THEISM. (continued 3)

A much more recent science than astronomy, the science of chemistry, undertakes to instruct us as to the composition of the universe, and it is marvellous how much it can tell us even of the composition of the stars. What, then, is its most general and certain result? Just this, that order of the strictest kind, the most definite proportions, are wrought into the very structure of every world, and of every compound object in the world, air and water, earth and mineral, plant and animal. The vast variety of visible substances are reducible to rather more than sixty constituent elements, each of which has not only its own peculiar properties but its own definite and unvarying combining proportions with other elements, so that amidst the prodigious number of combinations all is strictly ordered, numerically exact. There is no chemical union possible except when the elements bear to each other a numerically constant ratio. Different compounds are always the products of the combination of the elements in different yet strictly definite proportions, there being no intermediate combinations, no transitional compounds. If each element did not admit of union with many others, the world would be dead and poor, its contents few and unvaried; if their unions were not always regulated by law, disorder would everywhere prevail. How comes it that they are so made in relation to one another that their manifold unions are ever regulated by law, and generate an endless variety of admirable products? Who made them thus? Did they make themselves? or, did any blind force make them? Reason answers that they must have been made by an intelligence which wanted them for its purposes. When the proportions of the elementary constituents are altered, the same elements produce the most diverse substances with the most dissimilar and even opposite properties, charcoal and diamond, a deadly poison or the breath of life, theine or strychnine. These powers all work together for good; but if they worked even a very little differently—if the circumstances in which they work, not to speak of the laws by which they work, were altered—they would spread destruction and death through the universe. The atmosphere is rather a mixture than a combination of chemical elements, but it is a mixture in which the constituents are proportioned to each other in the only way which fits it to sustain the lives of plants and animals, and to accomplish its many other important services; and wonderful in the extreme is the provision made for the constant restoration of the due proportions amidst perpetual oscillations. One of the chiefs of modern chemistry, Baron Liebig, points to what takes place when rain falls on the soil of a field adapted for vegetable growth as to something which "effectually strikes all human wisdom dumb." "During the filtration of rain-water," he says, "through the soil, the earth does not surrender one particle of all the nutritive matter which it contains available for vegetable growth (such as potash, silicic acid, ammonia, &c.); the most unintermittent rain is unable to abstract from it (except by the mechanical action of floods) any of the chief requisites for its fertility. The particles of mould not only firmly retain all matter nutritive to vegetable growth, but also immediately absorb such as are contained in the rain-water (ammonia, potash, &c.). But only such substances are completely absorbed from the water as are indispensable requisites for vegetable growth; others remain either entirely or for the most part in a state of solution." The laws and uses of light and heat, electricity and magnetism, and the adjustments which they presuppose, all point not less clearly to the ordinances of a supremely profound and accurate mind. In a word, out of a few elements endowed with definite powers, this world with its air and its seas, its hills and valleys, its vegetable forms and animal frames, and other worlds innumerable, have been built up by long-sustained and endlessly-varied processes of chemical synthesis mostly conducted under conditions so delicately adjusted to the requirements of each case, that the ablest chemists, with all their instruments and artifices, cannot even reproduce them on any scale however small. Can these elements be reasonably thought of as having been unfashioned and unprepared, or these processes as having been uninstituted and unpresided over by intelligence?[23]

The sciences of geology and palæontology disclose to us the history of our earth and of its vegetable and animal organisms. They prove that for countless ages, that from the inconceivably remote period of the deposition of the Laurentian rocks, light and heat, air and moisture, land and sea, and all general physical forces have been so arranged and co-ordinated as to produce and maintain a state of things which secured during all these countless ages life and health and pleasure for the countless millions of individuals contained in the multitude of species of creatures which have contemporaneously or successively peopled the earth. The sea, with its winds and waves, its streams and currents, its salts, its flora and fauna, teems with adaptations no less than the land. Probably no one has studied it with more care or to more purpose than Lieutenant Maury, and his well-known work on its physical geography proceeds throughout on the principle that "he who would understand its phenomena must cease to regard it as a waste of waters, and view it as the expression of One Thought, a unity with harmonies which One Intelligence, and One Intelligence alone, could utter;" while many of its pages might appropriately be read as a commentary on these lines of Wordsworth,—

The sciences referred to certify further, that as regards the various forms of life there has been from the time when it can be first traced to the present day "advance and progress in the main," and that the history of the earth corresponds throughout with the history of life on the earth, while each age prepares for the coming of another better than itself. But advance and progress presuppose intelligence, because they cannot be rationally conceived of apart from an ideal goal foreseen and selected. Volumes might be written to show how subtly and accurately external nature is adjusted to the requirements of vegetable and animal life, and how vegetable and animal life are inter-related; nay, even on how well the earth is fitted for the development and happiness of man. Think of the innumerable points of contact and connection, for example, between physical geography and political economy, which all indicate so many harmonies between the earth and man's economical condition, capacities, and history.[24]

The vegetable and animal kingdoms viewed generally, are also striking instances of unity of plan, of progressive order, of elaborately adjusted system. There are general principles of structure and general laws of development common to all organisms, constituting a plan of organisation capable of almost infinite variation, which underlies all the genera and orders of living creatures, vegetable and animal. It comprehends a number of subordinate plans which involve very abstract conceptions, and which even the ablest naturalists still very imperfectly comprehend. These higher plans would probably never have been thought of but for the detection of the numerous phenomena which seemed on a superficial view irreconcilable with the idea of purpose in creation. Just as it was those so-called "disturbances" in the planetary orbits, which appeared at first to point to some disorder and error in the construction of the sidereal system, that prompted Lagrange to the investigations which resulted in establishing that the order of the heavens was of a sublimer and more remarkable character than had been imagined, essentially including these apparent disturbances, so it has been the seeming exceptions to plan which are witnessed in rudimentary and aborted organs (such as the wing-bones in wingless birds, the finger-bones in horses, the legs below the skin in serpents, the teeth which never cut the gums in whales, &c.), that have indicated to modern biologists a unity of organisation far more comprehensive and wonderful than had previously been suspected. The larger and more ideal order thus brought to light as ruling in the organic world is one which could only have originated in a mind of unspeakable power and perfection. And it not only thus testifies directly of itself in favour of a Divine Intelligence, but the recognition of it, while correcting in some respects earlier conceptions as to the place of utility in nature, far from proving that utility has been disregarded or sacrificed, shows that each organ has been formed, not only with reference to its actual use in a given individual or species, but to the capacity of being applied to use in countless other individuals and species.[25]

When we enter into the examination of organisation in itself, adjustment becomes still more obvious in the processes of growth, reproduction, fructification, &c., in plants and animals, and in the provisions for locomotion, for securing food and shelter, for sight, hearing, &c., in the latter. The great physician, Sir Charles Bell, devoted a whole treatise to point out those which are to be found in the hand alone. The arrangement of bones, muscles, joints, and other parts in the limb of a tiger or the wing of an eagle are not less admirable. The eye and ear are singularly exquisite structures, the former being far the most perfect of optical, and the latter far the most perfect of acoustic instruments. Instances of this sort are, indeed, so remarkable, and so irresistibly convincing to most minds, that some theists have consented to rest on them exclusively the inference of a designing intelligence. They would grant that the evidences of purpose are only to be traced in organisation. The limitation is inconsistent and untenable, but not inexplicable. The adjustment of parts to one another, and their co-ordination as means to an end, are not more certainly existent in fitting the eye to see and the ear to hear than in securing the stability of the solar system, but they are more obviously visible because compressed into a compass easily grasped and surveyed; because organ and function are the most specialised kinds of means and ends; because organisms are the most curiously and conspicuously elaborate examples of order. And as the telescope can show us no end of the simple and majestic order of the heavens, so the microscope can show us no end of the exquisite and impressive order which discloses even—

The traces of a Supreme Reason crowd still more upon the vision when we come to the human mind,—

The mere existence of originated minds necessarily implies the existence of an unoriginated mind. "What can be more absurd," asks Montesquieu, "than to imagine that a blind fatalistic force has produced intelligent beings?" The complicated and refined adjustments of the body to the mind, and of the mind to the body, are so numerous and interesting that their study has now become the task of a special class of scientific men. A very little disorder in the organisation of the brain—such as even microscopic post-mortem examination may fail to detect—suffices to cause hallucinations of the senses, to shake intellect from its throne, to paralyse the will, and to corrupt the sentiments and affections. How precise and skilful must the adjustment be between the sound brain and sane mind! Who sufficiently realises the mystery of wisdom which lies in the familiar fact that the mind, by merely willing to use the members of the body, sets in motion instantaneously and unconsciously, without effort and without failure, cords and pulleys and levers, joints and muscles, of which it only vaguely, if at all, surmises the existence? The laws of our various appetencies, affections, and emotions, and their relations to their special ends or objects, the nature of the several intellectual faculties and their subservience to mental culture, and still more the general constitution of the mind as a system consisting of a multitude of powers under the government of reason and conscience, present to us vast fields filled with the evidences of Divine Wisdom.[27]

There are others no less extensive and inexhaustible in the principles which underlie and maintain human society, and those which preside over the progressive development of humanity. Political economy is the department of social science which has been cultivated with most success. What, then, is its most comprehensive and best established theorem? This—that although the great majority of men are moved mainly by self-interest, and few seek with much zeal or persistency the general good, the result of their being left in perfect freedom to pursue their own advantage, so long as they do not outwardly violate the rules of justice, is far better for the whole society than if they conformed their conduct to any plan which human wisdom, aiming directly at the general good, could devise; nature having provided in the principles of the human constitution and the circumstances of human life for the selfish plans and passions of individuals so neutralising one another, so counteracting and counterpoising one another, as to secure the social stability and welfare—as to leave general ideas and interests to rule with comparatively little resistance. It is surely a natural inference from this that a Supreme Reason grasps all human reasons, and uses them in order to realise a purpose grander and better than any which they themselves contemplate. History viewed as a whole teaches the same truth on a wider scale. An examination of it discloses a plan pervading human affairs from the origin of man until the present day—a progress which has proceeded without break or stoppage, in accordance with laws which are as yet very imperfectly apprehended. Of the countless generations which have come and gone like the leaves of the forest, for unknown thousands of years, few have had the slightest glimpse of the order which connected them with their fellows, and embraced their every action; fewer still have sought to conform to it; the immense majority have set before them only mean and narrow schemes for personal good; all passions have raged and all vices prevailed in their turn; there have been confusion and tumult and war; and yet the order, progress, plan I speak of have been slowly and silently but surely built up. In this evolution of order out of the chaos of millions on millions of conflicting human wills seeking merely their own pleasure, there is, perhaps, even a more impressive proof of the operation of Divine Wisdom than in the origination and preservation of order among the multitudinous stars of heaven. The philosophical historian who has most conclusively shown by the scrutiny of the chief events in the annals of humanity the existence of such a progressive plan, is amply justified in arguing that it cannot have originated with man, or matter, or chance, but must be the work of God. "We have passed in review," he says, "all the theories imagined by philosophers and historians to explain the mysterious fact that there is in the life of man unfolded in history a succession, a plan, a development, which cannot be referred to man himself. Some, despairing from the outset to find a solution, make of their ignorance a blind power which they call hazard. Evidently that is no solution. Hazard is a word, and nothing more. Other writers—the majority of writers—say that this mysterious power is nature, under the form of climate, or races, or the whole of the physical influences which act on the moral world. But what is nature? Whence has it this power, this foresight, this intelligence, which are so conspicuous in the course of our destinies? If nature is matter, and nothing but matter, that too is no answer. Who will believe that matter acts with wisdom—with intelligence? Where there is intelligent action there must be an intelligent being; therefore nature leads us to God. Finally, there are those who substitute for nature general laws. But do not laws suppose a legislator? and who can this legislator be, if not God?"[28]

There is, then, everywhere, both in the physical and moral worlds, order and adaptation, proportion and co-ordination, and there is very widely present progress—order which advances in a certain direction to a certain end, which is until realised only an ideal. This is the state of things which science discloses. The question is, Is this state of things intelligible on any other supposition than that of a designing mind? The theist holds that it is not; that it directly and imperatively demands an intelligent cause; that to assign it either to no cause, or to any other than an intelligent cause, is, in the strictest and strongest sense of the term, absurd. If we deny that there is such order as I have indicated, we set aside the entire teaching of all the sciences—we pronounce science to be from beginning to end a delusion and a lie. Men in the present day dare not do this. If we deny that such order implies the agency of a Supreme Intelligence, we contradict no express declaration of any of the sciences; we may accept all that they have to tell us about order, and they can tell us about nothing else. But notwithstanding this, it is far more reasonable, far less absurd, to deny that there is order in the universe, than to admit it and deny that its ultimate cause is an intelligence. Further, although we cannot be more certain of the cause than of the effect from which it is inferred, and consequently cannot be more certain that an intelligence has produced the order which is in the universe than that there is order therein, the theistic inference from the whole of that order may well be greatly stronger than the scientific proof of order in any particular instance. Men of science have probably never as good reasons for believing in the laws of order brought to light by their own special science, as the theist has for believing in a Supreme Intelligence because of the order which is the common and concurrent result of all the sciences, and which is obvious to every eye.

II.

The argument from order and adaptation is often spoken of as "the argument from design." The phrase is an unfortunate one. The argument is not from but to design. To assume design and then to affirm that "every design must have a designer," is manifestly not serious reasoning, but a play upon words. To assume design at all is to assume precisely what one is most bound to prove; and to assume design in the universe is to assume what cannot be proved, yea, what the theist requires to show against the pantheist cannot be proved. In any other than a very loose and metaphorical sense design has no existence except in mind. There is no design in the sky, or the sea, or the land; there are only law, order, and arrangement therein, and these things are not designs although they imply designs. What we can describe as the designs of the lower animals are given to them with their constitutions, and are only a part of the instrumentality which fits them for their place in the world. Men have designs properly so called; but the argument for the existence of God from the evidences of a Supreme Wisdom in the progressive evolution of human history, instead of resting on these designs, is based on the fact that what has actually been realised has far transcended them. Science as a mere exposition of the facts of the universe can never show us Divine design, for the good reason that there is no such design in these facts, although, had it not existed elsewhere, they could never have been what they are. While this is true, it must in justice be added that most if not all of the advocates of theism who have presented the argument under consideration in the faulty form,—"Design implies a designer; the universe abounds in design; therefore the universe, so far as it abounds in design, implies a designer,"—have erred more in expression than in thought. In reality they have not meant by design what is properly so called, and consequently have not begun their argument by assuming what was denied and in need of proof. In reality they have meant by design those characteristics of things which they hold to be the indications or evidences or correlatives of intelligence, and which they might have designated by such terms as order, adjustment, adaptation, fitness, progress, &c. All attempts to refute their reasoning, therefore, by a strict and literal interpretation of the phrase "Design implies a designer," must be pronounced unfair. Censure of the phrase is warranted. Rejection of the argument on account of the phrase is superficial and unjust.

It has been held that the argument from order and adaptation is essentially different from the design argument. The reason given for this has been that the design argument is based on the analogy or supposed analogy between the works of nature and the products of human art. In this argument, we are told, we infer from the likeness which certain natural objects bear to artificial objects that there must be a likeness in their causes. We know, it is said, that only intelligent beings frame such structures as houses, ships, and watches, and seeing that there is in the mechanism of the heavens, the circulation of the blood, and the construction of the eye, arrangements and adjustments of a similar kind, we conclude that they also must have been framed by an intelligent being, who must be as much greater than man as the works of nature are greater than the works of art, for causes are proportional to their effects. Now this may be the design argument as some have presented it who had no particular wish to criticise it severely, and it certainly is the way in which Hume and Kant wished it to be presented; but it has no claim whatever to be considered the only proper form of the argument, and is, in fact, a very bad form of it. It is true that there is an analogy between the works of nature and the works of art, and that on the strength of this analogy the two classes of works, and also their causes, may be compared, but not true that the design argument when correctly stated either rests on such analogy or implies such comparison. The analogy and comparison may be drawn into, and, as it were, incorporated with the design argument, but that is rather as a means of illustration than as a condition of inference. When we infer from an examination of their construction that the eye and the ear have been designed by an intelligent being, we are no more dependent on our knowledge that a watch or a telescope has been designed by an intelligent being than we are dependent on our knowledge of the eye and ear being the products of intelligence when we infer that the watch and the telescope are the products of intelligence. There is an inference in both cases, and an inference of precisely the same nature in both cases. It is as direct and independent when the transition is to God from His works as when to our fellow-men from their works. We are greatly mistaken if we suppose that we have an immediate knowledge of the intelligence of the beings who make watches, houses, and ships; we only know that the beings who make these things are intelligent because such things could not be made without intelligence: in a word, we only know our fellow-creatures to be intelligent beings because they utter and arrange sounds so as to convey a meaning, execute movements which tend to an end, and construct machines. We have no more a direct perception or a personal experience of the intelligence of our fellow-men than we have of the intelligence of God. The mind which has given origin to the order and adjustments of the universe is not more absolutely inaccessible to sense and self-consciousness than the mind which gives origin to the order and adjustments of a watch. It is therefore impossible that our knowledge of the former should be dependent on our knowledge of the latter. In both cases the knowledge is inferential,—in both cases it is dependent on the immediate consciousness of intelligence in ourselves,—but the inference is in the former case neither longer nor less legitimate than in the latter. We deny, then, that there is any truth in the statement that the design argument rests on the analogy between the works of nature and the products of art It rests directly on the character of the works of nature as displaying order and adjustment. It is essentially identical with the argument which we have expounded.

It is not less objectionable to speak of the argument from order and adaptation as being an argument from final causes than to speak of it as being an argument from design, unless the different significations of final cause be distinguished, and those which are irrelevant and illegitimate be excluded. For the expression "final cause" has various significations which are indeed intimately related, yet which cannot be employed indifferently without leading to utter confusion. These significations may be distributed into two classes. Each class contains three significations, and every signification of the first class has a signification of the second class to correspond to it. In fact, the significations of the first class are simply so many aspects of order or adaptation, and those of the second class so many aspects of design or intention; the former are order and adaptation viewed with reference to the intrinsic, the extrinsic, and the ultimate ends of things, and the latter are design and intention viewed with reference to the same three ends. Final cause sometimes means the intrinsic end of what is orderly and adjusted, the realisation of the nature of anything which is considered as a whole, a complex of order and adjustment. The combined stability and movement of the solar system is in this sense the final cause of the arrangements by which that result is secured. Sight is in this sense the final cause of the eye, because in sight the true nature of the eye manifests itself. Then, final cause sometimes means not the intrinsic but the extrinsic end of what is orderly and adjusted; not merely the realisation of the nature of anything, but its relationship to other things, its adaptations to their requirements, its uses; not merely the end of an arrangement regarded as a self-contained or completed whole, but the end or ends which it serves as a system surrounded by, connected with, and included in other systems. It is impossible to admit final cause in the sense of intrinsic end and to deny it in that of extrinsic end; for the universe is not a mere aggregate of systems placed alongside of one another, but otherwise unconnected—it is itself a system composed of an infinity of systems within systems. Nothing in nature stands alone; nothing lives to itself nor dies to itself. What is a whole with reference to something smaller than itself, is a part with reference to something larger than itself. The eye is a whole with reference to its own cords, lenses, fluids, and membranes, but it is a part with reference to the body; sight is therefore not more certainly its end than the uses of sight How can a man admit final cause to be involved in the relationship between his stomach and bodily life, but deny it to be involved in the relationship between his stomach and the vegetable and animal substances with which he satisfies its cravings? Clearly the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic ends is a narrow one, and exists not so much in the nature of things as in our way of looking at things. We have but to elevate and extend our own view, and what was before an extrinsic end is thereby changed into an intrinsic end. Admit, in fact, final cause anywhere, and you must admit it everywhere; admit anything to have an end, and you must admit all things to have an end; for the world is a grand and wondrous unity in which all objects depend on and serve one another, and all forces contribute to the attainment of a single comprehensive issue. Once accept the principle of finality, and there is no consistent stopping short of the conviction of Aristotle, that on it hang the whole heavens and earth.

It is only when the word final cause is used in one or other of these two senses that we can with any propriety speak of reasoning from final causes to the existence of God. And these are just the senses in which the expression is now least used. Final cause is generally employed at present to signify design. It means, not the arrangement of causes and effects into systematic unities, the parts of which have definite relations to one another and a common issue, or the adaptation of these unities to support and serve one another, but purpose or intention in the Divine Mind with respect to such arrangement or adaptation. This sense of the word is so obviously general enough to refer both to intrinsic and extrinsic ends that it would be unnecessary to direct attention to the fact, were it not that we are much more apt to fall into error regarding extrinsic than intrinsic ends, and consequently, regarding the intention or purpose which refers to them. A thing has just one intrinsic end—namely, the single conspicuous and all-comprehensive function or issue in virtue of which we can regard it as being a whole or unity, and as possessed of a certain relative independence or completeness. There is thus comparatively little possibility of error in determining what the intrinsic end is in a given instance, and comparatively little danger of presumption in affirming it to have been the end contemplated by the Divine Mind. There is no doubt, for example, that the eye is an instrument constructed in a way calculated to attain the intrinsic end—sight; and there can be no presumption in affirming that God must have had that end in view in the construction of the eye. If there be a God, and if He have had anything to do with the making of the eye, He must have designed that His creatures should see with their eyes. It is different with extrinsic ends. A thing has never merely one extrinsic end; it has always a multitude of extrinsic ends, for it is always related to a multitude of other things. If we would speak of the extrinsic end of a thing we must mean thereby the whole of its adaptations to other things, the entire circle of its external relationships, the sum of its uses. But men have always shown themselves prone in judging of the extrinsic ends of things to single out some particular adaptation or use, or at least a few adaptations or uses, and to ignore or exclude all others. And especially have they shown themselves prone to judge of things merely from their relationship and utility to themselves, as if their happiness was the chief if not sole end of all things. This is, of course, an utterly erroneous method of judging, and necessarily leads to ridiculous thoughts about things, and to irreverent thoughts about God's designs in the creation of things. "It can," as Hegel tells us, "truly profit neither religion nor science, if, after considering the vine with reference to the well-known uses which it confers upon man, we proceed to consider the cork-tree with reference to the corks which are cut from its bark to serve as stoppers for wine-bottles."

When we affirm, then, that final causes in the sense of intrinsic ends are in things, we affirm merely that things are systematic unities, the parts of which are definitely related to one another and co-ordinated to a common issue; and when we affirm that final causes in the sense of extrinsic ends are in things, we affirm merely that things are not isolated and independent systems, but systems definitely related to other systems, and so adjusted as to be parts or components of higher systems, and means to issues more comprehensive than their own. We cannot affirm that final causes in the sense of designs are in things; they can only exist in a mind. What do we mean when we hold that final causes in this sense truly are in the Divine Mind, and with reference equally to intrinsic and extrinsic ends? Merely that such order and adjustment as may actually be seen in things and between things—seen with the naked eye it may be, or only to be seen through the telescope or microscope—or which, if they cannot be seen, yet can by scientific induction be proved to be in and between things,—that that order and adjustment which actually exist, were intended or designed by God to exist. Of course every theist who sees evidences of God's existence in the harmonies of nature, must necessarily rise to final causes in this sense from final causes in the other senses which have been indicated; he must pass from material arrangements to the Divine Intelligence which he believes to be manifested by them. And there can be no shadow of presumption in any theist searching for final causes—Divine designs—in this sense and to this extent. What Descartes and others have said against doing so, on the ground that it is arrogant for a man to suppose he can investigate the ends contemplated by the Deity—can penetrate into the counsels of Divine Wisdom—has manifestly no force or relevancy, so long as all that is maintained is that the order which actually exists was meant to exist. The doubt or denial of that is irreverent. To admit the existence of God, and yet to refuse to acknowledge that He purposed and planned the adaptations and harmonies in nature, is surely as presumptuous as it is inconsistent. To assume that God is ignorant of the constitution and character of the universe, and has had no share in the contrivance and management of it, is to degrade Him to the level of the dream-and-dread-begotten gods of Democritus and Epicurus. Better not to think of God at all, than to think of Him in such a way.

The final cause of a thing, however, may mean, and with reference both to adjustment and design, neither its intrinsic nor extrinsic, but its ultimate end. It may mean, not merely that a thing is and was intended to be the mechanism or organism which science analyses and explains, and to stand in the relationships and fulfil the uses which science traces, but also that it will have, and was intended to have, a destination in the far future. We may ask, What is the goal towards which creation moves? What will be the fate of the earth? In what directions are vegetable and animal life developing? What is the chief end of man? Whither is history tending? What is the ideal of truth which science has before it, and which it hopes to realise? of beauty, which art has before it? of goodness, which virtue has before it? And although to most if not all of these questions probably no very definite and certain answer can be given, to deny that they can in any measure be answered, to pronounce all speculation regarding ultimate ends as wholly vain, would justly be deemed the expression of a rash and thoughtless dogmatism. Science claims not only to explain the past but to foretell the future. The power of prevision possessed by a science is the best criterion of its rank among the sciences when rank is determined by certitude. And most significant is the boldness with which some of the sciences have of late begun to forecast the future. Thus, with reference to the end of the world, the spirit of prophecy, which until very recently was almost confined to the most noted religious visionaries, is now poured largely out upon our most distinguished physicists. This we regard as a most significant and hopeful circumstance, and trust that ere long the prophets of science will be far less discordant and conflicting in their predictions even of the remotest issues than they must be admitted to be at present.

While speculation as to final causes in the sense of ultimate ends is, within certain limits, as legitimate as it is natural, its results are undoubtedly far too meagre and uncertain to allow of our reasoning from them to the existence or wisdom of God. We must prove that there is a Divine Intelligence from what we actually perceive in things, and not from what we can conjecture as to the final destinies of things. In fact, until we have ascertained that there is a Divine Intelligence, and in some measure what are the principles on which that Intelligence proceeds, our chance of reaching truth through speculation as to the ultimate ends of things is, in all probability, exceedingly small. It is on no hazardous speculations of this kind that we would rest an argument for the Divine existence, although questions have been raised as to the Divine character and government which will, at a later stage of the discussion, involve us to some extent in the consideration of ultimate ends.

When final cause is employed to signify design in any reference, be it to intrinsic, extrinsic, or ultimate ends, I have nothing to object to Bacon and Descartes's condemnation of it as illegitimate and unprofitable in science. I know of no science, physical or moral, in which, while thus understood, it can be of the slightest use as a principle of scientific discovery. It is as much out of place in the world of organic as of inorganic nature. It is quite incorrect to say that although it does not lead to the discovery of new truths in strictly physical science, it does so in physiology for example, or in psychology, or in ethics. It is only when it means merely the inherent order and adjustment of things—not when it means designs and purposes regarding them—that the search after it can possibly lead to scientific truth, and, when so understood, it leads to truth in all sciences alike. It was the suggestive principle in Adams and Leverrier's discovery of the planet Neptune from certain unexplained perturbations of the planet Uranus, quite as much as in Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood from the observation of certain unexplained valves at the outlet of the veins and the rise of the arteries. It is involved in the very nature of the inductive process, and is only confirmed and enlarged by the progress of inductive research. It stands in no opposition to the principle of efficient causes, and is in no degree disproved by the discovery of such causes. Assertions to the effect that it has gradually been driven by the advance of knowledge from the simpler sciences into those which are complex and difficult,—that it is being expelled even out of biology and sociology—and that it always draws its confirmation, not from phenomena which have been explained, but from phenomena which await explanation,—are often made, but they rest almost exclusively on the wishes of those who make them. They have no real historical basis.[29]

LECTURE VI.

OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER EXAMINED.

I.

The universe is a system which comprehends countless subordinate systems. It is full of combinations of parts which constitute wholes, and of means which conspire to ends. The natural and obvious explanation of the order and adjustments which it thus presents is that they are due to a mind or intelligence. And this is the only rational explanation of them. Mind can alone account for order and adjustment, for the co-ordination of parts into a whole, or the adaptation of means to an end. If we refer them to anything else, the reference is essentially contrary to reason, essentially irrational. It may seem at the first superficial glance as if there were a variety of hypotheses as to the origin of the order we everywhere see around us, all equally or nearly equally credible; but adequate reflection cannot fail to convince us that they must be reduced to a single alternative—to two antagonistic theories. Our only choice is between reason and unreason, between a sufficient and an insufficient cause, between, we may even say, a cause and no cause. This will be brought out by an examination of the various hypotheses which have been suggested by those who are unwilling to admit that the order of the world originated in mind. They try their best to suggest some other alternative than that which I have said is inevitable; but every suggestion they make only raises the alternative which they would avoid—mind or chance, reason or unreason, a sufficient explanation or an absurd one. Before proceeding to establish this, however, it may be necessary to remark on some direct objections which have been taken to the design argument,—objections which might be valid, although no explanation of order could be given or were even attempted.

The inference which the theist requires to draw from the existence of order in the universe is merely the existence of an intelligence who produced that order. It follows that it is an unfair objection to his argument to urge, as has often been urged, that it does not directly and of itself prove God to be the creator of the universe, but only the former of it—not the author of matter, but only of the collocations of matter. This objection, which men even like Hume and Kant and J. S. Mill, have thought worth employing, is simply that the argument does not prove more than it professes to prove. It does not pretend to make all other reasoning for the Divine existence superfluous. It is no condition of its validity that it should stand alone; that it should contribute nothing to other arguments and receive nothing from them. The objection is thus entirely irrelevant. It may be a wise caution to those who would trust exclusively to it, and neglect or depreciate other arguments. It is no objection to its legitimacy.

It is remarkable, too, that those who have urged this objection have never felt that before employing it they were bound to satisfy themselves and to prove to others that order is a mere surface or superficial thing—outside of matter, superimposed on it. If order be something inherently and intrinsically in matter—be of its very essence—belong to what is ultimate in it; if matter and its form be inseparable,—then the author of its order must have been also the author of itself; and all that this objection shows us is, that those who have employed it have had mistaken notions about the nature of matter. Now, as I have already had to indicate, modern science seems rapidly perfecting the proof of this. The order in the heavens, and in the most complicated animal organisms, appears to be not more wonderful than the order in the ultimate atoms of which they are composed. The balance of evidence is in favour of the view that order extends as far and penetrates as deep as matter itself does. The human intellect is daily learning that it is foolish to fancy that there is anywhere in matter a sphere in which the Divine Wisdom does not manifest itself in and through order.

There is still another remark to be made on the objection under consideration. The immediate inference from the order of the universe is to an intelligent former of the universe, not to a creator. But this does not preclude the raising of the question, Is it reasonable to believe the former of the world merely its former? Must not its former be also its creator? On the contrary, the inference that the order of the world must be the result of intelligent agency ought to suggest this question to every serious and reflective mind, and it should even contribute something to its answer. The order of the universe must have originated with intelligence. What is implied in this admission? Clearly that the order of the universe cannot have originated with matter,—that matter is unintelligent, and cannot account either for intelligence or the effects of intelligence. But if so, the intelligence which formed the universe must be an eternal intelligence. The supposition that matter is eternal must in this case be supplemented by the admission that mind is eternal. In other words, the affirmation that the former of the world is merely its former—the denial that its former is also its creator—means dualism, the belief in two distinct eternal existences,—an eternal mind and eternal matter. Whoever is not prepared to accept this hypothesis must abandon the affirmation and denial from which it necessarily follows. And who can, after due deliberation, accept it? The law of parsimony of causes absolutely forbids our assuming, for the explanation of anything, more causes than are necessary to account for it. It forbids, therefore, our belief in an eternal matter and an eternal mind, unless we can show reason for holding that one of them alone is not a sufficient cause of the universe. Now those who grant the inference from order to intelligence, themselves admit that matter is not a sufficient First Cause of the universe as it actually exists. Do they find any person admitting that mind would be an insufficient First Cause? Do they themselves see any way of showing its insufficiency? Do they not even perceive that it would be foolish and hopeless to try to show that an eternal mind could not create a material universe, and that all they could show would be, the here quite irrelevant truth, that the human mind is ignorant of the manner in which this could be done? If the answers to these questions are what I believe they must be, it must also be acknowledged that the former of the universe can only be rationally thought of as also its creator.

I turn to the consideration of another equally futile objection to the argument from order. That argument, it is said, does not prove the Divine Intelligence to be infinite. The universe, as a system of order, is finite, and we have no right to conclude that its cause is in respect of intelligence, or in any other respect, infinite. We must attribute to the cause the wisdom necessary to produce the effect, but no more. The obvious reply is, that this is precisely what we do. The argument is not employed to prove the infinity of the Divine Intelligence, but to prove that the order and adaptations which everywhere abound in the universe must have had an intelligence capable of conceiving and producing them. It is an obvious and legitimate argument to that extent, and it is pushed no farther. The inference that the world had an intelligent author is as simple, direct, and valid, as that any statue, painting, or book had an intelligent author. When Mr Spencer, Mr Lewes, and Professor Tyndall argue that the cause of the universe cannot be known to be intelligent, because the reason of man, being finite, cannot comprehend the infinite, they overlook that the reason of man has no need to comprehend the infinite in order to apprehend such manifestations of the infinite as come before it. Just as a person reading the works of the able men who urge this weak objection feels certain that these books must have had their origin in minds endowed with certain intellectual powers, and cannot have been produced by chance, or blind forces, or bodies destitute of minds, and this although much in their minds is and always must be inscrutable to him; so, when he studies the books of nature and of history, he feels equally certain, and in the same way certain, that they are the compositions of a most amazing intellect; and his certainty as to this need not be lessened, clouded, or in any degree affected, by the great and indubitable, but here irrelevant, truth—that the mind of God is in itself, in its essence, inscrutable; and in its greatness, its infinity, incomprehensible.

The argument from order must further be admitted sufficient to show, if valid at all, that the wisdom of the First Cause is of the most wondrous character. The more nature and mind and history are studied by any one who sees in them evidence of design at all, the more wondrous must the wisdom displayed in them be felt to be. Whoever realises that that wisdom is at once guiding the countless hosts of heavenly bodies in all their evolutions through the boundless realms of space, and fashioning and providing for the countless hosts of microscopic creatures dwelling on the leaf of a flower or in a drop of water, everywhere accomplishing a multitude of ends by few and simple means, or effecting single and definite purposes by the most elaborate and complex contrivances, must feel that rash beyond all expression is the short-sighted mortal who can venture to affirm that it is not infinite. If "the Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, and by understanding hath established the heavens," His wisdom and His understanding are at least so great that we cannot measure them, and have no right to pronounce them limited. The adjustments and harmonies of the universe, as we know it, indicate a depth and richness of wisdom in its Author which far pass our comprehension; and the universe which we know is probably less in comparison with the universe which God has made, than the leaf on which a host of animalcules live and die is in comparison with the vastest of primeval forests, or an ant-hill with the solar system. The universe which we see and know is a noble commentary on such words of Scripture as these: "I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compass on the face of the depth: when He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of the deep: when He gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment: when He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him." But beyond the universe which we see and know, extend illimitable fields of space and stretches of time which we do not see and do not know, but which may be even more crowded with the works of Divine Intelligence than any which are within our range of bodily or mental vision. The ingenious authors of the book entitled 'The Unseen Universe' suppose the entire visible universe to be but a local product and temporary phase of a far older and greater universe, which itself again may be only an island in the ocean of a universe still more stupendous and refined. Whatever error may be mingled with this thought in the work mentioned, there is, I doubt not, at least this much of truth also, that the entire course of nature which science reveals is but a ripple, a current, in the ocean of God's universal action. The man whose mind is duly open to the possibility of this will not venture to pronounce the intelligence of God to be finite. The man who fails to recognise its possibility is very blind, very thoughtless.

It is scarcely credible that the evidences of God's wisdom should have been argued to be proofs of His weakness. And yet this has happened. "It is not too much to say," wrote Mr J. S. Mill, "that every indication of design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against the omnipotence of the Designer. For what is meant by design? Contrivance: the adaptation of means to an end. But the necessity for contrivance—the need of employing means—is a consequence of the limitation of power. Who would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word was sufficient? The very idea of means implies that the means have an efficacy which the direct action of the being who employs them has not. Otherwise they are not means, but an encumbrance. A man does not use machinery to move his arms. If he did, it could only be when paralysis had deprived him of the power of moving them by volition. But if the employment of contrivance is in itself a sign of limited power, how much more so is the careful and skilful choice of contrivances? Can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means when the means have no efficacy but what is given them by the will of him who employs them, and when his will could have bestowed the same efficacy on any other means? Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, and there is no room for them in a being for whom no difficulties exist. The evidences, therefore, of natural theology distinctly imply that the author of the Kosmos worked under limitations."[30]

This, it seems to me, is very strange and worthless reasoning. According to it, the ability of God to form and execute a purpose is evidence not of power but of weakness. I wonder if Mr Mill imagined that the inability of God to form and carry out a purpose would have been evidence not of His weakness but of His power. Or did he suppose, perhaps, that both ability and inability were signs of weakness, and that, consequently, for once opposites were identical? Or did he not think on the subject at all, and so reasoned very much at random? I confess I cannot see how ability to contrive things is weakness, or inability to contrive them power. I hold to Bacon's maxim that "knowledge is power," and refuse to admit that wisdom is weakness. But God, if omnipotent, it is said, did not need to contrive: His mere word must have been sufficient. Yes, is the obvious answer; His mere word, His mere will, was sufficient to produce all His contrivances, and has produced them all. There is no shadow of reason for suspecting that anything was difficult to Him or for Him. No such suspicion is entertained by those who employ the design argument; and those who would rationally object to that argument must find something else to insist on than the power of God's mere will. The will of God is everywhere as efficacious as He in His omnipotence and omniscience chooses that it should be. At the same time, if He desire certain ends, His will cannot remain mere will and dispense with the contrivance of appropriate means. If He wish to bestow happiness on human beings, He must create human beings, and contrive their bodies and minds. To speak of His will as able to "bestow the same efficacy on any means" is no less contrary to reason than it would be to speak of it as able to make the part greater than the whole. It is only in the world imagined by Mr Mill—one in which two and two might be five—that a sunbeam could serve the same purpose as a granite pillar or a steam-engine; and such a world, most people will assuredly hold, even omnipotence could not create. Infinite power and wisdom must necessarily work "under limitations" when they originate and control finite things; but the limitations are not in the infinite power and wisdom themselves—they are in their operations and effects. According to Mr Mill's argument, infinite power could not create a finite world at all: only a finite power could do so. That surely means that a finite power must be mightier than an infinite power; and that, again, is surely a plain self-contradiction, a manifest absurdity.

There is another objection which, although in itself unworthy of answer, has been urged so often and presented in so many forms, some of which are rhetorically impressive, that it cannot be wholly passed over. The design argument has been censured as "assuming that the genesis of the heavens and the earth was effected somewhat after the manner in which a workman shapes a piece of furniture"—as "converting the Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting as man is seen to act"—as "transforming the First Cause into a magnified mechanist who constructs a work of art, and then sits apart from it and observes how it goes," &c. Now the heavens and the earth are to such a wonderful extent exemplifications both of mechanical laws and æsthetic principles, that no man of sense, I think, will deny that they may most justly be compared to machines or works of art, or even pronounced to be machines and works of art. They are that, although they are more than that. An animal is a machine, although an organism too. Every organism is a machine, although every machine is not an organism. Art and nature are not antagonistic and exclusive. Man and all man's arts are included in nature, and nature is the highest art. While, however, it is legitimate and even necessary to illustrate the design argument by references to human inventions, the numerous and immense differences between the works of man's art and the processes of nature must not be overlooked; and there is no excuse for saying that they have been overlooked. It is precisely because the universe is so above anything man has made or can make, and because vegetable and animal organisms are so different from watches and statues, that the argument in question leads us to a divine and not to a merely human intelligence. It implies that both the works of God and the works of man are products of intelligence; but it does not require that they should have anything else in common. It recognises that the most elaborate and exquisite contrivances of man fall immeasurably below "nature's most minute designs." So far from requiring, it forbids our carrying any of the limitations or peculiarities of human contrivance over to that which is divine. Besides, the belief in design is held in conjunction with the belief in creation out of nothing. The same persons who recognise that there is a divine wisdom displayed in the constitution and course of nature believe the universe to have been called into being by the mere volition of the Almighty. But among all theories of the genesis of the heavens and the earth, that is the only one which does not represent the First Cause as working like a man. Man never creates—he cannot create. To produce anything he must have something to work on—he must have materials to mould and modify.[31]

II.

Those who refuse to refer the order and adaptations in the universe to a designing intelligence are bound to account for them in some other way. Has this been done? Has any person succeeded in tracing them back to any other principle which can be reasonably regarded as their cause, or as adequate to their production? This is the question which we have now to consider.

Matter, some would have us believe, is the origin of the order of the universe. Grant it, and there is still the question—What is the origin of matter?—to be disposed of. We have seen that this is a question which we are bound to raise; we have seen that there are strong reasons for holding that matter had an origin, had a beginning in time, and none whatever for regarding it as self-existent and eternal. The very existence of order and system, of mechanical adjustments and organic adaptations in the universe, seems to prove that matter must have had a beginning. If certain collocations of matter evince design, and must have had a beginning, the adaptation of the parts to form the collocation evinces design, and implies a beginning. And if matter had a beginning, its cause can only have been mind. To say that it originated with chance or necessity is plainly absurd. Chance and necessity are meaningless terms unless mind or matter be presupposed. There can be no accidents where neither mind nor matter exists. There can be no chance where there is no law. Chance or accident is what occurs when two or more independent series of phenomena meet, without their meeting having been premeditated and provided for. When one series of causes leads a man to pass a house at a given moment of a given day, and another series of causes, coexistent with but wholly independent of the former series, determines that a heavy body shall fall from the roof of that house at that moment of that day and kill that man, the consequence—his death—is what may be properly called an accident, or matter of chance. One who believes, indeed, in the omniscience and universal foreordination and government of God, will hold that even in such a case the accident or chance is merely apparent; but he will not deny the right of the atheist to speak of chance or accident in this way, or to explain as matters of chance whatever he can. The word chance, or accident, can have no intelligible sense, however, unless there be such independent series of phenomena—unless there be mental and material existences, mental and material laws. Chance cannot be conceived of, even by the atheist, as the origin of existence. The same may be said of necessity. Matter or mind may act necessarily, but necessity cannot act without matter or mind. If it be requisite, therefore, to seek a cause for matter, mind alone can be assigned as its cause. If we are justified in seeking for the origin of matter at all, our choice of an answer lies between mind and absurdity, between a real and sufficient cause and an imaginary and inconceivable cause. Besides, how could matter of itself produce order, even if it were self-existent and eternal? It is far more unreasonable to believe that the atoms or constituents of matter produced of themselves, without the action of a Supreme Mind, this wonderful universe, than that the letters of the English alphabet produced the plays of Shakespeare, without the slightest assistance from the human mind known by that famous name. These atoms might, perhaps, now and then, here and there, at great distances and long intervals, produce, by a chance contact, some curious collocation or compound; but never could they produce order or organisation, on an extensive scale or of a durable character, unless ordered, arranged, and adjusted in ways of which intelligence alone can be the ultimate explanation. To believe that their fortuitous and undirected movements could originate the universe, and all the harmonies and utilities and beauties which abound in it, evinces a credulity far more extravagant than has ever been displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. Yet no consistent materialist can refuse to accept this colossal chance-hypothesis. All the explanations of the order of the universe which materialists, from Democritus and Epicurus to Diderot and Lange, have devised, rest on the assumption that the elements of matter, being eternal, must pass through infinite combinations, and that one of these must be our present world—a special collocation among the countless millions of collocations, past and future. Throw the letters of the Greek alphabet, it has been said, an infinite number of times, and you must produce the Iliad and all Greek books. The theory of probabilities, I need hardly say, requires us to believe nothing so absurd. Throw letters together without thought through all eternity, and you will never make them express thought. All the letters in the Iliad might have been tossed and jumbled together from morning to night by the hands of the whole human race, from the beginning of the world until now, and the first line of the Iliad would have been still to compose, had not the genius of Homer been inspired to sing the wrath of Achilles and the war around Troy. But what is the Iliad to the hymn of creation, and the drama of providence? Were these glorious works composed by the mere jumbling together of atoms, which were not even prepared beforehand to form things, as letters are to form words, and which had to shake themselves into order without the help of any hand? They may believe that who can. It seems to me that it ought to be much easier to believe all the Arabian Nights.

To ascribe the origination of order to law is a manifest evasion of the real problem. Law is order. Law is the very thing to be explained. The question is—Has law a reason, or is it without a reason? The unperverted human mind cannot believe it to be without a reason. "The existence of a law connecting and governing any class of phenomena implies a presiding intelligence which has preconceived and established the law. The regulation of events by precise rules of time and space, of number and measure, is evidence of thought and mind." So says Dr Whewell; and the statement is amply justified by the fact, that all laws and rules in the universe imply that existences are related to one another in a way of which intelligent adjustment alone is the adequate and ultimate explanation. The existence of a law uniformly involves the coexistence of several conditions, and that is a phenomenon which, whenever the conditions and law are physically ultimate, and consequently physically inexplicable, clearly presupposes mind. Laws, in a word, are not the causes but the expressions of order. They are themselves the results of delicately accurate adjustments, which indicate the operation of a divine wisdom. There are chemical laws, for example, simply because there are chemical elements endowed with affinities, attractions, or forces the most diverse, yet so balanced and harmonised as to secure the welfare of the world. Besides, laws do not act of themselves. No law produces of itself any result. It is the agents which act according to the law that produce results, and the nature of the result produced depends on the number and character of the agents, and how each is situated and circumstanced. If the agents oppose each other, or are inappropriately distributed, they bring about disorder and disaster in conformity to law. There is no calamity, no evil, no scene of confusion, in the known world, which is not the result of the action of agents which operate in strictest accordance to law. The law of gravitation might rule every particle of matter, and yet conflict and confusion and death would prevail throughout the entire solar system were harmony and stability and life not secured by very special arrangements. Matter might have all its present inherent and essential laws, and yet remain for ever a chaos. Apart from a designing and superintending intelligence, the chances in favour of chaos and against cosmos, even allowing matter to have uncreated properties and laws, were incalculable. The obvious inference is that which Professor Jevons expresses in these words—"As an unlimited number of atoms can be placed in unlimited space in an unlimited number of modes of distribution, there must, even granting matter to have had all its laws from eternity, have been at some moment in time, out of the unlimited choices and distributions possible, that one choice and distribution which yielded the fair and orderly universe that now exists." Only out of rational choice can order have come.

The most common mode, perhaps, of evading the problem which order presents to reason, is the indication of the process by which the order has been realised. From Democritus to the latest Darwinian there have been men who supposed that they had completely explained away the evidences for design in nature when they had described the physical antecedents of the arrangements appealed to as evidences. Aristotle showed the absurdity of the supposition more than 2200 years ago. But those who deny final causes have gone on arguing in the same irrational manner down to the present time. They cannot, in fact, do otherwise. They are committed to a false position, and they dare not abandon the sophism on which it rests. Nothing else can explain how any sane mind should infer that because a thing is conditioned it cannot have been designed. The man who argues that the eye was not constructed in order to see because it has been so constructed as to be capable of seeing, is clearly either unable to reason correctly, or allows his reasoning faculty to be terribly perverted by prejudice. That a result is secured by appropriate conditions can seem to no sound and unprejudiced intellect a reason for regarding it to have been undesigned. And yet what other reason is involved in all the attempts to explain away final causes by means of the nebular, Darwinian, and other development hypotheses?

M. Comte imagines that he has shown the inference of design, from the order and stability of the solar system, to be unwarranted, when he has pointed out the physical conditions through which that order and stability are secured, and the process by which they have been obtained. He refers to the comparative smallness of the planetary masses in relation to the central mass, the feeble eccentricity of their orbits, the moderate mutual inclination of their planes, and the superior mean density of their solid over their fluid constituents, as the circumstances which render it stable and habitable, and these characteristic circumstances, as he calls them, he tells us flow naturally and necessarily from the simple mutual gravity of the several parts of nebulous matter. When he has done this, he supposes himself to have proved that the heavens declare no other glory than that of Hipparchus, of Kepler, and of Newton.

Now, the assertion that the peculiarities which make the solar system stable and the earth habitable have flowed naturally and necessarily from the simple mutual gravity of the several parts of nebulous matter, is one which greatly requires proof, but which has never received it. In saying this, we do not challenge the proof of the nebular theory itself. That theory may or may not be true. We are quite willing to suppose it true; to grant that it has been scientifically established. What we maintain is, that even if we admit unreservedly that the earth, and the whole system to which it belongs, once existed in a nebulous state, from which they have been gradually evolved into their present condition conformably to physical laws, we are in no degree entitled to infer from the admission the conclusion which Comte and others have drawn. The man who fancies that the nebular theory implies that the law of gravitation, or any other physical law, has of itself determined the course of cosmical evolution, so that there is no need for believing in the existence and operation of a Divine Mind, proves merely that he is not exempt from reasoning very illogically. The solar system could only have been evolved out of its nebulous state into that which it now presents if the nebula possessed a certain size, mass, form, and constitution—if it was neither too rare nor too dense, neither too fluid nor too tenacious; if its atoms were all numbered, its elements all weighed, its constituents all disposed in due relation to each other—that is to say, only if the nebula was in reality as much a system of order, which intelligence alone could account for, as the worlds which have been developed from it. The origin of the nebula thus presents itself to the reason as a problem which demands solution no less than the origin of the planets. All the properties and laws of the nebula require to be accounted for. What origin are we to give them? It must be either reason or unreason. We may go back as far as we please, but at every step and stage of the regress we must find ourselves confronted with the same question—the same alternative.

The argument of Comte, it is further obvious, proceeds on the arbitrary and erroneous assumption that a process is proved to have been without significance or purpose when the manner in which it has been brought about is exhibited. It is plain that on this assumption even those works of man which have cost most thought might be shown to have cost none. A house is not built without considerable reflection and continuous reference to an end contemplated and desired, but the end is only gradually realised by a process which can be traced from its origin onwards, and through the concurrence or sequence of a multitude of conditions. Would a description of the circumstances on which the security and other merits of a house depend,—of the peculiarities in its foundation, walls, and roof, in its configuration and materials, which render it convenient and comfortable, or of the processes by which these peculiarities were attained,—prove the house to have been unbuilt by man, to have been developed without the intervention of an intelligent architect? It would, if Comte's argument were good; if it would not, Comte's argument must be bad. But can any one fail to see that such an argument in such a case would be ridiculous? The circumstances, peculiarities, and processes referred to are themselves manifest evidences of design and intelligence. They are a part of what has to be explained, and a part of it which can only be explained on the supposition of a contriving and superintending mind. They entitle us to reject all hypotheses which would explain the construction of the house without taking into account the intelligence of its architect. The circumstances, peculiarities, and process described by Comte, as rendering the earth an orderly system and the abode of life, are no less among the evidences for the belief that intelligence has presided over the formation of the earth. They require for their rational comprehension to be thought of as the means and conditions by which ends worthy of intelligence have been secured. They require to be accounted for; and they cannot be reasonably accounted for except on the supposition of having been designed. If we reject that view we must accept this, that the present system of things is a special instance of order which has occurred among innumerable instances of disorder, produced by the interaction of the elements or atoms of matter in infinite time. These elements or atoms we must imagine as affecting all possible combinations, and falling at length, after countless failures, into a regular and harmonious arrangement of things. Now, we can in a vague, thoughtless way imagine this, but we cannot justify our belief of it either by particular facts or general reasons. It is an act of imagination wholly divorced from intelligence. Thus to refer the origin and explanation of universal order to chance, is merely mental caprice.

If the evolution of the earth and the heavenly bodies from a nebula destroy neither the relevancy nor the force of the design argument, the development of complex organisms from simple ones, and the descent of all the plants and animals on earth from a very few living cells or forms, will not remove or lessen the necessity for supposing an intelligence to have designed all the organisms, simple and complex alike, and to have foreordained, arranged, and presided over the course of their development. Were it even proved that life and organisation had been evolved out of dead and inorganic matter, the necessity of believing in such an intelligence would still remain. Nothing of the kind has yet been proved. On the contrary, scientific experimentation has all tended to show that life proceeds only from life. But had it been otherwise—had this break and blank in the development theory been filled up—matter would only have been proved to be more wonderful than it had been supposed to be. The scientific confirmation of the hypothesis of what is called spontaneous generation would not relieve the mind from the necessity of referring the potency of life and all else that is wonderful in matter either to design or chance, reason or unreason—it would not free it from the dilemma which had previously presented itself.[32]

The development of higher from lower organisms, of course, still less frees us from the obligation to believe that a supreme intelligence presides over the development. Development is not itself a cause, but a process,—it is a something which must have a cause; and the only kinds of development which have yet been shown to be exemplified in the organic world demand intelligence as their ultimate cause. I do not know that I can better prove that there is no opposition between development and design than by referring to an illustration which Professor Huxley made use of with a directly contrary view. To show that the argument from final causes, or what is often called the theological argument, had, as commonly stated, received its death-blow from Mr Darwin, he wrote as follows: "The theological argument runs thus—an organ or organism (A) is precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose (B); therefore it was specially constructed to perform that purpose. In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function or purpose of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end, on the ground that the only cause we know of competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time is a contriving intelligence, adapting the means directly to that end. Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly, and that this, again, had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all, seeing that it had no figures on the dial, and the hands were rudimentary, and that, going back and back in time, we come at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted first from a tendency in the structure to vary indefinitely, and secondly from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper and checked all those in other directions,—then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end by an intelligent agent."[33]

Our great comparative physiologist would probably not write so at present. He may still not accept the design argument; but he is now well aware that it has not got its death-blow, nor even any serious wound, from the theory of evolution. He has since, on more than one occasion, shown the perfect compatibility of development with design. He might, perhaps, in defence of his earlier and less considerate utterances, maintain that no organ has been made with the precise structure which it at present possesses in order to accomplish the precise function which it at present fulfils; but he admits that the most thoroughgoing evolutionist must at least assume "a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences," and "is thereby at the mercy of the theologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe." Granting thus much, he is logically bound to grant more. If the entire evolution of the universe may have been intended, the several stages of its evolution may have been intended; and they may have been intended for their own sakes as well as for the sake of the collective evolution or its final result. If eyes and ears were contrived for a purpose, the eyes and ears of each species of animals may have been made with the precise structure which they exhibit for the precise purposes which they fulfil, although they may have been developed out of a different kind of eyes and ears, and will, in the lapse of ages, be developed into still other kinds. The higher theology, the general designs, which Professor Huxley admits evolution cannot touch, is in no opposition to the lower theology, the special designs, which he strangely supposes it to have definitively discarded.

Nothing can be more certain than that Dr Paley would have held the design argument to have been in no degree weakened by the theory of evolution, and that he would have been very much astonished by Professor Huxley's remarks on that argument. In referring to the mechanism of a watch as an evidence of intelligence in its maker, Dr Paley pointed out that our idea of the greatness of that intelligence would be much increased if watches were so constructed as to give rise to other watches like themselves. He must necessarily have admitted that the watch imagined by Professor Huxley was still more remarkable, and implied a still greater intelligence in its contrivance. The revolving barrel must have had wonderful capabilities, which only intelligence could confer. All the circumstances in which it was to be placed must have been foreseen, and all the influences which were to act upon it must have been taken into account, which could only be done by intelligence. All that helped variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper must have been brought into requisition, and all that hindered it, or favoured variations in other directions, must have been detected and checked; but no unintelligent agents can be conceived of as accomplishing such work, or as more than the means of accomplishing it employed by a providential Reason. The greater the distance between the revolving barrel and the most elaborated watch—the greater the number of mechanisms between the first and the last of these two terms, or between the commencing cause and the final result—the greater the necessity for a mind the most comprehensive and accurate, to serve as an explanation of the entire series of mechanisms and the whole process of development.

Mr Darwin, and a large number of those who are called Darwinians, profess to prove that all the order of organic nature may have been unintentionally originated by the mechanical operation of natural forces. They think they can explain how, from a few simple living forms, or even from a single primordial cell, the entire vegetable and animal kingdoms, with all their harmonies and beauties, have arisen wholly independent of any ordaining and presiding mind, by means of the operation of the law of heredity that like produces like; of variability from the action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; of over-production, or a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for existence; of natural selection, or the survival and prevalence of the fittest, and the disappearance and extinction of what is unsuited to its circumstances and inferior to its competitors; and of sexual selection. But the remarkable originality, ingenuity, and skill which they display in endeavouring to establish, illustrate, and apply these laws, make all the more striking the absence of freshness and independence, of force or relevancy, in the reasonings by which they would attach to them an irreligious inference. The same men who have adduced so many new facts, and thrown so much new light on facts previously known, in support of the real or alleged laws indicated, have not adduced a single new reason, and scarcely even set in a more plausible light a single old reason, for the denial of design. They assure us, copiously and vehemently, that the laws which they claim to have proved are in themselves a disproof of design; but they somehow forget that it is incumbent on them to bestow the labour requisite to make this manifest. They reason as if it were almost or wholly self-evident, whereas a little more thought would show them that all their laws imply mind and purpose.

There is a law of heredity: like produces like. But why is there such a law? Why does like produce like? Why should not all nature have been sterile? Why should there have been any provision for the propagation of life in a universe ruled by a mere blind force? And why should producer and produced be like? Why should offspring not always be as unlike their parents as tadpoles are unlike frogs? The offspring of all the higher animals pass through various embryological stages in which they are extremely unlike their parents. Why should they ever become like to them? Physical science cannot answer these questions; but that is no reason why they should not both be asked and answered. I can conceive of no other intelligent answer being given to them than that there is a God of wisdom, who designed that the world should be for ages the abode of life; that the life therein should be rich and varied, yet that variation should have its limits; that there should be no disorder or confusion; and who, to secure this result, decreed that plants should yield seeds, and animals bring forth, after their kind. He who would disprove design must certainly not start with the great mystery of generation.

Then, the so-called law of variability is the expression of a purpose which must have Reason at its beginning, middle, and end. There is in no organism an absolutely indefinite tendency to vary. Every variation of every organism is in some measure determined by the constitution of the organism. "A whale," as Dr Huxley says, "does not tend to vary in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of producing whalebone." But a tendency to definite variation is an indication of purpose. If a man could make a revolving barrel with a tendency to develop into a watch, he would have to be credited with having designed both the barrel and watch, not less than if he had contrived and constructed the two separately. Further, variation has proceeded in a definite direction. Darwin admits that there is no law of necessary advancement. There is no more reason in the nature of the case for improvement than for deterioration. Apart from the internal constitution of an organism having been so planned, and its external circumstances so arranged, as to favour the one rather than the other, its variations could not have been more towards self-perfection than self-destruction. But variation, according to the Darwinians, has taken place in one direction and not in another; it has been forward, not backward; it has been a progression, not a retrogression. Why? Only because of a continuous adjustment of organisms to circumstances tending to bring this about. Had there been no such adjustment, there might have been only unsuitable variations, or the suitable variations might have been so few and slight that no higher organisms would have been evolved. Natural selection might have had no materials, or altogether insufficient materials, to work with. Or the circumstances might have been such, that the lowest organisms were the best endowed for the struggle of life. If the earth were covered with water, fish would survive, and higher creatures would perish. Natural selection cannot have made the conditions of its own action—the circumstances in the midst of which it must operate. Therefore, there is more in progressive variation than it can explain: there is what only an all-regulative intelligence can explain.

Again, there is a law of over-production, we are told, which gives rise to a struggle for existence. Well, is this law not a means to an end worthy of Divine Wisdom? In it we find the reason why the world is so wonderfully rich in the most varied forms of life. What is called over-production is a productivity which is in excess of the means of subsistence provided for the species itself; but no species exists merely for itself. The ratio of the production of life is probably none too high for the wants of all the creatures which have to be supplied with food and enjoyment. And the wants of all creatures are what have to be taken into account; not the wants of any single species—not the wants of man alone. If we adequately realised how vast is the number of guests which have constantly to be fed at the table of nature, we would, I have no doubt, acknowledge that there is little, if any, real waste of life in the world. Then, the struggle to which the rate of production gives rise is, on the showing of the Darwinians themselves, subservient to the noblest ends. Although involving privation, pain, and conflict, its final result is order and beauty. All the perfections of sentient creatures are represented as due to it. Through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The inference seems natural that these perfections were designed to be attained by it; that this state of struggle was ordained for the sake of the advantages which it is actually seen to produce. The suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals for some higher end than happiness—that He cares for animal perfection as well as for animal enjoyment; but it affords no reason for denying that the ends which the conflict actually serves, it was also intended to serve. Besides, the conflict is clearly not a struggle for bare existence; it is, even as regards the animals, a struggle for the largest amount of enjoyment which they can secure, and for the free and full exercise of all their faculties. It thus manifests, not only indirectly but also directly, what its ends are. They are ends which can only be reasonably conceived of as having been purposed by an intelligence, and which are eminently worthy of a Divine intelligence.

But what of the law, or so-called law, of natural selection? In itself, and so far as physical science can either prove or disprove it, it is simply an expression of the alleged fact, that in the struggle of life, any variation, however caused, which is profitable to the individuals of a species, will tend to their preservation, will have a chance of being transmitted to their offspring, and will be of use to them likewise, so that they will survive and multiply at the expense of competitors which are not so well endowed. But natural selection thus understood is obviously in no opposition to design; on the contrary, it is a way in which design may be realised. Some might even hold that design cannot be conceived of as realised in any other natural way; that if not thus realised, it could only be miraculously realised. But Mr Darwin, and many of those who call themselves his followers, tell us not only that there is natural selection, but that blind forces and mechanical laws alone bring it about; that intention and intelligence have nothing to do with it. What proof do they give us? Alas! the painful thing is that they give us none. They point out the blind forces and the mechanical laws by which the selection is effected and its results secured; they show how they are adapted to accomplish their work: and then they assert that these forces and laws explain the whole matter; that no underlying and all-embracing reason has prepared, arranged, and used them. They see the physical agencies and the physical process by which order and beauty have been attained—they do not see intelligence and design; and because they do not see them, they conclude that they have no existence. They describe the mechanism which their senses apprehend, and affirm it to have made itself, or at least to have been unmade, and to work of itself, because the mind which contrived it and directs it is inaccessible to sense. All their reasoning resolves itself into a denial of what is spiritual because it is unseen.

The only instances of natural selection which have been adduced to show that blind forces may bring about results as remarkable, and of the same kind, as those which are accomplished by intelligent agents, are manifestly irrelevant. They are of such a nature that every teleologist must hold them to imply what they are intended to disprove. When Professor Huxley points to the winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay as carefully selecting the particles of sea-sand on the coast of Brittany, and heaping them, according to their size and weight, in different belts along the shore; to a frosty night selecting the hardy plants in a plantation from among the tender ones; and to a hurricane transporting a sapling to a new seat in the soil,—he completely mistakes what the problem before him is. Fire and water can produce wonderful effects in a steam-engine; but the man who should infer, from there being no intelligence in the fire and water themselves, that intelligence must have had nothing to do with their effects when they were brought into contact in a steam-engine, would deserve no great credit for his reasoning. It is precisely Professor Huxley's reasoning. He looks at the fire and water separately, and completely ignores the engine. Because in a world which is a system of order and law a certain collocation and combination of physical conditions and forces will produce an orderly result, he infers that design and intelligence are not needed to produce such a result. I submit that that is illegitimate and irrelevant reasoning. It resolves itself into a denial of Divine and intelligent agency, because the senses apprehend merely physical elements and a physical process. It assumes a selected adaptation, which presupposes intelligence in order to get rid of intelligence. It begs the whole question.

The so-called law of sexual selection, if it be a law at all, is obviously teleological in its nature. Its end is the production of beauty in form and colour. Can blind physical forces, if not subservient to intelligence, be conceived of as working towards so essentially ideal a goal as beauty?

I think enough has now been said to show that the researches and speculations of the Darwinians have left unshaken the design argument. I might have gone farther if time had permitted, and proved that they had greatly enriched the argument. The works of Mr Darwin are invaluable to the theologian, owing to the multitude of "beautiful contrivances" and "marvellous adjustments" admirably described in them. The treatises on the fertilisation of orchids and on insectivorous plants require only to have their legitimate conclusions deduced and applied in order to be transformed into treatises of natural theology. If Paley's famous work be now somewhat out of date, it is not because Mr Darwin and his followers have refuted it, but because they have brought so much to light which confirms its argument.[34]