as it appears to be, it remains then that man, intended, as we have already seen from his structure and properties, to be a discoursing, social being, acting under the influence of affections, desires, and purposes, was also intended to act under the influence of a sense of duty; and that the acknowledgment of the obligation of a moral law is as much part of his nature, as hunger or thirst, maternal love or the desire of power; that, therefore, in conceiving man as the work of a Creator, we must imagine his powers and character given him with an intention on the Creator’s part that this sense of duty should occupy its place in his constitution as an active and thinking being: and that this directive and judiciary principle is a part of the work of the same Author who made the elements to minister to the material functions, and the arrangements of the world to occupy the individual and social affections of his living creatures.

This principle of conscience, it may further be observed, does not stand upon the same level as the other impulses of our constitution by which we are prompted or restrained. By its very nature and essence, it possesses a supremacy over all others. “Your obligation to obey this law is its being the law of your nature. That your conscience approves of and attests such a course of action is itself alone an obligation. Conscience does not only offer itself to show us the way we should walk in, but it likewise carries its own authority with it, that it is our natural guide: the guide assigned us by the author of our nature.”[26] That we ought to do an action, is of itself a sufficient and ultimate answer to the questions, why we should do it?—how we are obliged to do it? The conviction of duty implies the soundest reason, the strongest obligation, of which our nature is susceptible.

We appear then to be using only language which is well capable of being justified, when we speak of this irresistible esteem for what is right, this conviction of a rule of action extending beyond the gratification of our irreflective impulses, as an impress stamped upon the human mind by the Deity himself; a trace of His nature; an indication of His will; an announcement of His purpose; a promise of His favour: and though this faculty may need to be confirmed and unfolded, instructed and assisted by other aids, it still seems to contain in itself a sufficient intimation that the highest objects of man’s existence are to be attained, by means of a direct and intimate reference of his thoughts and actions to the Divine Author of his being.