This step so much resembles the mode in which one intelligent being understands and apprehends the conceptions of another, that we cannot be surprised if those persons in whose minds such a process has taken place, have been most ready to acknowledge the existence and operation of a superintending intelligence, whose ordinances it was their employment to study. When they had just read a sentence of the table of the laws of the universe, they could not doubt whether it had had a legislator. When they had deciphered there a comprehensive and substantial truth, they could not believe that the letters had been thrown together by chance. They could not but readily acknowledge that what their faculties had enabled them to read, must have been written by some higher and profounder mind. And accordingly, we conceive it will be found, on examining the works of those to whom we owe our knowledge of the laws of nature, and especially of the wider and more comprehensive laws, that such persons have been strongly and habitually impressed with the persuasion of a Divine Purpose and Power which had regulated the events which they had attended to, and ordained the laws which they had detected.
To those who have pursued science without reaching the rank of discoverers;—who have possessed a derivative knowledge of the laws of nature which others had disclosed, and have employed themselves in tracing the consequences of such laws, and systematizing the body of truth thus produced, the above description does not apply; and we have not therefore in these cases the same ground for anticipating the same frame of mind. If among men of science of this class, the persuasion of a supreme Intelligence has at some periods been less vivid and less universal, than in that higher class of which we have before spoken, the fact, so far as it has existed, may perhaps be in some degree accounted for. But whether the view which we have to give of the mental peculiarities of men whose science is of this derivative kind be well founded, and whether the account we have above offered of that which takes place in the minds of original discoverers of laws in scientific researches be true, or not, it will probably be considered a matter of some interest to point out historically that in fact, such discoverers have been peculiarly in the habit of considering the world as the work of God. This we shall now proceed to do.
As we have already said, the names of great discoverers are not very numerous. The sciences which we may look upon as having reached or at least approached their complete and finished form, are Mechanics, Hydrostatics, and Physical Astronomy. Galileo is the father of modern Mechanics; Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton are the great names which mark the progress of Astronomy. Hydrostatics shared in a great measure the fortunes of the related science of Mechanics; Boyle and Pascal were the persons mainly active in developing its more peculiar principles. The other branches of knowledge which belong to natural philosophy, as Chemistry and Meteorology, are as yet imperfect, and perhaps infant sciences; and it would be rash to presume to select, in them, names of equal preeminence with those above mentioned: but it may not be difficult to show, with sufficient evidence, that the effect of science upon the authors of science is, in these subjects as in the former ones, far other than to alienate their minds from religious trains of thought, and a habit of considering the world as the work of God.
We shall not dwell much on the first of the above mentioned great names, Galileo; for his scientific merit consisted rather in adopting the sound philosophy of others, as in the case of the Copernican system, and in combating prevalent errors, as in the case of the Aristotelian doctrines concerning motion, than in any marked and prominent discovery of new principles. Moreover the mechanical laws which he had a share in bringing to light, depending as they did, rather on detached experiments and transient facts, than on observation of the general course of the universe, could not so clearly suggest any reflection on the government of the world at that period, as they did afterwards when Newton showed their bearing on the cosmical system. Yet Galileo, as a man of philosophical and inventive mind, who produced a great effect on the progress of physical knowledge, is a person whose opinions must naturally interest us, engaged in our present course of reasoning. There is in his writings little which bears upon religious views, as there is in the nature of his works little to lead him to such subjects. Yet strong expressions of piety are not wanting, both in his letters, and in his published treatises. The persecution which he underwent, on account of his writings in favour of the Copernican system, was grounded, not on his opposition to the general truths of natural religion, which is our main concern at present, nor even on any supposed rejection of any articles of Christian faith, but on the alleged discrepancy between his adopted astronomical views and the declarations of scripture. Some of his remarks may interest the reader.
In his third dialogue on the Copernican system he has occasion to speak of the opinion which holds all parts of the world to be framed for man’s use alone: and to this he says, “I would that we should not so shorten the arm of God in the government of human affairs; but that we should rest in this, that we are certain that God and nature are so occupied in the government of human affairs, that they could not more attend to us if they were charged with the care of the human race alone.” In the same spirit, when some objected to the asserted smallness of the Medicean stars, or satellites of Jupiter, and urged this as a reason why they were unworthy the regard of philosophers, he replied that they are the works of God’s power, the objects of His care, and therefore may well be considered as sublime subjects for man’s study.
In the Dialogues on Mechanics, there occur those observations concerning the use of the air-bladder in fishes, and concerning the adaptation of the size of animals to the strength of the materials of which they are framed, which have often since been adopted by writers on the wisdom of Providence. The last of the dialogues on the system of the world is closed by a religious reflection, put in the mouth of the interlocutor who usually expresses Galileo’s own opinions. “While it is permitted us to speculate concerning the constitution of the world, we are also taught (perhaps in order that the activity of the human mind may not pause or languish) that our powers do not enable us to comprehend the works of His hands. May success therefore attend this intellectual exercise, thus permitted and appointed for us; by which we recognize and admire the greatness of God the more, in proportion as we find ourselves the less able to penetrate the profound abysses of his wisdom.” And that this train of thought was habitual to the philosopher we have abundant evidence in many other parts of his writings. He had already said in the same dialogue, “Nature (or God, as he elsewhere speaks) employs means in an admirable and inconceivable manner; admirable, that is, and inconceivable to us, but not to her, who brings about with consummate facility and simplicity things which affect our intellect with infinite astonishment. That which is to us most difficult to understand is to her most easy to execute.”
The establishment of the Copernican and Newtonian views of the motions of the solar system and their causes, were probably the occasions on which religious but unphilosophical men entertained the strongest apprehensions that the belief in the government of God may be weakened when we thus “thrust some mechanic cause into his place.” It is therefore fortunate that we can show, not only that this ought not to occur, from the reason of the thing, but also that in fact the persons who are the leading characters in the progress of these opinions were men of clear and fervent piety.
In the case of Copernicus himself it does not appear that, originally, any apprehensions were entertained of any dangerous discrepancy between his doctrines and the truths of religion, either natural or revealed. The work which contains these memorable discoveries was addressed to Pope Paul III., the head, at that time, (1543) of the religious world; and was published, as the author states in the preface, at the urgent entreaty of friends, one of whom was a cardinal, and another a bishop.[33] “I know,” he says, “that the thoughts of a philosopher are far removed from the judgment of the vulgar; since it is his study to search out truth in all things, as far as that is permitted by God to human reason.” And though the doctrines are for the most part stated as portions of a mathematical calculation, the explanation of the arrangement by which the sun is placed in the centre of the system is accompanied by a natural reflection of a religious cast; “Who in this fair temple would place this lamp in any other or better place than there whence it may illuminate the whole? We find then under this ordination an admirable symmetry of the world, and a certain harmonious connexion of the motion and magnitude of the orbs, such as in any other way cannot be found. Thus the progressions and regressions of the planets all arise from the same cause, the motion of the earth. And that no such movements are seen in the fixed stars, argues their immense distance from us, which causes the apparent magnitude of the earth’s annual course to become evanescent. So great, in short, is this divine fabric of the great and good God;”[34] “this best and most regular artificer of the universe,” as he elsewhere speaks.
Kepler was the person, who by further studying “the connexion of the motions and magnitude of the orbs,” to which Copernicus had thus drawn the attention of the astronomers, detected the laws of this connexion, and prepared the way for the discovery, by Newton, of the mechanical laws and causes of such motions. Kepler was a man of strong and lively piety; and the exhortation which he addresses to his reader before entering on the exposition of some of his discoveries, may be quoted not only for its earnestness but its reasonableness also. “I beseech my reader, that not unmindful of the divine goodness bestowed on man, he do with me praise and celebrate the wisdom and greatness of the Creator, which I open to him from a more inward explication of the form of the world, from a searching of causes, from a detection of the errors of vision: and that thus, not only in the firmness and stability of the earth he perceive with gratitude the preservation of all living things in nature as the gift of God, but also that in its motion, so recondite, so admirable, he acknowledge the wisdom of the Creator. But him who is too dull to receive this science, or too weak to believe the Copernican system without harm to his piety, him, I say, I advise that, leaving the school of astronomy, and condemning, if he please, any doctrines of the philosophers, he follow his own path, and desist from this wandering through the universe, and lifting up his natural eyes, with which alone he can see, pour himself out from his own heart in praise of God the Creator; being certain that he gives no less worship to God than the astronomer, to whom God has given to see more clearly with his inward eye, and who, for what he has himself discovered, both can and will glorify God.”
The next great step in our knowledge of the universe, the discovery of the mechanical causes by which its motions are produced, and of their laws, has in modern times sometimes been supposed, both by the friends of religion and by others, to be unfavourable to the impression of an intelligent first cause. That such a supposition is founded in error we have offered what appear to us insurmountable reasons for believing. That in the mind of the great discoverer of this mechanical cause, Newton, the impression of a creating and presiding Deity was confirmed, not shaken, by all his discoveries, is so well known that it is almost superfluous to insist upon the fact. His views of the tendency of science invested it with no dangers of this kind. “The business of natural philosophy is,” he says, (Optics, Qu. 28,) “to argue from phenomena without feigning hypotheses, and to deduce cause from effects, till we come to the very first cause, which is certainly not mechanical.” “Though every true step made in this philosophy brings us not immediately to the knowledge of the first cause, yet it brings us nearer to it, and is on that account highly to be valued.” The Scholium, or note, which concludes his great work, the Principia, is a well known and most striking evidence on this point, “This beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets, could have its origin in no other way than by the purpose and command of an intelligent and powerful Being. He governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as the lord of the universe. He is not only God, but Lord or Governor. We know him only by his properties and attributes, by the wise and admirable structure of things around us, and by their final causes; we admire him on account of his perfections, we venerate and worship him on account of his government.”