logy with those of gravity, and declared that all these were but steps in our advance towards a first cause. Between. us and this first cause, the source of the universe and of its laws, we cannot doubt that there intervene many successive steps of possible discovery and generalization, not less wide and striking than the discovery of universal gravitation: but it is still more certain that no extent or success of physical investigation can carry us to any point which is not at an immeasurable distance from an adequate knowledge of Him.

CHAPTER VIL

On Final Causes.

We have pointed out a great number of instances where the mode in which the arrangements of nature produce their effect, suggests, as we conceive, the belief that this effect is to be considered as the end and purpose of these arrangements. The impression which thus arises, of design and intention exercised in the formation of the world, or of the reality of Final Causes, operates on men's minds so generally, and increases so constantly on every additional examination of the phenomena of the universe, that we cannot but suppose such a belief to have a deep and stable foundation. And we conceive that in several of the comparatively few cases in which such a belief has been rejected, the averseness to it has arisen from the influence of some of the causes mentioned in the last chapter; the exclusive pursuit, namely, of particular trains and modes of reasoning, till the mind becomes less capable of forming the conceptions and making the exertions which are requisite for the apprehension of truths not included among its usual subjects of thought.

1. This seems to be the case with those who maintain that purpose and design cannot be inferred or deduced from the arrangements which we see around us by any process of reasoning. We can reason from effects to causes, say such writers, only in cases where we know something of the na

ture of the cause. We can infer from the works of men, the existence of design and purpose, because we know, from past observation, what kind of works human design and purpose can produce. But the universe, considered as the work of God, cannot be compared with any corresponding work, or judged of by any analogy with known examples. How then can we, in this case, they ask, infer design and purpose in the artist of the universe? On what principles, on what axioms, can we proceed, which shall include this necessarily singular instance, and thus give legitimacy and validity to our reasonings?

What has already been said on the subject of the two different processes by which we obtain principles, and by which we reason from them, will suggest the reply to these questions. When we collect design and purpose from the arrangements of the universe, we do not arrive at our conclusion by a train of deductive reasoning, but by the convic tion which such combinations as we perceive immediately and directly impress upon the mind." Design must have had a designer." But such a principle can be of no avail to one whom the contemplation or the description of the world does not impress with the perception of design. It is not, therefore, at the end, but at the beginning of our syllogisms, not among remote conclusions, but among original principles, that we must place the truth, that such arrangements, manifestations, and proceedings as we behold about us imply a Being endowed with consciousness, design, and will, from whom they proceed.

This is inevitably the mode in which such a conviction is acquired; and that it is so, we may the more readily believe, when we consider that it is the case with the design and will which we ascribe to man, no less than in that which we believe to exist in God. At first sight we might perhaps be tempted to say, that we infer design and purpose from the works of man in one case, because we have known these attributes in other cases produce effects in some measure similar. But to this we must reply, by asking how we come to know the existence of human design and purpose at first, and at all? What we see around us are certain appearances, things, successions of events; how come we ever to ascribe to other men the thought and will of which we are conscious ourselves? How do we come to

believe that there are other men? How are we led to elevate, in our conceptions, some of the objects which we perceive into persons? No doubt their actions, their words induce us to do this. We see that the manifestations which we observe must be so understood, and no otherwise. We feel that such actions, such events must be connected by consciousness and personality; that the actions are not the actions of things, but of persons; not necessary and without significance, like the falling of a stone, but voluntary and with purpose like what we do ourselves. But this is not a result of reasoning: we do not infer this from any similar case which we have known; since we are now speaking of the first conception of a will and purpose different from our own. In arriving at such knowledge, we are aided only by our own consciousness of what thought, purpose, will, are and possessing this regulative principle, we so decipher and interpret the complex appearances which surround us, that we receive irresistibly the persuasion of the existence of other men, with thought and will and purpose like our own. And just in the same manner, when we examine attentively the adjustment of the parts of the human frame to each other and to the elements, the relation of the propertios of the earth to those of its inhabitants, or of the physicial to the moral nature of man, thought must arise and cling to our perceptions, however little it be encouraged, that this system, every where so full of wonderful combinations, suited to the preservation, and well being of living creatures, is also the expression of the intention, wisdom, and goodness of a personal creator and governor.

We conceive then that it is so far from being an unsatis factory or unphilosophical process by which we collect the existence of a Deity from the works of creation, that the process corresponds most closely with that on which rests the most steadfast of our convictions, next to that of our own existence, the belief of the existence of other human beings. If any one ever went so far in scepticism as to doubt the existence of any other person than himself, he might, so far as the argument from final causes is concerned, reject the being of God as well as that of man; but without dwelling on the possibility of such fantasies, when we consider how impossible it is for men in general not to attribute personality, purpose, thought, will to each other, in virtue of cer

tain combinations of appearances and actions, we must deem them most consistent and reasonable in attributing also personality and purpose to God, in virtue of the whole assemblage of appearances and actions which constitute the universe, full as it is of combinations from which such a suggestion springs. The vividness, the constancy of the belief of a wise and good Being, thus governing the world, may be different in different men, according to their habit of directing their thoughts on the subject; but such a belief is undoubtedly capable of becoming lively and steadfast in the highest degree. It has been entertained and cherished by enlightened and well regulated minds in all ages; and has been, at least since the rise of Christianity, not only the belief, but a pervading and ruling principle of action of many men, and of whole communities. The idea may be rendered more faint by turning the mind away from it, and perhaps by indulging too exclusively in abstract and general speculations. It grows stronger by an actual study of the details of the creation; and, as regards the practical consequences of such a belief, by a habit of referring our actions and hopes to such a Governor. In this way it is capable of becoming as real and fixed an impression as that of a human friend and master; and all that we can learn, by observing the course of men's feelings and actions, tends to convince us, that this belief of the being and presence and government of God, leads to the most elevated and beneficial frame of mind of which man is capable.

2. How natural and almost inevitable is this persuasion of the reality of the Final Causes and consequent belief in the personality of the Deity, we may gather by observing how constantly it recurs to the thoughts, even of those who, in consequence of such peculiarities of mental discipline as have been described, have repelled and resisted the impres sion.

Thus, Laplace, of whom we have already spoken, as one of the greatest mathematicians of modern times, expresses his conviction that the supposed evidence of final causes will disappear as our knowledge advances, and that they only seem to exist in those cases where our ignorance leaves room for such a mistake. "Let us run over," he says, "the history of the progress of the human mind and its errors: we shall perpetually see final causes oushed away to

the bounds of its knowledge. These causes, which Newton removed to the limits of the solar system, were not long ago conceived to obtain in the atmosphere, and employed in explaining meteors: they are, therefore, in the eyes of the philosopher, nothing more than the expression of the ignorance in which we are of the real causes.

We may observe that we have endeavoured to give a very different, and, as we believe, a far truer view of the effect which philosophy has produced on our knowledge of final causes. We have shown, we trust, that the notion of design and end is transferred by the researches of science, not from the domain of our knowledge to that of our ignorance, but merely from the region of facts to that of laws. We hold that, in this form, final cuses in the atmosphere are still to be conceived to obtain, no less than in an earlier state of meteorological knowledge; and that Newton was right, when he believed that he had established their reality in the solar system, not expelled them from it.

But our more peculiar business at present is to observe that Laplace himself, in describing the arrangements by which the stability of the solar system is secured, uses language which shows how irresistibly these arrangements suggest an adaptation to its preservation as an end. If in his expressions we were to substitute the Deity for the abstraction "nature" which he employs, his reflection would coincide with that which the most religious philosopher would entertain. "It seems that 'God' has ordered every thing in the heavens to ensure the duration of the planetary system, by views similar to those which He appears to us so admirably to follow upon the earth, for the preservation of animals and the perpetuity of the species."* This consideration alone would explain the disposition of the system, if it were not the business of the geometer to go further.' It may be possible for the geometer to go further; but he must be strangely blinded by his peculiar pursuits, if, when he has discovered the mode in which these views are an

* Il semble que la nature ait tout dispose dans le ciel, pour assurer la durce du systeme planetaire, par des vues semblables a celles qu'elle nous parait suivre si admirablement sur la terre, pour la conservation des individus et la perpetuite des especes, -Syst. du Monde, p. 442.

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