The view of the universe which we have principally had occasion to present to the reader, is that in which we consider its appearances as reducible to certain fixed and general laws. Availing ourselves of some of the lights which modern science supplies, we have endeavoured to show that the adaptation of such laws to each other, and their fitness to promote the harmonious and beneficial course of the world, may be traced, wherever we can discover the laws themselves; and that the conceptions of the Divine Power, Goodness and Superintendence which we thus form, agree in a remarkable manner with the views of the Supreme Being, to which reason, enlightened by the divine revelation, has led.
But we conceive that the general impressions of mankind would go further than a mere assent to the argument as we have thus stated it. To most persons it appears that the mere existence of a law connecting and governing any class of phenomena, implies a presiding intelligence which has preconceived and established the law. When events are regulated by precise rules of time and space, of number and measure, men conceive these rules to be the evidence of thought and mind, even without discovering in the rules any peculiar adaptations, or without supposing their purpose to be known.
The origin and the validity of such an impression on the human mind may appear to some matters of abstruse and doubtful speculation: yet the tendency to such a belief prevails strongly and widely, both among the common class of minds whose thoughts are casually and unsystematically turned to such subjects, and among philosophers to whom laws of nature are habitual subjects of contemplation. We conceive therefore that such a tendency may deserve to be briefly illustrated; and we trust also that some attention to this point may be of service in throwing light upon the true relation of the study of nature to the belief in God.
1. A very slight attention shows us how readily order and regularity suggest to a common apprehension the operation of a calm and untroubled intelligence presiding over the course of events. Thus the materialist poet, in accounting for the belief in the Gods, though he does not share it, cannot deny the habitual effect of this manifestation.
Præterea cœli rationes ordine certo
Et varia annorum cernebant tempora vorti;
Nec poterant quibus id fieret cognoscere caussis.
Ergo perfugium sibi habebant Omnia Divis
Tradere et illorum nutu facere omnia flecti.
Lucret. v. 1182.