Let us consider for a moment what takes place in the mind of a

student of nature when he attains to the perception of a law

previously unknown, connecting the appearances which he has

studied. A mass of facts which before seemed incoherent and

unmeaning, assume, on a sudden, the aspect of connexion and

intelligible order. Thus, when Kepler discovered the law which

connects the periodic times with the diameters of the planetary

orbits; or, when Newton showed how this and all other known

mathematical properties of the solar system were included in the

law of universal gravitation according to the inverse square of

the distance; particular circumstances which, before, were merely

matter of independent record, became, from that time, indissolubly

conjoined by the laws so discovered. The separate occurrences and

facts, which might hitherto have seemed casual and without reason,

were now seen to be all exemplifications of the same truth. The

change is like that which takes place when we attempt to read a

sentence written in difficult or imperfect characters. For a time

the separate parts appear to be disjointed and arbitrary marks; the

suggestions of possible meanings, which succeed each other in the

mind, fail, as fast as they are tried, in combining or accounting

for these symbols: but at last the true supposition occurs; some

words are found to coincide with the meaning thus assumed; the

whole line of letters appear to take definite shapes and to leap

into their proper places; and the truth of the happy conjecture

seems to flash upon us from every part of the inscription.

The discovery of laws of nature, truly and satisfactorily

connecting and explaining phenomena, of which, before, the

connexion and causes had been unknown, displays much of a similar

process, of obscurity succeeded by evidence, of effort and

perplexity followed by conviction and repose. The innumerable

conjectures and failures, the glimpses of light perpetually

opening and as often clouded over, the unwearied perseverance and

inexhaustible ingenuity exercised by Kepler in seeking for the

laws which he finally discovered, are, thanks to his communicative

disposition, curiously exhibited in his works, and have been

narrated by his biographers; and such efforts and alternations,

modified by character and circumstances, must generally precede

the detection of any of the wider laws and dependencies by which

the events of the universe are regulated. We may readily conceive

the satisfaction and delight with which, after this perplexity and

struggle, the discoverer finds himself in light and tranquillity;

able to look at the province of nature which has been the subject

of his study, and to read there an intelligible connexion, a

sufficing reason, which no one before him had understood or

apprehended.

This step so much resembles the mode in which one intelligent being

understands and apprehends the conceptions of another, that we

cannot be surprised if those persons in whose minds such a process

has taken place, have been most ready to acknowledge the existence

and operation of a superintending intelligence, whose ordinances it

was their employment to study. When they had just read a sentence

of the table of the laws of the universe, they could not doubt

whether it had had a legislator. When they had deciphered there a

comprehensive and substantial truth, they could not believe that

the letters had been thrown together by chance. They could not but

readily acknowledge that what their faculties had enabled them to

read, must have been written by some higher and profounder mind.

And accordingly, we conceive it will be found, on examining the

works of those to whom we owe our knowledge of the laws of nature,

and especially of the wider and more comprehensive laws, that

such persons have been strongly and habitually impressed with the

persuasion of a Divine Purpose and Power which had regulated the

events which they had attended to, and ordained the laws which they

had detected.

To those who have pursued science without reaching the rank of

discoverers;--who have possessed a derivative knowledge of the laws

of nature which others had disclosed, and have employed themselves

in tracing the consequences of such laws, and systematizing the

body of truth thus produced, the above description does not apply;

and we have not therefore in these cases the same ground for

anticipating the same frame of mind. If among men of science of

this class, the persuasion of a supreme Intelligence has at some

periods been less vivid and less universal, than in that higher

class of which we have before spoken, the fact, so far as it has

existed, may perhaps be in some degree accounted for. But whether

the view which we have to give of the mental peculiarities of men

whose science is of this derivative kind be well founded, and

whether the account we have above offered of that which takes

place in the minds of original discoverers of laws in scientific

researches be true, or not, it will probably be considered a matter

of some interest to point out historically that in fact, such

discoverers have been peculiarly in the habit of considering the

world as the work of God. This we shall now proceed to do.

As we have already said, the names of _great_ discoverers are

not very numerous. The sciences which we may look upon as having

reached or at least approached their complete and finished form,

are Mechanics, Hydrostatics, and Physical Astronomy. Galileo is

the father of modern Mechanics; Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton are

the great names which mark the progress of Astronomy. Hydrostatics

shared in a great measure the fortunes of the related science of

Mechanics; Boyle and Pascal were the persons mainly active in

developing its more peculiar principles. The other branches of

knowledge which belong to natural philosophy, as Chemistry and

Meteorology, are as yet imperfect, and perhaps infant sciences;

and it would be rash to presume to select, in them, names of equal

preeminence with those above mentioned: but it may not be difficult

to show, with sufficient evidence, that the effect of science upon

the authors of science is, in these subjects as in the former ones,

far other than to alienate their minds from religious trains of

thought, and a habit of considering the world as the work of God.

We shall not dwell much on the first of the above mentioned great

names, Galileo; for his scientific merit consisted rather in

adopting the sound philosophy of others, as in the case of the

Copernican system, and in combating prevalent errors, as in the

case of the Aristotelian doctrines concerning motion, than in

any marked and prominent discovery of new principles. Moreover

the mechanical laws which he had a share in bringing to light,

depending as they did, rather on detached experiments and transient

facts, than on observation of the general course of the universe,

could not so clearly suggest any reflection on the government of

the world at that period, as they did afterwards when Newton showed

their bearing on the cosmical system. Yet Galileo, as a man of

philosophical and inventive mind, who produced a great effect on

the progress of physical knowledge, is a person whose opinions must

naturally interest us, engaged in our present course of reasoning.

There is in his writings little which bears upon religious views,

as there is in the nature of his works little to lead him to such

subjects. Yet strong expressions of piety are not wanting, both

in his letters, and in his published treatises. The persecution

which he underwent, on account of his writings in favour of the

Copernican system, was grounded, not on his opposition to the

general truths of natural religion, which is our main concern at

present, nor even on any supposed rejection of any articles of

Christian faith, but on the alleged discrepancy between his adopted

astronomical views and the declarations of scripture. Some of his

remarks may interest the reader.

In his third dialogue on the Copernican system he has occasion

to speak of the opinion which holds all parts of the world to be

framed for man’s use alone: and to this he says, “I would that we

should not so shorten the arm of God in the government of human

affairs; but that we should rest in this, that we are certain

that God and nature are so occupied in the government of human

affairs, that they could not more attend to us if they were charged

with the care of the human race alone.” In the same spirit, when

some objected to the asserted smallness of the Medicean stars, or

satellites of Jupiter, and urged this as a reason why they were

unworthy the regard of philosophers, he replied that they are the

works of God’s power, the objects of His care, and therefore may

well be considered as sublime subjects for man’s study.

In the Dialogues on Mechanics, there occur those observations

concerning the use of the air-bladder in fishes, and concerning the

adaptation of the size of animals to the strength of the materials

of which they are framed, which have often since been adopted by

writers on the wisdom of Providence. The last of the dialogues on

the system of the world is closed by a religious reflection, put

in the mouth of the interlocutor who usually expresses Galileo’s

own opinions. “While it is permitted us to speculate concerning the

constitution of the world, we are also taught (perhaps in order

that the activity of the human mind may not pause or languish) that

our powers do not enable us to comprehend the works of His hands.

May success therefore attend this intellectual exercise, thus

permitted and appointed for us; by which we recognize and admire

the greatness of God the more, in proportion as we find ourselves

the less able to penetrate the profound abysses of his wisdom.”

And that this train of thought was habitual to the philosopher we

have abundant evidence in many other parts of his writings. He had

already said in the same dialogue, “Nature (or God, as he elsewhere

speaks) employs means in an admirable and inconceivable manner;

admirable, that is, and inconceivable to us, but not to her, who

brings about with consummate facility and simplicity things which

affect our intellect with infinite astonishment. That which is to

us most difficult to understand is to her most easy to execute.”

The establishment of the Copernican and Newtonian views of the

motions of the solar system and their causes, were probably the

occasions on which religious but unphilosophical men entertained

the strongest apprehensions that the belief in the government of

God may be weakened when we thus “thrust some mechanic cause into

his place.” It is therefore fortunate that we can show, not only

that this ought not to occur, from the reason of the thing, but

also that in fact the persons who are the leading characters in the

progress of these opinions were men of clear and fervent piety.

In the case of Copernicus himself it does not appear that,

originally, any apprehensions were entertained of any dangerous

discrepancy between his doctrines and the truths of religion,

either natural or revealed. The work which contains these memorable

discoveries was addressed to Pope Paul III., the head, at that

time, (1543) of the religious world; and was published, as the

author states in the preface, at the urgent entreaty of friends,

one of whom was a cardinal, and another a bishop.[33] “I know,”

he says, “that the thoughts of a philosopher are far removed from

the judgment of the vulgar; since it is his study to search out

truth in all things, as far as that is permitted by God to human

reason.” And though the doctrines are for the most part stated as

portions of a mathematical calculation, the explanation of the

arrangement by which the sun is placed in the centre of the system

is accompanied by a natural reflection of a religious cast; “Who in

this fair temple would place this lamp in any other or better place

than there whence it may illuminate the whole? We find then under

this ordination an admirable symmetry of the world, and a certain

harmonious connexion of the motion and magnitude of the orbs,

such as in any other way cannot be found. Thus the progressions

and regressions of the planets all arise from the same cause, the

motion of the earth. And that no such movements are seen in the

fixed stars, argues their immense distance from us, which causes

the apparent magnitude of the earth’s annual course to become

evanescent. So great, in short, is this divine fabric of the great

and good God;”[34] “this best and most regular artificer of the

universe,” as he elsewhere speaks.

Kepler was the person, who by further studying “the connexion of

the motions and magnitude of the orbs,” to which Copernicus had

thus drawn the attention of the astronomers, detected the laws of

this connexion, and prepared the way for the discovery, by Newton,

of the mechanical laws and causes of such motions. Kepler was

a man of strong and lively piety; and the exhortation which he

addresses to his reader before entering on the exposition of some

of his discoveries, may be quoted not only for its earnestness but

its reasonableness also. “I beseech my reader, that not unmindful

of the divine goodness bestowed on man, he do with me praise and

celebrate the wisdom and greatness of the Creator, which I open

to him from a more inward explication of the form of the world,

from a searching of causes, from a detection of the errors of

vision: and that thus, not only in the firmness and stability

of the earth he perceive with gratitude the preservation of all

living things in nature as the gift of God, but also that in its

motion, so recondite, so admirable, he acknowledge the wisdom of

the Creator. But him who is too dull to receive this science, or

too weak to believe the Copernican system without harm to his

piety, him, I say, I advise that, leaving the school of astronomy,

and condemning, if he please, any doctrines of the philosophers,

he follow his own path, and desist from this wandering through the

universe, and lifting up his natural eyes, with which alone he

can see, pour himself out from his own heart in praise of God the

Creator; being certain that he gives no less worship to God than

the astronomer, to whom God has given to see more clearly with his

inward eye, and who, for what he has himself discovered, both can

and will glorify God.”

The next great step in our knowledge of the universe, the discovery

of the mechanical causes by which its motions are produced, and

of their laws, has in modern times sometimes been supposed, both

by the friends of religion and by others, to be unfavourable

to the impression of an intelligent first cause. That such a

supposition is founded in error we have offered what appear to us

insurmountable reasons for believing. That in the mind of the great

discoverer of this mechanical cause, Newton, the impression of a

creating and presiding Deity was confirmed, not shaken, by all

his discoveries, is so well known that it is almost superfluous

to insist upon the fact. His views of the tendency of science

invested it with no dangers of this kind. “The business of

natural philosophy is,” he says, (Optics, Qu. 28,) “to argue from

phenomena without feigning hypotheses, and to deduce cause from

effects, till we come to the very first cause, which is certainly

not mechanical.” “Though every true step made in this philosophy

brings us not immediately to the knowledge of the first cause, yet

it brings us nearer to it, and is on that account highly to be

valued.” The Scholium, or note, which concludes his great work,

the Principia, is a well known and most striking evidence on this

point, “This beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets, could

have its origin in no other way than by the purpose and command of

an intelligent and powerful Being. He governs all things, not as

the soul of the world, but as the lord of the universe. He is not

only God, but Lord or Governor. We know him only by his properties

and attributes, by the wise and admirable structure of things

around us, and by their final causes; we admire him on account of

his perfections, we venerate and worship him on account of his

government.”

Without making any further quotations, it must be evident to

the reader that the succession of great philosophers through

whom mankind have been led to the knowledge of the greatest of

scientific truths, the law of universal gravitation, did, for

their parts, see the truths which they disclosed to men in such a

light that their religious feelings, their reference of the world

to an intelligent Creator and Preserver, their admiration of his

attributes, were exalted rather than impaired by the insight which

they obtained into the structure of the universe.

Having shown this with regard to the most perfect portion of human

knowledge, our knowledge of the motions of the solar system, we

shall adduce a few other passages, illustrating the prevalence

of the same fact in other departments of experimental science;

although, for reasons which have already been intimated, we

conceive that sciences of experiment do not conduct so obviously as

sciences of observation to the impression of a Divine Legislator of

the material world.

The science of Hydrostatics was constructed in a great measure by

the founders of the sister science of Mechanics. Of those who were

employed in experimentally establishing the principles peculiarly

belonging to the doctrine of fluids, Pascal and Boyle are two of

the most eminent names. That these two great philosophers were

not only religious, but both of them remarkable for their fervent

and pervading devotion, is too well known to be dwelt on. With

regard to Pascal, however, we ought not perhaps to pass over an

opinion of his, that the existence of God cannot be proved from the

external world. “I do not undertake to prove this,” says he, “not

only because I do not feel myself sufficiently strong to find in

nature that which shall convince obstinate atheists, but because

such knowledge without Jesus Christ is useless and steril.” It is

obvious that such a state of mind would prevent this writer from

encouraging or dwelling upon the grounds of natural religion; while

yet he himself is an example of that which we wish to illustrate,

that those who have obtained the furthest insight into nature,

have been in all ages firm believers in God. “Nature,” he says, in

another place, “has perfections in order to show that she is the

image of God, and defects in order to show that she is only his

image.”[35]

Boyle was not only a most pious man as well as a great philosopher,

but he exerted himself very often and earnestly in his writings

to show the bearing of his natural philosophy upon his views of

the Divine attributes, and of the government of the world. Many

of these dissertations convey trains of thought and reasoning

which have never been surpassed for their combination of judicious

sobriety in not pressing his arguments too far, with fervent

devotion in his conceptions of the Divine nature. As examples of

these merits, we might adduce almost any portion of his tracts on

these subjects; for instance, his “Inquiry into the Final Causes

of Natural Things;” his “Free Inquiry into the Vulgar Notion of

Nature;” his “Christian Virtuoso;” and his essay entitled “The High

Veneration Man’s Intellect owes to God.” It would be superfluous to

quote at any length from these works. We may observe, however, that

he notices that general fact which we are at present employed in

exemplifying, that “in almost all ages and countries the generality

of philosophers and contemplative men were persuaded of the

existence of a Deity from the consideration of the phenomena of the

universe; whose fabric and conduct they rationally concluded could

not justly be ascribed either to chance or to any other cause than

a Divine Being.” And in speaking of the religious uses of science,

he says: “Though I am willing to grant that some impressions of

God’s wisdom are so conspicuous that even a superficial philosopher

may thence infer that the author of such works must be a wise

agent; yet how wise an agent he has in these works expressed

himself to be, none but an experimental philosopher can well

discern. And ’tis not by a slight survey, but by a diligent and

skilful scrutiny, of the works of God, that a man must be, by a

rational and affective conviction, engaged to acknowledge that

the author of nature ‘is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in

working.’”

After the mechanical properties of fluids, the laws of the

operation of the chemical and physical properties of the elements

about us, offer themselves to our notice. The relations of heat

and of moisture in particular, which play so important a part, as

we have seen, in the economy of our world, have been the subject

of various researches; and they have led to views of the operation

of such agents, some of which we have endeavoured to present to

the reader, and to point out the remarkable arrangements by which

their beneficial operation is carried on. That the discoverers

of the laws by which such operations are regulated, were not

insensible to the persuasion of a Divine care and contrivance

which those arrangements suggest, is what we should expect, in

agreement with what we have already said, and it is what we find.

Among the names of the philosophers to whom we owe our knowledge

on these subjects, there are none greater than those of Black,

the discoverer of the laws of latent heat, and Dalton, who first

gave us a true view of the mode in which watery vapour exists and

operates in the atmosphere. With regard to the former of these

philosophers, we shall quote Dr. Thomson’s account of the views

which the laws of latent heat suggested to the discoverer.[36] “Dr.

Black quickly perceived the vast importance of this discovery,

and took a pleasure in laying before his students a view of

the beneficial effects of this habitude of heat in the economy

of nature. During the summer season a vast magazine of heat is

accumulated in the water, which by gradually emerging during

congelation serves to temper the cold of winter. Were it not for

this accumulation of heat in water and other bodies, the sun would

no sooner go a few degrees to the south of the equator than we

should feel all the horrors of winter.”

In the same spirit are Mr. Dalton’s reflections, after pointing

out the laws which regulate the balance of evaporation and

rain,[37] which he himself first clearly explained. “It is scarcely

possible,” says he, “to contemplate without admiration the

beautiful system of nature by which the surface of the earth is

continually supplied with water, and that unceasing circulation of

a fluid so essentially necessary to the very being of the animal

and vegetable kingdom takes place.”

Such impressions appear thus to rise irresistibly in the breasts

of men, when they obtain a sight, for the first time, of the

varied play and comprehensive connexions of the laws by which the

business of the material world is carried on and its occurrences

brought to pass. To dwell upon or develope such reflections is not

here our business. Their general prevalence in the minds of those

to whom these first views of new truths are granted, has been, we

trust, sufficiently illustrated. Nor are the names adduced above,

distinguished as they are, brought forwards as _authorities_

merely. We do not claim for the greatest discoverers in the realms

of science any immunity from error. In their general opinions they

may, as others may, judge or reason ill. The articles of their

religious belief may be as easily and as widely as of other men’s,

imperfect, perverted, unprofitable. But on this one point, the

tendency of our advances in scientific knowledge of the universe

to lead us up to a belief in a most wise maker and master of the

universe, we conceive that they who make these advances, and who

feel, as an original impression, that which others feel only

by receiving their teaching, must be looked to with a peculiar

attention and respect. And what their impressions have commonly

been, we have thus endeavoured to show.

CHAPTER VI.

_On Deductive Habits; or, on the Impression produced on Men’s

Minds by tracing the consequences of ascertained Laws._

The opinion illustrated in the last chapter, that the advances

which men make in science tend to impress upon them the reality of

the Divine government of the world, has often been controverted.

Complaints have been made, and especially of late years, that the

growth of piety has not always been commensurate with the growth

of knowledge, in the minds of those who make nature their study.

Views of an irreligious character have been entertained, it is

sometimes said, by persons eminently well instructed in all the

discoveries of modern times, no less than by the superficial and

ignorant. Those who have been supposed to deny or to doubt the

existence, the providence, the attributes of God, have in many

cases been men of considerable eminence and celebrity for their

attainments in science. The opinion that this is the case, appears

to be extensively diffused, and this persuasion has probably

often produced inquietude and grief in the breasts of pious and

benevolent men.

This opinion, concerning the want of religious convictions among

those who have made natural philosophy their leading pursuit,

has probably gone far beyond the limits of the real fact. But if

we allow that there are any strong cases to countenance such an

opinion, it may be worth our while to consider how far they admit

of any satisfactory explanation. The fact appears at first sight

to be at variance with the view we have given of the impression

produced by scientific discovery; and it is moreover always a

matter of uneasiness and regret, to have men of eminent talents

and knowledge opposed to doctrines which we consider as important

truths.

We conceive that an explanation of such cases, if they should

occur, may be found in a very curious and important circumstance

belonging to the process by which our physical sciences are formed.

The first discovery of new general truths, and the developement

of these truths when once obtained, are two operations extremely

different; imply different mental habits, and may easily be

associated with different views and convictions on points out of

the reach of scientific demonstration. There would therefore be

nothing surprising, or inconsistent with what we have maintained

above, if it should appear that while original discoverers of laws

of nature are peculiarly led, as we have seen, to believe the

existence of a supreme intelligence and purpose; the far greater

number of cultivators of science, whose employment it is to learn

from others these general laws, and to trace, combine, and apply

their consequences, should have no clearness of conviction or

security from error on this subject, beyond what belongs to persons

of any other class.

This will, perhaps, become somewhat more evident by considering

a little more closely the distinction of the two operations of

discovery and developement, of which we have spoken above, and the

tendency which the habitual prosecution of them may be expected to

produce in the thoughts and views of the student.

We have already endeavoured in some measure to describe that which

takes place when a new law of nature is discovered. A number of

facts in which, before, order and connexion did not appear at all,

or appeared by partial and contradictory glimpses, are brought

into a point of view in which order and connexion become their

essential character. It is seen that each fact is but a different

manifestation of the same principle; that each particular is that

which it is, in virtue of the same general truth. The inscription

is deciphered; the enigma is guessed; the principle is understood;

the truth is enunciated.

When this step is once made, it becomes possible to deduce from the

truth thus established, a train of consequences often in no small

degree long and complex. The process of making these inferences

may properly be described by the word Deduction, while the very

different process by which a new principle is collected from an

assemblage of facts, has been termed Induction; the truths so

obtained and their consequences constitute the results of the

Inductive Philosophy; which is frequently and rightly described

as a science which ascends from particular facts to general

principles, and then descends again from these general principles

to particular applications and exemplifications.

While the great and important labours by which science is really

advanced consist in the successive steps of the _inductive_ ascent

in the discovery of new laws perpetually more and more general; by

far the greater part of our books of physical science unavoidably

consists in _deductive_ reasoning, exhibiting the consequences

and applications of the laws which have been discovered; and the

greater part of writers upon science have their minds employed in

this process of deduction and application.

This is true of many of those who are considered, and justly,

as distinguished and profound philosophers. In the mechanical

philosophy, that science which applies the properties of matter

and the laws of motion to the explanation of the phenomena of

the world, this is peculiarly the case. The laws, when once

discovered, occupy little room in their statement, and when no

longer contested, are not felt to need a lengthened proof. But

their consequences require far more room and far more intellectual

labour. If we take, for example, the laws of motion and the law

of universal gravitation, we can express in a few lines, that

which, when developed, represents and explains an innumerable

mass of natural phenomena. But here the course of developement is

necessarily so long, the reasoning contains so many steps, the

considerations on which it rests are so minute and refined, the

complication of cases and of consequences is so vast, and even

the involution arising from the properties of space and number

so serious, that the most consummate subtlety, the most active

invention, the most tenacious power of inference, the widest spirit

of combination, must be tasked and tasked severely, in order to

solve the problems which belong to this portion of science. And

the persons who have been employed on these problems, and who

have brought to them the high and admirable qualities which such

an office requires, have justly excited in a very eminent degree

the admiration which mankind feel for great intellectual powers.

Their names occupy a distinguished place in literary history; and

probably there are no scientific reputations of the last century

higher, and none more merited, than those earned by the great

mathematicians who have laboured with such wonderful success in

unfolding the mechanism of the heavens; such for instance as

D’Alembert, Clairault, Euler, Lagrange, Laplace.

But it is still important to recollect, that the mental employments

of men, while they are occupied in this portion of the task of the

formation of science, are altogether different from that which

takes place in the mind of a discoverer, who, for the first time,

seizes the principle which connects phenomena before unexplained,

and thus adds another original truth to our knowledge of the

universe. In explaining, as the great mathematicians just mentioned

have done, the phenomena of the solar system by means of the law

of universal gravitation, the conclusions at which they arrived

were really included in the truth of the law itself, whatever skill

and sagacity it might require to develope and extricate them from

the general principle. But when Newton conceived and established

the law itself, he added to our knowledge something which was not

contained in any truth previously known, nor deducible from it by

any course of mere reasoning. And the same distinction, in all

other cases, obtains, between these processes which establish the

principles, generally few and simple, on which our sciences rest,

and those reasonings and calculations, founded on the principles

thus obtained, which constitute by far the larger portion of

the common treatises on the most complete of the sciences now

cultivated.

Since the difference is so great between the process of inductive

generalization of physical facts, and that of mathematical

deduction of consequences, it is not surprising that the two

processes should imply different mental powers and habits. However

rare the mathematical talent, in its highest excellence, may be,

it is far more common, if we are to judge from the history of

science, than the genius which divines the general laws of nature.

We have several good mathematicians in every age; we have few great

discoverers in the whole history of our species.

The distinction being thus clearly established between original

discovery and derivative speculation, between the ascent to

principles and the descent from them, we have further to observe,

that the habitual and exclusive prosecution of the latter process

may sometimes exercise an unfavourable effect on the mind of the

student, and may make him less fitted and ready to apprehend and

accept truths different from those with which his reasonings

are concerned. We conceive, for example, that a person labours

under gross error, who believes the phenomena of the world to be

altogether produced by mechanical causes, and who excludes from

his view all reference to an intelligent First Cause and Governor.

But we conceive that reasons may be shown which make it more

probable that error of such a kind should find a place in the mind

of a person of deductive, than of inductive habits;--of a mere

mathematician or logician, than of one who studies the facts of the

natural world and detects their laws.

The person whose mind is employed in reducing to law and order and

intelligible cause the complex facts of the material world, is

compelled to look beyond the present state of his knowledge, and

to turn his thoughts to the existence of principles higher than

those which he yet possesses. He has seen occasions when facts

that at first seemed incoherent and anomalous, were reduced to

rule and connexion; and when limited rules were discovered to be

included in some rule of superior generality. He knows that all

facts and appearances, all partial laws, however confused and

casual they at present seem, must still, in reality, have this

same kind of bearing and dependence;--must be bound together by

some undiscovered principle of order;--must proceed from some

cause working by most steady rules;--must be included in some

wide and fruitful general truth. He cannot therefore consider any

principles which he has already obtained, as the ultimate and

sufficient reason of that which he sees. There must be some higher

principle, some ulterior reason. The effort and struggle by which

he endeavours to extend his view, makes him feel that there is a

region of truth not included in his present physical knowledge; the

very imperfection of the light in which he works his way, suggests

to him that there must be a source of clearer illumination at a

distance from him.

We must allow that it is scarcely possible to describe in a manner

free from some vagueness and obscurity, the effect thus produced

upon the mind by the efforts which it makes to reduce natural

phenomena to general laws. But we trust it will still be allowed

that there is no difficulty in seeing clearly that a different

influence may result from this process, and from the process

of deductive reasoning which forms the main employment of the

mathematical cultivators and systematic expositors of physical

science in modern times. Such persons are not led by their pursuits

to any thing beyond the general principles, which form the basis

of their explanations and applications. They acquiesce in these;

they make these their ultimate grounds of truth; and they are

entirely employed in unfolding the particular truths which are

involved in the general truth. Their thoughts dwell little upon the

possibility of the laws of nature being other than we find them

to be, or on the reasons why they are not so; and still less on

those facts and phenomena which philosophers have not yet reduced

to any rule; which are lawless to us, though we know that, in

reality, they are governed by some principle of order and harmony.

On the contrary, by assuming perpetually the existing laws as

the basis of their reasoning, without question or doubt, and by

employing such language that these laws can be expressed in the

simplest and briefest form, they are led to think and believe as

if these laws were necessarily and inevitably what they are. Some

mathematicians indeed have maintained that the highest laws of

nature with which we are acquainted, the laws of motion and the

law of universal gravitation, are not only necessarily true, but

are even self-evident and certain _à priori_, like the truths of

geometry. And though the mathematical cultivator of the science of

mechanics may not adopt this as his speculative opinion, he may

still be so far influenced by the tendency from which it springs,

as to rest in the mechanical laws of the universe as ultimate and

all-sufficient principles, without seeing in them any evidence of

their having been selected and ordained, and thus without ascending

from the world to the thought of an Intelligent Ruler. He may thus

substitute for the Deity certain axioms and first principles, as

the cause of all. And the follower of Newton may run into the error

with which he is sometimes charged, of thrusting some mechanic

cause into the place of God, if he do not raise his views, as his

master did, to some higher cause, to some source of all forces,

laws, and principles.

When, therefore, we consider the mathematicians who are employed

in successfully applying the mechanical philosophy, as men well

deserving of honour from those who take an interest in the progress

of science, we do rightly; but it is still to be recollected, that

in doing this they are not carrying us to any higher point of view

in the knowledge of nature than we had attained before: they are

only unfolding the consequences, which were already virtually in

our possession, because they were implied in principles already

discovered:--they are adding to our knowledge of effects, but

not to our knowledge of causes:--they are not making any advance

in that progress of which Newton spoke, and in which he made so

vast a stride, in which “every step made brings us nearer to the

knowledge of the first cause, and is on that account highly to be

valued.” And as in this advance they have no peculiar privileges or

advantages, their errors of opinion concerning it, if they err, are

no more to be wondered at, than those of common men; and need as

little disturb or distress us, as if those who committed them had

confined themselves to the study of arithmetic or of geometry. If

we can console and tranquillize ourselves concerning the defective

or perverted views of religious truth entertained by any of our

fellow men, we need find no additional difficulty in doing so when

those who are mistaken are great mathematicians, who have added to

the riches and elegance of the mechanical philosophy. And if we

are seeking for extraneous grounds of trust and comfort on this

subject, we may find them in the reflection;--that, whatever may

be the opinions of those who assume the causes and laws of that

philosophy and reason from them, the views of those admirable and

ever-honoured men who first caught sight of these laws and causes,

impressed _them_ with the belief that this is “the fabric of a

great and good God;” that “it is man’s duty to pour out his soul in

praise of the Creator;” and that all this beautiful system must be

referred to “a first cause, which is certainly not mechanical.”

2. We may thus, with the greatest propriety, deny to the mechanical

philosophers and mathematicians of recent times any authority

with regard to their views of the administration of the universe;

we have no reason whatever to expect from their speculations any

help, when we attempt to ascend to the first cause and supreme

ruler of the universe. But we might perhaps go further, and assert

that they are in some respects less likely than men employed in

other pursuits, to make any clear advance towards such a subject

of speculation. Persons whose thoughts are thus entirely occupied

in deduction are apt to forget that this is, after all, only one

employment of the reason among more; only one mode of arriving

at truth, needing to have its deficiencies completed by another.

Deductive reasoners, those who cultivate science, of whatever

kind, by means of mathematical and logical processes alone, may

acquire an exaggerated feeling of the amount and value of their

labours. Such employments, from the clearness of the notions

involved in them, the irresistible concatenation of truths which

they unfold, the subtlety which they require, and their entire

success in that which they attempt, possess a peculiar fascination

for the intellect. Those who pursue such studies have generally

a contempt and impatience of the pretensions of all those other

portions of our knowledge, where from the nature of the case, or

the small progress hitherto made in their cultivation, a more

vague and loose kind of reasoning seems to be adopted. Now if this

feeling be carried so far as to make the reasoner suppose that

these mathematical and logical processes can lead him to all the

knowledge and all the certainty which we need, it is clearly a

delusive feeling. For it is confessed on all hands, that all which

mathematics or which logic can do, is to develope and extract

those truths, as conclusions, which were in reality involved in

the principles on which our reasonings proceeded.[38] And this

being allowed, we cannot but ask how we obtain these principles?

from what other source of knowledge we derive the original truths

which we thus pursue into detail? since it is manifest that such

principles cannot be derived from the proper stores of mathematics

or logic. These methods can generate no new truth; and all the

grounds and elements of the knowledge which, through them, we

can acquire, must necessarily come from some extraneous source.

It is certain, therefore, that the mathematician and the logician

must derive from some process different from their own, the

substance and material of all our knowledge, whether physical or

metaphysical, physiological or moral. This process, by which we

acquire our first principles, (without pretending here to analyse

it,) is obviously the general course of human experience, and the

natural exercise of the understanding; our intercourse with matter

and with men, and the consequent growth in our minds of convictions

and conceptions such as our reason can deal with, either by her

systematic or unsystematic methods of procedure. Supplies from this

vast and inexhaustible source of original truths are requisite, to

give any value whatever to the results of our deductive processes,

whether mathematical or logical; while on the other hand, there are

many branches of our knowledge, in which we possess a large share

of original and derivative convictions and truths, but where it is

nevertheless at present quite impossible to erect our knowledge

into a complete system;--to state our primary and independent

truths, and to show how on these all the rest depend by the rules

of art. If the mathematician is repelled from speculations on

morals or politics, on the beautiful or the right, because the

reasonings which they involve have not mathematical precision

and conclusiveness, he will remain destitute of much of the most

valuable knowledge which man can acquire. And if he attempts to

mend the matter by giving to treatises on morals, or politics, or

criticism, a form and a phraseology borrowed from the very few

tolerably complete physical sciences which exist, it will be found

that he is compelled to distort and damage the most important

truths, so as to deprive them of their true shape and import, in

order to force them into their places in his artificial system.

If therefore, as we have said, the mathematical philosopher dwells

in his own bright and pleasant land of deductive reasoning, till

he turns with disgust from all the speculations, necessarily less

clear and conclusive, in which his imagination, his practical

faculties, his moral sense, his capacity of religious hope and

belief, are to be called into action, he becomes, more than common

men, liable to miss the road to truths of extreme consequence.

This is so obvious, that charges are frequently brought against

the study of mathematics, as unfitting men for those occupations

which depend upon our common instinctive convictions and feelings,

upon the unsystematic exercise of the understanding with regard

to common relations and common occurrences. Bonaparte observed of

Laplace, when he was placed in a public office of considerable

importance, that he did not discharge it in so judicious and

clear sighted a manner as his high intellectual fame might lead

most persons to expect.[39] “He sought,” that great judge of

character said, “subtleties in every subject, and carried into

his official employments the spirit of the method of infinitely

small quantities,” by which the mathematician solves his more

abstruse problems. And the complaint that mathematical studies

make men insensible to moral evidence and to poetical beauties, is

so often repeated as to show that some opposition of tendency is

commonly perceived between that exercise of the intellect which

mathematics requires and those processes which go on in our minds

when moral character or imaginative beauty is the subject of our

contemplation.

Thus, while we acknowledge all the beauty and all the value of

the mathematical reasonings by which the consequences of our

general laws are deduced, we may yet consider it possible that

a philosopher, whose mind has been mainly employed, and his

intellectual habits determined, by this process of deduction, may

possess, in a feeble and imperfect degree only, some of those

faculties by which truth is attained, and especially those truths

which regard our relation to that mind, the origin of all law, the

source of first principles, which must be immeasurably elevated

above all derivative truths. It would, therefore, be far from

surprising, if there should be found, among the great authors

of the developements of the mechanical philosophy, some who had

refused to refer the phenomena of the universe to a supreme mind,

purpose, and will. And though this world be, to a believer in the

Being and government of God, a matter of sorrow and pain, it need

not excite more surprise than if the same were true of a person

of the most ordinary endowments, when it is recollected in what a

disproportionate manner the various faculties of such a philosopher

may have been cultivated. And our apprehensions of injury to

mankind from the influence of such examples will diminish, when

we consider, that those mathematicians whose minds have been less

partially exercised, the great discoverers of the truths which

others apply, the philosophers who have looked upwards as well as

downwards, to the unknown as well as to the known, to ulterior as

well as proximate principles, have never rested in this narrow

and barren doctrine; but have perpetually looked forwards, beyond

mere material laws and causes, to a First Cause of the moral and

material world, to which each advance in philosophy might bring

them nearer, though it must ever remain indefinitely beyond their

reach.

It scarcely needs, perhaps, to be noticed, that what we here

represent as the possible source of error is, not the perfection

of the mathematical habits of the mind, but the deficiency of the

habit of apprehending truth of other kinds;--not a clear insight

into the mathematical consequences of principles, but a want of

a clear view of the nature and foundation of principles;--not

the talent for generalizing geometrical or mechanical relations,

but the tendency to erect such relations into ultimate truths

and efficient causes. The most consummate mathematical skill may

accompany and be auxiliary to the most earnest piety, as it often

has been. And an entire command of the conceptions and processes

of mathematics is not only consistent with, but is the necessary

condition and principal instrument of every important step in the

discovery of physical principles. Newton was eminent above the

philosophers of his time, in no one talent so much as in the power

of mathematical deduction. When he had caught sight of the law of

universal gravitation, he traced it to its consequences with a

rapidity, a dexterity, a beauty of mathematical reasoning which no

other person could approach; so that on this account, if there had

been no other, the establishment of the general law was possible to

him alone. He still stands at the head of mathematicians as well

as of philosophical discoverers. But it never appeared to him,

as it may have appeared to some mathematicians who have employed

themselves on his discoveries, that the general law was an ultimate

and sufficient principle: that the point to which he had hung his

chain of deduction was the highest point in the universe. Lagrange,

a modern mathematician of transcendent genius, was in the habit

of saying, in his aspirations after future fame, that Newton was

fortunate in having had the system of the world for his problem,

since its theory could be discovered once only. But Newton himself

appears to have had no such persuasion that the problem he had

solved was unique and final: he laboured to reduce gravity to some

higher law, and the forces of other physical operations to an

analogy with those of gravity, and declared that all these were

but steps in our advance towards a first cause. Between us and

this first cause, the source of the universe and of its laws, we

cannot doubt that there intervene many successive steps of possible

discovery and generalization, not less wide and striking than the

discovery of universal gravitation: but it is still more certain

that no extent or success of physical investigation can carry us to

any point which is not at an immeasurable distance from an adequate

knowledge of Him.

CHAPTER VII.

_On Final Causes._

We have pointed out a great number of instances where the mode in

which the arrangements of nature produce their effect, suggests,

as we conceive, the belief that this effect is to be considered as

the _end_ and _purpose_ of these arrangements. The impression which

thus arises, of design and intention exercised in the formation of

the world, or of the reality of _Final Causes_, operates on men’s

minds so generally, and increases so constantly on every additional

examination of the phenomena of the universe, that we cannot but

suppose such a belief to have a deep and stable foundation. And we

conceive that in several of the comparatively few cases in which

such a belief has been rejected, the averseness to it has arisen

from the influence of some of the causes mentioned in the last

chapter; the exclusive pursuit, namely, of particular trains and

modes of reasoning, till the mind becomes less capable of forming

the conceptions and making the exertions which are requisite for

the apprehension of truths not included among its usual subjects of

thought.

1. This seems to be the case with those who maintain that purpose

and design cannot be _inferred_ or _deduced_ from the arrangements

which we see around us by any process of reasoning. We can reason

from effects to causes, say such writers, only in cases where we

know something of the nature of the cause. We can infer from the

works of men, the existence of design and purpose, because we

know, from past observation, what kind of works human design and

purpose can produce. But the universe, considered as the work of

God, cannot be compared with any corresponding work, or judged

of by any analogy with known examples. How then can we, in this

case, they ask, infer design and purpose in the artist of the

universe? On what principles, on what axioms, can we proceed, which

shall include this necessarily singular instance, and thus give

legitimacy and validity to our reasonings?

What has already been said on the subject of the two different

processes by which we obtain principles, and by which we reason

from them, will suggest the reply to these questions. When we

collect design and purpose from the arrangements of the universe,

we do not arrive at our conclusion by a train of deductive

reasoning, but by the conviction which such combinations as we

perceive immediately and directly impress upon the mind. “Design

must have had a designer.” But such a principle can be of no avail

to one whom the contemplation or the description of the world does

not impress with the perception of design. It is not, therefore, at

the end, but at the beginning of our syllogisms, not among remote

conclusions, but among original principles, that we must place the

truth, that such arrangements, manifestations, and proceedings

as we behold about us imply a Being endowed with consciousness,

design, and will, from whom they proceed.

This is inevitably the mode in which such a conviction is acquired;

and that it is so, we may the more readily believe, when we

consider that it is the case with the design and will which we

ascribe to man, no less than in that which we believe to exist in

God. At first sight we might perhaps be tempted to say, that we

infer design and purpose from the works of man in one case, because

we have known these attributes in other cases produce effects in

some measure similar. But to this we must reply, by asking how we

come to know the existence of human design and purpose _at first_,

and _at all_? What we see around us are certain appearances,

things, successions of events; how come we ever to ascribe to other

men the thought and will of which we are conscious ourselves? How

do we come to believe that there are other men? How are we led

to elevate, in our conceptions, some of the _objects_ which we

perceive into _persons_? No doubt their actions, their words induce

us to do this. We see that the manifestations which we observe must

be so understood, and not otherwise. We feel that such actions,

such events must be connected by consciousness and personality;

that the actions are not the actions of things, but of persons;

not necessary and without significance, like the falling of a

stone, but voluntary and with purpose like what we do ourselves.

But this is not a result of reasoning: we do not infer this from

any similar case which we have known; since we are now speaking of

the _first_ conception of a will and purpose different from our

own. In arriving at such knowledge, we are aided only by our own

consciousness of what thought, purpose, will, are: and possessing

this regulative principle, we so decipher and interpret the complex

appearances which surround us, that we receive irresistibly the

persuasion of the existence of other men, with thought and will

and purpose like our own. And just in the same manner, when we

examine attentively the adjustment of the parts of the human frame

to each other and to the elements, the relation of the properties

of the earth to those of its inhabitants, or of the physical to

the moral nature of man, the thought must arise and cling to our

perceptions, however little it be encouraged, that this system,

every where so full of wonderful combinations, suited to the

preservation, and well-being of living creatures, is also the

expression of the intention, wisdom, and goodness of a personal

creator and governor.

We conceive then that it is so far from being an unsatisfactory

or unphilosophical process by which we collect the existence of

a Deity from the works of creation, that the process corresponds

most closely with that on which rests the most steadfast of our

convictions, next to that of our own existence, the belief of

the existence of other human beings. If any one ever went so far

in scepticism as to doubt the existence of any other person than

himself, he might, so far as the argument from final causes is

concerned, reject the being of God as well as that of man; but,

without dwelling on the possibility of such fantasies, when we

consider how impossible it is for men in general not to attribute

personality, purpose, thought, will to each other, in virtue of

certain combinations of appearances and actions, we must deem them

most consistent and reasonable in attributing also personality and

purpose to God, in virtue of the whole assemblage of appearances

and actions which constitute the universe, full as it is of

combinations from which such a suggestion springs. The vividness,

the constancy of the belief of a wise and good Being, thus

governing the world, may be different in different men, according

to their habit of directing their thoughts to the subject; but such

a belief is undoubtedly capable of becoming lively and steadfast

in the highest degree. It has been entertained and cherished by

enlightened and well-regulated minds in all ages; and has been,

at least since the rise of Christianity, not only the belief, but

a pervading and ruling principle of action of many men, and of

whole communities. The idea may be rendered more faint by turning

the mind away from it, and perhaps by indulging too exclusively in

abstract and general speculations. It grows stronger by an actual

study of the details of the creation; and, as regards the practical

consequences of such a belief, by a habit of referring our actions

and hopes to such a Governor. In this way it is capable of becoming

as real and fixed an impression as that of a human friend and

master; and all that we can learn, by observing the course of men’s

feelings and actions, tends to convince us, that this belief of

the being and presence and government of God, leads to the most

elevated and beneficial frame of mind of which man is capable.

2. How natural and almost inevitable is this persuasion of the

reality of Final Causes and consequent belief in the personality

of the Deity, we may gather by observing how constantly it recurs

to the thoughts, even of those who, in consequence of such

peculiarities of mental discipline as have been described, have

repelled and resisted the impression.

Thus, Laplace, of whom we have already spoken, as one of the

greatest mathematicians of modern times, expresses his conviction

that the supposed evidence of final causes will disappear as our

knowledge advances, and that they only seem to exist in those cases

where our ignorance leaves room for such a mistake. “Let us run

over,” he says, “the history of the progress of the human mind and

its errors: we shall perpetually see final causes pushed away to

the bounds of its knowledge. These causes, which Newton removed

to the limits of the solar system, were not long ago conceived to

obtain in the atmosphere, and employed in explaining meteors: they

are, therefore, in the eyes of the philosopher nothing more than

the expression of the ignorance in which we are of the real causes.”

We may observe that we have endeavoured to give a very different,

and, as we believe, a far truer view of the effect which philosophy

has produced on our knowledge of final causes. We have shown, we

trust, that the notion of design and end is transferred by the

researches of science, not from the domain of our knowledge to that

of our ignorance, but merely from the region of facts to that of

laws. We hold that, in this form, final causes in the atmosphere

are still to be conceived to obtain, no less than in an earlier

state of meteorological knowledge; and that Newton was right, when

he believed that he had established their reality in the solar

system, not expelled them from it.

But our more peculiar business at present is to observe that

Laplace himself, in describing the arrangements by which the

stability of the solar system is secured, uses language which

shows how irresistibly these arrangements suggest an adaptation

to its preservation as an _end_. If in his expressions we were to

substitute the Deity for the abstraction “nature” which he employs,

his reflection would coincide with that which the most religious

philosopher would entertain. “It seems that ‘God’ has ordered

every thing in the heavens to ensure the duration of the planetary

system, by _views_ similar to those which He appears to us so

admirably to follow upon the earth, for the preservation of animals

and the perpetuity of species.[40] This consideration alone would

explain the disposition of the system, if it were not the business

of the geometer to go further.” It may be possible for the geometer

to go further; but he must be strangely blinded by his peculiar

pursuits, if, when he has discovered the mode in which these views

are answered, he supposes himself to have obtained a proof that

there are no views at all. It would be as if the savage, who had

marvelled at the steady working of the steam engine, should cease

to consider it a work of art, as soon as the self-regulating part

of the mechanism had been explained to him.

The unsuccessful struggle in which those persons engage, who

attempt to throw off the impression of design in the creation,

appears in an amusing manner through the simplicity of the ancient

Roman poet of this school. Lucretius maintains that the eye was not

made for seeing, nor the ear for hearing. But the terms in which he

recommends this doctrine show how hard he knew it to be for men to

entertain such an opinion. His advice is,--

Illud in his rebus vitium _vehementer_ et istum

Effugere errorem, vitareque _præmeditator_,

Lumina ne facias oculorum clara creata,

Prospicere ut possimus. iv. 823.

’Gainst their preposterous error guard thy mind

Who say each organ was for use design’d;

Think not the visual orbs, so clear, so bright,

Were furnish’d for the purposes of sight.

Undoubtedly the poet is so far right, that a most “vehement”

caution and vigilant “premeditation” are necessary to avoid the

“vice and error” of such a persuasion. The study of the adaptations

of the human frame is so convincing, that it carries the mind with

it, in spite of the resistance suggested by speculative systems.

Cabanis, a modern French physiological writer of great eminence,

may be selected as a proof of this. Both by the general character

of his own speculations, and by the tone of thinking prevalent

around him, the consideration of design in the works of nature was

abhorrent from his plan. Accordingly, he joins in repeating Bacon’s

unfavourable mention of final causes. Yet when he comes to speak

of the laws of reproduction of the human race, he appears to feel

himself compelled to admit the irresistible manner in which such

views force themselves on the mind. “I regard,” he says, “with the

great Bacon, the philosophy of final causes as barren; but I have

elsewhere acknowledged that it was very difficult for the most

cautious man (l’homme le plus reservé) never to have recourse to

them in his explanations.”[41]

3. It may be worth our while to consider for a moment the opinion

here referred to by Cabanis, of the propriety of excluding the

consideration of final causes from our natural philosophy. The

great authority of Bacon is usually adduced on this subject.

“The handling of final causes,” says he, “mixed with the rest

in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent

inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion

to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great

arrest and prejudice of farther discovery.”[42]

A moment’s attention will show how well this representation agrees

with that which we have urged, and how far it is from dissuading

the reference to final causes in reasonings like those on which

we are employed. Final causes are to be excluded _from physical

inquiry_; that is, we are not to assume that we know the objects

of the Creator’s design, and put this assumed purpose in the

place of a physical cause. We are not to think it a sufficient

account of the clouds that they are for watering the earth, (to

take Bacon’s examples,) or “that the solidness of the earth is

for the station and mansion of living creatures.” The physical

philosopher has it for his business to trace clouds to the laws of

evaporation and condensation; to determine the magnitude and mode

of action of the forces of cohesion and crystallization by which

the materials of the earth are made solid and firm. This he does,

making no use of the notion of final causes: and it is precisely

because he has thus established his theories independently of any

assumption of an end, that the end, when after all, it returns upon

him and cannot be evaded, becomes an irresistible evidence of an

intelligent legislator. He finds that the effects, of which the

use is obvious, are produced by most simple and comprehensive laws;

and when he has obtained this view, he is struck by the beauty of

the means, by the refined and skilful manner in which the useful

effects are brought about;--points different from those to which

his researches were directed. We have already seen, in the very

case of which we have been speaking, namely, the laws by which the

clouds are formed and distribute their showers over the earth, how

strongly those who have most closely and extensively examined the

arrangements there employed (as Howard, Dalton, and Black) have

been impressed with the harmony and beauty which these contrivances

manifest.

We may find a further assertion of this view of the proper use of

final causes in philosophy, by referring to the works of one of

the greatest of our philosophers, and one of the most pious of

our writers, Boyle, who has an Essay on this subject. “I am by

all means,” says he, “for encouraging the contemplation of the

celestial part of the world, and the shining globes that adorn it,

and especially the sun and moon, in order to raise our admiration

of the stupendous power and wisdom of him who was able to frame

such immense bodies; and notwithstanding their vast bulk and

scarce conceivable rapidity, keep them for so many ages constant

both to the lines and degrees of their motion, without interfering

with one another. And doubtless we ought to return thanks and

praises to the divine goodness for having so placed the sun and

moon, and determined the former, or else the earth, to move in

particular lines for the good of men and other animals; and how

disadvantageous it would have been to the inhabitants of the earth

if the luminaries had moved after a different manner. I dare not,

however, affirm that the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies

were made solely for the use of man: _much less presume to prove

one system of the world to be true and another false; because the

former is better fitted to the convenience of mankind, or the

other less suited, or perhaps altogether useless to that end_.”

This passage exhibits, we conceive, that combination of feelings

which ought to mark the character of the religious natural

philosopher; an earnest piety ready to draw nutriment from the

contemplation of established physical truths; joined with a

philosophical caution, which is not seduced by the anticipation

of such contemplations, to pervert the strict course of physical

inquiry.

It is precisely through this philosophical care and scrupulousness

that our views of final causes acquire their force and value as

aids to religion. The object of such views is not to lead us to

physical truth, but to connect such truth, obtained by its proper

processes and methods, with our views of God, the master of the

universe, through those laws and relations which are thus placed

beyond dispute.

Bacon’s comparison of final causes to the vestal virgins is one of

those poignant sayings, so frequent in his writings, which it is

not easy to forget. “Like them,” he says, “they are dedicated to

God, and are barren.” But to any one who reads his work it will

appear in what spirit this was meant. “Not because those final

causes are not true and worthy to be inquired, being kept within

their own province.” (Of the Advancement of Learning, b. ii. p.

142.) If he had had occasion to develope his simile, full of latent

meaning as his similes so often are, he would probably have said,

that to these final causes barrenness was no reproach, seeing they

ought to be, not the mothers but the daughters of our natural

sciences; and that they were barren, not by imperfection of their

nature but in order that they might be kept pure and undefiled, and

so fit ministers in the temple of God.

CHAPTER VIII.

_On the Physical Agency of the Deity._

1. We are not to expect that physical investigation can enable us

to conceive the manner in which God acts upon the members of the

universe. The question, “Canst thou by searching find out God?”

must silence the boastings of science as well as the repinings

of adversity. Indeed, science shows us, far more clearly than

the conceptions of every day reason, at what an immeasurable

distance we are from any faculty of conceiving _how_ the universe,

material and moral, is the work of the Deity. But with regard

to the material world, we can at least go so far as this;--we

can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated

interpositions of divine power exerted in each particular case,

but by the establishment of general laws. This, which is the view

of the universe proper to science, whose office it is to search

out these laws, is also the view which, throughout this work, we

have endeavoured to keep present to the mind of the reader. We

have attempted to show that it combines itself most readily and

harmoniously with the doctrines of Natural Theology; that the

arguments for those doctrines are strengthened, the difficulties

which affect them removed, by keeping it steadily before us. We

conceive, therefore, that the religious philosopher will do well to

bear this conception in his mind. God is the author and governor of

the universe through the laws which he has given to its parts, the

properties which he has impressed upon its constituent elements;

these laws and properties are, as we have already said, the

instruments with which he works; the institution of such laws, the

selection of the quantities which they involve, their combination

and application, are the modes in which he exerts and manifests his

power, his wisdom, his goodness: through these attributes, thus

exercised, the Creator of all, shapes, moves, sustains, and guides

the visible creation.

This has been the view of the relation of the Deity to the universe

entertained by the most sagacious and comprehensive minds ever

since the true object of natural philosophy has been clearly and

steadily apprehended. The great writer who was the first to give

philosophers a distinct and commanding view of this object, thus

expresses himself in his “Confession of Faith:” “I believe--that

notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating since the

first Sabbath, yet, nevertheless, he doth accomplish and fulfil his

divine will in all things, great and small, singular and general,

as fully and exactly by providence, as he could by miracle and

new creation, though his working be not immediate and direct, but

by compass; not violating nature, which is his own law upon the

creature.”

And one of our own time, whom we can no longer hesitate to place

among the worthiest disciples of the school of Bacon, conveys the

same thought in the following passage: “The Divine Author of the

universe cannot be supposed to have laid down particular laws,

enumerating all individual contingencies, which his materials

have understood and obey--this would be to attribute to him the

imperfections of human legislation;--but rather, by creating them

endued with certain fixed qualities and powers, he has impressed

them in their origin with the _spirit_, not the letter of his law,

and made all their subsequent combinations and relations inevitable

consequences of this first impression.”[43]

2. This, which thus appears to be the mode of the Deity’s operation

in the material world, requires some attention on our part in

order to understand it with proper clearness. One reason of this

is, that it is a mode of operation altogether different from that

in which we are able to make matter fulfil our designs. Man can

construct exquisite machines, can call in vast powers, can form

extensive combinations, in order to bring about results which he

has in view. But in all this he is only taking advantage of laws

of nature which already exist; he is applying to his use qualities

which matter already possesses. Nor can he by any effort do more.

He can establish no new law of nature which is not a result of the

existing ones. He can invest matter with no new properties which

are not modifications of its present attributes. His greatest

advances in skill and power are made when he calls to his aid

forces which before existed unemployed, or when he discovers so

much of the habits of some of the elements as to be able to bend

them to his purpose. He navigates the ocean by the assistance of

the winds which he cannot raise or still: and even if we suppose

him able to control the course of these, his yet unsubjugated

ministers, this could only be done by studying their characters, by

learning more thoroughly the laws of air and heat and moisture. He

cannot give the minutest portion of the atmosphere new relations,

a new course of expansion, new laws of motion. But the Divine

operations, on the other hand, include something much higher. They

take in the establishment of the laws of the elements, as well

as the combination of these laws and the determination of the

distribution and quantity of the materials on which they shall

produce their effect. We must conceive that the Supreme Power has

ordained that air shall be rarefied, and water turned into vapour,

by heat; no less than that he has combined air and water so as to

sprinkle the earth with showers, and determined the quantity of

heat and air and water, so that the showers shall be as beneficial

as they are.

We may and must, therefore, in our conceptions of the Divine

purpose and agency, go beyond the analogy of human contrivances. We

must conceive the Deity, not only as constructing the most refined

and vast machinery, with which, as we have already seen, the

universe is filled; but we must also imagine him as establishing

those properties by which such machinery is possible: as giving to

the materials of his structure the qualities by which the material

is fitted to its use. There is much to be found, in natural

objects, of the same kind of contrivance which is common to these

and to human inventions; there are mechanical devices, operations

of the atmospheric elements, chemical processes;--many such have

been pointed out, many more exist. But besides these cases of the

combination of means, which, we seem able to understand without

much difficulty, we are led to consider the Divine Being as the

_author of the laws_ of chemical, of physical, and of mechanical

action, and of such other laws as make matter what it is;--and

this is a view which no analogy of human inventions, no knowledge

of human powers, at all assists us to embody or understand.

Science, therefore, as we have said, while it discloses to us the

mode of instrumentality employed by the Deity, convinces us, more

effectually than ever, of the impossibility of conceiving God’s

actions by assimilating them to our own.

3. The laws of material nature, such as we have described them,

operate at all times, and in all places; affect every province of

the universe, and involve every relation of its parts. Wherever

these laws appear, we have a manifestation of the intelligence by

which they were established. But a law supposes an agent, and a

power; for it is the mode according to which the agent proceeds,

the order according to which the power acts. Without the presence

of such an agent, of such a power, conscious of the relations

on which the law depends, producing the effects which the law

prescribes, the law can have no efficacy, no existence. Hence we

infer that the intelligence by which the law is ordained, the

power by which it is put in action, must be present at all times

and in all places where the effects of the law occur; that thus the

knowledge and the agency of the Divine Being pervade every portion

of the universe, producing all action and passion, all permanence

and change. The laws of nature are the laws which he, in his

wisdom, prescribes to his own acts; his universal presence is the

necessary condition of any course of events, his universal agency

the only origin of any efficient force.

This view of the relation of the universe to God has been

entertained by many of the most eminent of those who have combined

the consideration of the material world with the contemplation of

God himself. It may therefore be of use to illustrate it by a few

quotations, and the more so, as we find this idea remarkably dwelt

upon in the works of that writer whose religious views must always

have a peculiar interest for the cultivators of physical science,

the great Newton.

Thus, in the observations on the nature of the Deity with which

he closes the “Opticks,” he declares the various portions of the

world, organic and inorganic, “can be the effect of nothing else

than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever living Agent, who

being in all places, is more able by his will to move the bodies

within his boundless uniform _sensorium_, and thereby to form and

reform the parts of the universe, than we are by our will to move

the parts of our own bodies.” And in the Scholium at the end of

the “Principia,” he says, “God is one and the same God always and

every where. He is omnipresent, not by means of his _virtue_ alone,

but also by his _substance_, for virtue cannot subsist without

substance. In him all things are contained, and move, but without

mutual passion: God is not acted upon by the motions of bodies;

and they suffer no resistance from the omnipresence of God.” And

he refers to several passages confirmatory of this view, not only

in the Scriptures, but also in writers who hand down to us the

opinions of some of the most philosophical thinkers of the pagan

world. He does not disdain to quote the poets, and among the rest,

the verses of Virgil;

Principio cœlum ac terras camposque liquentes

Lucentemque globum lunæ, Titaniaque astra,

Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus

Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet:

warning his reader, however, against the doctrine which such

expressions as these are sometimes understood to express. “All

these things he rules, not as _the soul of the world_, but as the

Lord of all.”

Clarke, the friend and disciple of Newton, is one of those who has

most strenuously put forwards the opinion of which we are speaking,

“All things which we commonly say are the effects of the natural

powers of matter and laws of motion, are indeed (if we will speak

strictly and properly,) the effects of God’s acting upon matter

continually and at every moment, either immediately by himself, or

mediately by some created intelligent being. Consequently there is

no such thing as the course of nature, or the power of nature,”

independent of the effects produced by the will of God.

Dugald Stewart has adopted and illustrated the same opinion, and

quotes with admiration the well-known passage of Pope, concerning

the Divine Agency, which

“Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent.”

Mr. Stewart, with no less reasonableness than charity, asserts the

propriety of interpreting such passages according to the scope

and spirit of the reasonings with which they are connected;[44]

since, though by a captious reader they might be associated with

erroneous views of the Deity, a more favourable construction will

often see in them only the results of the necessary imperfection

of our language, when we dwell upon the omnipresence and universal

activity of God.

Finally, we may add that the same opinions still obtain the assent

of the best philosophers and divines of our time. Sir John Herschel

says, (Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 37.) “We

would no way be understood to deny the constant exercise of His

direct power in maintaining the system of nature; or the ultimate

emanation, of every energy which material agents exert, from his

immediate will, acting in conformity with his own laws.” And the

Bishop of London, in a note to his “Sermon on the duty of combining

religious instruction with intellectual culture,” observes, “the

student in natural philosophy will find rest from all those

perplexities which are occasioned by the obscurity of causation, in

the supposition, which although it was discredited by the patronage

of Malebranche and the Cartesians, has been adopted by Clarke and

Dugald Stewart, and which is by far the most simple and sublime

account of the matter; that all the events, which are continually

taking place in the different parts of the material universe, are

the _immediate_ effects of the divine agency.”

CHAPTER IX.

_On the Impression produced by considering the Nature and

Prospects of Science; or, on the Impossibility of the Progress of

our Knowledge ever enabling us to comprehend the Nature of the

Deity._

If we were to stop at the view presented in the last chapter,

it might be supposed that--by considering God as eternal and

omnipresent, conscious of all the relations, and of all the objects

of the universe, instituting laws founded on the contemplation

of these relations, and carrying these laws into effect by his

immediate energy,--we had attained to a conception, in some degree

definite, of the Deity, such as natural philosophy leads us to

conceive him. But by resting in this mode of conception, we should

overlook, or at least should disconnect from our philosophical

doctrines, all that most interests and affects us in the character

of the Creator and Preserver of the world;--namely, that he is the

lawgiver and judge of our actions; the proper object of our prayer

and adoration; the source from which we may hope for moral strength

here, and for the reward of our obedience and the elevation of our

nature in another state of existence.

We are very far from believing that our philosophy alone can give

us such assurance of these important truths as is requisite for

our guidance and support; but we think that even our physical

philosophy will point out to us the necessity of proceeding far

beyond that conception of God, which represents him merely as the

mind in which reside all the contrivance, law, and energy of the

material world. We believe that the view of the universe which

modern science has already opened to us, compared with the prospect

of what she has still to do in pursuing the path on which she has

just entered, will show us how immeasurably inadequate such a mode

of conception would be: and that if we take into our account, as

we must in reason do, all that of which we have knowledge and

consciousness, and of which we have as yet no systematic science,

we shall be led to a conviction that the Creator and Preserver

of the material world must also contain in him such properties

and attributes as imply his moral character, and as fall in most

consistently with all that we learn in any other way of his

providence and holiness, his justice and mercy.

1. The sciences which have at present acquired any considerable

degree of completeness, are those in which an extensive and

varied collection of phenomena, and their proximate causes, have

been reduced to a few simple general laws. Such are Astronomy

and Mechanics, and perhaps, so far as its physical conditions

are concerned, Optics. Other portions of human knowledge can

be considered as perfect sciences, in any strict sense of the

term, only when they have assumed this form; when the various

appearances which they involve are reduced to a few principles,

such as the laws of motion and the mechanical properties of the

luminiferous ether. If we could trace the endless varieties of

the forms of crystals, and the complicated results of chemical

composition, to some one comprehensive law necessarily pointing out

the crystalline form of any given chemical compound, Mineralogy

would become an exact science. As yet, however, we can scarcely

boast of the existence of any other such sciences than those which

we at first mentioned: and so far therefore as we attempt to give

definiteness to our conception of the Deity, by considering him

as the intelligent depositary and executor of laws of nature, we

can subordinate to such a mode of conception no portion of the

creation, save the mechanical movements of the universe, and the

propagation and properties of light.

2. And if we attempt to argue concerning the nature of the laws

and relations which govern those provinces of creation whither our

science has not yet reached, by applying some analogy borrowed from

cases where it has been successful, we have no chance of attaining

any except the most erroneous and worthless guesses. The history of

human speculations, as well as the nature of the objects of them,

shows how certainly this must happen. The great generalizations

which have been established in one department of our knowledge,

have been applied in vain to the purpose of throwing light on

the other portions which still continue in obscurity. When the

Newtonian philosophy had explained so many mechanical facts, by

the two great steps,--of resolving the action of a whole mass

into the actions of its minutest particles, and considering these

particles as centres of force,--attempts were naturally soon made

to apply the same mode of explanation to facts of other different

kinds. It was conceived that the whole of natural philosophy must

consist in investigating the laws of force by which particles of

different substances attracted and repelled, and thus produced

motions, or vibrations _to_ and _from_ the particles. Yet what were

the next great discoveries in physics? The action of a galvanic

wire upon a magnet; which is not to attract or repel it, but to

turn it to the _right_ and _left_; to produce motion, not to or

from, but _transverse_ to the line drawn to the acting particles;

and again, the undulatory theory of light, in which it appeared

that the undulations must not be longitudinal, as all philosophers,

following the analogy of all cases previously conceived, had,

at first, supposed them to be, but _transverse_ to the path of

the ray. Here, though the step from the known to the unknown was

comparatively small, when made conjecturally it was made in a

direction very wide of the truth. How impossible then must it be to

attain in this manner to any conception of a law which shall help

us to understand the whole government of the universe!

3. Still, however, in the laws of the luminiferous ether, and of

the other fluid, (if it be another fluid) by which galvanism and

magnetism are connected, we have something approaching nearly to

mechanical action, and, possibly, hereafter to be identified with

it. But we cannot turn to any other part of our physical knowledge,

without perceiving that the gulf which separates it from the exact

sciences is yet wider and more obscure. Who shall enunciate for

us, and in terms of what notions, the general law of _chemical_

composition and decomposition? sometimes indeed we give the name

of _attraction_ to the affinity by which we suppose the particles

of the various ingredients of bodies to be aggregated; but no one

can point out any common feature between this and the attractions

of which alone we know the exact effects. He who shall discover the

true general law of the forces by which elements form compounds,

will probably advance as far beyond the discoveries of Newton, as

Newton went beyond Aristotle. But who shall say in what direction

this vast flight shall be, and what new views it shall open to us

of the manner in which matter obeys the laws of the Creator?

4. But suppose this flight performed;--we are yet but at the outset

of the progress which must carry us towards Him. We have yet to

begin to learn all that we are to know concerning the ultimate laws

of organized bodies. What is the principle of _life_? What is the

rule of that action of which assimilation, secretion, developement,

are manifestations? and which appears to be farther removed from

mere chemistry than chemistry is from mechanics. And what again is

the new principle, as it seems to be, which is exhibited in the

_irritability_ of an animal nerve? the existence of a sense? How

different is this from all the preceding notions! No efforts can

avoid or conceal the vast but inscrutable chasm. Those theorists,

who have maintained most strenuously the possibility of tracing

the phenomena of animal life to the influence of physical agents,

have constantly been obliged to suppose a mode of agency altogether

different from any yet known in physics. Thus Lamarck, one of

the most noted of such speculators, in describing the course of

his researches, says, “I was soon persuaded that the _internal

sentiment_ constituted a power which it was necessary to take into

account.” And Bichat, another writer on the same subject, while

he declares his dissent from Stahl, and the earlier speculators,

who had referred every thing in the economy of life to a single

principle, which they called the _anima_, the _vital principle_,

and so forth, himself introduces several principles, or laws,

all utterly foreign to the region of physics; namely, _organic

sensibility_, _organic contractility_, _animal sensibility_,

_animal contractility_, and the like. Supposing such principles

really to exist, how far enlarged and changed must our views be

before we can conceive these properties, including the faculty of

perception, which they imply, to be produced by the will and power

of one supreme Being, acting by fixed laws. Yet without conceiving

this, we cannot conceive the agency of that Deity, who is

incessantly thus acting, in countless millions of forms and modes.

How strongly then does science represent God to us as

incomprehensible! his attributes as unfathomable! His power, his

wisdom, his goodness, appear in each of the provinces of nature

which are thus brought before us; and in each, the more we study

them, the more impressive, the more admirable do they appear.

When then we find these qualities manifested in each of so many

successive ways, and each manifestation rising above the preceding

by unknown degrees, and through a progression of unknown extent,

what other language can we use concerning such attributes than that

they are _infinite_? What mode of expression can the most cautious

philosophy suggest, other than that He, to whom we thus endeavour

to approach, is infinitely wise, powerful, and good?

5. But with sense and consciousness the history of living things

only begins. They have instincts, affections, passions, will. How

entirely lost and bewildered do we find ourselves when we endeavour

to conceive these faculties communicated by means of general laws!

Yet they are so communicated from God, and of such laws he is the

lawgiver. At what an immeasurable interval is he thus placed above

every thing which the creation of the inanimate world alone would

imply; and how far must he transcend all ideas founded on such

laws as we find there!

6. But we have still to go further and far higher. The world

of reason and of morality is a part of the same creation, as

the world of matter and of sense. The will of man is swayed by

rational motives; its workings are inevitably compared with a

rule of action; he has a conscience which speaks of right and

wrong. These are laws of man’s nature no less than the laws of his

material existence, or his animal impulses. Yet what entirely new

conceptions do they involve? How incapable of being resolved into,

or assimilated to, the results of mere matter, or mere sense! Moral

good and evil, merit and demerit, virtue and depravity, if ever

they are the subjects of strict science, must belong to a science

which views these things, not with reference to time or space,

or mechanical causation, not with reference to fluid or ether,

nervous irritability or corporeal feeling, but to their own proper

modes of conception; with reference to the relations with which

it is possible that these notions may be connected, and not to

relations suggested by other subjects of a completely extraneous

and heterogeneous nature. And according to such relations must the

laws of the moral world be apprehended, by any intelligence which

contemplates them at all.

There can be no wider interval in philosophy than the separation

which must exist between the laws of mechanical force and motion,

and the laws of free moral action. Yet the tendency of men to

assume, in the portions of human knowledge which are out of

their reach, a similarity of type to those with which they are

familiar, can leap over even this interval. Laplace has asserted

that “an intelligence which, at a given instant, should know all

the forces by which nature is urged, and the respective situation

of the beings of which nature is composed, if, moreover, it were

sufficiently comprehensive to subject these data to calculation,

would include in the same _formula_, the movements of the largest

bodies of the universe and those of the slightest atom. Nothing

would be uncertain to such an intelligence, and the future, no

less than the past, would be present to its eyes.” If we speak

merely of mechanical actions, this may, perhaps, be assumed to be

an admissible representation of the nature of their connexion in

the sight of the supreme intelligence. But to the rest of what

passes in the world, such language is altogether inapplicable. A

_formula_ is a brief mode of denoting a rule of calculating in

which numbers are to be used: and numerical measures are applicable

only to things of which the relation depend on time and space. By

such elements, in such a mode, how are we to estimate happiness

and virtue, thought and will? To speak of a formula with regard to

such things, would be to assume that their laws must needs take the

shape of those laws of the material world which our intellect most

fully comprehends. A more absurd and unphilosophical assumption we

can hardly imagine.

We conceive, therefore, that the laws by which God governs his

moral creatures, reside in his mind, invested with that kind of

generality, whatever it be, of which such laws are capable; but of

the character of such general laws, we know nothing more certainly

than this, that it must be altogether different from the character

of those laws which regulate the material world. The inevitable

necessity of such a total difference is suggested by the analogy of

all the knowledge which we possess and all the conceptions which we

can form. And, accordingly, no persons, except those whose minds

have been biassed by some peculiar habit or course of thought,

are likely to run into the confusion and perplexity which are

produced by assimilating too closely the government and direction

of voluntary agents to the production of trains of mechanical

and physical phenomena. In whatever manner voluntary and moral

agency depend upon the Supreme Being, it must be in some such way

that they still continue to bear the character of will, action,

and morality. And, though too exclusive an attention to material

phenomena may sometimes have made physical philosophers blind to

this manifest difference, it has been clearly seen and plainly

asserted by those who have taken the most comprehensive views of

the nature and tendency of science. “I believe,” says Bacon, in

his Confession of Faith, “that, at the first the soul of man was

not produced by heaven or earth, but was breathed immediately from

God; so that _the ways and proceedings of God with spirits are not

included in nature; that is in the laws of heaven and earth_; but

are reserved to the law of his secret will and grace; wherein God

worketh still, and resteth not from the work of redemption, as

he resteth from the work of creation; but continueth working to

the end of the world.” We may be permitted to observe here, that,

when Bacon has thus to speak of God’s dealings with his moral

creatures, he does not take his phraseology from those sciences

which can offer none but false and delusive analogies; but helps

out the inevitable scantiness of our human knowledge, by words

borrowed from a source more fitted to supply our imperfections.

Our natural speculations cannot carry us to the ideas of “grace”

and “redemption;” but in the wide blank which they leave, of all

that concerns our hopes of the Divine support and favour, the

inestimable knowledge which revelation, as we conceive, gives us,

finds ample room and appropriate place.

7. Yet even in the view of our moral constitution which natural

reason gives, we may trace laws that imply a personal relation to

our Creator. How can we avoid considering _that_ as a true view

of man’s being and place, without which, his best faculties are

never fully developed, his noblest energies never called out, his

highest point of perfection never reached? Without the thought of a

God over all, superintending our actions, approving our virtues,

transcending our highest conceptions of good, man would never rise

to those higher regions of moral excellence which we know him to

be capable of attaining. “To deny a God,” again says the great

philosopher, “destroys magnanimity and the raising of human nature;

for take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and

courage he will put on, when he finds himself maintained by a man;

who, to him, is instead of a God, or _melior natura_: which courage

is manifestly such, as that creature, without that confidence of

a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he

resteth and assureth himself upon divine protection and favour,

gathereth a force and faith, which human nature could not obtain.

Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that

it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human

frailty.”[45]

Such a law, then, of reference to a Supremely Good Being, is

impressed upon our nature, as the condition and means of its

highest moral advancement. And strange indeed it would be if we

should suppose, that in a system where all besides indicates

purpose and design, this law should proceed from no such origin;

and no less inconceivable, that such a law, purposely impressed

upon man to purify and elevate his nature, should delude and

deceive him.

8. Nothing remains, therefore, but that the Creator, who, for

purposes that even we can see to be wise and good, has impressed

upon man this tendency to look to him for support, for advancement,

for such happiness as is reconcileable with holiness;--to believe

him to be the union of all perfection, the highest point of all

intellectual and moral excellence;--IS, in reality, such a guardian

and judge, such a good, and wise, and perfect Being, as we thus

irresistibly conceive him. It would indeed be extravagant to assert

that the imagination of the creature, itself the work of God, can

invent a higher point of goodness, of justice, of holiness, than

the Creator himself possesses: that the Eternal Mind, from whom our

notions of good and right are derived, is not himself directed by

the rules which these notions imply.

It is difficult to dwell steadily on such thoughts. But they will

at least serve to confirm the view which it was our object to

illustrate; namely, how incomparably the nature of God must be

elevated above any conceptions which our natural reason enables

us to form; and we have been led to these reflections, it will be

recollected, by following the clue of which science gave us the

beginning. The Divine Mind must be conceived by us as the seat of

those laws of nature which we have discovered. It must be no less

the seat of those laws which we have not yet discovered, though

these may and must be of a character far different from any thing

we can guess. The Supreme Intelligence must therefore contain the

laws, each according to their true dependence, of organic life, of

sense, of animal impulse, and must contain also the purpose and

intent for which these powers were put in play. But the Governing

Mind must comprehend also the laws of the responsible creatures

which the world contains, and must entertain the purposes for

which their responsible agency was given them. It must include

these laws and purposes, connected by means of the notions, which

responsibility implies, of desert and reward, of moral excellence

in various degrees, and of well-being as associated with right

doing. All the laws which govern the moral world are expressions

of the thought and intentions of our Supreme Ruler. All the

contrivances for moral no less than for physical good, for the

peace of mind, and other rewards of virtue, for the elevation and

purification of individual character, for the civilization and

refinement of states, their advancement in intellect and virtue,

for the diffusion of good, and the repression of evil; all the

blessings that wait on perseverance and energy in a good cause;

on unquenchable love of mankind, and unconquerable devotedness to

truth; on purity and self-denial; on faith, hope, and charity;--all

these things are indications of the character, will, and future

intentions of that God, of whom we have endeavoured to track the

footsteps upon earth, and to show his handiwork in the heavens.

“This God is our God, for ever and ever.” And if, in endeavouring

to trace the tendencies of the vast labyrinth of laws by which the

universe is governed, we are sometimes lost and bewildered, and

can scarce, or not at all, discern the line by which pain, and

sorrow, and vice fall in with a scheme directed to the strictest

right and greatest good, we yet find no room to faint or falter;

knowing that these are the darkest and most tangled recesses of our

knowledge; that into them science has as yet cast no ray of light;

that in them reason has as yet caught sight of no general law by

which we may securely hold: while, in those regions where we can

see clearly, where science has thrown her strongest illumination

upon the scheme of creation; where we have had displayed to us

the general laws which give rise to all multifarious variety of

particular facts;--we find all full wisdom, and harmony, and

beauty: and all this wise selection of means, this harmonious

combination of laws, this beautiful symmetry of relations,

directed, with no exception which human investigation has yet

discovered, to the preservation, the diffusion, the well-being

of those living things, which, though of their nature we know

so little, we cannot doubt to be the worthiest objects of the

Creator’s care.

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Loudon, Encyclopædia of Gardening, 848.

[2] Dec. Phys. vol. ii. 478.

[3] Fleming, Zool. i. 400.

[4] Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l’Homme, II. 371.

[5] It will be observed that it is not here asserted that the

difference of native products depends on the difference of climate

_alone_.

[6] The resemblance consists in this; that we have a strip of

greater temperature accompanied by a strip of smaller temperature,

these strips arising from the diurnal and nocturnal impressions

respectively, and being in motion; as in the waves on a canal, we

have a moving strip of greater elevation accompanied by a strip

of smaller elevation. We do not here refer to any hypothetical

undulations in the fluid matter of heat.

[7] Loudon, 1219.

[8] Loudon, 1214.

[9] Manchester Memoirs, v. 357.

[10] Howard on the climate of London, vol. ii. pp. 216, 217.

[11] Daniell, Meteor. Ess. p. 56.

[12] Daniell. p. 129.

[13] Phil. Trans. 1821.

[14] Mr. Gough in Manch. Mem. vol. v.

[15] The reader who is acquainted with the two theories of light,

will perceive that though we have adopted the doctrine of the

ether, the greater part of the arguments adduced would be equally

forcible, if expressed in the language of the theory of emission.

[16] Or rather through the _focal centre_ of the eye, which is

always near the centre of the pupil.

[17] Laplace, Expos. du Syst. du Monde, p. 441.

[18] In this statement of Laplace, however, one remarkable

provision for the stability of the system is not noticed.

The planets Mercury and Mars, which have much the largest

eccentricities among the old planets, are those of which the

masses are much the smallest. The mass of Jupiter is more than two

thousand times that of either of these planets. If the orbit of

Jupiter were as eccentric as that of Mercury is, all the security

for the stability of the system, which analysis has yet pointed

out, would disappear. The earth and the smaller planets might in

that case change their approximately circular orbits into very long

ellipses, and thus might fall into the sun, and fly off into remote

space.

It is further remarkable that in the newly discovered planets, of

which the orbits are still more eccentric than that of Mercury, the

masses are still smaller, so that the same provision is established

in this case also. It does not appear that any mathematician has

even attempted to point out a necessary connexion between the mass

of a planet and the eccentricity of its orbit on any hypothesis.

May we not then consider this combination of small masses with

large eccentricities, so important to the purposes of the world, as

a mark of provident care in the Creator?

[19] The _eccentricity_ of a planet’s orbit is measured by taking

the proportion of the _difference_ of the greatest and least

distances from the sun, to the _sum_ of the same distances.

Mercury’s greatest and least distances are as two and three; his

eccentricity, therefore, is one-fifth.

[20] The stability of the axis of rotation about which the earth

revolves, has sometimes been adduced as an instance of preservative

care. The stability, however, would follow necessarily, if the

earth, or its superficial parts, were originally fluid; and

that they were so is an opinion widely received, both among

astronomers and geologists. The original fluidity of the earth

is probably a circumstance depending upon the general scheme of

creation; and cannot with propriety be considered with reference

to one particular result. We shall therefore omit any further

consideration of this argument.

[21] Airy on Encke’s Comet, p. 1, note.

[22] Principia, b. iii. prop. x.

[23] Paley.

[24] If the Laws of Motion are stated as _three_, which we conceive

to be the true view of the subject, the other two, as applied in

mechanical reasonings, are the following:

_Second Law._ When a force acts on a body in motion, it produces

the same effect as if the same force acted on a body at rest.

_Third Law._ When a force of the nature of pressure produces

motion, the velocity produced is proportional to the force, other

things beings equal.

[25] Though Friction is not concerned in any cosmical phenomena, we

have thought this the proper place to introduce the consideration

of it; since the contrast between the cases in which it does act,

and those in which it does not, is best illustrated by a comparison

of cosmical with terrestrial motions.

[26] Butler, Serm. 3.

[27] Müller, Infusoria, Preface.

[28] _Monas._ Müller. Cuvier.

[29] _Volvox._

[30] _Vibrio._ Müller. Cuvier.

[31] Dupuis. Origine des Cultes.

[32] Herschel on the Study of Nat. Phil. Art. 28.

[33] Amici me cunctantem atque etiam reluctantem, retraxerunt,

inter quos primus fuit Nicolaus Schonbergius, Cardinalis

Capuanus, in omni genere literatum celebris; proximus ille

vir mei amantissimus Tidemannus Gisius, episcopus Culmensis,

sacrarum ut est et omnium bonarum literarum studiosissimus.--_De

Revolutionibus. Præf. ad Paulum III._

[34] Lib. i. cx.

[35] Pensées, Art. viii. 1.

[36] Thomson’s Hist. of Chemistry, vol. i. 321.

[37] Manch. Mem. vol. v. p. 346.

[38] “Since all reasoning may be resolved into syllogisms,

and since in a syllogism the premises do virtually assert the

conclusion, it follows at once, that no truth can be elicited by

any process of reasoning.”--_Whately’s Logic_, p. 223.

Mathematics is the _logic of quantity_, and to this science the

observation here quoted is strictly applicable.

[39] A l’intérieur le ministre Quinette fut remplacé par

Laplace, géomêtre du premier rang, mais qui ne tarda pas à

se montrer administrateur plus que médiocre: des son premier

travail les consuls s’aperçurent qu’ils s’étaient trompés:

Laplace ne saisissait aucune question sous son vrai point de

vue: il cherchait des subtilités partout, n’avait que des idées

problématiques, et portait enfin l’esprit des infiniment petits

dans l’administration.--_Mémoires écrits à Ste Hélène_, i. 3.

[40] Il semble que la nature ait tout disposé dans le ciel, pour

assurer la durée du systême planétaire, par des vues semblables

à celles qu’elle nous parait suivre si admirablement sur la

terre, pour la conservation des individus et la perpétuité des

espèces.--_Syst. du Monde_, p. 442.

[41] Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l’Homme, i. 299.

[42] De Augment. Sc. ii. 105.

[43] Herschel on the Study of Nat. Phil. Art. 28.

[44] Elem. of Phil. ii. p. 273.

[45] Bacon. Essay on Atheism.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been

corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within

the text and consultation of external sources.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,

and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 47: ‘a slendar stalk’ replaced by ‘a slender stalk’.

Pg 48: ‘animal motious’ replaced by ‘animal motions’.

Pg 54: ‘the raingage’ replaced by ‘the rain gauge’.

Pg 67: ‘by Fourrier, and’ replaced by ‘by Fourier, and’.

Pg 69: ‘would dimininish’ replaced by ‘would diminish’.

Pg 72: ‘is obvitated by’ replaced by ‘is obviated by’.

Pg 81: ‘than 1-100dth to’ replaced by ‘than 1-100th to’.

Pg 131: ‘are nealy circular’ replaced by ‘are nearly circular’.

Pg 139: ‘by one anomally’ replaced by ‘by one anomaly’.

Pg 153: ‘would loose its’ replaced by ‘would lose its’.

Pg 174: ‘a memoir entited’ replaced by ‘a memoir entitled’.

Pg 174: ‘volocity, in’ replaced by ‘velocity, in’.

Pg 178: ‘effects take take place’ replaced by ‘effects take place’.

Pg 196: ‘and and Director of’ replaced by ‘and Director of’.

Pg 200: ‘for for her young’ replaced by ‘for her young’.

Pg 205: ‘in his puposes’ replaced by ‘in his purposes’.

Pg 224: ‘thus irremoveably’ replaced by ‘thus irremovably’.

Pg 228: ‘of knowlege and’ replaced by ‘of knowledge and’.

Pg 259: ‘and no othewise’ replaced by ‘and not otherwise’.