"If the world were made by any antecedent Mind or Understanding, that is by a Deity, then there must needs be an Idea and Exemplar of the whole world before it was made, and consequently actual knowledge, both in the order of Time and Nature, before Things. But conceiving of knowledge as it was got by their own finite minds, and ignorant of any evidence of an ideal Archetype for the world or any part of it, they [the Democritic Philosophers who denied a Divine Creative Mind] affirmed that there was none, and concluded that there could be no knowledge or mind before the world was, as its cause." Plato's assertion of Archetypal Ideas was a protest against this doctrine, but was rather a guess, suggested by the nature of mathematical demonstration, than a doctrine derived from a contemplation of the external world.
"Now however," Mr. Owen continues, "the recognition of an ideal exemplar for the vertebrated animals proves that the knowledge of such a being as Man must have existed before Man appeared. For the Divine Mind which planned the Archetypal also foreknew all its modifications. The Archetypal Idea was manifested in the flesh under divers modifications upon this planet, long prior to the existence of those animal species which actually exemplify it. To what natural or secondary causes the orderly succession and progression of such organic phenomena may have been committed, we are as yet ignorant. But if without derogation to the Divine Power, we may conceive such ministers and personify them by the term Nature, we learn from the past history of our globe that she has advanced with slow and stately steps, guided by the archetypal light amidst the wreck of worlds, from the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea, under its old ichthyic vestment, until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the human form."
4. Law implies a Lawgiver, even when we do not see the object of the Law; even as Design implies a Designer, when we do not see the object of the Design. The Laws of Nature are the indications of the operation of the Divine Mind; and are revealed to us, as such, by the operations of our minds, by which we come to discover them. They are the utterances of the Creator, delivered in language which we can understand; and being thus Language, they are the utterances of an Intelligent Spirit.
5. It may seem to some persons too bold a view, to identify, so far as we thus do, certain truths as seen by man, and as seen by God:[1]—to make the Divine Mind thus cognizant of the truths of geometry, for instance. If any one has such a scruple, we may remark that truth, when of so luminous and stable a kind as are the truths of geometry, must be alike Truth for all minds, even for the highest. The mode of arriving at the knowledge of such truths, may be very different, even for different human minds;—deduction for some;—intuition for others. But the intuitive apprehension of necessary truth is an act so purely intellectual, that even in the Supreme Intellect, we may suppose that it has its place. Can we conceive otherwise, than that God does contemplate the universe as existing in space, since it really does so;—and subject to the relations of space, since these are as real as space itself? We are well aware that the Supreme Being must contemplate the world under many other aspects than this;—even man does so. But that does not prevent the truths, which belong to the aspect of the world, contemplated as existing in space, from being truths, regarded as such, even by the Divine Mind.
6. If these reflections are well founded, as we trust they will, on consideration, be seen to be, we may adopt many of the expressions by which philosophers heretofore have attempted to convey similar views; for in fact, this view, in its general bearing at least, is by no means new. The Mind of Man is a partaker of the thoughts of the Divine Mind. The Intellect of Man is a spark of the Light by which the world was created. The Ideas according to which man builds up his knowledge, are emanations of the archetypal Ideas according to which the work of creation was planned and executed. These, and many the like expressions, have been often used; and we now see, we may trust, that there is a great philosophical truth, which they all tend to convey; and this truth shows at the same time, how man may have some knowledge respecting the Laws of Nature, and how this knowledge may, in some cases, seem to be a knowledge of necessary relations, as in the case of space.[2]
7. Now, the views to which we have been led, bear very strongly upon that argument. For if man, when he attains to a knowledge of such laws, is really admitted, in some degree, to the view with which the Creator himself beholds his creation;—if we can gather, from the conditions of such knowledge, that his intellect partakes of the Nature of the Supreme Intellect;—if his Mind, in its clearest and largest contemplations, harmonizes with the Divine Mind;—we have, in this, a reason which may well seem to us very powerful, why, even if the Earth alone be the habitation of intelligent beings, still, the great work of Creation is not wasted. If God have placed upon the earth a creature who can so far sympathize with Him, if we may venture upon the expression;—who can raise his intellect into some accordance with the Creative Intellect; and that, not once only, nor by few steps, but through an indefinite gradation of discoveries, more and more comprehensive, more and more profound; each, an advance, however slight, towards a Divine Insight;—then, so far as intellect alone (and we are here speaking of intellect alone) can make Man a worthy object of all the vast magnificence of Creative Power, we can hardly shrink from believing that he is so.