Chapter XI: Appendix: NOTE I., page 6 (2)

There are few who hold in a consistent manner that God is known by immediate intuition. The great majority of those who profess to believe this, so explain it as to show that they believe nothing of the kind. Dr Charles Hodge (Systematic Theology, pt. i. ch. i.) may be indicated as an example. Professing to hold that the knowledge of God is innate and intuitive, he so explains and restricts these terms as would make our knowledge of our fellow-men as much innate and intuitive as our knowledge of God, or even more so; and even after all these qualifications finds that nothing more can be maintained than "that a sense of dependence and accountability to a being higher than themselves exists in all minds"--which is far from being equivalent to the conclusion that God is intuitively known. Cousin is sometimes represented as an advocate of the view in question, but erroneously. Discounting a few inaccurate phrases, his theory as to the nature of the theistic process is substantially identical with that expounded in the lecture. Its purport is not that reason directly and immediately contemplates the Absolute Being, but that it is enabled and necessitated by the essential conditions of cognition, the _a priori_ ideas of causality, infinity, &c., to apprehend Him in His manifestations. To find intuitionists who in this connection really mean what they say, we must go to Hindu Yogi, Plotinus and the Alexandrian Mystics, Schelling, and a few of his followers--or, in other words, to those who have thought of God as a pantheistic unity or a Being without attributes.

Many German theologians, unduly influenced by the authority of Schleiermacher, and destitute of a sound knowledge of psychology, have rested religion on feeling--mere or pure feeling. Hegel opposed the attempt to do this, with considerable effect, although on erroneous principles. Krause exposed it, however, with far more thoroughness in his 'Absolute Religionsphilosophie.' It is on feeling that belief is rested by most of the advocates of what is called "the faith philosophy." With thinkers of this class a man like Cousin must not be confounded, although he maintained that religion begins with faith and not with reflection; or like Hamilton, although he denied that the infinite can be _known_ while affirming that it "is, must, and ought to be, _believed_." Cousin meant by faith "nothing else than the consent of reason," and Hamilton meant by belief "assent to the original data of reason."

The words faith and belief are used in a bewildering variety of senses. A few remarks will make this apparent.

(_a_) By belief or faith is sometimes meant _reason_ as distinguished from _understanding_, and sometimes _reason_ as distinguished from _reasoning_. These two senses are so very closely allied that we may allow them to count as but a single signification. It is extraordinary that in either sense belief should be contrasted with reason, as it is by those who tell us that the infinite is an object only of faith, and that reason has to do exclusively with the finite, or that first principles are inaccessible to reason but revealed to faith. To create an appearance of conflict between reason and faith by identifying faith with reason in a special sense, and reason with understanding or reasoning, is unwarranted, if not puerile. What use can there be in telling us that God cannot be known--cannot be apprehended by reason--but is only an object of faith, a Being merely to be believed in, when what is meant is that we have the same immediate certainty of His existence as of the truth of an axiom of geometry?

(_b_) Belief may be limited to apprehension, and knowledge to comprehension. It may be said that "we have but faith, we cannot know" the unseen and infinite, just as it is said that we believe that the grass grows but do not know how it grows. It is obvious, however, that if apprehension be knowledge, as it surely is, we believe only what we know. We know--_i.e._, apprehend--the existence of God and the growth of the grass, and we believe what we thus know. We do not know--_i.e._, comprehend--the nature of God or the nature of growth, and what we do not thus know neither do we believe.

(_c_) At other times faith or belief relates to probable, as opposed to certain, knowledge. "We do not know this, but we believe it," often means, "We are not sure of this, but we think it likely." It is not in this sense, of course, that any one except a religious sceptic will allow that the existence of God is a matter of faith. A man may admit that religion and science differ as faith and knowledge, but if he is willing to understand this as signifying that while science is certain, religion is at the most merely probable, he must necessarily be a doubter or an unbeliever.

(_d_) Faith or belief sometimes refers to the knowledge which rests on personal testimony, Divine or human. Such faith may be more certain than assent given to the evidence furnished by science. It ought to be precisely proportioned to the evidence that there is such and such testimony, and that the testimony is trustworthy.

(_e_) By faith or belief is sometimes meant trust in a person or fidelity to a truth; the yielding up of the heart and life to the object of faith. Faith or belief of this kind always involves "preparedness to act upon what we affirm." It does not appear to me that such preparedness is, as Professor Bain maintains, "the genuine, unmistakable criterion of belief" in general. This kind of faith, like all other faith, ought to rest on the assent of the intellect to evidence, although what is characteristic of it is to be found not in the intellect but in the emotions and will. Since it constitutes and produces, however, spiritual experience, it is a condition and source as well as a consequence of knowledge. There can be, in fact, no profound religious knowledge, because there can be no vital religion, without it.

In religion, as in every other department of thought and life, man is bound to regulate his belief by the simple but comprehensive principle that evidence is the measure of assent. Disbelief ought to be regulated by the same principle, for disbelief is belief; not the opposite of belief, but belief of the opposite. Unbelief is the opposite both of belief and disbelief. Ignorance is to unbelief what knowledge is to belief or disbelief. The whole duty of man as to belief is to believe and disbelieve according to evidence, and neither to believe nor disbelieve when evidence fails him.

NOTE XI., page 118.

THE THEOLOGICAL INFERENCE FROM THE THEORY OF ENERGY.

A remarkably clear account of the chief theories as to the nature of matter will be found in Professor Tait's 'Lectures on some Recent Advances in Physical Science,' Lect. XII. In Thomson and Tait's 'Natural Philosophy,' Thomson's article on "The Age of the Sun's Heat" ('Macmillan's Magazine,' March 1862), Tait's 'Thermodynamics,' Helmholtz's 'Correlation and Conservation of Forces,' Balfour Stewart's 'Treatise on Heat,' &c., the facts and theorems which seem to establish that the material universe is a temporary system will be found fully expounded.

I am not acquainted with any more effective criticism of the argumentation by which the eminent physicists mentioned support their conclusion than that of the Rev. Stanley Gibson; and, although it seems to me not to come to very much, I feel bound in fairness to give it entire. After an exposition of the theory of energy, and of the reasoning founded on it by which we seem necessitated to infer that the universe tends at last to be a scene of rest, coldness, darkness, and death, he thus writes: "Is this reasoning, I ask, open to any objection? and if not, does it bear out the theological conclusion here sought to be rested upon it? In attempting to pass a verdict upon the question here raised, we cannot but feel, not only the grandeur of the subject before us, but also the imminent risk of its being affected by considerations unknown to us. We certainly need to judge with diffidence. Perhaps the first question which arises is, Are we to take the material universe to be infinite? If it be, and if its stores of energy, potential and kinetic, have no limit, then it is no longer clear that the final stage of accumulation need have been reached, however long its past history may have been; nor yet, I may add, that it would ever be reached in the future. I may be reminded that at present, at all events, only finite accumulations have arisen, and that this is not consistent with an accumulation through a past eternity. But this objection assumes that there never could have been more than some assignable degree of diffusion of matter. Why should this be? If at any past period there was a certain degree of diffusion, why may there not have been a greater degree at an earlier period? And if so, why may not this integrating, as I should propose to call it, have been going on for ever?

"If, on the other hand, the universe be finite, then, according to the principle of the conservation of energy, reflection of heat must take place from its boundaries, and there may be reconcentration of energy on certain points, according to the form of the bounding surface.

"A second inquiry arises thus. If it be impossible to imagine the present history of the universe continued backward indefinitely under its present code of laws, are we therefore obliged to assume some anomalous interference? We speak, of course, of these laws as they are known to us. Might there not be others, yet unknown, that would solve the difficulty?

"The history of the universe, as immediately known to us, offers as its leading feature the falling together of small discrete bodies in enormous numbers and with great velocities, or the condensation of very rare and diffused gases. Hence the formation of bodies, some of vast size, others smaller, but all originally greatly heated. This process seems to point to an earlier state of things, in which such accumulations of matter, though sparse even now, were far less common--a state in which, to use the expression which I have proposed, matter was far less integrated. It is quite true that the great change of which we thus obtain a glimpse is not a recurring process. It is not therefore fitted for eternal repetition and continuance. But it is a bold thing to say that this earlier state of things may not have followed from one still older by a natural process, and this again from one before, and so on through an indefinite regression. We have seen what an important part the ether plays in the present process of the dissipation of energy. The existence of that ether, the separation of matter into two main forms, may have sprung out of some previous condition of things wholly unknown to us. And so also there may be forms and stores of energy as yet unknown.

"Mr Proctor, in his work on the sun, has cautioned us how we speculate on the physical constitution of that body, whilst we must feel uncertain how far the physical laws, which we observe here, will hold under the vastly different conditions obtaining there. He supports his caution by referring to cases in which what had been confidently thought by many to be safe generalisations have been shown to fail in novel circumstances. Thus it was thought that the passage of a gas from the gaseous into the liquid form was always an abrupt change. But it has been found that carbonic acid gas can be made to pass into the liquid state by insensible gradations. Again, it had been thought that gas, when incandescent, always gave light whose spectrum was broken into thin lines; but it has been shown that hydrogen, under high pressure, may be made to give forth light with a continuous spectrum. Now surely this caution, which Mr Proctor enters in the case of which he speaks, might still more wisely be entered when we come to consider a state of things so novel, so remote from our experience, as that which attended the origin of the universe, or rather of that state of the universe with which we are acquainted. We certainly must not be in haste to conclude that because the laws of nature, as they are known to us, will not explain what must have taken place at some very remote period, therefore those events must have been altogether anomalous."--Religion and Science, pp. 71-74.

It is here virtually--perhaps I may say expressly--conceded that if the matter and energy of the universe be finite and located in infinite space, the reasoning by which the theorists of thermodynamics maintain that perpetual motion is incompatible with the transformation and dissipation of energy, cannot be resisted. Unless matter and energy be infinite or space finite, the known laws of nature must eventually abolish all differences of temperature and destroy all life--this is what is admitted. To me it seems to amount to yielding all that is demanded; because whoever seriously considers the difficulties involved in believing either matter infinite or space finite must, I am persuaded, come to regard it as equivalent to an acknowledgment that the world will have an end and must have had a beginning.

Zoellner, in his ingenious work on the nature of comets, endeavours to avoid this inference by recourse to the hypotheses of Riemann and others as to a space of _n_ dimensions. In such a space the shortest line would be a circle, and a body might move for ever, yet describe a limited course. Matter, space, and inferentially time, would, in fact, according to this hypothesis, be both finite and infinite. It is to be hoped that few persons in the full possession of their intellects will ever accept a view like this. The imaginary geometry may be thoroughly sound reasoning, but it is reasoning from erroneous premises, and it can only be useful so long as it is remembered that its premises are erroneous. They have only to be assumed to be true to experience and reality, and all science must be set aside in favour of nonsense. Logic ought not, however, to be confounded with truth.

Caspari fancies that by representing the universe as not a mechanism but an organism, he preserves the right to believe it eternal. But surely the laws of heat apply to organisms no less than to mechanisms.

In an article concerning the cosmological problem, published in the first number of the 'Vierteljahrsschrift f. Wissenschaftliche Philosophie,' Professor Wundt rejects the theory in question on extremely weak grounds. "It is easy to see," he says, "that, in the case of the English physicists at least, the desire of harmonising the data of the exact sciences with theological conceptions has not been without influence on this limitation of the universe." The rashness displayed by such a statement, and the utter want of evidence or probability for it, as regards men like Thomson or Tait, need not be pointed out. Besides, Clausius and Helmholtz are neither English physicists nor likely to be influenced by theological conceptions. Will it be believed that, notwithstanding this charge against others, Professor Wundt's own reasoning is not scientific, but merely anti-theological? Such is the case. If the Thomsonian theory be admitted, a place is left for creative action, for miracle; and this, he argues, is a contradiction of the principle of causality. Therefore the theory must be rejected. It is to be regretted that so eminent a man of science should employ so unscientific an argument.

There is obviously a very widespread unwillingness to accept the Thomsonian theory; but, so far as I am aware, good reasons have not yet been given for its rejection. The contrast between the reception which it has received and that which has been accorded to the Darwinian theory is certainly curious, and probably instructive.

NOTE XII., page 130.

THE HISTORY OF THE ÆTIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.

The argument for the Divine existence which proceeds on the principle of causality is generally called the cosmological argument, but sometimes, and perhaps more accurately, the ætiological argument. The proof from order is not unfrequently termed cosmological. It is impossible to keep the ætiological argument entirely separate either from the ontological or cosmological argument. Ætiological reasoning may be detected as a creative factor in the rudest religious creeds. The search for causes began not with the origin of philosophy but with the origin of religion. Passages like Ps. xc. 1, 2, cii. 26-28; Rom. i. 19, 20; Heb. i. 10-12--have been referred to as anticipations of the argument. Wherever nature is spoken of in Scripture, it is as the work of an uncreated being, of a free and sovereign mind. Aristotle gave a formal expression to the ætiological argument by inferring from the motion of the universe the existence of a first unmoved mover--Phys., vii. 1, 2, viii. 7, 9, 15. Cicero repeated his reasoning, and tells us it had been also employed by Carneades, De Nat. Deor., ii. 9, iii. 12, 13. Well known is St Augustine's "Interrogavi terram, et dixit: non sum. Interrogavi mare et abyssos--et responderunt: non sumus deus tuus, quære super nos. Interrogavi coelum, solem, lunam, stellas: neque nos sumus deus, quem quæris, inquiunt. Et dixi omnibus iis--dicite mihi de illo aliquid. Et exclamaverunt voce magna: ipse fecit nos. Interrogavi mundi molem de Deo meo et respondit mihi: non ego sum, sed ipse me fecit."--Conf., x. 6. Diodorus of Tarsus (Phot. Bib. Cod., 223, p. 209 Bekk.), and John of Damascus (De Fid. Orth., i. 3), inferred the necessity of a creative unity from the mutability and corruptibility of worldly things. Thomas Aquinas argued on the principle of causality in three ways--viz.: 1. From motion to a first moving principle, which is not moved by any other principle; 2. From effects to a first efficient cause; and 3. From the possible and contingent to what is in itself necessary.--Summa. P. i., Qu. 2, 3. Most of the theologians of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries who treat of the proofs of the Divine existence, employ in some form the argument from causation. Thus, in Pearson 'On the Creed' and Charnock's 'Discourses on the Existence and Attributes of God' will be found good examples of how it was presented in this country in the seventeenth century. Hume's speculations on causation attracted attention to it. The philosophers of the Scottish school and their adherents among the theologians laboured to present it in a favourable light. In Germany, Leibnitz (Théodicée, I. c. 7) and Wolff (Rational Thoughts of God, § 928) laid stress on the accidental contingent character of the world and its contents, and, relying on the principle of the sufficient reason, concluded that there must be a universal and permanent cause of all that is changing and transitory, an absolute ground of all that is relative and derivative. Further, Wolff and his followers raised on this reasoning a large amount of metaphysical speculation as to the nature of a necessary cause, the properties of an absolute Being, which was of a very questionable sort in itself, and had no proper connection with the so-called cosmological argument. To this argument, as stated by Wolff, Kant applied his transcendental criticism, and proved, as he thought, that it was "a perfect nest of dialectical assumptions." His argumentation may be allowed to have had force against Wolff, but it is weak wherever it is relevant to the ætiological proof rightly understood. In fact, his objections openly proceed on the assumption that the principle of causality is only applicable within the sphere of sense experience. If this be true, no objections, of course, are necessary. As a rule, the ætiological argument is not skilfully or even carefully treated in the works of recent German theologians. It has been expounded, however, with great philosophical ability and with a rare wealth of scientific knowledge, by Professor Ulrici of Halle, in the work entitled 'Gott und die Natur.' A translation of this treatise would confer a real service both on the theology and philosophy of this country.

NOTE XIII., page 137.

MATHEMATICS AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT.

"Another science regarded as barren of religious applications, and even as sometimes positively injurious, is mathematics. Its principles are, indeed, of so abstruse a nature, that it is not easy to frame out of them a religious argument that is capable of popular illustration. But, in fact, mathematical laws form the basis of nearly all the operations of nature. They constitute, as it were, the very framework of the material world.... It seems, then, that this science forms the very foundation of all arguments for theism, from the arrangements and operations of the material universe. We do, indeed, neglect the foundation, and point only to the superstructure, when we state these arguments. But suppose mathematical laws to be at once struck from existence, and what a hideous case would the universe present! What then would become of the marks of design and unity in nature, and of the theist's argument for the being of a God?... It is said, however, that mathematicians have been unusually prone to scepticism concerning religious truth. If it be so, it probably originates from the absurd attempt to apply mathematical reasoning to moral subjects; or rather, the devotees of this science often become so attached to its demonstrations, that they will not admit any evidence of a less certain character. They do not realise the total difference between moral and mathematical reasonings, and absurdly endeavour to stretch religion on the Procrustean bed of mathematics. No wonder they become sceptics. But the fault is in themselves, not in this science, whose natural tendencies, upon a pure and exalted mind, are favourable to religion."--Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, pp. 387-389.

"Nor can we fail to notice how frequently the law which men have invented proves to have been already known and used in nature. The mathematician devises a geometric locus or an algebraic formula from _a priori_ considerations, and afterward discovers that he has been unwittingly solving a mechanical problem, or explaining the form of a real phenomenon. Thus, for example, in Peirce's 'Integral Calculus,' published in 1843, is a problem invented and solved purely in the enthusiasm of following the analytic symbols; but in 1863 it proved to be a complete prophetic discussion and solution of the problem of two pendulums suspended from one horizontal cord. Thus also Galileo's discussion of the cycloid proved, long afterward, to be a key to problems concerning the pendulum, falling bodies, and resistance to transverse pressure. Four centuries before Christ, Plato and his scholars were occupied upon the eclipse as a purely geometric speculation, and Socrates seemed inclined to reprove them for their waste of time. But in the seventeenth century after Christ, Kepler discovers that the Architect of the heavens had given us magnificent diagrams of the eclipse in the starry heavens; and, since that time, all the navigation and architecture and engineering of the nineteenth century have been built on these speculations of Plato. Equally remarkable is the history of the idea of extreme and mean ratio. Before the Christian era geometers had invented a process for dividing a line in this ratio, that they might use it in an equally abstract and useless problem--the inscribing a regular pentagon in a circle. But it was not until the middle of the present century that it was discovered that this idea is embodied in nature. It is hinted at in some animal forms, it is very thoroughly and accurately expressed in the angles at which the leaves of plants diverge as they grow from the stem, and it is embodied approximately in the revolutions of the planets about the sun.... Now, in all these cases of the embodiment in nature of an idea which men have developed, not by a study of the embodiment, but by an _a priori_ speculation, there seems to us demonstrative evidence that man is made in the image of his Creator; that the thoughts and knowledge of God contain and embrace all possible _a priori_ speculations of men. It is true that God's knowledge is infinite, and beyond our utmost power of conception. But how can we compare the reasonings of Euclid upon extreme and mean ratio with the arrangement of leaves about the stem, and the revolutions of planets around the sun, and not feel that these phenomena of creation express Euclid's idea as exactly as diagrams or Arabic digits could do; and that this idea was, in some form, present in the creation?"--The Natural Foundations of Theology. By T. Hill, D.D., LL.D.

There is an ingenious and judicious little work by Charles Girdlestone, M.A., published in 1875, and entitled 'Number: a Link between Divine Intelligence and Human. An Argument.'

NOTE XIV., page 140.

ASTRONOMY AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT.

The design argument has always drawn some of its data from astronomy. The order and beauty of the heavenly bodies, the alternation of day and night, the succession of the seasons, and the dependence of living creatures on these changes, are referred to as indications of God's character and agency in many passages of Scripture. Thus, to select only from the Psalms: "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?"--viii. 3, 4. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge."--xix. 1, 2. "He appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down. Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.... The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all."--civ. 19-24. Among classical writers, Cicero has presented the design argument as founded on the arrangements and movements of the heavenly bodies in a very striking manner, when, referring to the instrument by which Posidonius had ingeniously represented them, he asks whether, if that instrument were carried into Scythia or Britain, any even of the barbarians of these lands would doubt that it was the product of reason, and rebukes those who would regard the wondrous system of which it was a feeble copy as the effect of chance. "Quod si in Scythiam aut in Britanniam, sphæram aliquis tulerit hanc, quam nuper familiaris noster effecit Posidonius, cujus singulæ conversiones idem efficiunt in sole, et in lunâ, et in quinque stellis errantibus, quod efficitur in coelo singulis diebus et noctibus: quis in illâ barbarie dubitet, quin ea sphæra sit perfecta ratione? Hi autem dubitant de mundo, ex quo et oriuntur et fiunt omnia, casune ipse sit effectus, aut necessitate aliquâ, an ratione ac mente divinâ: et Archimedem arbitrantur plus valuisse in imitandis sphæræ conversionibus, quam naturam in efficiendis, præsertim cum multis partibus sint illa perfecta, quam hæc simulata, sollertius."--De Nat. Deorum, ii. 34, 35. The 'Astro-Theology' of Wm. Derham, published in 1714, was perhaps the first work entirely devoted to the illustration of the design argument from astronomical facts and theories. Among comparatively recent works of a similar kind I may mention Vince's 'Confutation of Atheism from the Laws and Constitution of the Heavenly Bodies,' Whewell's 'Bridgewater Treatise,' Dick's 'Celestial Scenery,' Mitchell's 'Planetary and Stellar Worlds,' and Leitch's 'God's Glory in the Heavens.' They afford ample evidence of the erroneousness of Comte's assertion that "the opposition of science to theology is more obvious in astronomy than anywhere else, and that no other science has given more terrible shocks to the doctrine of final causes." Kepler did not think so, for he concludes his work on the 'Harmony of Worlds' with these devout words: "I thank Thee, my Creator and Lord, that Thou hast given me this joy in Thy creation, this delight in the works of Thy hands. I have shown the excellency of Thy work unto men, so far as my finite mind was able to comprehend Thine infinity. If I have said aught unworthy of Thee, or aught in which I may have sought my own glory, graciously forgive it." Nor did Newton, for he wrote: "Elegantissima hæcce compages solis, planetarum, et cometarum (et stellarum), non nisi consilio et dominio Entis cujusdam potentis et intelligentis oriri potuit." And in our own times such men as Herschel, Brewster, Mädler, &c., have protested against the notion that astronomy tends to atheism.

The late Professor De Morgan demonstrated in his 'Essay on Probability,' when only eleven planets were known, that the odds against chance, to which in such a case intelligence is the only alternative, being the cause of all these bodies moving in one direction round the sun, with an inconsiderable inclination of the planes of their orbits, were twenty thousand millions to one. "What prospect," are his own words, "would there have been of such a concurrence of circumstances, if a state of chance had been the only antecedent? With regard to the sameness of the directions, either of which might have been from west to east, or from east to west, the case is precisely similar to the following: There is a lottery containing black and white balls, from each drawing of which it is as likely a black ball shall arise as a white one: what is the chance of drawing eleven balls all white?--answer 2047 to one against it. With regard to the other question, our position is this: There is a lottery containing an infinite number of counters, marked with all possible different angles less than a right angle, in such a manner that any angle is as likely to be drawn as another, so that in ten drawings the sum of the angles drawn may be anything under ten right angles: now, what is the chance of ten drawings giving collectively less than one right angle?--answer 10,000,000 to one against it. Now, what is the chance of both these events coming together?--answer, more than 20,000,000,000 to one against it. It is consequently of the same degree of probability that there has been something at work which is not chance in the formation of the solar system."

There are several departments of science as much, or even more, adapted than astronomy, to furnish proofs of the wisdom of God; but there is none which affords us such evidence of His power, or so helps us to realise His omnipresence, our own nothingness before Him, and the littleness of our earth in the system of His creation. Those who wish to have impressions of this kind deepened may be recommended to read the works of Proctor and Flammarion.

What is said in the paragraph to which this note refers must not be so understood as to be in consistent with the possibility or probability, if not demonstrated certainty, that the universe is not a perfectly conservative system, but one which is tending surely although slowly to the destruction of the present condition of things. This fact, if it be a fact, can no more affect the design argument in its relation to astronomy, than the decay of plants and the death of animals can affect it in relation to vegetable and animal physiology.

NOTE XV., page 143.

CHEMISTRY AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT.

The history of chemistry is of itself sufficient to disprove the view of Comte that the initial and conjectural stages of a science are those in which it affords most support to theology. It was only after the definitive constitution of chemistry as a science, only after the discovery of positive and precise chemical laws, that the teleological argument for the Divine existence began to be rested to a certain extent upon it.

The Honourable Robert Boyle, the founder of the Boyle Lectureship, was one of the most distinguished chemists of his age, a zealous defender of final causes, and the author of several treatises intended to diffuse worthy views and sentiments as to the character and operations of the Creator.

Probably the two best English treatises on the relationship of chemistry to theism are the Bridgewater Treatise of Dr Prout, 'Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion, considered with reference to Natural Theology' (3d ed., 1845), and the Actonian Prize Essay of Professor Fownes, 'Chemistry as exemplifying the Wisdom and Beneficence of God' (1844). Both writers were chemists of high reputation, but they were not very conversant with theology or philosophy, and have, in consequence, by no means fully utilised the excellent scientific materials which they collected.

This makes it all the more to be regretted that the late Professor George Wilson was not permitted to accomplish his design of writing "a book corresponding to the 'Religio Medici' of Sir Thomas Browne, with the title 'Religio Chemici.'" Among the fragments comprised in the work published under that title after his death, three essays--"Chemistry and Natural Theology," "The Chemistry of the Stars," and "Chemical Final Causes"--are most interesting and suggestive.

The attempts of writers like Moleschott and Büchner to draw atheistic inferences from the theories or hypotheses of modern chemistry have given rise to a multitude of answers, but it may be sufficient to refer to the 'Antimaterialismus' of Dr L. Weiss. Liebig in his 'Chemical Letters' manifests profound contempt for the materialistic and anti-theistic speculations attempted to be based on the science of which he was so illustrious a master.

NOTE XVI., page 145.

GEOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, ETC., AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT.

The single fact that geology proves that every genus and species of organic forms which exist or have existed on the earth had a definite beginning in time, gives to this science great importance in reference to theism. It decides at once and conclusively what metaphysics might have discussed without result for ages. Its religious bearings are exhibited in Buckland's 'Geology and Mineralogy considered in reference to Natural Theology,' Hugh Miller's 'Footprints of the Creator,' Hitchcock's 'Religion of Geology,' and many other works. Lyell concludes both his 'Elements of Geology' and 'Principles of Geology' by affirming that geological research finds in all directions the clearest indications of creative intelligence; that "as we increase our knowledge of the inexhaustible variety displayed in nature, and admire the infinite wisdom and power which it manifests, our admiration is multiplied by the reflection, that it is only the last of a great series of pre-existing creations, of which we cannot estimate the number or limit in times past."

The numerous adaptations which exist between the terrestrial and celestial economies are dwelt on in detail by M'Culloch in the second volume of his 'Proofs and Illustrations of the Attributes of God from the Facts and Laws of the Physical Universe,' and by Buchanan in 'Faith in God and Modern Atheism,' vol. i. pp. 132-156. These two authors have also treated of the adaptations subsisting between the organic and inorganic worlds. The Bridgewater Treatise of Chalmers was on 'The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man;' and that of Kidd, on 'The Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Constitution of Man.'

In Ritter's 'Geographical Studies,' Guyot's 'Earth and Man,' Kapp's 'Allgemeine Erdkunde,' Lotze's 'Mikrokosmus,' B. vi. c. 1, Duval's 'Des Rapports entre la Géographie et l'Economie Politique,' Cocker's 'Theistic Conception of the World,' ch. vii., &c., will be found a rich store of teleological data as to the fitness of the earth to be the dwelling-place and the schoolhouse of human beings. Of course, those who attempt to prove this thesis require carefully to resist the temptation to conceive of the relation of nature to man as not one of cause and effect, of action and reaction, of mutual influence, but as an immediate and inexplicable pre-established harmony like that which Leibnitz supposed to exist between the body and the soul. This was the theory which Cousin set forth in a celebrated lecture on the part of geography in history. Regarding it I may quote the words which I have used elsewhere: "This notion is not only purely conjectural, but inconsistent with the innumerable facts which manifest that nature does influence man, and that man does modify nature. It is impossible to hold, either in regard to the body and soul, or in regard to nature and man, _both_ the theory of mutual influence and of pre-established harmony. All that, in either case, proves the former, disproves the latter. The belief in a pre-established harmony between man and nature is, indeed, considerably more absurd than in a pre-established harmony between the body and soul; for when a body is born, a soul is in it, which remains in it till death, and is never known to leave it in order to take possession of some other body: but every country is not created with a people in it, nor is every people permanently fixed to a particular country. Imagination may be deceived for a moment by an obvious process of association into this belief of certain peoples being suited for certain lands, independently of the action of natural causes--the Greeks, let us say, for Greece, the Indian for the prairies and forests of America, the Malayan for the islands of the Indian Archipelago; but a moment's thought on the fact that the Turk has settled down where the Greeks used to be--that mighty nations of English-speaking men are rising up where the Indian roamed, and that Dutchmen are thriving in the lands of the Malayan, should suffice to disabuse us. Besides, just as the dictum, 'Marriages are made in heaven,' is seriously discredited by the great number that are badly made, so the kindred opinion that every country gets the people which suits it, and every people the country, as a direct and immediate consequence of their pre-established harmony, is equally discredited by the prevalence of ill-assorted unions, a great many worthless peoples living in magnificent lands, while far better peoples have much worse ones."--Philosophy of History in France and Germany, pp. 191, 192.

NOTE XVII., page 146.

THE ORGANIC KINGDOM AND DESIGN.

The order and system in the vegetable and animal kingdoms are undeniable general facts, whatever may have been the secondary agencies by which they have been produced; and the inference of design from these facts is valid, whatever may have been the mode of their production. The characters and relationships of organic forms constitute a proof of intelligence, whether their genera and species be the immediate and immutable expressions of the ideas of the Divine Mind, or the slowly-reached results of evolution. Of course, if there has been a process of evolution, it must have been one exactly fitted to attain the result. But the discovery or exhibition of such a process will be sufficient to cause a certain class of minds to believe that there has been no cause but the process--that the process completely explains both itself and the result, and leaves no room for intelligence.

The character of the order and system in the organic world is so extremely abstruse, subtle, and comprehensive, that all the attempts at classification in botany prior to De Candolle, and in zoology prior to Cuvier, were failures. The labours of the great naturalists and biologists of the present century have, doubtless, accomplished much; but the light reached is still but the feeble light of an early dawn. Yet that light is most pleasant and satisfying to the eye of the mind. The reason sees in it a profound significance and a wonderful beauty. How, it may well be asked, can a scheme of order which tasks to such an extent the powers of comprehension possessed by the human mind, and yet which is perceived, when discovered, to be admirably rational, be supposed to have originated elsewhere than in a Mind?

I can only mention a few out of the multitude of books which treat of design in the organic world. Among general works on natural theology it may be sufficient to refer to those of Paley, Buchanan, and Tulloch; and among special works to Professor Balfour's 'Phyto-Theology; or, Botanical Sketches, intended to illustrate the Works of God in the Structure, Functions, and General Distribution of Plants;' M'Cosh's 'Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation;' Agassiz's 'Structure of Animal Life; being Six Lectures on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in His Works;' Kirby's 'Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation of Animals;' Roget's 'Animal and Vegetable Physiology, considered in reference to Natural Theology;' and Sir Charles Bell's 'The Hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments, as evincing Design.' The three last-mentioned works are Bridgewater Treatises.

It is a duty to call particular attention to the recent work of M. Janet, 'Les Causes Finales.' Although M. Janet concedes, perhaps, too much to the opponents of finality, his treatise contains the ablest and most adequate discussion of the various problems suggested by the indications which organic nature gives of design that has yet appeared. It is eminently worthy of a careful study. I am glad to know that a translation of this valuable work is in progress.

Among the masters of biological science, Cuvier, V. Baer, Agassiz, and R. Owen may be named, as among those who have set the highest value on the principle of finality. The essay on Classification of Agassiz, and the various essays which Von Baer has published at different times, on what he calls "Zielstrebigkeit," are specially important.

NOTE XVIII., page 148.

EVIDENCES OF DESIGN IN ORGANISMS.

"The _savants_ are generally too much disposed to confound the doctrine of final cause with the hypothesis of an invisible force acting without physical means, as a _deus ex machinâ_. These two hypotheses, far from reducing themselves the one to the other, are in explicit contradiction; for he who says _design_ says at the same time _means_, and, consequently, causes adapted to produce a certain effect. To discover this cause is by no means to destroy the idea of design; it is, on the contrary, to bring to light the condition, _sine quâ non_, of the production of the end. To make clear this distinction we cite a beautiful example, borrowed from M. Claude Bernard. How does it happen, says this eminent physiologist, that the gastric juice, which dissolves all aliments, does not dissolve the stomach itself, which is of precisely the same nature as the aliments with which it is nourished? For a long time the vital force was supposed to intervene--that is to say, an invisible cause which, in some way, suspended the properties of the natural agents, to prevent their producing their necessary effects. The vital force would, by a sort of moral _veto_, forbid the gastric juice to touch the stomach. We see that this would be a real miracle. Everything is explained when we know that the stomach is lined with a coating or varnish which is not attacked by the gastric juice, and which protects the walls which it covers. Who does not see that in refuting the omnipotence of the vital force, very far from having weakened the principle of finality, we have given to it a wonderful support? What could the most perfect art have done to protect the walls of the stomach, but invent a precaution similar to that which exists in reality? And how surprising it is that an organ destined to secrete and use an agent most destructive to itself, is found armed with a protective tunic, which must have always coexisted with it, since otherwise it would have been destroyed before having had time to procure for itself this defence--which excludes the hypothesis of long gropings and happy occurrences."--Janet, 'Final Causes and Contemporaneous Physiology,' Presb. Quart. Rev., April 1876.

Professor Tyndall gives a very graphic description of the combination of remarkable arrangements by which the human ear is fitted to be an organ of hearing. I quote from it the following words, and connect with them some striking observations of Max Müller. "Finally, there is in the labyrinth a wonderful organ, discovered by the Marchese Corti, which is to all appearance a musical instrument, with its chords so stretched as to accept vibrations of different periods, and transmit them to the nerve-filaments which traverse the organ. Within the ears of men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of 3000 strings has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer world, and rendering it fit for reception by the brain. Each musical tremor which falls upon this organ selects from its tensioned fibres the one appropriate to its own pitch, and throws that fibre into unisonant vibration. And thus, no matter how complicated the motion of the external air may be, those microscopic strings can analyse it and reveal the constituents of which it is composed."--On Sound, p. 325. "What we hear when listening to a chorus or a symphony is a commotion of elastic air, of which the wildest sea would give a very inadequate image. The lowest tone which the ear perceives is due to about 30 vibrations in one second, the highest to about 4000. Consider, then, what happens in a _presto_, when thousands of voices and instruments are simultaneously producing waves of air, each wave crossing the other, not only like the surface waves of the water, but like spherical bodies, and, as it would seem, without any perceptible disturbance; consider that each tone is accompanied by secondary notes, that each instrument has its peculiar _timbre_, due to secondary vibrations; and, lastly, let us remember that all this cross-fire of waves, all this whirlpool of sound, is moderated by laws which determine what we call harmony, and by certain traditions or habits which determine what we call melody--both these elements being absent in the songs of birds--that all this must be reflected like a microscopic photograph on the two small organs of hearing, and there excite not only perception, but perception followed by a new feeling even more mysterious, which we call either pleasure or pain;--and it will be clear that we are surrounded on all sides by miracles transcending all we are accustomed to call miraculous."--Science of Language, second series, p. 115.

The structure of the eye has often been described as an evidence of design. There is an extremely interesting comparison of it with the photographic camera in Le Conte's 'Religion and Science,' pp. 20-33.

The whole reading public knows the masterly chapter on "The Machinery of Flight" in the Duke of Argyll's 'Reign of Law.'

NOTE XIX., page 149.

PSYCHOLOGY AND DESIGN.

The following writers treat at considerable length of the evidences of design to be traced in the constitution of the mind: Sir Matthew Hale in his 'Primitive Origination of Mankind;' Barrow in the seventh of his 'Sermons on the Creed;' Bentley in the second sermon of his 'Boyle Lecture;' Crombie in the second volume of his 'Natural Theology;' Lord Brougham in his 'Discourse on Natural Theology,' sect. iii., pp. 52-80; Turton's 'Natural Theology Considered,' pp. 65-160; Chalmers's 'Natural Theology,' Book III.; Buchanan's 'Faith in God,' pp. 213-231; Tulloch's 'Theism,' pp. 182-247; and Ulrici's 'Gott und Mensch.'

The phenomena of animal instinct are of themselves an inexhaustible source of instruction as to the Divine wisdom and goodness. "The spinning machinery which is provided in the body of a spider is not more accurately adjusted to the viscid secretion which is provided for it, than the instinct of the spider is adjusted both to the construction of its web and also to the selection of likely places for the capture of its prey. Those birds and insects whose young are hatched by the heat of fermentation, have an intuitive impulse to select the proper materials, and to gather them for the purpose. All creatures, guided sometimes apparently by senses of which we know nothing, are under like impulses to provide effectually for the nourishing of their young; and it is most curious and instructive to observe that the extent of provision which is involved in the process, and in the securing of the result, seems very often to be greater as we descend in the scale of nature, and in proportion as the parents are dissociated from the actual feeding or personal care of their offspring. The mammalia have nothing to provide except food for themselves, and have at first, and for a long time, no duty to perform beyond the discharge of a purely physical function. Birds have more to do--in the building of nests, in the choice of sites for these, and after incubation in the choice of food adapted to the period of growth. Insects, much lower in the scale of organisation, and subject to the wonderful processes of metamorphosis, have to provide very often for a distant future, and for successive stages of development not only in the young but in the _nidus_ which surrounds them. Bees, if we are to believe the evidence of observers, have an intuitive guidance in the selection of food which has the power of producing organic changes in the bodies of the young, even to the determination and development of sex, so that, by the administration of it, under what may be called artificial conditions, certain selected individuals can be made the mothers and queens of future hives. These are but a few examples of facts of which the whole animal world is full, presenting, as it does, one vast series of adjustments between bodily organs and corresponding instincts. But this adjustment would be useless unless it were part of another adjustment--between the instincts and perceptions of animals and those facts and forces of surrounding nature which are related to them, and to the whole cycle of things of which they form a part. In those instinctive actions of the lower animals which involve the most distant and the most complicated anticipations, it is certain that the prevision involved is a prevision which is not in the animals themselves. They appear to be, and beyond all doubt really are, guided by some simple appetite, by an odour or a taste, and, in all probability, they have generally as little consciousness of the ends to be subserved as the suckling has of the processes of nutrition. The path along which they walk is a path which they did not engineer. It is a path made for them, and they simply follow it. But the propensities and tastes and feelings which make them follow it, and the rightness of its direction towards the ends to be attained, do constitute an adjustment which may correctly be called mechanical, and is part of a unity which binds together the whole world of life, and the whole inorganic world on which living things depend."--Duke of Argyll on Animal Instinct (Cont. Rev., July 1875).

Instinctive actions will not be shown to be less evidences of Divine purpose by its being proved that intelligence, at least in the higher animals, probably always co-operates in some degree with instinct, or that much which is referred to instinct may be traced either directly to experience or to the hereditary transmission of qualities originally generated by experience.

NOTE XX., page 152.

HISTORY AND DESIGN.

The quotation is from the eighteenth--the concluding--volume of the 'Etudes sur l'Histoire de l'Humanité,' by Professor Laurent of Ghent. I have given some account of his historical doctrine, and endeavoured to defend the theistic inference which he has drawn from his laborious survey of historical facts against the objections of Professor J. B. Meyer, in my 'Philosophy of History in France and Germany,' pp. 321-330. Bunsen, in the work entitled 'God in History,' seeks to establish the same great thesis.

"History," says Niebuhr, "shows, on a hundred occasions, an intelligence distinct from nature, which conducts and determines those things which may seem to us accidental; and it is not true that history weakens our belief in Divine Providence. History is, of all kinds of knowledge, the one which tends most decidedly to that belief."--Lectures on the History of Rome, vol. ii. p. 59.

Süssmilch's celebrated treatise, 'Göttliche Ordnung in der Veränderung des menschlichen Geschlechtes, &c.;' M'Cosh's 'Method of the Divine Government;' and Gillett's 'God in Human Thought,' vol. ii. pp. 724-792, may be consulted as regards the evidences of Divine purpose to be found in the constitution of society.

NOTE XXI., page 168.

HISTORY OF THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.