If we could show gravity to be a necessary consequence of those

properties which we adopt as essential to our notion of matter,

(extension, solidity, mobility, inertia) we might then call it also

one of the essential properties. But no one probably will assert

that this is the case. Its universality is a fact of observation

merely. How then can a property,--in its existence so needful for

the support of the universe, in its laws so well adapted to the

purposes of creation,--how came it to be thus universal? Its being

found every where is necessary for its uses; but this is so far

from being a sufficient explanation of its existence, that it is

an additional fact to be explained. We have here, then, an agency

most simple in its rule, most comprehensive in its influence, most

effectual and admirable in its operation. What evidence could be

afforded of design, by laws of mechanical action, which this law

thus existing and thus operating does not afford us?

5. It is not necessary for our purpose to consider the theories

which have been proposed to account for the action of gravity. They

have proceeded on the plan of reducing this action to the result of

pressure or impulse. Even if such theories could be established,

they could not much, or at all, affect our argument; for the

arrangements by which pressure or impact could produce the effects

which gravity produces, must be at least as clearly results of

contrivance, as gravity itself can be.

In fact, however, none of these attempts can be considered as at

all successful. That of Newton is very remarkable: it is found

among the Queries in the second edition of his Optics. “To show,”

he says, “that I do not take gravity for an essential property of

bodies, I have added one question concerning its cause, choosing to

propose it by way of question, because I am not yet satisfied about

it for want of experiments.” The hypothesis which he thus suggests

is, that there is an elastic medium pervading all space, and

increasing in elasticity as we proceed from dense bodies outwards:

that this “causes the gravity of such dense bodies to each other:

every body endeavouring to go from the denser parts of the medium

towards the rarer.” Of this hypothesis we may venture to say, that

it is in the first place quite gratuitous; we cannot trace in any

other phenomena a medium possessing these properties: and in the

next place, that the hypothesis contains several suppositions which

are more complex than the fact to be explained, and none which

are less so. Can we, on Newton’s principles, conceive an elastic

medium otherwise than as a collection of particles, repelling each

other? and is the repulsion of such particles a simpler fact than

the attraction of those which gravitate? And when we suppose that

the medium becomes more elastic as we proceed from each attracting

body, what cause can we conceive capable of keeping it in such a

condition, except a repulsive force emanating from the body itself:

a supposition at least as much requiring to be accounted for, as

the attraction of the body. It does not appear, then, that this

hypothesis will bear examination; although, for our purpose, the

argument would be rather strengthened than weakened, if it could be

established.

6. Another theory of the cause of gravity, which at one time

excited considerable notice, was that originally proposed by M.

Le Sage, in a memoir entitled “Lucrece Newtonien,” and further

illustrated by M. Prevost; according to which all space is occupied

by currents of matter, moving perpetually in straight lines, in

all directions, with a vast velocity, and penetrating all bodies.

When two bodies are near each other, they intercept the current

which would flow in the intermediate space if they were not there,

and thus receive a tendency towards each other from the pressure

of the currents on their farther sides. Without examining further

this curious and ingenious hypothesis, we may make upon it the same

kind of observations as before;--that it is perfectly gratuitous,

except as a means of explaining the phenomena; and that, if it were

proved, it would still remain to be shown what necessity has caused

the existence of these _two kinds_ of matter; the first kind being

that which is commonly called matter, and which alone affects our

senses, while it is inert as to any tendency to motion; the second

kind being something imperceptible to our senses, except by the

effects it produces on matter of the former kind; yet exerting an

impulse on every material body, permeating every portion of common

matter, flowing with inconceivable velocity, in inexhaustible

abundance, from every part of the abyss of infinity on one side,

to the opposite part of the same abyss; and so constituted that

through all eternity it can never bend its path, or return, or

tarry in its course.

If we were to accept this theory, it would little or nothing

diminish our wonder at the structure of the universe. We might well

continue to admire the evidence of contrivance, if such a machinery

should be found to produce all the effects which flow from the law

of gravitation.

7. The arguments for and against the necessity of the law of

the inverse square of the distance in the force of gravity,

were discussed with great animation about the middle of the

last century. Clairault, an eminent mathematician, who did

more than almost any other person for the establishment and

development of the Newtonian doctrines, maintained, at one period

of his researches, not only that the inverse square was not the

_necessary_ law, but also that it was not the _true_ law. The

occasion of this controversy was somewhat curious.

Newton and other astronomers had found that the line of the moon’s

_apsides_ (that is of her greatest and least distances from the

earth) moves round to different parts of the heavens with a

velocity twice as great as that which the calculation from the law

of gravitation seems at first to give. According to the theory,

it appeared that this line ought to move round once in eighteen

years; according to observation, it moves round once in nine

years. This difference, the only obvious failure of the theory of

gravitation, embarrassed mathematicians exceedingly. It is true,

it was afterwards discovered that the apparent discrepancy arose

from a mistake; the calculation, which is long and laborious, was

supposed to have been carried far enough to get close to the truth;

but it appeared afterwards that the residue which had been left out

as insignificant, produced, by an unexpected turn in the reckoning,

an effect as large as that which had been taken for the whole. But

this discovery was not made till afterwards; and in the mean time

the law of the inverse square appeared to be at fault. Clairault

tried to remedy the defect by supposing that the force of the

earth’s gravity consisted of a large force varying as the square of

the distance, and a very small force varying as the fourth power

(the square of the square.) By such a supposition, observation and

theory could be reconciled; but on the suggestion of it, Buffon

came forward with the assertion that the force _could_ not vary

according to any other law than the inverse square. His arguments

are rather metaphysical than physical or mathematical. Gravity,

he urges, is a quality, an emanation; and all emanations are

inversely as the square of the distance, as light, odours. To this

Clairault replies by asking, how we know that light and odours

have their intensity inversely as the square of the distance from

their origin: not, he observes, by measuring the intensity, but

by _supposing_ these effects to be material emanations. But who,

he asks, supposes gravity to be a material emanation _from_ the

attracting body.

Buffon again pleads that so many facts prove the law of the inverse

square, that a single one, which occurs to interfere with this

agreement, must be in some manner capable of being explained away.

Clairault replies, that the facts do _not_ prove this law to obtain

exactly; that small effects, of the same order as the one under

discussion, have been neglected; and that therefore the law is only

known to be true, _as far_ as such an approximation goes, and no

farther.

Buffon then argues, that there can be no such additional fraction

of the force, following a different law, as Clairault supposes: for

what, he asks, is there to determine the magnitude of the fraction

to one amount rather than another? why should nature select for it

any particular magnitude? To this it is replied, that, whether we

can explain the fact or not, nature does select certain magnitudes

in preference to others: that where we ascertain she does this,

we are not to deny the fact because we cannot assign the grounds

of her preference. What is there, it is asked, to determine the

magnitude of the whole force at any fixed distance? We cannot tell;

yet the force is of a certain definite intensity and no other.

Finally, Clairault observes, that we have, in cohesion, capillary

attraction, and various other cases, examples of forces varying

according to other laws than the inverse square; and that therefore

this cannot be the only possible law.

The discrepancy between observation and theory which gave rise to

this controversy was removed, as has been already stated, by a more

exact calculation: and thus, as Laplace observes, in this case

the metaphysician turned out to be right and the mathematician to

be wrong. But most persons, probably, who are familiar with such

trains of speculation, will allow, that Clairault had the best of

the argument, and that the attempts to show the law of gravitation

to be necessarily what it is, are fallacious and unsound.

8. We may observe, however, that the law of gravitation according

to the inverse square of the distance, which thus regulates the

motions of the solar system, is not confined to that province of

the universe, as has been shown by recent researches. It appears

by the observations and calculations of Sir John Herschel, that

several of the stars, called _double stars_, consist of a pair of

luminous bodies which revolve above each other in ellipses, in such

a manner as to show that the force, by which they are attracted

to each other, varies according to the law of the inverse square.

We thus learn a remarkable fact concerning bodies which seemed so

far removed that no effort of our science could reach them; and we

find that the same law of mutual attraction which we have before

traced to the farthest bounds of the solar system, prevails also

in spaces at a distance compared with which the orbit of Saturn

shrinks into a point. The establishment of such a truth certainly

suggests, as highly probable, the prevalence of this law among

all the bodies of the universe. And we may therefore suppose, that

the same ordinance which gave to the parts of our system that rule

by which they fulfil the purposes of their creation, impressed

the same rule on the other portions of matter which are scattered

in the most remote parts of the universe; and thus gave to their

movements the same grounds of simplicity and harmony which we find

reason to admire, as far as we can acquire any knowledge of our own

more immediate neighbourhood.

CHAPTER XI.

_The Laws of Motion._

We shall now make a few remarks on the general Laws of Motion by

which all mechanical effects take place. Are we to consider these

as instituted laws? and if so, can we point out any of the reasons

which we may suppose to have led to the selection of those laws

which really exist?

The observations formerly made concerning the inevitable narrowness

and imperfection of our conclusions on such subjects, apply here,

even more strongly than in the case of the law of gravitation. We

can hardly conceive matter divested of these laws; and we cannot

perceive or trace a millionth part of the effects which they

produce. We cannot, therefore, expect to go far in pointing out the

advantages of these laws such as they now obtain.

It would be easy to show that the fundamental laws of motion, in

whatever form we state them, possess a very preeminent simplicity,

compared with almost all others, which we might imagine as

existing. This simplicity has indeed produced an effect on men’s

minds which, though delusive, appears to be very natural; several

writers have treated these laws as self-evident, and necessarily

flowing from the nature of our conceptions. We conceive that this

is an erroneous view, and that these laws are known to us to be

what they are, by experience only; that they might, so far as we

can discern, have been any others. They appear therefore to be

selected for their fitness to answer their purposes; and we may,

perhaps, be able to point out some instances in which this fitness

is apparent to us.

Newton, and many English philosophers, teach the existence of

_three_ separate fundamental laws of motion, while most of the

eminent mathematicians of France reduce these to _two_, the law

of inertia and the law that force is proportioned to velocity. As

an example of the views which we wish to illustrate, we may take

the law of inertia, which is identical with Newton’s first Law of

Motion. This law asserts, that a body at rest continues at rest,

and that a body in motion goes on moving with its velocity and

direction unchanged, except so far as it is acted on by extraneous

forces.[24]

We conceive that this law, simple and universal as it is, cannot

be shown to be necessarily true. It might be difficult to discuss

this point in general terms with any clearness; but let us take

the only example which we know of a motion absolutely uniform, in

consequence of the absence of any force to accelerate or retard

it;--this motion is the rotation of the earth on its axis.

1. It is scarcely possible that discussions on such subjects

should not have a repulsive and scholastic aspect, and appear like

disputes about words rather than things. For mechanical writers

have exercised all their ingenuity so to circumscribe their notions

and so to define their terms that these fundamental truths should

be expressed in the simplest manner: the consequence of which has

been, that they have been made to assume the appearance rather

of identical assertions than of general facts of experience. But

in order to avoid this inconvenience, as far as may be, let us

take the _first law of motion_ as exemplified in a particular

case, the rotation of the earth. Of all the motions with which

we are acquainted this is alone invariable. Each day, measured

by the passages of the stars, is so precisely of the same length

that, according to Laplace’s calculations, it is impossible

that a difference of hundredth of a second of time should have

obtained between the length of the day in the earliest ages and

at the present time. Now why is this? How is this very remarkable

uniformity preserved in this particular phenomenon, while all the

other motions of the system are subject to inequalities? How is it

that in the celestial machine no retardation takes place by the

lapse of time, as would be the case in any machine which it would

be possible for human powers to construct? The answer is, that in

the earth’s revolution on her axis no cause operates to retard

the speed, like the imperfection of materials, the friction of

supports, the resistance of the ambient medium; impediments which

cannot, in any human mechanism, however perfect, be completely

annihilated. But here we are led to ask again, why should the

speed continue the same when not affected by an extraneous cause?

Why should it not languish and decay of itself by the mere lapse

of time? That it might do so, involves no contradiction, for

it was the common, though erroneous, belief of all mechanical

speculators, to the time of Galileo. We can conceive velocity to

diminish in proceeding from a certain point of time, as easily as

we can conceive force to diminish in proceeding from a certain

point of space, which in attractive forces really occurs. But,

it is sometimes said, the _motion_ (that is the velocity) _must_

continue the same from one instant to another, for there is nothing

to change it. This appears to be taking refuge in words. We may

call the velocity, that is the speed of a body, its motion; but

we cannot, by giving it this name, make it a _thing_ which has

any _à priori_ claim to permanence, much less any self-evident

constancy. Why must the speed of a body, left to itself, continue

the same, any more than its temperature? Hot bodies grow cooler of

themselves, why should not quick bodies go slower of themselves?

Why must a body describe one thousand feet in the next second

because it has described one thousand feet in the last? Nothing

but experience, under proper circumstances, can inform us whether

bodies, abstracting from external agency, do move according to

such a rule. We find that they do so, we learn that all diminution

of their speed which ever takes place, can be traced to external

causes. Contrary to all that men had guessed, motion appears to

be of itself endless and unwearied. In order to account for the

unalterable permanence of the length of our day, all that is

requisite is to show that there is no let or hindrance in the way

of the earth’s rotation;--no resisting medium or alteration of

size,--she “spinning _sleeps_” on her axle, as the poet expresses

it, and may go on sleeping with the same regularity for ever, so

far as the experimental properties of motion are concerned.

Such is the necessary consequence of the first law of motion;

but the law itself has no necessary existence, so far as we can

see. It was discovered only after various perplexities and false

conjectures of speculators on mechanics. We have learnt that it is

so, but we have not learnt, nor can any one undertake to teach us,

that it must have been so. For aught we can tell, it is one among

a thousand equally possible laws, which might have regulated the

motions of bodies.

2. But though we have thus no reason to consider this as the only

possible law, we have good reason to consider it as the best, or at

least as possessing all that we can conceive of advantage. It is

the _simplest_ conceivable of such laws. If the velocity had been

compelled to change with the time, there must have been a law of

the change, and the kind and amount of this change must have been

determined by its dependence on the time and other conditions.

This, though quite supposable, would undoubtedly have been more

complex than the present state of things. And though complexity

does not appear to embarrass the operations of the laws of nature,

and is admitted, without scruple, when there is reason for it,

simplicity is the usual character of such laws, and appears to have

been a ground of selection in the formation of the universe, as it

is a mark of beauty to us in our contemplation of it.

But there is a still stronger apparent reason for the selection

of this law of the preservation of motion. If the case had been

otherwise, the universe must necessarily in the course of ages

have been reduced to a state of rest, or at least to a state not

sensibly differing from it. If the earth’s motion, round its

axis, had slackened by a very small quantity, for instance, by

a hundredth of a second in a revolution, and in this proportion

continued, the day would have been already lengthened by six hours

in the six thousand years which have elapsed since the history

of the world began; and if we suppose a longer period to precede

or to follow, the day might be increased to a month or to any

length. All the adaptations which depend on the length of the day

would consequently be deranged. But this would not be all; for

the same law of motion is equally requisite for the preservation

of the annual motion of the earth. If her motion were retarded by

the establishment of any other law instead of the existing one,

she would wheel nearer and nearer to the sun at every revolution,

and at last reach the centre, like a falling hoop. The same would

happen to the other planets; and the whole solar system would,

in the course of a certain period, be gathered into a heap of

matter without life or motion. In the present state of things on

the other hand, the system, as we have already explained, is, by

a combination of remarkable provisions, calculated for an almost

indefinite existence, of undiminished fitness for its purposes.

There are, therefore, manifest reasons, why, of all laws which

could occupy the place of the first law of motion, the one which

now obtains is the only one consistent with the durability and

uniformity of the system;--the one, therefore, which we may

naturally conceive to be selected by a wise contriver. And as,

along with this, it has appeared that we have no sort of right to

attribute the establishment of this law to any thing but selection,

we have here a striking evidence, to lead us to a perception of

that Divine mind, by which means so simple are made to answer

purposes so extensive and so beneficial.

CHAPTER XII.

_Friction._[25]

We shall not pursue this argument of the last chapter, by

considering the other laws of motion in the same manner as we have

there considered the first, which might be done. But the facts

which form exceptions and apparent contradictions to the first law

of which we have been treating, and which are very numerous, offer,

we conceive, an additional exemplification of the same argument;

and this we shall endeavour to illustrate.

The rule that a body naturally moves for ever with an undiminished

speed, is so far from being obviously true, that it appears on a

first examination to be manifestly false. The hoop of the school

boy, left to itself, runs on a short distance, and then stops; his

top spins a little while, but finally flags and falls; all motion

on the earth appears to decay by its own nature; all matter which

we move appears to have a perpetual tendency to divest itself of

the velocity which we communicate to it. How is this reconcileable

with the first law of motion on which we have been insisting?

It is reconciled principally by considering the effect of

_Friction_. Among terrestrial objects friction exerts an agency

almost as universal and constant as the laws of motion themselves;

an agency which completely changes and disguises the results of

those laws. We shall consider some of these effects.

It is probably not necessary to explain at any length the nature

and operation of friction. When a body cannot move without causing

two surfaces to rub together, this rubbing has a tendency to

diminish the body’s motion or to prevent it entirely. If the

body of a carriage be placed on the earth without the wheels, a

considerable force will be requisite in order to move it at all:

it is here the friction against the ground which obstructs the

motion. If the carriage be placed on its wheels, a much less force

will move it, but if moved it will soon stop: it is the friction at

the ground and at the axles which stops it: placed on a level rail

road, with well made and well oiled wheels, and once put in motion,

it might run a considerable distance alone, for the friction is

here much less; but there is friction, and therefore the motion

would after a time cease.

1. The friction which we shall principally consider is the friction

which _prevents_ motion. So employed, friction is one of the most

universal and important agents in the mechanism of our daily

comforts and occupations. It is a force which is called into play

to an extent incomparably greater than all the other forces with

which we are concerned in the course of our daily life. We are

dependent upon it at every instant and in every action; and it is

not possible to enumerate the ways in which it serves us; scarcely

even to suggest a sufficient number of them to give us a true

notion of its functions.

What can appear a more simple operation than standing and walking?

yet it is easy to see that without the aid of friction these simple

actions would scarcely be possible. Every one knows how difficult

and dangerous they are when performed on smooth ice. In such a

situation we cannot always succeed in standing: if the ice be very

smooth, it is by no means easy to walk, even when the surface is

perfectly level; and if it were ever so little inclined, no one

would make the attempt. Yet walking on the ice and on the ground

differ only in our experiencing more friction in the latter case.

We say _more_, for there is a considerable friction even in the

case of ice, as we see by the small distance which a stone slides

when thrown along the surface. It is this friction of the earth

which, at every step we take, prevents the foot from sliding back;

and thus allows us to push the body and the other foot forwards.

And when we come to violent bodily motions, to running, leaping,

pulling or pushing objects, it is easily seen how entirely we

depend upon the friction of the ground for our strength and force.

Every one knows how completely powerless we become in any of these

actions by the _foot slipping_.

In the same manner it is the friction of objects to which the

hand is applied, which enables us to hold them with any degree

of firmness. In some contests it was formerly the custom for the

combatants to rub their bodies with oil, that the adversary might

not be able to keep his grasp. If the pole of the boatman, the rope

of the sailor, were thus smooth and lubricated, how weak would be

the thrust and the pull! Yet this would only be the removal of

friction.

Our buildings are no less dependent on this force for their

stability. Some edifices are erected without the aid of cement; and

if the stones be large and well squared, such structures may be

highly substantial and durable; even when rude and slight, houses

so built answer the purposes of life. These are entirely upheld

by friction, and without that agent they would be thrown down by

the Zephyr, far more easily than if all the stones were lumps of

ice with a thawing surface. But even in cases where cement _binds_

the masonry, it does not take the duty of _holding_ it together.

In consequence of the existence of friction, there is no constant

tendency of the stones to separate; they are in a state of repose.

If this were not so, if every shock and every breeze required to be

counteracted by the cement, no composition exists which would long

sustain such a wear and tear. The cement excludes the corroding

elements, and helps to resist extraordinary violence; but it is

friction which gives the habitual state of rest.

We are not to consider friction as a _small_ force, slightly

modifying the effects of other agencies. On the contrary its

amount is in most cases very great. When a body lies loose on the

ground, the friction is equal to one-third or one-half, or in some

cases the whole of its weight. But in cases of bodies supported by

oblique pressure, the amount is far more enormous. In the arch of a

bridge, the friction which is called into play between two of the

vaulting stones, may be equal to the whole weight of the bridge.

In such cases this conservative force is so great, that the common

theory, which neglects it, does not help us even to guess what

will take place. According to the theory, certain forms of arches

only will stand, but in practice almost any form will stand, and it

is not easy to construct a model of a bridge which will fall.

We may see the great force of friction in the _brake_, by which

a large weight running down a long inclined plane has its motion

moderated and stopt; in the windlass, where a few coils of the

rope round a cylinder sustain the stress and weight of a large

iron anchor; in the nail or screw which holds together large

beams; in the mode of raising large blocks of granite by an iron

rod driven into a hole in the stone. Probably no greater forces

are exercised in any processes in the arts than the force of

friction; and it is always employed to produce rest, stability,

moderate motion. Being always ready and never wearied, always at

hand and augmenting with the exigency, it regulates, controls,

subdues all motions;--counteracts all other agents;--and finally

gains the mastery over all other terrestrial agencies, however

violent, frequent, or long continued. The perpetual action of all

other terrestrial forces appears, on a large scale, only as so many

interruptions of the constant and stationary rule of friction.

The objects which every where surround us, the books or dishes

which stand on our tables, our tables and chairs themselves, the

loose clods and stones in the field, the heaviest masses produced

by nature or art, would be in a perpetual motion, quick or slow

according to the forces which acted on them, and to their size, if

it were not for the tranquillizing and steadying effects of the

agent we are considering. Without this, our apartments, if they

kept their shape, would exhibit to us articles of furniture, and of

all other kinds, sliding and creeping from side to side with every

push and every wind, like loose objects in a ship’s cabin, when she

is changing her course in a gale.

Here, then, we have a force, most extensive and incessant in its

operation, which is absolutely essential to the business of this

terrestrial world, according to any notion which we can form. The

more any one considers its effects, and the more he will find how

universally dependent he is upon it, in every action of his life;

resting or moving, dealing with objects of art or of nature, with

instruments of enjoyment or of action.

2. Now we have to observe concerning this agent, Friction, that

we have no ground for asserting it to be a necessary result of

other properties of matter, for instance, of their solidity and

coherency. Philosophers have not been able to deduce the laws of

friction from the other known properties of matter, nor even to

explain what we know experimentally of such laws, (which is not

much,) without introducing new hypotheses concerning the surfaces

of bodies, &c.--hypotheses which are not supplied us by any other

set of phenomena. So far as our knowledge goes, friction is a

separate property, and may be conceived to have been bestowed upon

matter for particular purposes. How well it answers the purpose

of fitting matter for the uses of the daily life of man, we have

already seen.

We may make suppositions as to the mode in which friction is

connected with the texture of bodies; but little can be gained for

philosophy, or for speculation of any kind, by such conjectures

respecting unknown connexions. If, on the other hand, we consider

this property of friction, and find that it prevails there, and

there only, where the general functions, analogies, and relations

of the universe require it, we shall probably receive a strong

impression that it was introduced into the system of the world _for

a purpose_.

3. It is very remarkable that this force, which is thus so

efficacious and discharges such important offices in all earthly

mechanism, disappears altogether when we turn to the mechanism

of the heavens. All motions on the earth soon stop;--a machine

which imitates the movements of the stars cannot go long without

winding up: but the stars themselves have gone on in their courses

for ages, with no diminution of their motions, and offer no

obvious prospect of any change. This is so palpable a fact, that

the first attempts of men to systematize their mechanical notions

were founded upon it. The ancients held that motions were to be

distinguished into _natural_ motions and _violent_,--the former

go on without diminution--the latter are soon extinguished;--the

motions of the stars are of the former kind;--those of a stone

thrown, and in short all terrestrial motions, of the latter. Modern

philosophers maintain that the laws of motion are the same for

celestial and terrestrial bodies;--that all motions are _natural_

according to the above description;--but that in terrestrial

motions, friction comes in and alters their character,--destroys

them so speedily that they appear to have existed only during an

effort. And that this is the case will not now be contested. Is

it not then somewhat remarkable that the same laws which produce

a state of permanent motion in the heavens, should, on the earth,

give rise to a condition in which rest is the rule and motion the

exception? The air, the waters, and the lighter portions of matter

are, no doubt, in a state of perpetual motion; over these friction

has no empire: yet even their motions are interrupted, alternate,

variable, and on the whole slight deviations from the condition of

equilibrium. But in the solid parts of the globe, rest predominates

incomparably over motion: and this, not only with regard to the

portions which cohere as parts of the same solid; for the whole

surface of the earth is covered with loose masses, which, if the

power of friction were abolished, would rush from their places and

begin one universal and interminable dance, which would make the

earth absolutely uninhabitable.

If, on the other hand, the dominion of friction were extended in

any considerable degree into the planetary spaces, there would

soon be an end of the system. If the planet had moved in a fluid,

as the Cartesians supposed, and if this fluid had been subject to

the rules of friction which prevail in terrestrial fluids, their

motions could not have been of long duration. The solar system must

soon have ceased to be a system of revolving bodies.

But friction is neither abolished on the earth, nor active in the

heavens. It operates where it is wanted, it is absent where it

would be prejudicial. And both these circumstances occasion, in

a remarkable manner, the steadiness of the course of nature. The

stable condition of the objects in man’s immediate neighbourhood,

and the unvarying motions of the luminaries of heaven, are alike

conducive to his well-being. This requires that he should be able

to depend upon a fixed order of place, a fixed course of time. It

requires, therefore, that terrestrial objects should be affected by

friction, and that celestial should not; as is the case, in fact.

What further evidence of benevolent design could this part of the

constitution of the universe supply?

4. There is another view which may be taken of the forces which

operate on the earth to produce permanency or change. Some parts

of the terrestrial system are under the dominion of powers which

act energetically to prevent all motion, as the crystalline forces

by which the parts of rocks are bound together; other parts are

influenced by powers which produce a perpetual movement and change

in the matter of which they consist; thus plants and animals

are in a constant state of internal movement, by the agency of

the vital forces. In the former case rigid immutability, in the

latter perpetual developement, are the tendencies of the agencies

employed. Now in the case of objects affected by friction, we

have a kind of intermediate condition, between the constantly

fixed and the constantly moveable. Such objects can and do move;

but they move but for a short time if left to the laws of nature.

When at rest, they can easily be put in motion, but still not

with unlimited ease; a certain finite effort, different in

different cases, is requisite for their purpose. Now this immediate

condition, this capacity of receiving readily and alternately the

states of rest and motion, is absolutely requisite for the nature

of man, for the exertion of will, of contrivance, of foresight, as

well as for the comfort of life and the conditions of our material

existence. If all objects were fixed and immoveable, as if frozen

into one mass; or if they were susceptible of such motions only

as are found in the parts of vegetables, we attempt in vain to

conceive what would come of the business of the world. But besides

the state of a particle which cannot be moved, and of a particle

which cannot be stopped, we have the state of a particle moveable

but not moved; or moved, but moved only while we choose: and this

state is that about which the powers, the thoughts, and the wants

of man are mainly conversant.

Thus the forces by which solidity and by which organic action

are produced, the laws of permanence and of developement, do not

bring about all that happens. Besides these, there is a mechanical

condition, that of a body exposed to friction, which is neither

one of absolute permanency nor one naturally progressive; but is

yet one absolutely necessary to make material objects capable of

being instruments and aids to man; and this is the condition of by

far the greater part of terrestrial things. The habitual course of

events with regard to motion and rest is not the same for familiar

moveable articles, as it is for the parts of the mineral, or of

the vegetable world, when left to themselves; such articles are in

a condition far better adapted than any of those other conditions

would be, to their place and purpose. Surely this shows us an

_adaptation_, an adjustment, of the constitution of the material

world to the nature of man. And as the organization of plants

cannot be conceived otherwise than as having their life and growth

for its object, so we cannot conceive that friction should be

one of the leading agencies in the world in which man is placed,

without supposing that it was intended to be of use when man should

walk and run, and build houses and ships, and bridges, and execute

innumerable other processes, all of which would be impossible,

admirably constituted as man is in other respects, if friction did

not exist. And believing, as we conceive we cannot but believe,

that the laws of motion and rest were thus given with reference

to their ends, we perceive in this instance, as in others, how

wide and profound this reference is, how simple in its means, how

fertile in its consequences, how effective in its details.

BOOK III.

RELIGIOUS VIEWS.

The contemplation of the material universe exhibits God to us as

the author of the laws of material nature; bringing before us a

wonderful spectacle, in the simplicity, the comprehensiveness,

the mutual adaptation of these laws, and in the vast variety of

harmonious and beneficial effects produced by their mutual bearing

and combined operation. But it is the consideration of the moral

world, of the results of our powers of thought and action, which

leads us to regard the Deity in that light in which our relation

to him becomes a matter of the highest interest and importance. We

perceive that man is capable of referring his actions to principles

of right and wrong; that both his faculties and his virtues may

be unfolded and advanced by the discipline which arises from the

circumstances of human society; that good men can be discriminated

from the bad, only by a course of trial, by struggles with

difficulty and temptation; that the best men feel deeply the need

of relying, in such conflicts, on the thought of a superintending

Spiritual power; that our views of justice, our capacity for

intellectual and moral advancement, and a crowd of hopes and

anticipations which rise in our bosoms unsought, and cling there

with inexhaustible tenacity, will not allow us to acquiesce in the

belief that this life is the end of our existence. We are thus led

to see that our relation the Superintender of our moral being, to

the Depositary of the supreme law of just and right, is a relation

of incalculable consequence. We find that we cannot be permitted

to be merely contemplators and speculators with regard to the

Governor of the moral world; we must obey His will; we must turn

our affections to Him; we must advance in His favour; or we offend

against the nature of our position in the scheme of which He is the

author and sustainer.

It is far from our purpose to represent natural religion, as of

itself sufficient for our support and guidance; or to underrate the

manner in which our views of the Lord of the universe have been,

much more, perhaps, than we are sometimes aware, illustrated and

confirmed by lights derived from revelation. We do not here speak

of the manner in which men have come to believe in God, as the

Governor of the moral world; but of the fact, that by the aid of

one or both of these two guides, Reason or Revelation, reflecting

persons in every age have been led to such a belief. And we

conceive it may be useful to point out some connexion between such

a belief of a just and holy Governor, and the conviction, which we

have already endeavoured to impress upon the reader, of a wise and

benevolent Creator of the physical world. This we shall endeavour

to do in the present book.

At the same time that men have thus learnt to look upon God as

their Governor and Judge, the source of their support and reward,

they have also been led, not only to ascribe to him power and

skill, knowledge and goodness, but also attribute to him these

qualities in a mode and degree excluding all limit:--to consider

him as almighty, all-wise, of infinite knowledge and inexhaustible

goodness; every where present and active, but incomprehensible by

our minds, both in the manner of his agency, and the degree of his

perfections. And this impression concerning the Deity appears to be

that which the mind receives from all objects of contemplation and

all modes of advance towards truth. To this conception it leaps

with alacrity and joy, and in this it acquiesces with tranquil

satisfaction and growing confidence; while any other view of the

nature of the Divine Power which formed and sustained the world,

is incoherent and untenable, exposed to insurmountable objections

and intolerable incongruities. We shall endeavour to show that the

modes of employment of the thoughts to which the well conducted

study of nature gives rise, do tend, in all their forms, to

produce or strengthen this impression on the mind; and that such

an impression, and no other, is consistent with the widest views

and most comprehensive aspects of nature and of philosophy, which

our Natural Philosophy opens to us. This will be the purpose of

the latter part of the present book. In the first place we shall

proceed with the object first mentioned, the connexion which may

be perceived between the evidences of creative power, and of moral

government, in the world.

CHAPTER I.

_The Creator of the Physical World is the Governor of the Moral

World._

With our views of the moral government of the world and the

religious interests of man, the study of material nature is not and

cannot be directly and closely connected. But it may be of some

service to trace in these two lines of reasoning, seemingly so

remote, a manifest convergence to the same point, a demonstrable

unity of result. It may be useful to show that we are thus led, not

to two rulers of the universe, but to one God;--to make it appear

that the Creator and Preserver of the world is also the Governor

and Judge of men;--that the Author of the Laws of Nature is also

the Author of the Law of Duty;--that He who regulates corporeal

things by properties of attraction and affinity and assimilating

power, is the same Being who regulates the actions and conditions

of men, by the influence of the feeling of responsibility, the

perception of right and wrong, the hope of happiness, the love of

good.

The conviction that the Divine attributes which we are taught by

the study of the material world, and those which we learn from

the contemplation of man as a responsible agent, belong to the

same Divine Being, will be forced upon us, if we consider the

manner in which all the parts of the universe, the corporeal and

intellectual, the animal and moral, are connected with each other.

In each of these provinces of creation we trace refined adaptations

and arrangements which lead us to the Creator and Director of so

skilful a system; but these provinces are so intermixed, these

different trains of contrivance so interwoven, that we cannot,

in our thoughts, separate the author of one part from the author

of another. The Creator of the Heavens and of the Earth, of the

inorganic and of the organic world, of animals and of man, of the

affections and the conscience, appears inevitably to be one and the

same God.

We will pursue this reflection a little more into detail.

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.

Such then is the Deity to which the researches of Natural Theology

point; and so far is the train of reflections in which we have

engaged, from being merely speculative and barren. With the

material world we cannot stop. If a superior Intelligence _have_

ordered and adjusted the succession of seasons and the structure

of the plants of the field, we must allow far more than this at

first sight would seem to imply. We must admit still greater

powers, still higher wisdom for the creation of the beasts of the

forest with their faculties; and higher wisdom still and more

transcendent attributes, for the creation of man. And when we reach

this point, we find that it is not knowledge only, not power only,

not foresight and beneficence alone, which we must attribute

to the Maker of the World; but that we must consider him as the

Author, in us, of a reverence for moral purity and rectitude; and,

if the author of such emotions in us, how can we conceive of Him

otherwise, than that these qualities are parts of his nature; and

that he is not only wise and great, and good, incomparably beyond

our highest conceptions, but also conformed in his purposes to the

rule which he thus impresses upon us, that is, Holy in the highest

degree which we can imagine to ourselves as possible.

CHAPTER II.

_On the Vastness of the Universe._

1. The aspect of the world, even without any of the peculiar lights

which science throws upon it, is fitted to give us an idea of the

greatness of the power by which it is directed and governed, far

exceeding any notions of power and greatness which are suggested by

any other contemplation. The number of human beings who surround

us--the various conditions requisite for their life, nutrition,

well-being, all fulfilled;--the way in which these conditions are

modified, as we pass in thought to other countries, by climate,

temperament, habit;--the vast amount of the human population of the

globe thus made up;--yet man himself but one among almost endless

tribes of animals;--the forest, the field, the desert, the air,

the ocean, all teeming with creatures whose bodily wants are as

carefully provided for as his;--the sun, the clouds, the winds,

all attending, as it were, on these organized beings;--a host of

beneficent energies, unwearied by time and succession, pervading

every corner of the earth;--this spectacle cannot but give the

contemplator a lofty and magnificent conception of the Author of

so vast a work, of the Ruler of so wide and rich an empire, of the

Provider for so many and varied wants, the Director and Adjuster of

such complex and jarring interests.

But when we take a more exact view of this spectacle, and aid our

vision by the discoveries which have been made of the structure and

extent of the universe, the impression is incalculably increased.

The number and variety of animals, the exquisite skill displayed

in their structure, the comprehensive and profound relations by

which they are connected, far exceed any thing which we could in

any degree have imagined. But the view of the universe expands also

on another side. The earth, the globular body thus covered with

life, is not the only globe in the universe. There are, circling

about our own sun, six others, so far as we can judge, perfectly

analogous in their nature: besides our moon and other bodies

analogous to it. No one can resist the temptation to conjecture,

that these globes, some of them much larger than our own, are

not dead and barren;--that they are, like ours, occupied with

organization, life, intelligence. To conjecture is all that we can

do, yet even by the perception of such a possibility, our view of

the kingdom of nature is enlarged and elevated. The outermost of

the planetary globes of which we have spoken is so far from the

sun, that the central luminary must appear to the inhabitants of

that planet, if any there are, no larger than Venus does to us; and

the length of their year will be eighty-two of ours.

But astronomy carries us still onwards. It teaches us that, with

the exception of the planets already mentioned, the stars which

we see have no immediate relation to our system. The obvious

supposition is that they are of the nature and order of our

sun: the minuteness of their apparent magnitude agrees, on this

supposition, with the enormous and almost inconceivable distance

which, from all the measurements of astronomers, we are led to

attribute to them. If then these are suns, they may, like our sun,

have planets revolving round them; and these may, like our planet,

be the seats of vegetable and animal and rational life:--we may

thus have in the universe worlds, no one knows how many, no one can

guess how varied:--but however many, however varied, they are still

but so many provinces in the same empire, subject to common rules,

governed by a common power.

But the stars which we see with the naked eye are but a very small

portion of those which the telescope unveils to us. The most

imperfect telescope will discover some that are invisible without

it; the very best instrument perhaps does not show us the most

remote. The number which crowds some parts of the heavens is truly

marvellous. Dr. Herschel calculated that a portion of the milky

way, about ten degrees long and two and a half broad, contained two

hundred and fifty-eight thousand. In a sky so occupied, the moon

would eclipse two thousand of such stars at once.

We learn too from the telescope that even in this province the

variety of nature is not exhausted. Not only do the stars differ in

colour and appearance, but some of them grow periodically fainter

and brighter, as if they were dark on one side, and revolved on

their axes. In other cases two stars appear close to each other,

and in some of these cases it has been clearly established,

that the two have a motion of revolution about each other; thus

exhibiting an arrangement before unguessed, and giving rise,

possibly, to new conditions of worlds. In other instances again,

the telescope shows, not luminous points, but extended masses of

dilute light, like bright clouds, hence called _nebulæ_. Some

have supposed (as we have noticed in the last book) that such

nebulæ by further condensation might become suns; but for such

opinions we have nothing but conjecture. Some stars again have

undergone permanent changes, or have absolutely disappeared, as the

celebrated star of 1572, in the constellation Cassiopea.

If we take the whole range of created objects in our own system,

from the sun down to the smallest animalcule, and suppose such a

system, or something in some way analogous to it, to be repeated

for each of the millions of stars thus revealed to us, we have a

representation of the material part of the universe, according to a

view which many minds receive as a probable one; and referring this

aggregate of systems to the Author of the universe, as in our own

system we have found ourselves led to do, we have thus an estimate

of the extent to which his creative energy would thus appear to

have been exercised in the material world.

If we consider further the endless and admirable contrivances and

adaptations which philosophers and observers have discovered in

every portion of our own system, every new step of our knowledge

showing us something new in this respect; and if we combine this

consideration with the thought how small a portion of the universe

our knowledge includes, we shall, without being able at all to

discern the extent of the skill and wisdom thus displayed, see

something of the character of the design, and of the copiousness

and ampleness of the means which the scheme of the world exhibits.

And when we see that the tendency of all the arrangements which

we can comprehend is to support the existence, to develope the

faculties, to promote the well-being of these countless species of

creatures; we shall have some impression of the beneficence and

love of the Creator, as manifested in the physical government of

his creation.

2. It is extremely difficult to devise any means of bringing

before a common apprehension the scale on which the universe is

constructed, the enormous proportion which the larger dimensions

bear to the smaller, and the amazing number of steps from large to

smaller, or from small to larger, which the consideration of it

offers. The following comparative representations may serve to

give the reader to whom the subject is new some idea of these steps.

If we suppose the earth to be represented by a globe a foot in

diameter, the distance of the sun from the earth will be about two

miles; the diameter of the sun, on the same supposition, will be

something above one hundred feet, and consequently his bulk such

as might be made up of two hemispheres, each about the size of the

dome of St. Paul’s. The moon will be thirty feet from us, and her

diameter three inches, about that of a cricket ball. Thus the sun

would much more than occupy all the space within the moon’s orbit.

On the same scale, Jupiter would be above ten miles from the sun,

and Uranus forty. We see then how thinly scattered through space

are the heavenly bodies. The fixed stars would be at an unknown

distance, but, probably, if all distances were thus diminished, no

star would be nearer to such a one-foot earth, than the moon now is

to us.

On such a terrestrial globe the highest mountains would be

about an eightieth of an inch high, and consequently only just

distinguishable. We may imagine therefore how imperceptible would

be the largest animals. The whole organized covering of such a

globe would be quite undiscoverable by the eye, except perhaps by

colour, like the bloom on a plum.

In order to restore this earth and its inhabitants to their true

dimensions, we must magnify them forty millions of times; and to

preserve the proportions, we must increase equally the distances

of the sun and of the stars from us. They seem thus to pass off

into infinity; yet each of them thus removed, has its system of

mechanical and perhaps of organic processes going on upon its

surface.

But the arrangements of organic life which we can see with the

naked eye are few, compared with those which the microscope

detects. We know that we may magnify objects thousands of times,

and still discover fresh complexities of structure; if we suppose,

therefore, that we increase every particle of matter in our

universe in such a proportion, in length, breadth, and thickness,

we may conceive that we tend thus to bring before our apprehension

a true estimate of the quantity of organized adaptations which are

ready to testify the extent of the Creator’s power.

3. The other numerical quantities which we have to consider in

the phenomena of the universe are on as gigantic a scale as the

distances and sizes. By the rotation of the earth on its axis, the

parts of the equator move at the rate of a thousand miles an hour,

and the portions of the earth’s surface which are in our latitude,

at about six hundred. The former velocity is nearly that with

which a cannon ball is discharged from the mouth of a gun; but,

large as it is, it is inconsiderable compared with the velocity

of the earth in its orbit about the sun. This latter velocity is

sixty-five times the former. By the rotatory motion of the earth,

a point of its surface is carried sometimes forwards and sometimes

backwards with regard to the annual progression; but in consequence

of the great predominance of the latter velocity in amount, the

former scarcely affects it either way. And even the latter velocity

is inconsiderable compared with that of light; which comparison,

however, we shall not make; since, according to the theory we have

considered as most probable, the motion of light is not a transfer

of matter but of motion from one part of space to another.

The extent of the scale of density of different substances has

already been mentioned; gold is twenty times as heavy as water; air

is eight hundred and thirty times lighter, steam eight thousand

times lighter than water; the luminiferous ether is incomparably

rarer than steam: and this is true of the matter of light, whether

we adopt the undulatory theory or any other.

4. The above statements are vast in amount, and almost oppressive

to our faculties. They belong to the measurement of the powers

which are exerted in the universe, and of the spaces through which

their efficacy reaches (for the most distant bodies are probably

connected both by gravity and light.) But these estimates cannot be

said so much to give us any notion of the powers of the Deity, as

to correct the errors we should fall into by supposing his powers

at all to resemble ours:--by supposing that numbers, and spaces,

and forces, and combinations, which would overwhelm us, are any

obstacle to the arrangements which his plan requires. We can easily

understand that to an intelligence surpassing ours in degree only,

that may be easy which is impossible to us. The child who cannot

count beyond four, the savage who has no name for any number above

five, cannot comprehend the possibility of dealing with thousands

and millions: yet a little additional developement of the intellect

makes such numbers manageable and conceivable. The difficulty

which appears to reside in numbers and magnitudes and stages of

subordination, is one produced by judging from ourselves--by

measuring with our own sounding line; when that reaches no bottom,

the ocean appears unfathomable. Yet in fact, how is a hundred

millions of miles a _great_ distance? how is a hundred millions

of times a _great_ ratio? Not in itself: this _greatness_ is no

quality of the numbers which can be proved like their mathematical

properties; on the contrary, all that absolutely belongs to number,

space, and ratio, must, we know demonstrably, be equally true of

the largest and the smallest. It is clear that the _greatness_ of

these expressions of measure has reference to _our_ faculties only.

Our astonishment and embarrassment take for granted the limits

of our own nature. We have a tendency to treat a difference of

degree and of addition, as if it were a difference of kind and of

transformation. The existence of the attributes, design, power,

goodness, is a matter depending on obvious grounds: about these

qualities there can be no mistake: if we can know any thing, we

can know these attributes when we see them. But the extent, the

limits of such attributes must be determined by their effects; our

knowledge of their limits by what we see of the effects. Nor is any

extent, any amount of power and goodness improbable beforehand: we

know that these must be great, we cannot tell how great. We should

not expect beforehand to find them bounded; and therefore when the

boundless prospect opens before us, we may be bewildered, but we

have no reason to be shaken in our conviction of the reality of

the cause from which their effects proceed: we may feel ourselves

incapable of following the train of thought, and may stop, but we

have no rational motive for quitting the point which we have thus

attained in tracing the Divine Perfections.

On the contrary, those magnitudes and proportions which leave our

powers of conception far behind;--that ever-expanding view which

is brought before us, of the scale and mechanism, the riches and

magnificence, the population and activity of the universe;--may

reasonably serve, not to disturb, but to enlarge and elevate our

conceptions of the Maker and Master of all; to feed an ever-growing

admiration of His wonderful nature; and to excite a desire to be

able to contemplate more steadily and conceive less inadequately

the scheme of his government and the operation of his power.

CHAPTER III.

_On Man’s Place in the Universe._

The mere aspect of the starry heavens, without taking into account

the view of them to which science introduces us, tends strongly

to force upon man the impression of his own insignificance. The

vault of the sky arched at a vast and unknown distance over our

heads; the stars, apparently infinite in number, each keeping its

appointed place and course, and seeming to belong to a wide system

of things which has no relation to the earth; while man is but one

among many millions of the earth’s inhabitants;--all this makes

the contemplative spectator feel how exceedingly small a portion

of the universe he is; how little he must be, in the eyes of an

intelligence which can embrace the whole. Every person, in every

age and country, will recognize as irresistibly natural the train

of thought expressed by the Hebrew psalmist: “when I consider the

heavens the work of thy hands--the moon and the stars which thou

hast ordained--Lord what is man that thou art mindful of him, or

the son of man that thou regardest him?”

If this be the feeling of the untaught person, when he contemplates

the aspect of the skies, such as they offer themselves to a

casual and unassisted glance, the impression must needs be

incalculably augmented, when we look at the universe with the aid

of astronomical discovery and theory. We then find, that a few of

the shining points which we see scattered on the face of the sky

in such profusion, appear to be of the same nature as the earth,

and may perhaps, as analogy would suggest, be like the earth, the

habitations of organized beings;--that the rest of “the host of

heaven” may, by a like analogy, be conjectured to be the centres of

similar systems of revolving worlds;--that the vision of man has

gone travelling onwards, to an extent never anticipated, through

this multitude of systems, and that while myriads of new centres

start up at every advance, he appears as yet not to have received

any intimation of a limit. Every person probably feels, at first,

lost, confounded, overwhelmed, with the vastness of this spectacle;

and seems to himself, as it were, annihilated by the magnitude

and multitude of the objects which thus compose the universe.

The distance between him and the Creator of the world appears to

be increased beyond measure by this disclosure. It seems as if a

single individual could have no chance and no claim for the regard

of the Ruler of the whole.

The mode in which the belief of God’s government of the physical

world is important and interesting to man, is, as has already

been said, through the connexion which this belief has with the

conviction of God’s government of the moral world; this latter

government being, from its nature, one which has a personal

relation to each individual, his actions and thoughts. It will,

therefore, illustrate our subject to show that this impression

of the difficulty of a personal superintendence and government,

exercised by the Maker of the world over each of his rational and

free creatures, is founded upon illusory views; and that on an

attentive and philosophical examination of the subject, such a

government is in accordance with all that we can discover of the

scheme and the scale of the universe.

1. We may, in the first place, repeat the observation made in

the last chapter, on the confusion which sometimes arises in our

minds, and makes us consider the number of the objects of the

Divine care as a difficulty in the way of its exercise. If we

can conceive this care employed on a million of persons, on the

population of a kingdom, of a city, of a street, there is no real

difficulty in supposing it extended to every planet in the solar

system, admitting each to be peopled as ours is; nor to every

part of the universe, supposing each star the centre of such a

system. _Numbers_ are nothing in themselves; and when we reject the

known, but unessential limits of our own faculties, it is quite as

allowable to suppose a million millions of earths, as one, to be

under the moral government of God.

2. In the next place we may remark, not only that no reason can be

assigned why the Divine care should not extend to a much greater

number of individuals than we at first imagine, but that in fact

we know that it _does_ so extend. It has been well observed, that

about the same time when the invention of the telescope showed us

that there might be myriads of other worlds claiming the Creator’s

care; the invention of the microscope proved to us that there were

in our own world myriads of creatures, before unknown, which this

care was preserving. While one discovery seemed to remove the

Divine Providence further from us, the other gave us most striking

examples that it was far more active in our neighbourhood than we

had supposed: while the first extended the boundaries of God’s

known kingdom, the second made its known administration more minute

and careful. It appeared that in the leaf and in the bud, in solids

and in fluids, animals existed hitherto unsuspected; the apparently

dead masses and blank spaces of the world were found to swarm with

life. And yet, of the animals thus revealed, all, though unknown to

us before, had never been forgotten by Providence. Their structure,

their vessels and limbs, their adaptation to their situation, their

food and habitations, were regulated in as beautiful and complete

a manner as those of the largest and apparently most favoured

animals. The smallest insects are as exactly finished, often as

gaily ornamented, as the most graceful beasts or the birds of

brightest plumage. And when we seem to go out of the domain of the

complex animal structure with which we are familiar, and come to

animals of apparently more scanty faculties, and less developed

powers of enjoyment and action, we still find that their faculties

and their senses are in exact harmony with their situation and

circumstances; that the wants which they have are provided for, and

the powers which they possess called into activity. So that Müller,

the patient and accurate observer of the smallest and most obscure

microscopical animalcula, declares that all classes alike, those

which have manifest organs, and those which have not, offer a vast

quantity of new and striking views of the animal economy; every

step of our discoveries leading us to admire the design and care

of the Creator.[27] We find, therefore, that the Divine Providence

is, in fact, capable of extending itself adequately to an immense

succession of tribes of beings, surpassing what we can imagine or

could previously have anticipated; and thus we may feel secure, so

far as analogy can secure us, that the mere multitude of created

objects cannot remove us from the government and superintendence of

the Creator.

3. We may observe further, that, vast as are the parts and

proportions of the universe, we still appear to be able to perceive

that it is _finite_; the subordination of magnitudes and numbers

and classes appears to have its limits. Thus, for any thing which

we can discover, the sun is the largest body in the universe;

and at any rate, bodies of the order of the sun are the largest

of which we have any evidence: we know of no substance denser

than gold, and it is improbable that one denser, or at least much

denser, should ever be detected: the largest animals which exist

in the sea and on the earth are almost certainly known to us. We

may venture also to say, that the smallest animals which possess

in their structure a clear analogy with larger ones, have been

already seen. Many of the animals which the microscope detects, are

as complete and complex in their organization as those of larger

size: but beyond a certain point, they appear, as they become

more minute, to be reduced to a homogeneity and simplicity of

composition which almost excludes them from the domain of animal

life. The smallest microscopical objects which can be supposed

to be organic, are points,[28] or gelatinous globules,[29] or

threads,[30] in which no distinct organs, interior or exterior,

can be discovered. These, it is clear, cannot be considered as

indicating an indefinite progression of animal life in a descending

scale of minuteness. We can, mathematically speaking, conceive one

of these animals as perfect and complicated in its structure as

an elephant or an eagle, but we do not find it so in nature. It

appears, on the contrary, in these objects, as if we were, at a

certain point of magnitude, reaching the boundaries of the animal

world. We need not here consider the hypotheses and opinions to

which these ambiguous objects have given rise; but, without any

theory, they tend to show that the subordination of organic life is

finite on the side of the little as well as of the great.

Some persons might, perhaps, imagine that a ground for believing

the smallness of organized beings to be limited, might be found in

what we know of the constitution of matter. If solids and fluids

consist of particles of a definite, though exceeding smallness,

which cannot further be divided or diminished, it is manifest

that we have, in the smallness of these particles, a limit to the

possible size of the vessels and organs of animals. The fluids

which are secreted, and which circulate in the body of a mite, must

needs consist of a vast number of particles, or they would not be

fluids: and an animal might be so much smaller than a mite, that

its tubes could not contain a sufficient collection of the atoms

of matter, to carry on its functions. We should, therefore, of

necessity reach a limit of minuteness in organic life, if we could

demonstrate that matter is composed of such indivisible atoms. We

shall not, however, build any thing on this argument; because,

though the _atomic theory_ is sometimes said to be proved, what is

proved is, that chemical and other effects take place as if they

were the aggregate of the effects of certain particles of elements,

the _proportions_ of which particles are fixed and definite; but

that any limit can be assigned to the smallness of these particles,

has never yet been made out. We prefer, therefore, to rest the

proof of the finite extent of animal life, as to size, on the

microscopical observations previously referred to.

Probably we cannot yet be said to have reached the limit of the

universe with the power of our telescopes; that is, it does

not appear that telescopes have yet been used, so powerful in

exhibiting small stars, that we can assume that more powerful

instruments would not discover new stars. Whether or no, however,

this degree of perfection has been reached, we have no proof that

it does not exist; if it were once obtained we should have, with

some approximation, the limit of the universe as to the number of

worlds, as we have already endeavoured to show we have obtained

the limits with regard to the largeness and smallness of the

inhabitants of our own world.

In like manner, although the discovery of new species in some of

the kingdoms of nature has gone on recently with enormous rapidity,

and to an immense extent;--for instance in botany, where the

species known in the time of Linnæus were about ten thousand, and

are now probably fifty thousand;--there can be no doubt that the

number of species and genera is really limited; and though a great

extension of our knowledge is required to reach these limits, it

is our ignorance merely, and not their nonexistence, which removes

them from us.

In the same way it would appear that the universe, so far as it

is an object of our knowledge, is finite in other respects also.

Now when we have once attained this conviction, all the oppressive

apprehension of being overlooked in the government of the universe

has no longer any rational source. For in the superintendence

of a finite system of things, what is there which can appear

difficult or overwhelming to a Being such as we must, from what

we know, conceive the Creator to be? Difficulties arising from

space, number, gradation, are such as we can conceive _ourselves_

capable of overcoming, merely by an extension of our present

faculties. Is it not then easy to imagine that such difficulties

must vanish before Him who made us and our faculties? Let it be

considered how enormous a proportion the largest work of man bears

to the smallest;--the great pyramid to the point of a needle. This

comparison does not overwhelm us, because we know that man has

made both. Yet the difference between this proportion and that of

the sun to the claw of a mite, does not at all correspond to the

difference which we must suppose to obtain between the Creator and

the creature. It appears then that, if the first flash of that view

of the universe which science reveals to us, does sometimes dazzle

and bewilder men, a more attentive examination of the prospect, by

the light we thus obtain, shows us how unfounded is the despair

of our being the objects of Divine Providence, how absurd the

persuasion that we have discovered the universe to be too large for

its ruler.

4. Another ground of satisfactory reflection, having the same

tendency, is to be found in the admirable order and consistency,

the subordination and proportion of parts, which we find to prevail

in the universe, as far as our discoveries reach. We have, it

may be, a multitude almost innumerable of worlds, but no symptom

of crowding, of confusion, of interference. All such defects are

avoided by the manner in which these worlds are distributed into

systems;--these systems, each occupying a vast space, but yet

disposed at distances before which their own dimensions shrink

into insignificance;--all governed by one law, yet this law so

concentrating its operation on each system, that each proceeds as

if there were no other, and so regulating its own effects that

perpetual change produces permanent uniformity. This is the kind of

harmonious relation which we perceive in that part of the universe,

the mechanical part namely, the laws of which are best known to

us. In other provinces, where our knowledge is more imperfect, we

can see glimpses of a similar vastness of combination, producing,

by its very nature, completeness of detail. Any analogy by which

we can extend such views to the moral world, must be of a very

wide and indefinite kind; yet the contemplation of this admirable

relation of the arrangements of the physical creation, and the

perfect working of their laws, is well calculated to give us

confidence in a similar beauty and perfection in the arrangements

by which our moral relations are directed, our higher powers and

hopes unfolded. We may readily believe that there is, in this part

of the creation also, an order, a subordination of some relations

to others, which may remove all difficulty arising from the vast

multitude of moral agents and actions, and make it possible that

the superintendence of the moral world shall be directed with as

exact a tendency to moral good, as that by which the government of

the physical world is directed to physical good.

We may perhaps see glimpses of such an order, in the arrangements

by which our highest and most important duties depend upon our

relation to a small circle of persons immediately around us: and

again, in the manner in which our acting well or ill results from

the operation of a few principles within us; as our conscience, our

desire of moral excellence, and of the favour of God. We can hardly

consider such principles otherwise than as intended to occupy

their proper place in the system by which man’s destination is to

be determined; and thus, as among the means of the government and

superintendence of God in the moral world.

That there must be an order and a system to which such regulative

principles belong, the whole analogy of creation compels us to

believe. It would be strange indeed, if, while the mechanical

world, the system of inert matter, is so arranged that we

cannot contemplate its order without an elevated intellectual

pleasure;--while organized life has no faculties without their

proper scope, no tendencies without their appointed object;--the

rational faculties and moral tendencies of man should belong to no

systematic order, should operate with no corresponding purpose:

that, while the perception of sweet and bitter has its acknowledged

and unmistakeable uses, the universal perception of right and

wrong, the unconquerable belief of the merit of certain feelings

and actions, the craving alike after moral advancement and after

the means of attaining it, should exist only to delude, perplex,

and disappoint man. No one, with his contemplations calmed and

filled and harmonized by the view of the known constitution of

the universe, its machinery “wheeling unshaken” in the farthest

skies and in the darkest cavern, its vital spirit breathing alike

effectively in the veins of the philosopher and the worm;--no one,

under the influence of such a train of contemplations, can possibly

admit into his mind a persuasion which makes the moral part of

our nature a collection of inconsistent and futile impressions,

of idle dreams and warring opinions, each having the same claims

to our acceptance. Wide as is the distance between the material

and the moral world; shadowy as all reasonings necessarily are

which attempt to carry the inferences of one into the other;

elevated above the region of matter as all the principles and

grounds of truth must be, which belong to our responsibilities

and hopes; still the astronomical and natural philosopher can

hardly fail to draw from their studies an imperturbable conviction

that our moral nature cannot correspond to those representations

according to which it has no law, coherency, or object. The mere

natural reasoner may, or must stop far short of all that it is

his highest interest to know, his first duty to pursue; but even

he, if he take any elevated and comprehensive views of his own

subject, must escape from the opinions, as unphilosophical as they

are comfortless, which would expel from our view of the world

all reference to duty and moral good, all reliance on the most

universal grounds of trust and hope.

Men’s belief of their duty, and of the reasons for practising it,

connected as it is with the conviction of a personal relation to

their Maker, and of His power of superintendence and reward, is as

manifest a fact in the moral, as any that can be pointed out is

in the natural world. By mere analogy which has been intimated,

therefore, we cannot but conceive that this fact belongs in some

manner or other to the order of the moral world, and of its

government.

When any one acknowledges a moral governor of the world; perceives

that domestic and social relations are perpetually operating and

seem intended to operate, to retain and direct men in the path of

duty; and feels that the voice of conscience, the peace of heart

which results from a course of virtue, and the consolations of

devotion, are ever ready to assume their office as our guides

and aids in the conduct of all our actions;--he will probably be

willing to acknowledge also that the means of moral government

are not wanting, and will no longer be oppressed or disturbed by

the apprehension that the superintendence of the world may be

too difficult for its Ruler, and that any of His subjects and

servants may be overlooked. He will no more fear that the moral

than that the physical laws of God’s creation should be forgotten

in any particular case: and as he knows that every sparrow which

falls to the ground contains in its structure innumerable marks

of the Divine care and kindness, he will be persuaded that every

individual, however apparently humble and insignificant, will have

his moral being dealt with according to the laws of God’s wisdom

and love; will be enlightened, supported, and raised, if he use the

appointed means which God’s administration of the world of moral

light and good offers to his use.

CHAPTER IV.

_On the Impression produced by the Contemplation of Laws of

Nature; or, on the Conviction that Law implies Mind._

The various trains of thought and reasoning which lead men from

a consideration of the natural world to the conviction of the

existence, the power, the providence of God, do not require, for

the most part, any long or laboured deduction, to give them their

effect on the mind. On the contrary, they have, in every age and

country, produced their impression on multitudes who have not

instituted any formal reasonings upon the subject, and probably

upon many who have not put their conclusions in the shape of any

express propositions. The persuasion of a superior intelligence and

will, which manifests itself in every part of the material world,

is, as is well known, so widely diffused and deeply infixed, as to

have made it a question among speculative men whether the notion

of such a power is not universal and innate. It is our business to

show only how plainly and how universally such a belief results

from the study of the appearances about us. That in many nations,

in many periods, this persuasion has been mixed up with much that

was erroneous and perverse in the opinions of the intellect or

the fictions of fancy, does not weaken the force of such consent.

The belief of a supernatural and presiding power runs through all

these errors: and while the perversions are manifestly the work

of caprice and illusion, and vanish at the first ray of sober

inquiry, the belief itself is substantial and consistent, and grows

in strength upon every new examination. It was the firmness and

solidity of the conviction of _something_ Divine which gave a

hold and permanence to the figments of so many false divinities.

And those who have traced the progress of human thought on other

subjects, will not think it strange, that while the fundamental

persuasion of a Deity was thus irremovably seated in the human

mind, the developement of this conception into a consistent, pure,

and steadfast belief in one Almighty and Holy Father and God,

should be long missed, or never attained, by the struggle of the

human faculties; should require long reflection to mature it, and

the aid of revelation to establish it in the world.

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.

They saw the skies in constant order run,

The varied seasons and the circling sun,

Apparent rule, with unapparent cause,

And thus they sought in Gods the source of laws.

The same feeling may be traced in the early mythology of a large

portion of the globe. We might easily, taking advantage of the

labours of learned men, exemplify this in the case of the oriental

nations, of Greece, and of many other countries. Nor does there

appear much difficulty in pointing out the error of those who

have maintained that all religion had its _origin_ in the worship

of the stars and the elements; and who have insinuated that all

such impressions are unfounded, inasmuch as these are certainly

not right objects of human worship. The religious feeling, the

conviction of a supernatural power, of an intelligence connecting

and directing the phenomena of the world, had not its _origin_

in the worship of sun, or stars, or elements; but was itself the

necessary though unexpressed foundation of all worship, and all

forms of false, as well as true, religion. The contemplation of

the earth and heavens called into action this religious tendency

in man; and to say that the worship of the material world formed

or suggested this religious feeling, is to invert the order of

possible things in the most unphilosophical manner. Idolatry is

not the source of the belief in God, but is a compound of the

persuasion of a supernatural government, with certain extravagant

and baseless conceptions as to the manner in which this government

is exercised.

We will quote a passage from an author who has illustrated at

considerable length the hypothesis that all religious belief is

derived from the worship of the elements.

“Light, and darkness its perpetual contrast; the succession of

days and nights, the periodical order of the seasons; the career

of the brilliant luminary which regulates their course; that of

the moon his sister and rival; night, and the innumerable fires

which she lights in the blue vault of heaven; the revolutions of

the stars, which exhibit them for a longer or a shorter period

above our horizon; the constancy of this period in the fixed stars,

its variety in the wandering stars, the planets; their direct and

retrograde course, their momentary rest; the phases of the moon

waxing, full, waning, divested of all light; the progressive motion

of the sun upwards, downwards; the successive order of the rising

and setting of the fixed stars, which mark the different points of

the course of the sun, while the various aspects which the earth

itself assumes mark, here below also, the same periods of the sun’s

annual motion; * * * all these different pictures, displayed before

the eyes of man, formed the great and magnificent spectacle by

which I suppose him surrounded at the moment when _he is about to

create his gods_.”[31]

What is this (divested of its wanton levity of expression) but to

say, that when man has so far traced the course of nature as to be

irresistibly impressed with the existence of order, law, variety in

constancy, and fixity in change; of relations of form and space,

duration and succession, cause and consequence, among the objects

which surround him; there springs up in his breast, unbidden

and irresistibly, the thought of superintending intelligence,

of a mind which comprehended from the first and completely that

which he late and partially comes to know? The worship of earth

and sky, of the host of heaven and the influences of nature, is

not the ultimate and fundamental fact in the early history of

the religious impressions of mankind. These are but derivative

streams, impure and scanty, from the fountain of religious feeling

which appears to be disclosed to us by the contemplation of the

universe, as the seat of law and the manifestation of intellect.

Time suggests to man the thought of eternity; space of infinity;

law of intelligence; order of purpose; and however difficult and

long a task it may be to develope these suggestions into clear

convictions, these thoughts are the real parents of our natural

religious belief. The only relation between true religion and

the worship of the elemental world is, that the latter is the

partial and gross perversion, the former the consistent and pure

developement of the same original idea.

2. The connexion of the laws of the material world with an

intelligence which preconceived and instituted the law, which

is thus, as we perceive, so generally impressed on the common

apprehension of mankind, has also struck no less those who have

studied nature with a more systematic attention, and with the

peculiar views which belong to science. The laws which such

persons learn and study, seem, indeed, most naturally to lead to

the conviction of an intelligence which originally gave to the law

its form.

What we call a general law is, in truth, a form of expression

including a number of facts of like kind. The facts are separate;

the unity of view by which we associate them, the character of

generality and of law, resides in those relations which are the

object of the intellect. The law once apprehended by us, takes

in our minds the place of the facts themselves, and is said to

_govern_ or determine them, because it determines our anticipations

of what they will be. But we cannot, it would seem, conceive a law,

founded on such intelligible relations, to govern and determine

the facts themselves, any otherwise than by supposing also an

intelligence by which these relations are contemplated, and these

consequences realized. We cannot then represent to ourselves the

universe governed by general laws otherwise than by conceiving an

intelligent and conscious Deity, by whom these laws were originally

contemplated, established, and applied.

This perhaps will appear more clear, when it is considered that

the laws of which we speak are often of an abstruse and complex

kind, depending upon relations of space, time, number, and other

properties, which we perceive by great attention and thought.

These relations are often combined so variously and curiously,

that the most subtle reasonings and calculations which we can form

are requisite in order to trace their results. Can such laws be

conceived to be instituted without any exercise of knowledge and

intelligence? Can material objects apply geometry and calculation

to themselves? Can the lenses of the eye, for instance, be formed

and adjusted with an exact suitableness to their refractive

powers, while there is in the agency which has framed them, no

consciousness of the laws of light, of the course of rays, of

the visible properties of things? This appears to be altogether

inconceivable.

Every particle of matter possesses an almost endless train of

properties, each acting according to its peculiar and fixed

laws. For every atom of the same kind of matter these laws are

invariably and perpetually the same, while for the different kinds

of matter the difference of these properties is equally constant.

This constant and precise resemblance, this variation equally

constant and equally regular, suggest irresistibly the conception

of some cause, independent of the atoms themselves, by which their

similarity and dissimilarity, the agreement and difference of their

deportment under the same circumstances, have been determined. Such

a view of the constitution of matter, as is observed by an eminent

writer of our own time, effectually destroys the idea of its

eternal and self-existent nature, “by giving to each of its atoms

the essential characters, at once, of a _manufactured article_ and

a _subordinate agent_.”[32]

That such an impression, and the consequent belief in a divine

Author of the universe, by whom its laws were ordained and

established, does result from the philosophical contemplation of

nature, will, we trust, become still more evident by tracing the

effect produced upon men’s minds by the discovery of such laws and

properties as those of which we have been speaking; and we shall

therefore make a few observations on this subject.

CHAPTER V.

_On Inductive Habits; or, on the Impression produced on Men’s Minds

by discovering Laws of Nature._

The object of physical science is to discover such laws and

properties as those of which we have spoken in the last chapter.

In this task, undoubtedly a progress has been made on which we may

well look with pleasure and admiration; yet we cannot hesitate to

confess that the extent of our knowledge on such subjects bears no

proportion to that of our ignorance. Of the great and comprehensive

laws which rule over the widest provinces of natural phenomena, few

have yet been disclosed to us. And the names of the philosophers,

whose high office it has been to detect such laws, are even yet far

from numerous. In looking back at the path by which science has

advanced to its present position, we see the names of the great

discoverers shine out like luminaries, few and scattered along the

line: by far the largest portion of the space is occupied by those

whose comparatively humble office it was to verify, to develope, to

apply the general truths which the discoverers brought to light.

It will readily be conceived that it is no easy matter, if it be

possible, to analyse the process of thought by which laws of nature

have thus been discovered; a process which, as we have said, has

been in so few instances successfully performed. We shall not here

make any attempt at such an analysis. But without this, we conceive

it may be shown that the constitution and employment of the mind

on which such discoveries depend, are friendly to that belief in

a wise and good Creator and Governor of the world, which it has

been our object to illustrate and confirm. And if it should appear

that those who see further than their fellows into the bearings

and dependencies of the material things and elements by which they

are surrounded, have also been, in almost every case, earnest and

forward in acknowledging the relation of all things to a supreme

intelligence and will; we shall be fortified in our persuasion

that the true scientific perception of the general constitution

of the universe, and of the mode in which events are produced and

connected, is fitted to lead us to the conception and belief of God.