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} PALEY’S NATURAL THEOLOGY;
WITH
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES,
BY ENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S., anp SIR C. BELL, K.G.H., &e.
AND AN INTRODUCTORY
| SCOURSE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY, BY LORD BROUGHAM:
TO WHICH ARE ADDED, SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS, AND A TREATISE ON ANIMAL MECHANICS,
BY SIR CHARLES BELL.
WITH NUMEBOUS WOODCUTS.
VOLS. YOL: I.
C; “COX, ‘1, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND
_———e
1851.
( iii )
CONTENTS
OF
A DISCOURSE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.
DEDICATION e e e ° e e °
Inrropucrion—Arrangement of Subjects and Expla-
nation of Terms . . ° . °
Anatysis of the Work ,. e e ° PART I.
NATURE OF THE SCIENCE AND OF ITS EVIDENCES.
Sxcrion I.—Introductory View of the Method of In- vestigation pursued in the Physical and Psycholo- gical Sciences . : ; . . :
Sxcrion I].—Comparison of the Physical Branch of Natural Theology with Physics : .
Sxotion I1I.—Comparison of the Psychological Branch of Natural Theology with Psychology
Szori0n I1V.—Of the Argument 4 priori . ° Sxecrion V.—Moral or Ethical Branch of Natural
Theology . . ° . . . . Sxcrion VI.—Lord Bacon's Doctrine of Final Causcs
Sxcrion VII.—Of Scientific Arrangement, and the Methods of Analysis and Synthesis
.
1! 15
19
28
45 66
78 106
VAG
iv CONTENTS.
PART II.
OF THE ADVANTAGES OF THE STUDY OF NATURAL THEOL(
Secrion I.—Of the Pleasures of Science .
Szcrion I].—Of the Pleasure and Improvement pecu- liar to Natural Theology . .
Sxcrion IIT.—Of the Connexion between Natural and Revealed Religion ° ° ° ° .
NOTES.
Norsg I.—Of the Classification of the Sciences . :
II.—Of the Psychological Argument from Final Causes . ‘ . . ° .
Il1I.—Of the Doctrine of Cause and Effect
IV.—Of the ‘Systéme de la Nature,’ and the Hypothesis of Materialism . . .
V.—Of Mr. Hume’s Sceptical Writings, and the Argument respecting Providence . : VI.—Of the Ancient Doctrines respecting Mind
VII.—Of the Ancient Doctrines respecting the Deity and Matter . . . .
VIII.—Of the Ancient Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul ° e ° e e
IX.—Of Bishop Warburton’s Theory concerning the Ancient Doctrine of a Future State
X.—Of Lord Bacon’s Character . . .
Translation of Passages inthe Text. . : Translation of Passages in the Notes « . :
A
DISCOURSE
OF
NATURAL THEOLOGY,
SHOWING
THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE AND THE ADVANTAGES OF THE STUDY.
BY
HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S.,
' "AND MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FRANC® i]
VOL. I, B
A DISCOURSE
OF
NATURAL THEOLOGY.
TT) JOHN CHARLES VISCOUNT ALTHORPE.*
Tux composition of this discourse was undertaken in consequence of an observation which I had often made, that scientific men are apt to regard the study of Natural Religion as little connected with philosophical pursuits. Many of the persons to whom I allude were men of religious habits of thinking; others were free from any disposition towards scepticism, rather because they had not much discussed the subject, than because they had formed fixed opinions upon it after inquiry: but the bulk of them relied little upon Natural Theo- ly, which they seemed to regard as a speculation built rather on fancy than on argument ; or, at any rate, as a kind of knowledge quite different from either physical or moral science. It therefore tppeared to me desirable to define, more precisely than had yet been done, the place and the claims o
* Now Earl Spencer. ° B
S A DISCOURSE OF
Natural Theology among the various branches of ‘ human knowledge. ro About the same time our Society,* as you may — recollect, was strongly urged: to publish an edition of Dr. Paley’s popular work, with copious andl - scientific illustrations. We both favoured this ; plan ; but some of our colleagues justly apprehended. that the adoption of it might open the door to the : introduction of religious controversy among US, . against our fundamental principles; and the scheme — was abandoned. I regarded it, however, as ex dient to carry this plan into execution by individual. exertion; and our worthy and accomplished col- league, Sir C. Bell—whose admirable treatise om Animal Mechanics pointed him out as the fellow- labourer I should most desire—fortunately agreed. to share the work of the illustrations. In these we have made a very considerable progress; and I now inscribe this publication, but particularly the Preliminary Discourse, to you. It was, with the exception of the Third Section of Part 1., and the greater portion of the Notes, written at the end of 1830, in 1831, and the latter part of 1833, anda portion was added in the autumn of 1834. In those days I held the Great Seal of this kingdom ; and it was impossible to finish the work while many cares of another kind pressed upon me. But the first leisure that could be obtained was devoted to this object, and to a careful revision of what had een written in a season less auspicious for such ‘culations. inscribe the fruits of those studies to you, not 'y as a token of ancient friendship—for that |
* For the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
WATURAL THEOLOGY. 9
you do not require; nor because I always have found you, whether in possession or in resistance of power, a fellow-labourer to maintain our common principles, alike firm, faithful, disinterested—for your known public character wants no testimony from me ; nor yet because a work on such a sub- ject needs the patronage of a great name—for it would be affectation in me to pretend any such motive; but because you have devoted much of your time to such inquiries—are beyond most men sensible of their importance — concur generally in the opinions which I profess to maintain—and had even formed the design of giving to the world your thoughts upon the subject, as I hope and trust you now will be moved to do all the more for the present address. In this view, your authority will prove of great value to the cause of truth, however superfluous the patronage of even your name might be to recommend the most important of all studies. Had our lamented friend Romilly lived, you are aware that not even these considerations would have made me address any one but him, with whom I had oftentimes speculated upon this ground. Both of us have been visited with the most severe afflictions, of a far nearer and more lasting kind than even his removal, and we are now left with few things to care for; yet, ever since the time I followed him to the grave, I question if either of us has read, without meditating upon the irreparable loss we and all men then sustained, the words of the ancient philosopher best imbued with religious opinions—“ Proficiscar enim non ad eos solum viros de quibus ante dixi, sed etiam ad Catonem meum, quo nemo vir melior natus est, nemo pietate oreestantior; cujus a me corpus crematum est,
10 A DISCOURSE OF
animus vero non me deserens sed respectans, in e profecto loca discessit quo mihi ipsi cernebat esse , veniendum ; quem ego meum casum fortiter ferre | visus sum, non quod sequo animo ferrem; sed me | ipse consolabar, existimans, non longinquum inter nos digressum et discessum fore.” *
* De Senect.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 11
INTRODUCTION.
ARRANGEMENT OF SUBJECTS AND EXPLANATION OF TERMS.
Tue words Theology and Religion are often used as synonymous. Thus Natural Theology and Natural Religion are by many confounded toge- ther. But the more accurate use of the words is that which makes Theology the science, and feli- gion its subject; and in this manner are they distinguished when we speak of a “professor of theology,” and a “sense of religion.”
There is, however, as regards Natural Theology, amore limited use of the word, which confines it to the knowledge and attributes of the Deity, and
' Yegards the speculation concerning his will, and our hopes from and duties towards him, as another branch of the science, termed Natural Religion, in contradistinction to the former. Dr. Paley hardly
touches on this latter branch in his book, there being only about one-sixtieth part devoted to it, and that incidentally in treating of the attributes. Indeed, though in the dedication he uses the word
Religion as synonymous with Theology, the title
and the arrangement of his discourse show that he generally employed the term Natural Theology its restricted sense. Bishop Butler, on the other hand, seems to have used Natural Religion 10 '
12 A DISCOURSE OF
2
sense equally restricted, but certainly little ware ranted by custom; for that portion of his work which treats of Natural Religion is confined tos | future state and the moral government of God, as | if he either held Natural Religion and Natural . Theology to be two branches of one subject, or Natural Religion to be a branch of Natural Theo- logy. The older writers, Clarke, Bentley, Der- ham, seem to have sometimes used the words indif- ferently, but never to have regarded Natural Religion in the restricted acceptation. The an- cients generally used Religion in a qualified sense, either as connected with an obligation, or as syno- nymous with superstition.
This Discourse is not a treatise of Natural Theology : it has not for its design an exposition of the doctrines whereof Natural Theology con- sists. But its object is, first, to explain the nature of the evidence upon which it rests—to show that it is a science, the truths of which are discovered by induction, like the truths of Natural and Moral Philosophy-—that it is a branch of science partaking of the nature of each of those great divisions of human knowledge, and not merely closely allied to them both. Secondly, the object of the Discourse is to explain the advantages attending this study. The work, therefore, is a logical one.
We have commented upon the use of the terms Theology and Religion. As it is highly desirable to keep scientific language precise, and always to use the same terms in the same sense, we shall now further observe upon the word “ moral’ in rela-- tion to science or faculties. It is sometimes used 0 denote the whole of our mental faculties, and ‘2 opposition to natural and physical, as when w
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 13
speak of “ soral science,” “ moral truths,” “ mo- ral philosophy.” But it is also used in contradis- tinction to “ intellectual” or ‘‘ mental,” and in connexion with or in reference to obligation; and then it relates to rights and duties, and is synony- mous with ethical, It seems advisable to use it always in this sense, and to employ the words spi- rival and mental in opposition to natural and ma- terial ; and psychological, as applied to the science of mind, in opposition to physical, Again, a dis- tinction is sometimes made between the intellectual and moral powers or faculties—the former being those of the understanding, the latter those of the will, or, as they are often called, the “ active powers,’—that is, the passions and feelings. It seems better to use the word active for this purpose
8 opposed to intellectual. Thus we shall first have these general terms, spiritual or mental, as applied to the immaterial part of the creation, and psychological, as applied to the science which treats of it. We shall next have a subdivision of the mental faculties into intellectual and active; both form the subjects of psychological science. Moral science, in its restricted sense, and properly so called, will then denote that branch which treats of duties, and of what is implied in those duties, their correlative rights: it will, in short, be ethical science.
Thus the science of mind—say Metaphysical science—may be said to consist of two great branches, the one of which treats of existences, the other of duties. The one accordingly has been ‘ermed with great accuracy, Ontology, speaking, of lat which 7; the other, Deontology, speaing
that which ought tobe. The former, howevets
ey
ys
14 | A DISCOURSE OF
comprehends properly all physical as wel tal science. The division which appears whole most convenient is this: That met science, as contradistinguished from p/ either psychological, which treats of th both intellectual and active, but treats ences only ; or moral, which treats of 1 duties, and is distinguishable from psyc though plainly connected with it nearly laries are with the propositions from wh flow. Then physical truths, in one resp under the same head with the first brancl physical truths. Physical as well as psy: science treats of existences, while mor: alone treats of duties.
According to a like arrangement, Nat ology consists of two great branches, o bling Ontology, the other analogous to D The former comprehends the discovery istence and attributes of a Creator, b gating the evidences of design in the wo creation, material as well as spiritual. relates to the discovery of his will and intentions with regard to his creatures, duct and their duty. The former rese physical and psychological sciences, anc the evidences of design, wisdom, and go hibited both in the natural and spiritual —
The latter resembles rather the depa moral science, as distinguished from bot} and psychological. We may thus co science of Natural Theology as consistin: inductive science, of three compartments Mental, and Moral; or, taking the Gr Physical, Psychological, and Ethical.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 15
This classification is convenient, and its grounds are very fit to be premised—at the same time that we must admit the question to be one only of clas- sification and technology. Having so stated the divisions of the subject, and the meaning of the terms used in relation to those divisions, I shall as- sume this arrangement and adhere to this phrasev- logy, as convenient, though far from represent- ing it to be the best. In such discussions it is far more important to employ one uniform and pre- viously explained language or arrangement, than
, to be very curious in adopting the best. No clas-
sification indeed can, from the nature of things, be rigorously exact. All the branches of science, even of natural philosophy, much more of meta- physical, run into each other, and are separated by Bradations rather than by lines of demarcation.
or could any scientific language we possess help breaking down under us in an attempt to maintain a perfectly logical arrangement.*
ANALYSIS OF THE WORK.
Te order of this Discourse is thus set out:
The First Part treats of the nature of the subject, and the kind of evidence upon which Natural Theology rests.
The Seconp Parr treats of the advantages de- rived from the study of the science.
The former Part is divided into seven sections. The frst is introductory, and treats of the od
of evidence by which the truths of Physical wi
* Note I.
16 A DISCOURSE OF
Psychological science are investigated, and shows there is as great an appearance of diversity be- tween the manner in which we arrive at the knowledge of different truths in those inductive sciences, as there is between the nature of any such inductive investigation and the proofs of the ontological branches of Natural Theology. But that diversity is proved to be only apparent; and hence it is inferred, that the supposed difference in the proofs of Natural Theology may also be only apparent.
The second section continues the application of this argument to the Physical branch of Natural - Theology, and shows further proofs that the first branch of Natural Theology is as much an: in- ductive science as Physics or Natural Philosophy. The first section compared the ontological branches of Natural Theology with all inductive science, physical as well as psychological. The second compares the physical branch of Natural Theology with physical science only.
The third section compares the psychological branch of Natural Theology with psychological science, and shows that both rest alike upon in- duction.
The fourth section shows that the argumentum a priort is unsound to a great degree—that it is insufficient for the purpose to which it is applied —that it serves only to a limited extent—and that to this extent it is in reality not distinguishable from induction, or the argumentum a posteriort,
The jifth section treats of the second or N« he deontological branch of Naturel ‘Theology,
K.
|
NATURAL TIUEOLOGY. 17
shows that it rests upon the same kind of evidence with moral science, and is, strictly speaking, as much a branch of inductive knowledge.
The sixth section examines the doctrines of Lord Bacon respecting Final Causes, and shows that he was not adverse to the speculation when kept within due bounds.
The seventh section examines the true nature of inductive analysis and synthesis, and points out some important errors prevailing on this subject.
In treating of the proofs of design displayed by the mental constitution of living creatures, and in treating of the Soul’s immortality, it becomes necessary to enter more at large into the subject, and therefore the third and the jifth sections are not, like the others, mere logical discourses in
_which the doctrines of Natural Theology are as-
sumed rather than explained. The subjects of those two sections have not been sufliciently handled in professed treatises upon Natural Theo- logy, which have been almost wholly confined to the first branch of the science—the proofs of the Deity’s existence and attributes—and to the phy- sical portion of that branch. This defect I have endeavoured to supply.
The Second Part, which treats of the advan- tages of the study, consists of three sections.
The first shows that the precise kind of plea- sure derived from the investigation of scientiic truths is derived from this study.
18 A DISCOURSE OF .
The second treats of the pleasures which are peculiar to this study.
The third treats of the connexion of Natural with Revealed Religion.*
* I have heard it said that some ideas in one part of this Discourse had been anticipated by a work of Dr. Crombie. That such coincidence is purely accidental must appear from this, that having mislaid his book when it reached me, I have never read one line of it to this hour.—Sept, 1845.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 19
PART THE FIRST.
NATURE OF THE SCIENCE, AND OF ITS EVIDENCES.
SECTION I.
INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE METHOD OF INVES TIGATION PURSUED IN THE PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES.
THE faculties as well as the feelings of the human mind, its intellectual as well as its active powers, are employed without any intermission, although with varying degrees of exertion, in one of two ways—either in regard to some object immediately connected with the supply of our wants, or in regard to subjects of mere contemplation. The first class of exertions relates to all the objects of necessity, of comfort, or of physical enjoyment : in the pursuit of these, the powers of the under- standing, or the passions, or both together, are, with nearly the whole of mankind, employed dur- ing the greater portion of their existence, and, with the bulk of mankind, during almost the whole of their existence. The other class of mental exertions, which engrosses but a very few men for the greater part of their lives, and occu- pies the majority only occasionally and wt cons-
20 A DISCOURSE OF
cerable intervals, comprehends within its scope all the subjects of meditation and reflection—of merely speculative reasoning and discussion: it is com- posed of all the efforts which our understanding can make, and all the desires which we can feel, upon subjects of mere science or taste, matters which begin and end in intellectual or moral gratification.
It is unquestionably true that these two grand branches of exertion have an intimate connexion with each other. The pursuits of science lend constant assistance to those of active life; and the practical exercise of the mental powers constantly furthers the progress of science merely speculative. But the two provinces are nevertheless perfectly distinguishable, and ought not to be confounded. The corollary from a scientific discovery may be the improvement of a very ordinary machine ora common working tool; yet the establishment of the speculative truth may have been the primary object of the philosopher who discovered it; and to learn that truth is the immediate purpose of him who studies the philosopher’s system. So the better regulation of the affections or the more entire control of the passions may be the result of an acquaintance with our mental constitution; but the object of him-who studies the laws of mind is nerely to become acquainted with the spiritual part of our nature. In like manner, it is very possible that the knowledge of a scientific truth may force itself upon one whose faculties or feel- ings are primarily engaged in some active exertion.
Some physical law, or some psychological truth, vay be discovered by one only intent upon supp ly-
“S 4 physical want. or obtaining a mental enyy-
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 21
ment. But here, as in the former case, the scientific or speculative object is only incidental or collateral to the main pursuit : the matter of contemplation is the corollary, the matter of action the proposition. The merely contemplative pursuits which thus form one of the great branches of mental exertion seem again to be divisible into two classes, by a line that, to a careless observer, appears suftici- ently defined. The objects of our inquiry and meditation appear to be either these things in the physical and spiritual worlds with which we are conversant through our senses or by means of our internal consciousness, or those things with which we are made acquainted only by reasoning—by the evidence of things unseen and unfelt. We either discuss the properties and relations of actually per- ceived and conceived beings, physical and mental —that is, the objects of sense and of consciousness —or we carry our inquiries beyond those things which we see and feel; we investigate the origin of them and of ourselves; we rise from the con- templation of nature and of the spirit within us, to the first cause of all, both of body and of mind. To the one class of speculation belong the in- quiries how matter and mind are framed, and how they act; to the other class belong the inquiries whence they proceed, and whither they tend. In a word, the structure and relations of the universe form the subject of the one branch of philosophy, and may be termed Human Science; the origin and destiny of the universe forms the subject of its other branch, and is termed Divine Sctence, or It is not to be denied that this classific be convenient ; indeed, it rests uvon
A DISCOURSE OF
lation; for the speculations which comp : two branches have certain common diff s and common resemblances. Yet it is equa ain, that nothing but an imperfect knowlec he subject, or a superficial attention to it, ¢ mit us to think that there is any well-defir undary which separates the two kinds of phi phy ; that the methods of investigation are u rent in each; and that the kind of evidence var y which the truths of the one and of the otl lass are demonstrated. The error is far mi 2xtensive in its consequences than a mere ini curacy of classification; for it materially impe the force of the proofs upon which Natu Theology rests. The proposition which I woi place in its stead is, That this science is stricth branch of inductive philosophy, formed and ported by the same kind of reasoning upon wh the Physical and Psychological sciences are four This important point will be established by a fi explanation ; and we shall best set about this by showing, in the first place, that the sam parent diversity of evidence exists in the dif subjects or departments of the branch whir have termed Human science. It seenis tc there on a superficial examination: if a scrutiny puts that appearance to flight, ference is legitimate, that there may “be n ground for admitting an essential differe tween the foundations of Human Scie Divine. The careless inquirer into physical trv certainly think he had seized on a so ciple of classification, if he should divi Jects with which philosophy, Natural '
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 23
s conversant, into two classes—those objects of vhich we know the existence by our senses or our consciousness ; that is, external objects which we re, touch, taste, and smell, internal ideas which we conceive or remember, or emotions which we feel—and those objects of which we only know the existence by a process of reasoning, founded upon something originally presented by the senses or by consciousness. This superficial reasoner would under the first of these heads the members of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms ; the heavenly bodies; the mind—for we are sup- posing him to be so far capable of reflection as to know that the proof of the mind’s separate ex- istence is, at the least, as short, plain, and direct, as that of the body, or of external objects. Under the second head he would range generally what- ever objects of examination are fiot directly per- ceived by the senses, or felt by consciousness.
But a moment’s reflection will show both how very short a way this classification would carry our inaccurate logician, and how entirely his prin- ciple fails to support him even during that little part of the journey. Thus the examination of certain visible objects and appearances enables us to ascertain the laws of light and of vision. Our senses teach us that colours differ, and that their mixture forms other hues; that their absence is black, their combination in certain proportions white. We are in the same way enabled to under- stand that the organ of vision performs its func- tions by a natural apparatus resembling, though far surpassing, certain instruments of out own constructing, and that therefore it works on he une principles, But that light, which can ve
24 A DISCOURSE OF
perceived directly by none of our senses, exist8 as | a separate body, we only infer by a process of reasoning from things which our senses do perceive. So we are acquainted with the effects of heat; we | know that it extends the dimensions of whatever matter it penetrates; we feel its effects upon our own nerves when subjected to its operation; and we see its effects in augmenting, liquefying, and decomposing other bodies; but its existence asa separate substance we do not know, except by reasoning and by analogy. Again, to which of the two classes must we refer the air? Its ex- istence is not made known by the sight, the smell, the taste; but is it by the touch? Assuredly a stream of it blown upon the nerves of touch pro- duces a certain effect; but to infer from thence ~ the existence of a rare, light, invisible, and im- palpable fluid, is clearly an operation of reasoning, as much as that which enables us to infer the existence of light or heat from their perceptible effects. But furthermore, we are accustomed to speak of seeing motion; and the reasoner whom we are supposing would certainly class the phenomena of mechanics, and possibly of dynamics generally, including astronomy, under his first head, of things known immediately by the senses. Yet assu nothing can be more certain than that the know- ledge of motion is a deduction of reasoning, not a perception of sense ; it is derived from the come parison of two positions: the idea of a change of place is the result of that comparison attained by a short process of reasoning ; and the estimate of velocity is the result of another process of reason- ing and of recollection: Thus, then, Ynere is 2k 4 ence excluded from the first class almost the whole
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 20
| mange of natural philosophy. But are we quite
; wire that anything remains which when severely
‘| examined will stand the test? Let us attend a
| little more closely to the things which we have
, passed over hastily, as if admitting that they be-
, 0 to the first class.
t is said that we do not see light, and we cer- tainly can know its existence directly by no other sense but that of sight, but that we see objects variously illuminated, and therefore that the exist- ence of light is an inference of reason, and the di- .{ Yersity of colour an object of sense. But the very | idea of diversity implies reasoning, for it is the result of a comparison; and when we affirm that white light is composed of the seven primary co- lours in certain proportions, we state a proposition | Which is the result of much reasoning—reasoning, .| itis true, founded upon sensations or impressions “} upon the senses ; but not less founded upon such J sensations is the reasoning which makes us believe “| in the existence of a body called light. The same may be said of heat and the phenomena of heated 4 bodies. The existence of heat is an inference from
certain phenomena, that is, certain effects produced on our external senses by certain bodies, or certain changes which those senses undergo in the neigh-
' bourhood of those bodies; but it is not more an inference of reason than the proposition that heat extends or liquefies bodies, for that is merely a conclusion drawn from comparing our sensations occasioned by the external objects placed in varying circumstances.
But can we say that there is no process of rea- soning even in the simplest case which we \ane supposed our reasoner to put—the existence at Ue
26 ' A DISCOURSE OF
three kingdoms, of nature, of the heavenly bo of the mind? It is certain that there is in e one of these cases a process of reasoning. A tain sensation is excited in the mind through sense of vision; it is an inference of reason this must have been excited by something, or r have had a cause. That the cause must have | external may possibly be allowed to be ano inference which reason could make unaided by evidence of any other sense. But to discover the cause was at any the least distance from organ of vision clearly required a new proces reasoning, considerable experience, and the ind tions of other senses; for the young man w] Mr. Cheselden couched for a cataract at first lieved that everything he saw touched his Experience and reasoning, therefore, are requ to teach us the existence of external objects ; all that relates to their relations of size, col motion, habits, in a word, the whole philosoph them, must of course be the result of still lo1 and more complicated processes of reasoning. of the existence of the mind : although undoubt the process of reasoning is here the shortest o: and the least liable to deception, yet so conne are all its phenomena with those of the body, it requires a process of abstraction alien from ordinary habits of most men, to be persuaded we have a more undeniable evidence of its sepa existence than we even have, of the separate e: ence of the body.
It thus clearly appears that we have been ji fied in calling the classifier whose case we | been supposing, a careless inquirer, & super
7easoner, an imperfect logician; that there
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 27
idation for the distinction which we have him to take between the different objects fic investigation ; that the evidence upon ir assent to both classes of truths reposes same kind, namely, the inferences drawn ning from sensations or ideas originally | by the external senses, or by our inward sness.
n, the distinction which at first appeared found to be without any warrant in the kinds of human science, has it any better when we apply it to draw the line between nch of philosophy itself, and the other is been termed Divine, or theology? In rds, is there any real, any specific differ- ween the method of investigation, the * the evidence, in the two departments of on? Although this preliminary discourse, 2d the work itself which it introduces, and lustrations of it, are calculated throughout h the answer to the question, we shall yet ‘particulars in this place, in order to show tisely the same fallacy which we have been , in regard to the classification of objects ary scientific research, gives rise to the neral classification or separation of all into two distinct branches, human and nd how erroneous it is to suppose that these ches rest upon different foundations.
28 . A DISCOURSE OF
>
SECTION II.
COMPARISON OF THE PHYSICAL BRANCH OF NAe TURAL THEOLOGY WITH PHYSICS.
THE two inquiries—that into the nature and cone stitution of the universe, and that into the evi- dence of design which it displays—in a word, physics and psychology, philosophy whether nae.! tural and mental, and the fundamental branch of Natural Theology,—are not only closely allied one to the other, but are to a very considerable extent identical. The two paths of investigation for a great part of the way completely coincide. The same induction of facts which leads us to a know- ledge of the structure of the eye, and its functions in the animal economy, leads us to the know]
of its adapiation to the properties of light. It is a! truth of physics, in the strictest sense of the word, ° that vision is performed by the eye refracting light, and making it converge to a focus upon the retina ; and_that the peculiar combination of its lenses, and the different materials they are com- posed of, correct the indistinctness which would ‘ otherwise arise from the different refrangibility of ! light ; in other words, make the eye an achromatic instrument. But if this is not also a truth in : Natural Theology, it is a position from which, by . the shortest possible process of reasoning, we arrive at a theological truth—namely, that the instrument so successfully performing a given service by Wea of this curious structure, must have been formed
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 29
with a knowledge of the properties of light. The position from which so easy a step brings us to this doctrine of Natural Theology was gained by strict induction. Upon the same evidence which all na- tural science rests on, reposes the knowledge that the eye is an optical instrument: this is a truth common to both Physics and Theology. Before the days of Sir Isaac Newton men knew that they saw by means of the eye, and that the eye was con- structed upon optical principles; but the reason of its peculiar conformation they knew not, because they were ignorant of the different refrangibility of light. When his discoveries taught this truth, it was found to have been dcted upon, and conse- quently known, by the Being who created the eye. Still our knowledge was imperfect ; and it was re- served for Mr. Dollond to discover another law of nature—the different dispersive powers of different substances—which enabled him to compound an object-glass that more effectually corrected the gVarious refrangibility of the rays. It was now ob- served that this truth also must have been known to the maker of the eye; for upon its basis is that instrument, far more perfect than the achromatie glass of Dollond, framed. These things are truths in both physics and theology; they are truths taught us by the self-same process of investigation, and resting upon the self-same kind of evidence.
When we extend our inquiries, and observe the varieties of this perfect instrument, we mark the adaptation of changes to the diversity of circum- stances, as in different animals ; and the truths thus learnfare in like manner common to Physical and Theological science ; that is, to Natural History,
or Comparative Anatomy, and Natural Theology. , i WoL I. c
30 A DISCOURSE OF
That beautiful instrument, so artistly contrived that the most ingenious workman could not imagine an improvement of it, becomes still more interest- ing and more wonderful, when we find that its conformation is varied with the different necessities of each animal. If the animal prowls by night, we see the opening of the pupil, and the power of concentration in the eye increased. If an am- phibious animal has occasionally to dive into the water, with the change of the medium through which the rays pass there is an accommodation in the condition of the humours, and the eye partakes of the eye both of the quadruped and of the fish.
So, having contemplated the apparatus for pro- tection in the human eye, we find that in the lower animals, who want both the accessory means of cleaning the eye and the ingenuity to accomplish it by other modes than the eyelids, an additional eye- lid, a new apparatus, is provided for this purpose.
Again, in fishes, whose eye is washed by the ele- ment in which they move, all the exterior apparatus is unnecessary, and is dismissed; but in the crab, and especially in that species which lies in mud, thg very peculiar and horny prominent eye, which every body must have observed, would be quite obscured were it not for a particular provision. There is a little brush of hair above the eye, against which the eye is occasionally raised to wipe off what may adhere to it. The form of the eye, the particular mode in which it is moved, and, we ma say, the coarseness of the instrument compared wi the parts of the same organ in the higher class of animals, make the mechanism of eyelids and of lachrymal glands unsuitable. The mechanism used for this purpose is discovered by observation and
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 3l
reasoning: that it is contrived for this purpose 1s equally a discovery of observation and reasoning. Both propositions are strictly propositions of phy- sical science.
The same remarks apply to every part of the animal body. ‘The use to which each member is subservient, and the manner in which it is enabled so to perform its functions as to serve that appointed nse, is learnt by an induction of the strictest kind.
| But it is impossible to deny, that what induction ‘thus teaches forms the great bulk of all Natural ‘Theology. The question which the theologian always puts upon each discovery of a purpose manifestly accomplished is this: ‘‘Suppose I had this operation to perform by mechanical means, and were acquainted with the laws regulating the action of matter, should I attempt it in any other | way than I here see practised?’ If the answer is in the negative, the consequence is irresistible, that some power, capable of acting with design, and possessing’ the supposed knowledge, employed the means which we see used. But this negative answer is the result of reasoning founded upon in- duction, and rests upon the same evidence whereon the doctrines of all physical science are discovered and believed. And the inference to which that negative answer so inevitably leads is a truth in Natural Theology; for it is only another way of asserting that design and knowledge are evinced in the works and functions of nature.
It may further illustrate the argument to take one or two other examples. When a bird’s egg is examined, it is found to consist of three parts, the chick, the yolk in which the chick is placed, and he white in which the yolk swims. The youk is
Cc 2
ee a ee
32 A DISCOURSE. OF |
lighter than the white; and is attached to it at two points by the treadles. If a line were drawn. through these two points it would pass below the centre of gravity of the yolk. From this arrange- ment it must follow that the chick is always upper- ; most, roll the egg how you will; consequently, the-j chick is always kept nearest to the breast or belly: of the mother while she is sitting. Suppose, then,, that any one acquainted with the laws of motion had to contrive things so as to secure this position. for the little speck or sac in question, in order its receiving the necessary heat from the hen—"4 could he proceed otherwise than by placing it in.: the lighter liquid, and suspending that liquid in: the heavier, so that its centre of gravity should be above the line or plane of suspension? Assuredly. not; for in no other way could his purpose be ace- complished. ‘This position is attained by a strict induction ; it is supported by the same kind of evi- | dence on which all physical truths rest. But ié. . leads by a single step to another truth in Natural. : Theology ; that the egg must have been formed by: some hand skilful in mechanism, and acting wi the knowledge of dynamics.
The forms of the bones and joints, and the ten- dons or cords which play over them, afford a variety of instances of the most perfect mechanical adjust- ment. Sometimes the power is sacrificed for ra~ pidity of motion, and sometimes rapidity is sacrificed. for power. Our knee-pan, or patella, throws off the tendon which is attached to it from the centre of motion, and therefore adds to the power of the muscles of the thigh, which enable us to rise or to
leap. We havea mechanism of precisely the wm Kind in the lesser joints, where the bones, answer:
NATURAL THEOLOGY.
ng the purposes of the patella, are formed . iminutive size.* In the toes of the ostrich oaterial is different, but the mechanism is the sa An elastic cushion is placed between the tenc md the joint, which, whilst it throws off the tena rom the centre of motion, and therefore adds he power of the flexor muscle, gives elasticity he bottom of the foot. And we recognise tl intention of this when we remember that this bir does not fly, but runs with great swiftness, and tha the whole weight rests upon the foot, which ha but little relative breadth; these elastic cushions serving in some degree the same office as the elastic frog of the horse’s hoof, or the cushion in the bottom of the camel’s foot., The web-foot of a water-fowl is an inimitable paddle; and all the ingenuity of the present day exerted to improve our steam-boats makes nothing oO approach it. The flexor tendon of the toes of 1e duck is so directed over the heads of the bones *the thigh and leg, that it is made tight when ¢ creature bends its leg, and is relaxed when the ‘is stretched out. When the bird draws its foot the toes are drawn together, in consequence of bent position of the bones of the leg pressing he tendon. When, on the contrary, it pushes leg out straight, in making the stroke, the ms are relieved from the pressure of the heel- .and the toes are permitted to be fully ex- d and at the same time expanded, so that the ‘etween them meets the resistance of a large e of water.
nother class of birds, those which Too Wyo 1ch of a tree, the same mechanism ans ere ourpose. The great length of the toes 9 alled Sesamoid, from Sesamum, a ind of Er
3t A DISCOURSE OF
these birds enables them to grasp the branch ; yet | were they supported by voluntary effort alone, and , were there no other provision made, their would relax in sleep, and they must fall. But, on }. the contrary, we know that they roost on one foot, } and maintain a firm attitude. Borelli has taken pains to explain how this is. The muscle which bends the toes lies on the fore part of the thigh, and runs over the joint which corresponds with our knee-joint; from the fore part its tendon passes to the back part of the leg, and over the joint equivalent to our heel- bone ; it then splits, and extends in the bottom of the foot to the toes. The consequence of this singular course of the tendon is, that when the mere weight of the bird causes these two joints to bend under it, the tendon is stretched, or would be stretched, were _ it not that its divided extremities, inserted into the last bones of the toes, draw those toes, so that they contract, and grasp the branch on which the bird roosts, without any effort whatever on its part.
These are facts learnt by induction ; the inductive science of dynamics shows us that such mechanism is calculated to answer the end which, in point of fact, is attained. To conclude from thence that the _ mechanist contrived the means with the intention of | producing this end, and with the knowledge of the science, is also strictly an inference of induction.
Consider now, in land animals, the structure of the larynx, the upper part of which is so contrived as to keep the windpipe closely shut by the valve thrown over its orifice, while the food is passing into the stomach, as it were, over a drawbridge, and, but for that valve, would fall into the lungs.
4Vo one can hesitate in ascribing this curious we- chanism to the intention that the same opening of ‘he throat and mouth should serve for conxeyins
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 35
! food to the stomach and air to the lungs, without any interference of the two operations. But that structure would not be sufficient for animals which live in the water, and must, therefore, while they breathe at the surface, carry down their food to devour it below. In them, accordingly, as in the whale and the porpoise, we find the valve is not flat, but prominent and somewhat conical, rising towards the back of the nose, and the continuation of the nostril by means of a ring (or sphyncter) muscle embraces the top of the windpipe so as to
! complete the communication beween the lungs and the blow-hole, while it cuts off all communication between those lungs and the mouth.
Again, if we examine the structure of a por- poise’s head, we find its cavities capable of preat distention, and such that he can fill them at plea- sure with air or with water, according as he would mount, float, or sink. By closing the blow-hole, he shuts out the water; by letting in the water he can sink; by blowing from the lungs against the
]| cavities he can force out the water and fill the hollows with air, in order to rise. No one can doubt that such facts afford direct evidence of an apt contrivance directed towards a specific object, and adopted by some power thoroughly acquainted with the laws of hydrostatics, as well as perfectly skilful in workmanship.
To draw an example from a very different source, let us observe the structure of the planetary system. There is one particular arrangement which pro- duces a certain effect—namely, the stability of the system,—produces it ina manner peculiarly adapted
for perpetual duration, and produces it through
tne agency of an influence quite universal, pet vading all space, and equal ly regulating the
36 A DISCOURSE OF
tions of the smallest particles of matter and oi most prodigious masses. This arrangement | sists in making the planets move in orbits mor less elliptical, but none differing materially 4 circles, with the sun near the centre, revol almost in one plane of motion, and moving in same direction — those whose eccentricity is most considerable having the smallest masses, the larger ones deviating hardly at all from circular path. The influence of gravitation, w] is inseparably connected with all matter as fa: we know, extends over the whole of this syst so that all those bodies which move round the —twenty-three planets including their satell and six or seven comets—are continually a upon each by two kinds of force,—the orig projection which sends them forward, and is acc panied with a similar and probably a coeval r tory motion in some of them round their axis, the attraction of each towards every other b which attraction produces three several effects— solidating the mass of each, and, in conjunction 1 the rotatory motion, moulding their forms—ret ing each planet in its orbit round the sun, and « satellite in its orbit round the planet—altering or turbing what would be the motion ofeach round sun if there were no other bodies in the syster attract and disturb. Now it is demonstrated by strictest process of mathematical reasoning, the result of the whole of these mutual acti proceeding from the universal influence of grav . tion, must necessarily, in consequence of the '’ euliar arrangement which has been describec the orbits and masses, and in consequence of faw by which gravitation acta, produce & Co alteration in the orbit of each body, Wich
| NATURAL THEOLOGY. 37
tion goes on for thousands of years, very slowly making that orbit bulge, as it were, until it reaches a certain shape, when the alteration begins to take | the opposite direction, and for an equal number of years oes on constantly, as it were, flattening the orbit, till it reaches a certain shape, when it stops, and then the bulging again begins; and that this alternate change of bulging and flattening must go on for ever by the same law, without ever excced- ing on either side a certain point. All changes in the system are thus periodical, and its perpetual stability is completely secured. It is manifest that such an arrangement, so conducive to such a pur- pose, and so certainly accomplishing that purpose, could only have been made with the express design of attaining such an end—that some power exists capable of thus producing such wonderful order, so marvellous and wholly admirable a harmony, out of such numberless disturbances—and that this power was actuated by the intention of producing this effect.* The reasoning upon this subject, I have observed, is purely mathematical; but the facts respecting the system on which all that rea- soning rests are known to us by induction alone: consequently the grand truth respecting the sccular disturbance, or the periodicity of the changes in the system—that discovery which makes the glory of Lagrange and Laplace, and constitutes the triumph of the Integral Calculus, whereof it is the .! fruit, and of the most patient course of astrono- .| mical observation whereon the analysis is grounded : * Earum autem perennes cursus atque perpetui cum ad- mirabili incredibiligue constantii, declaraut in his vim eb mentem esse divinam, ut heec ipsa qui non sentiat deorwm
/ vim habere, is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur — © icero De Nat. Deo. II. 21. c3
=,
38 A DISCOURSE OF
—may most justly be classed as a truth both of Mixed Mathematics and of Natural Theology— the theologian only adds a single short link to chain of the physical astronomer’s demonstrati in order to reach the great Artificer from the p nomena of his system.
But let us examine further this matter. 1 position which we reach by a strict process of duction, is common to Natural Philosophy : Natural Theology—namely, that a given or; performs a given function, or a given arrangem possesses a certain stability, by its adaptation mechanical laws. I have said that the proces: reasoning is short and easy, by which we arr at the doctrine more peculiar to Natural Theok —namely, that some power acquainted with : acting upon the knowledge of those laws, fashio. the organ with the intention of having. the funct of vision performed, or constructed the system so t it might endure. Is not this last process as mu one of strict induction as the other? It is plai only a generalization of many particular facts reasoning from things known to things unknov an inference of a new or unknown relation fr other relations formerly observed and known. to take Dr. Paley’s example, we pass over a cc mon and strike the foot against a stone, we do - stop to ask who placed it there; but if we f that our foot has struck on a watch, we at o1 conclude that some mechanic made it, and t some one dropt it on the ground. Why do draw this inference? Because all our former | perience had told us that such machinery is |
result of human skill and labour, and that it wLere grows wild about, or is found i the &
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 39
|
- When we see that a certain effect, namely, distinct vision, is performed by an achromatic instrument, the eye, why do we infer that some one must have made it? Because we nowhere and at no time have had any experience of any one thing fashion- ing itself, and indeed cannot form to ourselves any distinct idea of what such a process as self-creation means ; and further, because when we ourselves would produce a similar result, we have recourse to like means. Again, when we perceive the adaptation of natural objects and operations to a perceived end, and from thence infer design in the
Ԥ maker of these objects and superintender of these operations, why do we draw this conclusion? DBe- cause we know by experience that if we ourselves desired to accomplish a similar purpose, we should do so by the like adaptation; we know by expe- rience that this is design in us, and that our pro- ceedings are the result of such design; we know that if some of our works were seen by othiers, who neither were aware of our having made them, nor of the intention with which we made them, they would be right should they, from seeing and examining them, both infer that we had made them, and conjecture why we had made them
| The same reasoning, by the help of experience,
' from what we know to what we cannot know, is manifestly the foundation of the inference, that the members of the body were fashioned for certain uses by a maker acquainted with their operations, and willing that those uses should be served.
Let us consider a branch of science which, if not wholly of modern introduction, has received ot Jate years such vast additions that it may really be
said to have its rise in our own times—\ al\ude i
the sublime speculations in Osteology prosecul'
40 A DISCOURSE OF
by Cuvier, Buckland, and others, in its connexior with Zoological and Geological researches.
A comparative anatomist, of profound learning and marvellous sagacity, has presented to him whal to common eyes would seem a piece-of half-decayed bone, found in a wild, ina forest, or in a cave, By accurately examining its shape, particularly the form of its extremity or extremities (if both ends happen to be entire), by close inspection di the texture of its surface, and by admeasurement of its proportions, he can with certainty discova the general form of the animal to which it be longed, its size as well as its shape, the economy of its viscera, and its general habits. Sometime the investigation in such cases proceeds upon chains of reasoning where all the links are seen and ur derstood; where the connexion of the parts found with other parts and with habitudes is perceived, and the reason understood,—as that the animal had a trunk because the neck was short compared with its height; or that it ruminated because its teeth were imperfect for complete mastication But, frequently, the inquiry is as certain in its re sults, although some links of the chain are com cealed from our view, and the conclusion wears 8 more empirical aspect—as gathering that the ant mal ruminated from observing the print of a clove foot, or that he had horns from his wanting ce tain teeth, or that he wanted the collar-bone fros. his having cloven hoofs. Limited experience ha‘. ing already shown such connexions as facts, mort
'ded experience will assuredly one day enable ‘omprehend the reason of the connexion. -! ~ enveries already made in this branch ~wonderful, and they proceed 1 -€ induction. 1 is shown
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 4)
"} animals formerly existed on the globe, being un- known varieties of spectes still known; but it also | appears that species existed, and even genera, ‘| wholly unknown for the last five thousand years. These peopled the earth, as it was, not before the
deluge, but before some convulsion long '| prior to that event had overwhelmed the countries | then dry, and raised others from the bottom of the sea. In these curious inquiries, we are conversant not merely with the world before the flood, but with a world which, before the flood, was covered with water, and which, in far earlier ages, had been the habitation of birds, and beasts, and rep- tiles. We are carried, as it were, several worlds back, and we reach a period when all was water, and slime, and mud ; and the waste, without either man or plants, gave resting place to enormous beasts like elephants and river-horses, while the water was tenanted by lizards, sixty or seventy feet long, and by others with eyes having shields of solid bone to protect them, and glaring from a neck ten feet in length, and the air was darkened by flying reptiles covered with scales, opening long jaws and | expanding wings, armed at the tips with claws.
No less strange, and yet no less procecding from induction, are the discoveries mace respecting the former state of the earth; the manner in which
| those animals, whether of known or unknown tribes, occupied it; and the period when, or, at least, the way in which, they ceased to exist. Professor Buckland has demonstrated the identity with the hyzna’s of the animal’s habits that cracked the bones which fill some of the caves, in order to come at the marrow; but he has also satisfactory
shown that it inhabited the neighbourhood, 0
must have been suddenly exterminated by dro’
42 A DISCOURSE OF
ing. His researches have been conducted by ¢€ periments with living animals, as well as by obs: vation upon the fossil remains.*
That this branch of scientific inquiry is sing larly attractive all will allow. Nor will any o dispute that its cultivation demands great kno ledge and skill. But this is not our chief purpc in referring to it. We learn from it that as a wo) existed without human beings, for no human bor are found in the earlier strata, it must be true tl a superior power, a divine and creative power, : terfered with the established order of things, a made man. But for another reason I have inti duced these details. There can be as little dou that the investigation of the former world from scanty remains, forms, in the strictest sense the term, a branch of physical science, and tl this branch sprang legitimately from the root of the whole,—induction ; in a word, that t process of reasoning employed to investigate—t kind of evidence used to demonstrate—its trut!
* The researches both of Cuvier and Buckland, far fr impugning the testimony to the great fact of a deluge bo! by the Mosaic writings, rather fortify it; and bring ad tional proofs of the fallacy which, for some time, had philosophers to ascribe a very high antiquity to the wo we now live in.
The extraordinary sagacity of Cuvier is, perhaps, in instance more shown, nor the singular nature of the sciel better illustrated, than in the correction which it enab him to give the speculation of President Jefferson upon ° Megalonyx—an animal which the President, from the s of a bone discovered, supposed to have existed, four tin the size of an ox, and with the form and habits of the li Cuvier has irrefragably shown, by an acute and learned duction, that the animal was a sloth, living entirely uj;
vegetable food, but of enormous size like a rhinoceros, 2 whose paws could tear up huge trees.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 43
is the modern analysis or induction taught by Bacon and practised by Newton. Now wherein, with reference to its nature and foundations, does it vary from the inquiries and illustrations of Na- tural Theology, one of whose propositions I have given as a corollary from this science ? When from examining a few bones, or it may be a single frag- ment of a bone, we infer that, in the wilds where we found it, there lived and ranged, some thousands of years ago, an animal wholly different from any we ever saw, and from any of which any account, any tradition, written or oral, has reached us, nay, from any that ever was seen by any person of whose exis- tence we ever heard, we assuredly are led to this re- mote conclusion, by a strict and rigorous process of reasoning ; but, as certainly, we come through that same process to the knowledge and belief of things unseen, both of us and of all men—things respect- ing which we have not, and cannot have, a single particle of evidence, either by sense or by testi- mony. Yet we harbour no doubt of the fact in fossil osteology ; we go farther, and not only implicitly believe the existence of this creature, for which we are forced to invent a name, but we clothe it with attributes, till, reasoning step by step, we come at so- accurate a notion of its form and habits, that we. can represent the one, and describe the other, with. unerring accuracy ; picturing to ourselves how it. looked, what it fed on, and how it continued its kind.. Now, the question is this: What perceivable difference is there between the kind of investiga- tions we have just been considering, and those of Natural Theology—except, indeed, that the latter are far more sublime in themselves, and ine: parably more interesting to us? Where logical precision of the arrangement which
ee
“44 A DISCOURSE OF
draw a broad line of demarcation between the two speculations, giving to the one the name and the rank of a science, but refusing it to the other, and: affirming that the one rested upon induction, bu not the other? We have, it is true, no experience directly of that Great Being’s existence in whom. we believe as our Creator; nor have we the testi- mony of any man relating such experience of his own. But so, neither we, nor any witnesses in any age, have ever seen those works of that Being, the: lost animals that once peopled the earth; and yet. the lights of inductive science have conducted us F to a full knowledge of their nature, as well asa = perfect belief in their existence. Without any = evidence from our senses, or from the testimony of * eye-witnesses, we believe in the existence and qua- ~ lities of those animals, because we infer by the F induction of facts that they once lived, and were ‘- endowed with a certain nature. This is called a doctrine of inductive philosophy. Is it less a doctrine of the same philosophy, that the eye could not have been made without a knowledge of optics, and as it could not make itself, and as no human artist, though possessed of the knowledge, has the skill and power to fashion it by his handy-work, ~ that there must exist some being of knowledge, « skill, and power, superior to our own, and sufficient { to create it? Is the corollary which I have given from the proposition that these lost animals once existed before man was created, a corollary of Natu- ral Theology, less the result of induction than that proposition itself a proposition of physical science? ‘ Has the Natural Theology any other foundation — than the Natural Philosophy ?*
.." See the treatise of Fossil Osteclogy, published with tha
°g4es on Instinct in this work.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 45
SECTION YI.
IMPARISON OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BRANCH OF NATURAL THEOLOGY WITH PSYCHOLOGY.
ITHERTO, our argument has rested upon a com- ison of the truths of Natural Theology with ose of Physical Science. But the evidences of sign presented by the universe are not merely ose which the material world affords; the intel- ctual system is equally fruitful in proofs of an in- lligent cause, although these have occupied little the philosopher’s attention, and may, indeed, be id never to have found a place among the specu- tions of the Natural Theologian. Nothing is ore remarkable than the care with which all the riters upon this subject, at least among the oderns, have confined themselves to the proofs forded by the visible and sensible works of nature, hile the evidence furnished by the mind and its erations has been wholly neglected.* The cele- ‘ated book of Ray on the Wonders of the Creation ems to assume that the human soul has no se- irate existence—that it forms no part of the ‘eated system. Derham has written upon Astro- ology and Physico-theology as if the heavens one proclaimed the glory of God, and the earth Wy showed forth his handy-work; for his only ention of intellectual nature is in the ange
* Note II.
46 A DISCOURSE OF
chapter of the Physico-theology on the soul, in which he is content with two observations: one, on the variety of man’s inclinations, and another, on his inventive powers—giving nothing which precisely proves design. Dr. Paley, whose work is chiefly taken from the writings of Derham, de- tiving from them its whole plan and much of its substance, but clothing the harsher statements of his original in an attractive and popular style,* had so little of scientific habits, so moderate a power of generalising, that he never once mentions the mind, or any of the intellectual phenomena, nor ever appears to consider them as forming a portion of the works or operations of nature. Thus, all these authors view the revolutions of the hea- venly bodies, the structure of animals, the organi- zation of plants, and the various operations of the material world which we see carried on around us, as indicating the existence of design, and leading to a knowledge of the Creator. But they pass over in silence, unaccountably enough, by far the most singular work of divine wisdom and power— the mind itself. Is there any reason whatever to draw this line ; to narrow within these circles the field of Natural Theology ; to draw from the con- stitution and habits of matter alone the proof that one Intelligent Cause formed and supports the universe? Qught we not rather to consider the
* This observation in nowise diminishes the peculiar merit of the style, and also of the homely, but close and logical, manner in which the argument is put; nor does it deny the praise of bringing down the facts of former writers, adapting them to the improved state of physical science--« [- merit the more remarkable, that Paley wrote his Natarsl 41 Theology at the close of his life. ‘
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 47
phenomena of the mind as more peculiarly adapted to help this inquiry, and as bearing a nearer rela- tion to the Great Intelligence which created and which maintains the systems
There cannot be a doubt that this extraordinary omission had its origin in the doubts which men are prone to entertain of the mind’s existence in- dependent of matter. The eminent persons above named * were not materialists, that is to say, if you had asked them the question, they would have answered in the negative; they would have gone farther, and asserted their belief in the separate existence of the soul independent of the body. But they never felt this as strongly as they were persuaded of the natural world’s existence. Their habits of thinking led them to consider matter as the only certain existence—as that which composed the universe—as alone forming the subject of our contemplations—as furnishing the only materials for our inquiries, whether respecting structure or habits and operations. They had no firm, definite, abiding, precise idea of any other existence respect- ing which they could reason and speculate. They saw and they felt external objects; they could examine the lenses of the eye, the valves of the veins and arteries, the ligaments and the sockets of the joints, the bones and the drum of the ear; but though they now and then made mention of
* Some have thought, unjustly, that the language of Paley rather savours of materialism; but it may at least be doubted whether he was fully impressed with the evidence of mental existence. His unexercised powers of abstract discussion, and the natural predilection for what he handled go well—a practical argument level to all comprehensions—appeat nor to have given him any taste for metaphysical syeculations.
/
’ 4
48 A DISCOURSE OF
the mind, and, if forced to the point, would have acknowledged a belief in it, they never were fully and intimately persuaded of its separate existence, They thought of it and of matter very differently ; they gave t¢s structure, and z¢s habits, and tts ope- rations, no place in their inquiries ; their contem- plations never rested upon it with any steadiness, and indeed scarcely ever even glanced upon it at all. That this is a very great omission, proceeding, - if not upon mere carelessness, upon a grievous fallacy, there can be no doubt whatever.
The evidence for the existence of mind is to the ' full as complete as that upon which we believe in the existence of matter. Indeed it is more certain and more irrefragable. The consciousness of ex- istence, the perpetual sense that we are thinking, and that we are performing the operation quite independently of all material objects, proves to us the existence of a being different from our bodies, with a degree of evidence higher than any we can have for the existence of those bodies themselves, | or of any other part of the material world. It is ' certain—proved, indeed, to demonstration—that many of the perceptions of matter which we derive through the senses are deceitful, and seem to in- dicate that which has no reality at all. Some inferences which we draw respecting it are con- founded with direct sensation or perception, for example, the idea of motion; other ideas, as those of hardness and solidity, are equally the result of reasoning, and often mislead. Thus we never doubt, on the testimony of our senses, that the parts of matter touch—that different bodies come in contact with one another, and with our organs of sense; and yet nothing is more certain than that
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 4yY
me small distance between the bodies k we perceive to touch. Indeed it is : that all the sensations and percep- > have of the material world may be yur own minds: it is barely possible, t matter should have no existence. I—that the sentient principle—that the being which we call *Z” and hich thinks, feels, reasons—should nce, is a contradiction in terms. Of neces, then, that of mind as inde- atter is more certain than that of ‘om mind. In a subsequent branch se™ we shall have occasion to treat juestion, when the constitution of the ‘ence to its future existence becomes “ discussion, At present we have teadily in view the undoubted fact, uite as much an integral part of the itter. at the constitution and functions of as much the subjects of inductive investivation as the structure and or. The mind, equally with matter, subject of observation by means of Which enables us to arrest and exa- . thoughts: it is even the subject of ‘the power which we have, through ibstraction and attention, of turning into courses not natural to them, is, and watching the results.—| Now
Note LV.
will occur in the Fifth Section of this Part, ients upon the course of our thoughts in id.
50 A DISCOURSE OF
the phenomena of mind, at the knowledge of which we arrive by this inductive process, the only legi- timate intellectual philosophy, afford as decisive proofs of design as do the phenomena of matter, and they furnish those proofs by the strict method of induction. In other words, we study the nature and operations of the mind, and gather from them evidences of design, by one and the same species of reasoning, the induction of facts. A few illus- trations of these positions may be useful, because this branch of the science has, as we have seen,
been unaccountably neglected by philosophers and .
theologians.
First. The structure of the mind, in every way in which we can regard it, affords evidences of the most skilful contrivance. All that adapts it se admirably to the operations which it performs, all its faculties, are plainly means working to an end. Among the most remarkable of these is the power of reasoning, or first comparing ideas and drawing conclusions from the comparison, and then com- paring together those conclusions or judgments, In this process the great instrument is attention, aa indeed it is the most important of all the mental faculties. It is the power by which the mind fixes itself upon a subject, and its operations are facili- tated by many contrivances of nature, without which the effort would be painful, if not impos- sible—voluntary attention being the most difficult OF] acts of the understanding.
Otserve, then, in the second place, the helps which are provided for the exertion of this faculty. Curiosity, or the thirst of knowledge, is one of the chief oft these. This desire renders any new idea the sources of attraction, and makes the mind almost
| |
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 5]
intarily, and with gratification rather than bend and apply itself to whatever has the y of novelty to rouse it. But association additional facilities of the same kind, and s us attend with satisfaction to ideas which rly were present and familiar, and the revival \ich gives pleasure oftentimes as sensible as of novelty, though of an opposite kind. Then, , habit, in this, as in all other operations of 2culties, has the most powerful influence, and es us to undergo intellectual labour with ease ‘omfort. ttrdly. Consider the phenomena of memory. important faculty, without which no intel- al progress whatever could be made, is sin- ‘ly adapted to its uses. The tenacity of our lection is in proportion to the attention which een exercised upon the several objects of con- lation at the time they were submitted to the Hence it follows, that by exerting a more ‘ous attention, by detaining ideas for some under our view, as it were, while they pass iwh the mind or before it, we cause them to :a deeper impression upon the memory, and thus enabled to recollect those things the st which we most desire to keep in mind. e, too, whatever facilitates attention, what- excites it, helps the memory, as we some- $ say; so that we recollect those things the 2st which were most striking at the time. But ‘ things are, generally speaking, most striking, most excite the attention, which are in them- 3 inost important. In proportion, therefore, rthing is most useful or for any TeasOn WO
52 A DISCOURSE OF
desirable to be remembered, it is most easily stored up in our memory. '
We may observe, however, in the fourth place,. that readiness of memory is almost as useful as } tenacity—quickness of bringing out as power of retention. Habit enables us to tax our recollection . with surprising facility and certainty ; as any one must be aware who has remarked the extraordinary. | feats performed by boys trained to learn things by"! heart, and especially to recollect numbers in calcu«: lating. From the same force of habit we derive- the important power of forming artificial or con--:; ventional associations between ideas—of tacking, as it were, one to the other, in order to have them!’ more under our control; and hence the relation:! between arbitrary signs and the things signified,. and the whole use of language, whether ordinary ’ or algebraical: hence, too, the formation of what is called artificial memory, and of all the other: helps to recollection. But a help is provided for- quickness of memory, independent of any habit or training, in what may be termed the natural asso- ciation of ideas, whereby one thing suggests another from various relations of likeness, contrast, contie. ' guity, and so forth. ‘The same association of ideas-- is of constant use in the exercise of the inventive faculty, which mainly depends upon it, and which is the great instrument not only in works of ima- gination, but in conducting all processes of original investigation by pure reasoning.
Fifthly. The effect of habit upon our whole intellectual system deserves to be further considered, - though we have already adverted to it. Itisalaw of our nature that any exertion becomes more easy
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 53
the more frequently it is repeated. This might have been otherwise: it might have been just the contrary, so that each successive operation should have been more difficult ; and it is needless to dwell upon the slowness of our progress, as well as the painfulness of all our exertions, say, rather, the impossibility of our making any advances in learn. ing, which must have been the result of such an intellectual conformation. But the influence of habit upon the exercise of all our faculties is valu- able beyond expression. It is indeed the great means of our improvement, both intellectual and moral, and it furnishes us with the chief, almost the only power we possess of making the different faculties of the mind obedient to the will. Whoever has observed the extraordinary feats performed by calculators, orators, rhymers, musicians, nay, by artists of all descriptions, can want no further proof of the power that man derives from the contrivances by which habits are formed in all mental exertions. ‘The performances of the Italian Jmprovvisatori, or makers of poetry off-hand upon any presented sub- ject and in almost any kind of stanza, are generally cited as the most surprising efforts in this kind. But the power of extempore speaking is not less singular, though more frequently displayed, at least in this country. A practised orator will declaim in measured and in various periods—will weave his discourse into one texture—form parenthesis within parenthesis—excite the passions, or move to laughter—take a turn in his discourse from an accidental interruption, making it the topic of his thetoric for five minutes to come, and pursuing, 0 4ke manner the new illustrations to which it Pwves
"se—mould his diction with a view to attain or LO VOL. I. Dv
54 A DISCOURSE OF
shun an epigrammatic point, or an alliteration, c discord ; and all this with so much assured rm ance on his own powers, and with such perfect e to himself, that he shall even plan the next sente: while he is pronouncing off-hand the one he engaged with, adapting each to the other, and sh look forward to the topic which is to follow, a fit in the close of the one he is handling to be introducer ; nor shall any auditor be able to disco: the least difference between all this and the porti of his speech which he has got by heart, or me the transition from the one to the other.* Sixth. The feelings and the passions w which we are moved or agitated are devised ; purposes apparent enough, and to effect which th adaptation is undeniable. That of love tends to t continuance of the species—the affections, to t rearing of the young; and the former is fitted the difference of sex, as the latter are to that of ag Generally, there are feelings of sympathy excit by distress and by weakness, and these beget attac ment towards their objects, and a disposition relieve them or to support. Both individuals a societies at large gain by the effects thence arisi of union and connexion, and mutual help. | hope, of which the seeds are indigenous in | bosoms, and which springs up like certain plas in the soil as often as it is allowed to repose, enco rages all our labours, and sustains us in every vic situde of fortune, as well as under all the toils our being. Fear, again, is the teacher of cautic prudence, cireumspection, and preserves us fre
* This experiment has been tried with perfect success my knowledge.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 55
lancer. Even anger, generally so painful, is not without its use: for it stimulates to defence, anu it oftentimes assuages the pain given to our more tender feelings by the harshness, or ingratitude. or injustice, or treachery of those upon whom our claims were the strongest, and whose cruelty or whose baseness would enter like steel into the soul, were no re-action excited to deaden and to protect it. Contempt, or even pity, is calculated to exer- cise the same healing influence.* The opera- tion of these reagents, so to speak, resembles the tis medicatrix in our bodily system, the form it has of throwing off foreign matter, or of heal- ing injuries sustained. Then, to go no farther, curiosity is implanted in all minds to a greater ora less degree; it is proportioned to the no- velty of objects, and consequently to our igno- rance, and its immediate effects are to fix our attention—to stimulate our apprehensive powers— by deepening the impressions of all ideas on our minds, to give the memory a hold over them—to make all intellectual exertion easy, and convert into a pleasure the toil that would otherwise be a pain. Can anything be more perfectly contrived as an instrument of instruction, and an instrument precisely adapted to the want of knowledge, by being: more powerful in proportion to the ignorance in which we are? Hence it is the great means by which, above all in early infancy, we are taught 2very thing most necessary for our physical as well
* ¢ Atque illi (Crantor et Panetius) quidem etiam utiliter natura dicebant permotiones istas animis nostris datas, retum cavendi causi; misericordiam wgritudinemque cle- enti ; ipsam iracundiam fortitudinis quasi cotem ose icebant.”"—<Acad, Quest, iv. 44, bd 2
56 A DISCOURSE OF
as moral existence. In riper years it smooths way for further acquirements to most men; tos in whom it is strongest, it opens the path science; but in all, without any exception, it vails at the beginning of life so powerfully a make them learn the faculties of their own boc and the general properties of those around the: an amount of knowledge which, for its extent its practical usefulness, very far exceeds, tho the most ignorant possess it, whatever additions greatest philosophers are enabled to build upc in the longest course of the most successful inv: gations.
Nor is it the curiosity natural to us all alone tends to the acquirement of knowledge ; desire of communicating it is a strong proper of our nature, and conduces to the same impor end. There is a positive pleasure as well in te: ing others what they knew not before, as in le ing what we did not know ourselves; and : undeniable that all this might have been differe arranged without a material alteration of oui tellectual and moral constitution in other resp: The propensity might have been, like the perve desires of the miser,:to retain what we know wv out communication, as it might have been n painful instead of pleasurable to acquire new ic by novelty being rendered repulsive and nat ag able. The stagnation of our faculties, the pension of mental exertion, the obscuration of intellectual world, would have then followed as tainly as universal darkness would veil the univ on the extinction of the sun.
Thus far we have been considering the use which the mental faculties and feelings are sul
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 57
their admirable adaptation to these ends. the intellectual world as a whole, and is impossible to contemplate without the extraordinary spectacle which the an displays, and the immense progress as been able to make in consequence of e, its capacity and its propensities, such e just been describing them. If the of the heavenly bodies, the prodigious ‘their motions, their vast distances and k, fill the imagination with awe, there wonder excited by the brilliancy of the powers—the inconceivable swiftness of he boundless range which our fancy can vast objects which our reason can em- iat we should have been able to resolve ts into their more simple constituents— the subtle light which fills all space—to rom that remote particle in the universe, ‘e occupy a speck, into regions infinitely certain the weight of bodies at the sur- > most distant worlds—investigate the govern their motions, or mould their | calculate to a second of time the periods e-appearance during the revolution of -all this is in the last degree amazing, ; much more food for admiration than » phenomena of the material creation. shall we say of that incredible power of ion which has enabled some even to an- ages the discovery of truths the farthest bove ordinary apprehension, and the tring of improbability and fiction—not a Clairaut conjecturing the existence of Janet, and the position of its orbit, ut
58 A DISCOURSE OF
of a Newton learnedly and sagaciously infe: from the refraction of light, the inflammable qu of the diamond, the composition of apparent] simplest of the elements, and the opposite n of the two ingredients, unknown for a eei after, of which it is composed?* Yet the something more marvellous still in the proces: thought, by which such prodigies have been formed, and in the force of the mind itself, - it acts wholly without external aid, borrowin; thing whatever from matter, and relying on it: powers alone. ‘The most abstruse investigatic the mathematician are conducted without an gard to sensible objects; and the helps he de in his reasonings from material things at all absolutely insignificant, compared with the pc of his work which is. altogether of an abstract -—the aid of figures and letters being only to f tate and abridge his labour, and not at all ess: to his progress. Nay, strictly speaking, ther no truths in the whole range of the pure m matics which might not, by possibility, have discovered and systematized by one depriv: sight and touch, or immured in a dark cha) without the use ofea single material object.
instrument of Newton’s most sublime specula the calculus which he invented, and the astoni systems reared by its means, which have give mortality to the names of Euler, Lagrange place, all are the creatures of pure abstract thc
* Further induction may add, to the list of these w ful conjectures, the thin ether, of which he even cal the density and the effects upon planetary motion. tainly the acceleration of Encke’s comet does seem to
the existence of some such medium by no means impr
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 59
and all might, by possibility, have existed in their present magnificence and splendour, without owing to material agency any help whatever, except such ss might be necessary for their recording and com- munication. These are, surely, the greatest of all the wonders of nature, when justly considered, although they speak to the understanding and not to the sense, Shall we, then, deny that the eye could be made without skill in optics, and yet acimit that the mind could be fashioned and endowed without the most exquisite of all skill, or could pro- ceed from any but an intellect of infinite power?
At first sight, it may be deemed that there is an essential difference between the evidence from mental and from physical phenomena. It may be thought that mind is of a nature more removed beyond our power than matter—that over the masses of matter man can himself exercise some control—that, to a certain degree, he has a plastic power—that into some forms he can mould them, and can combine into a certain machinery—that he can begin and can continue motion, and can pro- duce a mechanism by which it may be begun, and maintained, and regulated—while mind, it may be supposed, is wholly beyond his reach; over it he has no grasp; its existence alone is known to him, and the laws by which it is regulated ;—and thus, it may be said, the great First Cause, which alone ean call both matter and mind into existence, has alone the power of modulating intellectual nature. But, when the subject is well considered, this dif- ference between the two branches of science disap- pears with all the rest. It is admitted, of course, that we can no more create matter than we can mind; and we can influence mind in ar “oe gether analogous to our power of °
60 A DISCOURSE OF
matter. By means of the properties of matter we can form instruments, machines, and figures. So by availing ourselves of the properties of mind, we can affect the intellectual faculties—exercising them, training them, improving them, producing, as it were, new forms of the understanding. Nor is there a greater difference between the mass of rude iron from which we make steel, and the thou- sands of watch-springs into which that steel is cut, or the chronometer which we form of this and other masses equally inert—than there is between the untutored indocile faculties of a rustic who has grown up to manhood without education, and the - skill of the artist who invented that chronometer, and of the mathematician who uses it to trace the motions of the heavenly bodies.
Although writers on Natural Theology have altogether neglected, at least in modern times, that branch of the subject at large with which we have now been occupied, there is one portion of it which has always attracted their attention—the Instincts of animals, These are unquestionably mental faculties, which we discover by observa- tion and consciousness, but which are themselves wholly unconnected with any exercise of reason. They exhibit, however, the most striking proofs of design, for they all tend immediately to the preservation or to the comfort of the animals en- dowed with them. The lower animals are pro- vided with a far greater variety of instincts, and of a more singular kind than man, because they have only the most circumscribed range and feeblest powers of reason, while to reason man iB in almost every thing indebted. Yet it would be as erroneous to deny that we are endowed with
any instincts, because sO much is accomplished by
1 t - 1
| NATURAL THEOLOGY. 61 ¥ reason,
as it would be rash to conclude that other
|, animals are wholly destitute of reasoning, because they owe so much to instinct. Granting that in-
7A fants learn almost all those animal functions which are of a voluntary nature, by an early exercise of
"i reason, it is plain that instinct alone guides them 4i in others which are necessary to continue their I life, as well as to begin their instruction: for ex- tf ample, they suck, and even swallow by instinct, “if and by instinct they grasf what is presented to 2x8 their hands. So, allowing that the brutes exercise et but very rarely, and in a limited extent, the rea- ha soning powers, it seems impossible to distinguish i from the operations of reason those instances of hel sagacity which some dogs exhibit in obeying the directions of their master, and indeed generally vel the docility shown by them and other animals ; 3 not to mention the ingenuity of birds in breaking vel bard substances by letting them drop from a height, off and in bringing the water of a deep pitcher nearer hel their beaks by throwing in pebbles. These are ix} different from the operations of instinct, because a- they are acts which vary with circumstances novel and unexpectedly varying; they imply therefore n.| the adaptation of means to an end, and the power fs} of varying those means when obstacles arise: we | can have no evidence of design, that is, of reason,
-f in other men, which is not similar to the proof of
reason in animals afforded by such facts as these. But the operations of pure instinct, by far the greater portion of the exertions of brutes, have never been supposed by any one to result from reasoning, and certainly they do afford the most striking proofs of an intelligent cause, as well as of a unity of design in the world, 'The wor of
d3
!
62 A DISCOURBE OF
bees is among the most remarkable of all facts in both these respects. The form is in every country the same—the proportions accurately alike—the size the very same to the fraction of a line, go where you will; and the form is proved to be that which the most refined analysis has enabled mathematicians to discover as of all others the best adapted for the purposes of saving room, and work, and materials. This discovery was only made about a century ago ; nay, tle instrument that enabled us to find it out—the fluxional or differential cal- culus—was unknown half a eentury before that application of its powers. And yet the bee had been for thousands of years, in all countries, unerringly working according to this fixed rule, choosing the same exact angle of 120 degrees for the inclination of the sides of its little room, which every one had for ages known to be the best pos- sible angle, but also choosing the same exact angles of 110 and 70 degrees for the parallelo- grams of the roof, which no one had ever disco- vered till the 18th century, when Keenig: solved that most curious problem of maxima and minima, the means of investigating which had not existed till the century before, when Newton and Leibnits invented the calculus, whereby such problems can: now be easily worked. It is impossible to conceive any thing more striking as a proof of refined skill than the creation of such instincts, and it is a skill altogether applied to the formation of intellectual existence.*
Now, all the inferences drawn from the exami- * See Dialogues on Instinct, where the subject of the Bet; architecture is more fully treated. |
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 63
yn which we have just gone through of psy- ogical phenomena are drawn according to the t rules of inductive science. The facts re- ig to the velocity of mental operations—to exercise of attention—to its connexion with Lory —to the helps derived from curiosity and 1 habit—to the association of ideas—to the res, feelings, and passions—and to the adjoin- provinces of reason and instinct—are all dis- ‘red by consciousness or by observation ; and even can make experiments upon the subject arying the circumstances in which the mental ers are exercised by ourselves and others, and king the results. ‘The facts thus collected and pared together we are enabled to generalize, thus to show that certain effects are produced n agency calculated to produce them. Aware if we desired to produce them, and had the er to employ this agency, we should resort to or accomplishing our purpose, we infer both some being exists capable of creating this icy, and that he employs it for this end. The ess of reasoning is not like, but identical with, by which we infer the existence of design in rs (than ourselves) with whom we have daily ‘course. ‘The kind of evidence is not like, but tical with, that by which we conduct all the stigations of intellectual and of natural science. ich is the process of reasoning by which we : the existence of design in the natural and al world. To this abstract argument an ad- m of great importance remains to be made. whole reasoning proceeds necessarily upon assumption that there exists a being or thing, rate from, and independent of, matter, wad
64 A DISCOURSE OF
conscious of its own existence, which we call m: For the argument is—‘‘ Had I to accomplish purpose, I should have used some such mear or, “Had I used these means, I should | thought I was accomplishing some such purpo Perceiving the adaptation of the means to the ¢ the inference is, that some being has acted as should ourselves act, and with the same vit But when we so speak, and so reason, we are the while referring to an intelligent principl existence: we are referring to our mind, and to our bodily frame. ‘The agency which we it from this reasoning is, therefore, a spiritual
immaterial agency —the working of someth like our own mind—and intelligence like our o though incomparably more powerful and m skilful. The Being of whom we thus acquir knowledge, and whose operations as well as e3 ence we thus deduce from a process of induc reasoning, must be a spirit, and wholly immatei But His being such is only inferred, because set out with assuming the separate existence of own mind, independently of matter. Without we never could conclude that superior inétellige existed or acted. ‘The belief that mind exist: essential to the whole argument by which we i that the Deity exists. This belief we have sh to be perfectly well grounded, and further o sions of confirming the truth of it will occur ur another head of discourse.* But at any rat is the foundation of Natural Theology in all branches: and upon the scheme of material no rational, indeed no intelligible, account ca:
* Sect. V. and Note LV.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 66
given of a First Cause, or of the creation or govern- ment of the universe.*
The preceding observations have been directed to the inquiries respecting the design exhibited in the universe. But the other parts of the first great branch of Natural Theology come strictly within the scope of the same reasoning. Thus, all the proofs of the Deity’s personality, that is, His individuality, His unity; all the evidence which we have of His works, showing throughout not only that they pro- ceeded from design, but that the design is of one distinctive kind—that they come from the hand not only of an intelligent being, but of a being whose intellect is specifically peculiar, and always of the same character; all these proofs are in the most -Yigorous sense inductive.
* It is worthy of observation, that not the least allusion is made in Dr. Paley’s work to the argument here stated, although it is the foundation of the whole of Natural Theo- logy. Not only does this author leave entirely untouched the argument a priort (as it is called), and also all the in- ductive arguments derived from the phenomena of mind, bat he does not even advert to the argument upon which the inference of design must of necessity rest—that design which is the whole subject ofhis book. Nothing can more evince his distaste or his inferior capacity for metaphysical researches. He assumes the very position which alone sceptics dispute. In combating him they would assert that he begged the whole
uestion ; for certainly they do not deny, at least in modern times, the fact of adaptation. As to the fundamental doc- trine of causation, not the least allusion is ever made to it in any of his writings, even in his Moral Philosophy. This doctrine is discussed in Note III.
66 A DISCOURSE OF
SECTION IV.
OF THE ARGUMENT A PRIORI.
lirTnERTO we have confined our attention to the evidences of Natural Religion afforded by the phe- nomena of the universe—what is commonly termed the arzument a@ posteriort. But some ingenious men, conceiving that the existence and attributes of a Deity are discoverable by reasoning merely, and without reference to facts, have devised what they term the argument @ priori, of which it is neccessary now to speak. he first thing that strikes us on this subject is the consequence which must inevitably follow from admitting the possibility of discerning the existence of the Deity and his attributes @ priori, or wholly independent of facts. It would follow that this is a necessary, not a contingent truth, and that it is not only as impossible for the Deity not to exist, as for the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, but that it is equally impossible for his attributes to be other than the argument is sup- posed to prove they are. ‘Thus the reasoners in question show, by the argument @ priort, that he is a being of perfect wisdom and perfect benevolence. Dr. Clarke is as clear of this as he is clear that his existence "3 proved by the same argument. Now, a | impossible that any such truths can be for their contraries ate not things
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 67
wholly inconceivable, inasmuch as there is nothing at all inconceivable in the Maker of the universe existing as a being of limited power and of mixed goodness, nay of malevolence. We never, before all experience, could pronounce it mathematically impossible that such a being should exist, and ‘should’ have created the universe. But next, the facts, when we came to examine them, might dis- prove the conclusions drawn @ priori. The universe might by possibility be so constructed that every contrivance might fail to produce the desired eftect —the eye might be chromatic and give indistinct images—the joints might be so unhinged as to im- pede motion—every smell, as Paley has it, might ‘| bea taint, and every touch a sting. Indeed, we | know that, perfect as the frame of things actually
is, a few apparent exceptions to the general beauty
of the system have made many disbelieve the per- | fect power and perfect goodness of the Deity, and ‘| invent Manichean theories to account for the exist- | ence of evil. Nothing can more clearly show the | absurdity of those arguments by which it is at- tempted to demonstrate the truths of this science \
as mathematical or necessary, and cognizable a
But, secondly, let us see whether the argument in question be really one a@ priori, or only a very imperfect process of induction—an induction from a limited number of facts.
Dr. Clarke is the chief patron of this kind of demonstration, as he terms it; and though his book contains it more at large, the statement of Ws fundamental argument is, perhaps, to be {ount
most distinctly given in the letters subyoned 0 celebrated work. The fundamental propos
68 A DISCOURSE OF
in the discourse itself are, That something must have existed from all eternity, and that this some- thing must have been a being independent and self- existent. In the letters he condenses, perhaps explains, certainly illustrates, these positions (see Answers to letters 3, 4, and 5) by arguing that the existence of space and time (or, as he terms ity duration) proves the existence of something where- of these are qualities, for they are not themselves substances; he cites the celebrated Scholium Generale of the Principia; and he concludes that the Deity must be the infinite being of whom they are qualities.
But to argue from the existence of space and time to the existence of anything else, is assuming that those two things have a real being independent of our conceptions of them; for the existence of certain ideas in our minds cannot be the foundation on which to build a conclusion that anything ex- ternal to our minds exists. To infer that and time are qualities of an infinite and eternal being is surely assuming the very thing to be proved, if a proposition can be said to have a dis- tinct meaning at all which predicates space and time as qualities of anything. What, for example, is time but the succession of ideas, and the con- sciousness and the recollection which we have of that succession? To call it a quality is absurd; as well might we call motion a quality, or our ideas of absent things and persons a quality.
Again, if space is to be deemed a quality, and if infinite space be the quality of an infinite being, finite space must also be a quality, and must, by parity of reason, be the quality of a finite being. Of what being? | Here is a cube of one foot with
NATURAL THEOLOGY. ~~ 69
an exhatsted receiver, or a cylinder of half an inch diameter and three inches high in the Torricellian vacuum. What is the being of whom that square and that round space are to be deemed as qua- lities? Is distance, that is, the supposed move- ment of a point in a straight line, ad infinitum, a quality ? It must be so if infinite space is. Then of what is it a quality? If infinite space is the quality of an infinite being, infinite distance must be the quality of an infinite being also. Buf can it be said to be the quality of the same infinite being? Observe that the mind can form just as correct an idea of infinite distance as of infinite space, or, rather, it can form a somewhat more dis- tinct idea. But the being to be inferred from this infinite distance cannot be exactly the same in kind with that to be inferred from space infinite in all directions. Again, if infinite distance shows an infinite being of whom it is the quality, finite dis- tance must be the quality of a finite being. What being ? Of what kind of being is the distance be- tween two trees or two points a quality? There can be no doubt that this argument rests either upon the use of words without meaning, or itis a disguised form of the old doctrine of the anima mundi, or of the hypothesis that the whole universe is a mere emanation of the Deity.
But it deserves to be remarked that this argu- ment, which professes to be @ priort, and wholly independent of all experience, is, strictly speaking, inductive, and nothing more. We can have no idea whatever of space apart from experience. The experience of space filled with matter enables as, by means of abstraction, to conceive space without the matter; and a further alstracty
70 A DISCOURSE OF
and generalization enable us to conceiv space by imagining the limits indefinitely of a particular portion of space. But th tion of the whole reasoning is the expe certain finite portions of space first observe nection with matter. Therefore our idea: are the result of our experience as to ext jects. Even if we would fancy figure possible) without having seen or touch jects external to ourselves, still it woul experience of our own ideas that had give idea. So of time; it is the succession of ¢ and we have the notion of it from cons and memory. From hence we form an id definite time or eternal duration. But th the whole is the observation which we hs upon the actual succession of our ideas ; is inductive, though the process of reas very short. It is as much a process of : reasoning as that by which we arrive at t! ledge of the mind’s existence. There is, t great inaccuracy in denominating the arg question, were it ever so sound, an arg priori, for it is a reasoning founded on ex and it is to be classed with the arguments from the observation of external objects, th of our reasoning @ posteriori as to matte the utmost, with the information given sciousness, the whole ground of our rea postertort as to mind. .
When, however, Dr. Clarke has once 1 propositions to which we have been advej deduces from them the whole qualities of t —those which we learn from experier thinks he can derive them all from the sin
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 71
itions that lie at the foundation of his argument. is truly astonishing to find so profound a thinker, and, generally speaking, so accurate a reasoner, actually supposing that he can deduce from the proposition, that a self-existent being must have existed from all time, this other proposition, that therefore this being must’be infinitely wise (Prop. XI.), and that he “ must of necessity be a being of infinite goodness, justice, and truth, and all cther moral perfections, such as become the su- prome governor and judge of the world.” (Prop. I.) With the general texture of this argument we have at present nothing to do, further than to show how little it can by possibility either deserve the name of an argument @ priori, or be re- ed as the demonstration of a necessary truth. or surely, prior to all experience, no one could ever know that there were such things as either Jadges or governors; and without the previous idea of a finite or worldly ruler and judge, we could never gain any idea of an eternal and infi- nitely just ruler or judge; and equally certain it is that this demonstration, if it proves the exist- ence of an infinite and eternal ruler or judge to be @ necessary and not a contingent truth (which is Dr. Clarke’s whole argument), would just as strictly prove the existence of finite rulers and judges to be a necessary and not a contingent truth; or, in other words, it would follow, that the existence of governors and judges in the world is a necessary truth, like the equality of the three angles in a triangle to two right angles, and that it would be a contradiction in terms, and so an impossibility, to conceive the world existing with- out governors and judges.
72 A DISCOURSE OF
I believe it may safely be said, that very fe men have ever formed a distinct apprehension ( the nature of Dr. Clarke’s celebrated argumen' and that hardly any person has ever been at a satisfied with it. ‘The opinion of Dr. Reid is we known upon this subject, and it has received th full acquiescence of no less an authority than the of Mr. Stewart.
‘¢ These,” says Dr. Reid, “ are the speculatior of men of superior genius; but whether they b as solid as they are sublime, or whether they b the wanderings of imagination in a region beyon the limits of human understanding, I am unabl to determine.”
To this Mr. Stewart adds—‘“ After this candi acknowledgment from Dr. Reid, I need not b ashamed to confess my own doubts and difficultie on the same subject.”*
That the argument @ priori has been most e} plicitly handled by Dr. Clarke, and that its acce tation rests principally upon his high authorit cannot be denied. Nevertheless, other great me preceded him in this field; and beside Sir Isas Newton’s Scholium Generale, which is thought 1 have suggested it, the same reasoning is to | found in the writings of others of Dr. Clarke predecessors.
The tenth chapter of Mr. Locke’s fourth boc does not materially differ, in its fundamental p sition, from the “‘ Demonstration of the Being ar Attributes.” The argument is all drawn from tl truth, assumed as self-evident. ‘ Nothing can1 more ’ produce any real“ being than it can be equ
* Philosophy of the Active Powers, i. 334.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. — 73
at angles.” From this, and the know- ave of our own existence, it is shown to t, ‘* from eternity there has been some- 1 again, ‘ that this eternal being must nost powerful and most knowing,” and God.” The only difference between 2nt and Dr. Clarke’s is, that Mr. Locke me of his propositions, our knowledge . existence. But this difference is only ice; for Dr. Clarke really has assumed socke has more logically made a distinct Dr. Clarke’s first proposition, that must have existed from all eternity, is 2d by showing the absurdity of the sup- it ‘ the things which now are were pro- f nothing.” He therefore assumes the f those things, while Mr. Locke more umes the existence of ourselves only, states it as a proposition. The other of Mr. Locke are more ingenious than ’s, and the whole reasoning is more though he does not give it the name of ‘ation, and scarcely can be said to treat that the Deity’s existence is a necessary re it to be so considered, the objections ited would apply to it. Indeed, if Dr. stated the different steps of his reason- netly as Mr. Locke has done, he would ved it to be inconclusive beyond a very mt, and to that extent inductive.* vorth, in the fifth chapter of his great , in answering the Democritick argu- ularly Mr. Locke’s proofs of his first position.
standing, IV. x. sec. 2.) al System, Book I. ¢. v. 8. 3, pat.4. The
14 A DISCOURSE OF
ments, 60 plainly anticipated Dr. Clarke, that hardly possible to conceive how the latter sh have avoided referring to the passage.* ‘Ifs be indeed a nature distinct from body, and a t really incorporeal, then will it undeniably fol from this very principle of theirs (the Dem tists), that there must be incorporeal space; (this space being supposed by them also to be nite) an infinite incorporeal Deity. Becaus space be not the extension of body, nor an affec thereof, then must it of necessity be, either accident existing alone by itself, without a. stance, which is impossible; or else the exten or affection of some other incorporeal subst that is infinite.” He then supposes a reply (foul on the doctrines of Gassendi), that space is: middle nature and essence, and proceeds to obs upon it:—‘* Whatsoever is, or hath any kin entity, doth either subsist by itself, or else i: attribute, affection, or mode of something
doth subsist by itself. For it is certain that t. ean be no mode, accident, or affection of nothi and, consequently, that nothing cannot be exter nor mensurable. But if space be neither the tension of body, nor yet of substance incorpo then must it of necessity be the extension of thing, and the affection of nothing, and notl must be measurable by yards and poles. We clude, therefore, that from this very hypothesi
profound learning of this unfinished work, and its sati tory exposition of the ancient philosophers, are abov praise. Why are the manuscripts of the author still bi in the British Museum ?
* Cudworth’s book was published in 1678. The ‘ monstration” was delivered in 1704-5 at the Boyle Lect
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 75
the Democritick and Epicurean atheists. tha: space is a nature distinct from body. aud positively infi- nite, it follows undeniably that there must be »»me incorporeal substance whose affection its extension is; and because there can be nothing infinite but only the Deity, that it is the infinite extension of our incorporeal Deity.” The statement of Dr. Clarke’s argument, given in his corre-pondence, is manifestly, if not taken from this, at least coin- cident with it.in every important respect. Dr. Cudworth, indeed, confines his reasoning to the consideration of space and immensity. and Dr. Clarke extends his to time and eternity also. But of the two portions of the argument this has been shown to be the most fallacious.
The arguments of the ancient theists were in great part drawn from metaphysical speculations, some of which resembled the argument @ priort.* But they were pressed by the difficulty of conceiv- ing the possibility of creation, whether of matter or spirit; and their inaccurate views of physical science made them consider this difficulty as pecu- liar to the creative act. They were thus driven to the hypothesis that matter and mind are eternal, and that the creative power of the Deity is only plastic. They supposed it easy to comprehend how the divine mind should be eternal and self-existing,
and matter also eternal and self-existing. They found no difficulty in comprehending how that mind could, by a wish or a word, reduce chaos to order, and mould all the elements of things into their present form; but how everything could be inade out of nothing they could not understand.
* Notes VI. and Vil.
76 A DISCOURSE OF
When rightly considered, however, there is ne {- more difficulty in comprehending the one than the |. other operation—the existence of the plastic, than ]. of the creative power; or rather, the one is as {. incomprehensible as the other. How the Supreme j- Being made matter out of the void is not easily { comprehended. ‘This must be admitted ; but is it of the natural world, or the regularity of the solar system? In truth, these difficulties meet us at every step of the argument in Natural Theology, when we would penetrate beyond those things, those Natural Philosophy. How matter acts on matter —how motion is begun, or, when begun, ceases— how impact takes place—what are the conditions and limitations of contact—whether or not mattet distance of a hundred million of miles—or how ane piece of iron attracts and repels another at a distance less than any visible space—all these, and | a thousand others of the like sort, are questions | In concluding these observations upon the argu- ment @ priort, I may remark, that although it carries us but a very little way, and would be unsafe to build upon alone, it is yet of eminent use in two
more easy to conceive how the same Being, by his mere will, moved and fashioned the primordial atoms of an eternally existing chaos into the beauty | facts which our faculties can easily comprehend; but they meet us just as frequently, and are just as @ hard to surmount, in our steps over the field of consists of ultimate particles, endowed with oppo- site powers of attraction and repulsion, and how these act—how one planet acts upon another at the just as easily put, and as hard to answer, as how the universe could be made out of nothing, or how, out of chaos, order could be made to spring.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 77
articulars. First, it illustrates, if it does not
must admit that excellent person's remark to be well-founded, that after we have, by the argument j (I should rather say the other parts of ta ), satisfied ourselves of the existence of an intelligent cause, we naturally con- nect with this cause those impressions which we have derived from the contemplation of infinite space and endless duration, and hence we clothe with the attributes of immensity and eternity the awful Being whove existence has been proved by a more rigorous process of investigation.*
ard Spencer, who has deeply sindied these abstruse
unioated to me, before he was aware of my
opinion, that he had arrived at nearly the same conclusion upon the merits of the argument 4 priori.
rS
VoL. I. >
78 A DISCOURSE OF
SECTION V.
MORAL OR ETHICAL BRANCH OF NATURAL THEOLOGY,
Ir we now direct our attention’ to the other gres branch of Natural Theology, that which we hay termed the moral or ethical portion, which treat of the probable designs of the Deity with respec to the future destiny of his creatures, we shall fin that the same argument applies to the nature of it truths which we have been illustrating in its appli cation to the first or ontological branch of th science, or that relating to the existence and attri butes of the Creator, whether proved by physica or by psychological reasoning. The second branch like the first, rests upon the same foundation wit all the other inductive sciences, the only difference being that the one belongs to the inductive scienc of Natural and Mental, and the other to th inductive seience of Moral Philosophy.
‘The means which we have of investigating th probable designs of the Deity are derived from tw sources—the nature of the human mind, and th attributes of the Creator.
To the consideration of these we now proceed but in discussing them, and especially the first, ther is this difference to be marked as distinguishin them from the former branch of Natural Theology ‘They are far less abundant in doctrine; they hav heen much less cultivated by scientific inquirers
und the truths ascertained in relation to them w
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 79
number: in a word, our knowledge of the ; designs in the order of nature is much \ited than our acquaintance with his exist- _ attributes. But, on the other hand, the of the evidence with that on which the luctive sciences rest is far more conspicuous may be termed the psychological part of id branch of Natural Theology than in any »f the first branch, it being much less appa- t the inferences drawn from facts in favour ‘eity’s existence and attributes are of the ‘ure with the ordinary deductions of phy- ence—jin other words, that this part of Theology is a branch of Natural Philoso- an it is that the deductions from the nature aind in favour of its separate and future » are a branch of Metaphysical science. this diversity it follows, that, in treating ynd branch of the subject, there will be sessity for entering at large into the subject Jeity’s probable designs in regard to the ecially those to be inferred from its consti- han we found there was for entering into the s of his existence and attributes, although 1 not be so much labour required for prov- this is a branch of inductive science.
IOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, OR EVIDENCE OF )EITY’S DESIGNS DRAWN FROM THE NA- OF THE MIND.
materiality of the Soul is the foundation of
octrines relating to its future State. If it
of material parts, or if it consists of any
tion of matter, or if it is inseparably con-
ith any combination of material elements, B2
80 - #® DISCOURSE OF
we have no reason whatever for believing that can survive the existence of the physical part of ox frame; on the contrary, its destruction seems { follow as a necessary consequence from the: dissoli tion of the body. it is true that the body is m destroyed in the sense of being annihilated; but: is equally true that the particular conformatior the particalar arrangement of material partick with which the soul is supposed to have been ina parably connected, or in which it is supposed t consist, is gone and destroyed even in the sens of annibilation; for that arrangement or conforms tion has no ionger an existeace, any more than marble statue can be said te have an existence wha it is burned into a mass of pounded quick-lime. Nei it is to the particular conformation and arrangemen and not to the matter itself, that te seul is consi dered as belonging by any theory of materialisn there being none of the theories of materialists s absurd as to make the tetal mass of the partick themselves, independent of their arrangement, th seat of the soul. ' Therefore, the destruction of ths form and organization as effectually destroys th soul which consists in it, as the beauty or the inte: lectual expression of the etatwe is gone when th marble is reduced te linve-dust.
Happily, however, the doctrines of materialisi rest upon no solid foundation, dither of reason ¢ experience. The vapue and indistinct form of th propositions in which they ure conveyed afforc one strong argument against their truth. I¢ - not easy to annex a definite meaning to the propx sition that mind is inseparably connected with particular arranpement of the particles of matter ; . és nore difficuk to say what they mean who vagnel
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 8)
call it a modification of matter ; but to consider it as consisting in a combination of matter, as coming into existence the instant that the particles of
guide whem modern most willi trust, though as too humble a helpmate by moat af the ancient
anges. We may fret of all observe that if a particular combination of matter gives birth to what we call mind, this is an operation altogether peculiar and
things—two different existences—the neutral salt composed of the acid and the alkali, and another thing different from that nestral ealt, and engen- dered for the first time by that salt coming into existence. So when, by chiselling, “the marble softened into life grows warm,” we have the marble new moulded, and endowed with the power of agreeably affecting our senses, our memory, an our fancy; but it is all the while the marble: there is the beautiful and expressive marble » of the amorphous mass, and we have not the marble, a new existence created Wy 1
82 ; A DISCOURSE OF
which has been given to that stone. But materialists have to maintain that, by matter hb ‘arranged in a particular way, there is prod both the organized body and something diff from it, and having not one of its properti neither dimensions, nor weight, nor colour, form. They have to maintain that the che who mixed the aqua fortis and potash produced nitre and something quite different from all three, and which began to exist the instant the nitre crystallized ; and that the sculptor fashioned the Apollo, not only made the ms into a human figure, but called into being « thing different from the marble and the statue, which exists at the same time with both and vy out one property of either. If, therefore, | theory is true, it must be admitted to rest nothing which experience has ever taught us supposes operations to be performed and rela to exist of which we see nothing that bears least resemblance in anything we know.
But secondly, the doctrine of the materialis every form which it assumes is contradicted by most plain and certain deductions of experi The evidence which we have of the existen the mind is complete in itself, and wholly pendent of the qualities or the existence of ms It is not only as strong and conclusive as the dence which makes us believe in the existen matter, but more strong and more conclusive : steps of the demonstration are fewer; the tru _ which they conduct the reason is less remote the axiom—the intuitive or self-evident pos whence the demonstration springs. We be that matter exists because it makes a certair
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 83
ression upon our senses, that is, because it pro- uces a certain change or a certain effect ; and we rgue, and argue justly, that this effect must have , cause, though the proof is by no means so clear hat this cause is something external to ourselves. But we know the existence of mind by our con- sciousness of or reflection on what passes within us, and our own existence as sentient and thinking beings implies the existence of the mind which has sense and thought. To know, therefore, that we are, and that we think, implies a knowledge of the soul’s existence. But this knowledge is altogether independent of matter, and the subject of it bears no resemblance whatever to matter in any one of its qualities, or habits, or modes of action. Nay, we only know the existence of matter through the operations of the mind; and were we to doubt of the existence of either, it would be far more rea- sonable to doubt that matter exists than that mind exists. ‘Che existence and the operations of mind, supposing it to exist, will account for all the phe- nomena which matter is supposed to exhibit. But the existence and action of matter, vary it how we may, will never account for one of the phenomena ofmind. We do not believe more firmly in the existence of the sensible objects around us when we are well and awake, than we do in the reality of those phantoms which the imagination conjures up in the hours of sleep, or the season of derange- ment. But no effect produced by material agency ever produced a spiritual existence, or engendered the belief of such an existence; indeed, the thing is almost a contradiction in terms. That all around us should only be the creatures of our fancy, no one can affirm to be impossible. But
cy A DISCOURSE OF
that our mind—that which remembers—cor imagines—in a word, that which thinks- the existence of which we are perpetut scious—that which cannot but exist if w that whieh can make its own operations th of its own thoughts—that this should existence is both impossible and indeed ; diction in terms. We have, therefore, ev the strictest kind—induction of facts the 1 eise and unerring—to justify the conclu: the mind exists, and is different from ¢ pendent of matter altogether.*
Now this proposition not only destroys trine of the materialists, but leads to the inferences in favour of the mind surviving with which it is connected through life. experience shows no one instance of ann Matter is perpetually changing—never de the form and manner of its existence are and ceaselessly varying—its existence m minates. ‘The body decays, and is said t that is, it is resolved into its elements, and the material of new combinations, animat animate, but not a single particle of it i ated ; nothing of us or around us ever cease: Tf the mind perishes, or ceases to exist at is the only example of annihilation which \
But, it'may be said, why should it not, body, be changed, or dissipated, or resol its elements? ‘The answer is plain: it dif the body in this, that it has no parts; it
Jutely one and simple; therefore it is inc: resolution or dissolution. These words,
* See, on the Hypothesis of Materisiiem,?
NATURAL THROLOGY. 85
erations or events they refer to, have no appli- tion to a simple and immaterial existence. Indeed, our idea of annibilation is wholly derived om matter, and what we are wont to call de- ruction means only change of form and resolution to parts, or combination into new forms. But w the example ef the changes undergone by mat- #, we should mot even have any notion of destruc- ion or anmihilation. When we come to consider he thing itself, we canmot conceive it to be pos- ible; we can well imagine a parcel of gunpowder rany other combustible substance ceasing to exist ‘such by burning or exploding; but that its thele elements should not continue to exist in a iflerent state, and in new eembinations, appears nconceivable. We cannot follow the process so af; we can form no eonception of any.one particle hat once is, eeasing whoily to be. How then can re form any corception of the mind which we ow know to exist ceasing to be? It is an idea ltoyether above our comptehension. ‘T'rue, we 0 cad tee after the body is dissolved, perceive the ind, because we pever knew it by the senses ; we aly were a of its existence in others by its fects upon er, and had wo experience of it aconnected with the body. But it by no means llows that.it should not exist, merely because we ive ceased to perceive its effects upon any portion ‘matter. It had connexion with the matter which used to act upon, and by which it used to be ‘ted on; when its entire severance took place at matter underwent a great change, but a change ising from its being of a composite nature. “Yns ue separation cannot have affected the mini like manner, because its nature is simple & ES
86 . A DISCOURSE OF
not composite. Our ceasing to perceive any effect produced by it on any portion of matter, the onl: means we can have of ascertaining its existence, i therefore no proof that it does not still exist; an even if we admit that it no longer does produc any effect upon any portion of matter, still this wil offer no proof that it has ceased to exist. Indeed when we speak of its being annihilated, we may b said to use a word to which no precise meanin can be attached by our imaginations. At any rat it is much more difficult to suppose that this anni hilation has taken place, and to conceive in wha way itis effected, than to suppose that the mint continues in some state of separate existence, dis encumbered of the body, and to conceive in wha manner this separate existence is maintained.
It may be further observed that the materia world affords no example of creation, any mor than of annihilation. Such as it was in point o quantity since its existence began, such it still is not a single particle of matter having been eithe added to it or taken from it. Change—unceasin, change—in all its parts, at every instant of time it is for ever undergoing; but though the com binations or relations of these parts are unremit tingly varying, there has not been a single one o them created, or a single one destroyed. Of mim this cannot be said ; it is called into existence per petually before our eyes. In one respect this ma! weaken the argument for the continued existenc of the soul, because it may lead to the conclusion that as we see mind created, so may it be destroyed while matter, which suffers no addition, is Viable t
no Joss, Yet the argument seems to gain in anoth Cirection more force than it loses 10 this, for:
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 87
thing can more strongly illustrate the diversity
. between mind and matter, or more strikingly show
avo. eee
Se: A A el" 2 a" a a -
that the one is independent of the other.
Again, the mind’s independence of matter and capacity of existence without it, appears to be strongly illustrated by whatever shows the entire dissimilarity of its constitution. The inconceivable rapidity of its operations is, perhaps, the most striking feature of the diversity ; and there is no doubt that this rapidity increases in proportion as the interference of the senses—that is, the influence of the body—is withdrawn. A multitude of facts, chiefly drawn from and connected with the Phe- nomena of Dreams, throw a strong light upon this subject, and seem to demonstrate the possible dis- connexion of mind and matter.
The bodily functions are in part suspended during sleep, that is, all those which depend upon volition. The senses, however, retain a portion of their acuteness ; and those of touch* and hearing, espe- cially, may be affected without awakening the al The consequence of the cessation which takes place of all communication of ideas through the senses is that the action of the mind, and, above all, of those powers connected with the imagination, becomes much more vigorous and uninterrupted. This is shown in two ways—first, by the celerity with which any impression upon the senses, strong enough to be felt without awaking, is caught up and made the groundwork of a new train of ideas, the mind instantly accommodating itself to the sug-
* The common classification of the senses which makes “he touch comprehend the sense of heat and cold, is here exlopted ; oe certainly, there seems almost as \ittle reas
for ranging under touch, as for rang' ght, sme 4earing, and taste under the same head. EINE HENS
So aa
88 A DISCOURSE OF
gestions of the impression, and making all its | thoughts chime in with that; and, secondly, by the prodigiously long succession of images that pass through the mind, with perfect distinctness and the greatest liveliness, in an instant of time,
The facts upon this subject are numerous, and of undeniable certainty, because of daily occurrence, Every one knows the effect of a bottle of hot water applied during sleep to the soles of the feet: you instantly dream of walking over hot mould, or ashes, or a stream of lava, or having your feet ‘burnt _by coming too near the fire, But the effect of falling, asleep ina stream of eold air, as inan open carriage, varies this experiment in a very ine teresting, and, indeed, instructive manner. You will, instantly that the wind begins to blow, dream of being upon some exposed point, and anxious for shelter, but unable to reach it; then you are on the deck of a ship, suffering from the gale—you run behind a sail for shelter, and the wind changes, so that it still blows upon you—you are driven to the cabin, but the ladder is removed, or the door locked. Presently you are on shore, in a house with all the windows open, and endeavour to shut them in vain; or, seeing a smith’s forge, you are attracted by the fire, and suddenly a hundred bel- lows play upon it, and extinguish it inan instant, but
fill the whole smithy with their blast, till you are as
coldason the road. Ifyou from time to time awake,
the moment you fall asleep again, the same course
of dreaming succeeds in the greatest variety of
changes that can be rung on our thoughts.*
But the rapidity of these changes, and of the suc-
* This happened to vac many years age when ceaiian, in Sweden ht, Lord Stuart, who wes with we, dep sounder, cs beh not feel i, -
NATURAL THEOLOGY. so
cession of ideas, cannot be aseertained by this experiment: it is most satisfactorily proved by another. Let any one who is extremely over- powered with drowsiness—as after sitting up all night, and sleeping none the next day—lie down, and begin to dictate: he will find himself falling asleep after uttering a few words, and he will be awakened by the person who writes repeating the last word, to show he has written the whole; not above five or six seconds may elapse, and the
will find it at first quite impossible to be- lieve that he has not been asleep for hours, and will chide the amanuensis for having fallen asleep over his work, so great apparently will be the length of the dream which he has dreamt, extending through half a lifetime. This experiment is easily tried : again and again the sleeper will find his endless dream renewed; and he will always be able to tell in how short a time he must have performed it. For suppose eight or ten seconds required to write the four or five words dictated, sleep could hardly begin in less than four or five seconds after the eiort of pronouncing the sentence; so that, at the utmost, not more than four or five seconds can have been spent in sleep. But, indeed, the greater pro- bability is, that not above a single second can have been so passed: for a writer will easily finish two words in a second; and suppose he has to write four, and half the time is consumed in falling asleep, one second only is the duration of the dream, which yet seems to last for years, so numerous are the images that compose it.*
* The experiment related in the text was made by myst
fer I had been in court all night on a trial, and bad 20 ept next day.
90 A DISCOURSE OF
Another experiment is still more striking, and + affords a more remarkable proof both of the velocity of thought, and of the quickness with which its course is moulded to suit any external impression made on the senses. But this experi- ment is not so easily tried. A puncture made will immediately produce a long dream, which seems to terminate in some such accident as that the sleeper has been wandering through a wood, and received a severe wound from a spear, or the tooth of a wild animal, which at the same instant awakens him. A gun fired in one instance, during the alarm of invasion, made a military man at once dream the enemy had landed, so that he ran to his post, and repairing to the scene of action, was present when the first discharge took place, which also the same moment awakened him.* Now these facts show the infinite rapidity of thought; for the puncture and discharge of the gun took place in an instant, and their impression on the senses was as instantaneous; and yet, during that instant, the mind went through a long opera- tion of fancy, suggested by the first part of the impression, and terminated, as the sleep itself was, by the continuation—the last portion of the same impression, Mark what was done in an instant— in a mere point of time. .The sensation of the pain or noise beginning is conveyed to the mind, and sets it a thinking of many things connected with such sensations. But that sensation is lost or forgotten for a portion’ of the short instant during
* The ingenious Eastern tale, in the Spectator, of the anagician who made the prince plunge bis head. who a ysl of water, is founded on facts like those to which LM sea referring.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 91
iich the impression lasts; for the conclusion of e same impression gives rise to a new set of vas. The walk in the wood, and the hurrying the post, are suggested by the sensation begin- ng. ‘Then follow many things unconnected with at sensation, except that they grew out of it; d, lastly, comes the wound, and the broadside, ggested by the continuance of the sensation, aile, all the time, this continuance ‘has been pro- tcing an effect on the mind wholly different from e train of ideas the dream consists of, nay, de- tuctive of that train—namely, the effect of rous- g it from the state of sleep, and restoring its minion over the body. ‘Nay, there may be said \ bea third operation of the mind going on at ‘e same time with these two—a looking forward 1 the dénowement of the plot,—for the fancy is all ong so contriving as to fit that, by terminating .some event, some result consistent with the im- tession made on the senses, and which has given se to the whole train of ideas.
‘There seems every reason to conelude, from these iets, that we only dream during the instant of trans- ion into and out of sleep, and when our sleep is not mmplete. ‘That instant is quite enough to account wx the whole of what appears a night’s dream. It
quite certain we remember no more than ought, seording to these experiments, to fill an instant of me; and there can be no reason why we should aly recollect this one portion if we had dreamt tuch more. The fact that we never dream so much 3 when our rest is frequently broken, proves the ime proposition almost to demonstration. An wy and restless night passed in bed is always a. Went 'dded fall with dreams, So, too, a night passed
92 A DISCOURSE OF
on the road in travelling, by such as sleep well in a carriage, isa night of constant ing.
jolt that awakens or half-awakens us seems to be the cause of a dream. If it be said that we alwayy or generally dream whea asleep, but only recolleus a portion of our dream, then the question ariswy why we recollect a dream each time we fall
or are awakened, and no more? If we can twenty dreams in a night of interrupted sleep, how is it that we can only recall one of two when ouf sleep is continued? "The length of time oceupiet by the dream we recollect is the only reason that can be given for our forgetting the rest; but this reason fails if, each time we are roused, we re | member separate dreams.
Nothing can be conceived better calculated than these facts to demonstrate the extreme agility ff the mental powers, their total diversity from any | material substances or actions; nothing bettet adapted to satisfy us that the nature of the mind # consistent with its existence apart from the body.
The changes which the mind undergoes in its activity, its capacity, its mode of operation, are matter of constant observation, indeed of man’s experience. Its essence is the same; it fundamental nature is unalterable; it never loss the distinguishing peculiarities which separate it from matter ; never acquires any of the properties of the latter; but it undergoes important changes both in the progress of time, and by means of exercise and culture. The development of the bodily powers appears to affect it, and 90 dees their decay ; but we rather ought to say, that, im
ordinary cases, its improvement is contemporane- ous with the growth of the ody, and its dedi
NATURAL FHEOLOGY. 93
lly is contemporaneous with that of the
ain that the strength of the body, its agility, ience of fatigue, indeed all its qualities, de- from thirty at the latest; and yet the mind yroving rapidly from thirty to fifty; suffers or no decline before sixty : and therefore is when the body is enfeebled, at the age of ight or fifty-nine, than it was in the acme corporeal faculties thirty years before. It ally certain, that while the body is sensibly ng, between sixty or sixty-three and seventy, ind suffers hardly any loss of strength in the ility of men; that men continue to seventy-
¢ seventy-six in the possession of all their [ powers: while fow can then bosst of more the remains of physical strength; and in- sare not wanting of persons who,
and ninety, or even older, when the body urdly be said to live, possess every faculty of ind unimpaired. We are authorised to con- from these facts, that unless some wrest’ Yent accident interferes, such as a wTOas ra grave contusion, the ordimary qouxte 0 ‘ats the mind and the body running cours
94 A DISCOURSE OF
widely different, and in great part of the time in opposite directions ; and this affords strong proof, both that the mind is independent of the body, and that its destruction in the period of its entire vigour is contrary to the analogy of nature.
The strongest of all the antec both for the separate existence of mind, and for its surviving the body, remains, and it is drawn from the strictest induction of facts. The body is constantly under going change in all its parts. Probably no person at the age of twenty has one single particle in any part of his body which he had at ten; and still less does any portion of the body he was born with con tinue to exist in or with him. All that he before had has now entered into new combinations, forming parts of other men, or of animals, or of vegetable or mineral substances, exactly as the body he now has will afterwards be resolved into new combinations after his death. Yet the mind continues one and the same, “ without change or shadow of turning.” None of its parts can be resolved or dispersed ; it is one and single, and it remains unchanged by the changes of the body. ‘The argument would be quite as strong though the change undergone by the body were admitted not to be so complete, and though some small portion of its harder parts* were supposed to continue with us through life.
But observe how strong the inferences arising from these facts are, both to prove-that the exist- ence of the mind is entirely independent of the existence of the body, and to show the probability of its surviving! If the mind continues the same | while all or nearly all the body is changed, it 4
* Except the enamel of the teeth none such wye:
Reda and the teeth of course grow long afer We)
NATURAL THEOLOGY. | 95
ows that the existence of the mind depends not in the least degree upon the existence of the body ; ‘or it has already survived a total change of, or, in ‘he common use of the words, an entire destruction of that body. But again, if the strongest argument to show that the mind perishes with the body, nay, the only argument be, as it indubitably is, derived from the phenomena of death, the fact to which we have been referring affords an answer to this. For the argument is, that we know of no instance in which the mind has ever been known to exist after the death of the body. Now here is exactly the instance desiderated, it being manifest that the same process which takes place on the body more suddenly at death is taking place more gradually, but as effectually in the result, during the whole of life, and that death itself does not more completely resolve the body into its elements and form it into new combinations than living fifteen or twenty years does destroy, by like resolution and combination, the self-same body. And yet after those years have elapsed and the former body has been dissipated and formed into new combinations, the mind remains the same as before, exercising the same memory and consciousness, and so preserving the same per- sonal identity as if the body had suffered no change tall. In short, it is not more correct to say that ill of us who are now living have bodies formed of what were once the bodies of those who went before 1s, than it is to say that some of us who are now iving at the age of fifty have bodies which in part elonged to others now living at that and other . iges, ‘The phenomena are precisely the same,and he operations are performed in like manner, thoug ‘th different degrees. of expedition. Now ad uld believe in the separate existence of the sou)
96 A DISCOURSE OF
if they had experience of its existing apart from the body. But the facts referred to prove that it doa exist apart from one body with which it once was united, and though it is in union with another, yet as it is not adherent to the same, it is shown te have an existence separate from, and independent of, that body. So all would believe in the sow surviving the body, if after the body’s death its existence were made manifest. But the facts re ferred to prove that after the body’s death ) after the chronic dissolution which the body under goes during life, the mind continnes to exist a before. Here, then, we have that proof so much desiderated—the existence of the soul after the dis- solution of the bodily frame with which it was coa- nected. The two cases cannot in any soundness of reasoning, be distin ed; a i argument, therefore one of ng induction, derived partly from physical science, through the evidence of our senses, partly from psychological science by the testimony of our consciousness, appears to prove the possible Immortality of the Soul almost as rigorously as “ if one were to rise from the dead.” Now we have gone through the first division of this second branch of the subject, and have consl- dered the proofs of the separate and future existence of the soul afforded by the nature of mind. Ht is quite clear that all of them are derived from a strict induction of facts, and that the doctrines rest upon precisely the same kind of evidence with that upon which the doctrines respecting the constitution and habits of the mind are founded. In truth, the sub- jects are not to be distinguished as the species of demonstration applicable to them—% Process by which the investigation of them is to Conducted. That mind has en existence peteay
i ¥
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 97
i demonstrable as well as matter, and that it is olly different from matter in its qualities, is a ith proved by induction of facts. That mind can ist independert of matter and survive the disso- ion of the bedy, is a truth proved exactly in the ne manner, by induction of facts. The pheno- ma of dreanss which lead to important conclusions ching the nature of the mind, lead, and by the f-same kind of reasoning, to important conclusions a similar description, toachiag the mind's exist- ce independent of the body. The facts, partly ysical, partly psychological, which show the nd to be unaffected by the decay and by even e total though gradual change of the body during e, likewise show that it can exist after the more dden change of a similar kiad, which we term e dissolution of the body by death. There is no sans of separating the two classes of truths, those Psychology and those of Natural Theology ; ey are parts of ome aad the same science; they 2 ascertained by ene and the same process of in- stigation; they repose upon ene and the same ad of evidence; nor can any person, without ring way to a most groundless and unphiloso- ical prejudice, profess his belief in the former ctrines, and reject the laiéer. The only difference tween the two is that the Theological propo- ions are of much greater importance to human ppimess than the Metaphysical.
| MORAL ARGUMENT, OR EVIDENCE OF THE DEITY S DESIGNS DRAWN FROM HIS ATTRI
BUTES IN CONNECTION WITH THE CONDITION WF THE SPECIES.
Probable designs of Divine Providence
98 ‘A DISCOURSE OF
respect to the future lot of man are to be gathered in part from the nature of the mind itself, the work of the Deity, and in part from the attributes of the Deity, ascertained by an examination of his whole works. It thus happens that a portion of this head of the argument has been anticipated in’ treating the other head, the nature of the mind. Whatever qualities of the soul show it to differ from matter, both make it improbable that it should perish with the body, and make it improbable that the Deity should destine it to such a catastrophe ; and what- ever facts show that it can survive a total change of the body during life, show likewise the proba. bility that the same being who endowed it with that capacity will suffer it, in like manner, to continue in being after the more sudden change which the body undergoes at death.
‘The argument built upon the supposed designs of the Creator requires to be handled in a humble and submissive spirit; but, if so undertaken, there is nothing in it which can be charged with presump- tion, or deemed inconsistent with perfect though rational devotion. In truth, all the investigations of Natural Theology are equally liable to sucha charge; for to trace the evidences of design in the works of nature, and inquire how far benevolence presides over their formation and maintenance—in other words, to deduce from what we see, the ex- istence of the Deity, and speculate upon His wisdom and goodness in the creation and government of the universe—is just as daring a thing, and exactly of the same kind of andacity, as to speculate upon His
Probable intentions with respect to the future ty of aman.
1e contemplation of the Deity’s goodne
‘educible from the great preponderance of ins
WATURAL THEOLOGY. 99
ch benevolent design is exhibited,* when ac- nied with a consideration of the feelings and of the human mind, gives rise to the first ent which is usually adduced in favour of the rtality of the Soul. There is nothing more sal or more constant than the strong desire of tality which possesses the mind, and com- with which its other wishes and solicitudes it faint and occasional. That a benevolent should have implanted this propensity with- e intention of gratifying it, and to serve no oparent purpose unless it be the proving that ithout an object, appears difficult to believe : rtainly the instinctive fear of death would erved all the purposes of self-preservation t any desire of immortality being connected , although there can be no doubt that this or at least the anxiety about our future des- intimately related to our dread of dissolu- But the inference acquires additional strength he consideration that the faculties of the mind ind improve almost to the time of the body’s ion, and that the destruction of the soul a: ment of its being fitter than ever for worthy seems quite inconceivable.
tender affections so strongly and so univer- perating in our nature afford another argu- of a like kind. No doubt the purpose to they are subservient in this life is much more tly perceivable; yet still it is inconsistent ie provisions of a benevolent Power to sup- 1at we should be made susceptible of such nt feelings, and be suffered to indulge in.
Dissertation on Evil, in which it is shown that out
and partial views are probably the ceuse of Ov" ‘vil to exist,
100 A DISCOURSE OF
them, so as to make our happiness chiefly consist in their gratification, and that then we should sud- denly be made to undergo the bitter pangs of sepa ration, while, by our surviving, those pangs are lengthened out without any useful effect resulting from our sufferings, ‘That such separations should be eternal appears irreconcilable with the strength of the affections wounded, and with the goodness so ge nerally perceived in the order of the universe. The supposition of a re-union hereafter overcomes the difficulty, and reconciles the rent it i a
‘The unequal distribution eoeearieae pone ments in this world, that is, the misery in which virtue often exists, and the prosperity not seldom attendant upon vice, can in no way be so well accounted for, consistently with the scheme of a benevolent Providence, as by the supposition of a Future State.
But perhaps there is nothing more strongly it- dicative of such a design in: the Crestor than the universal prevalence of religion amongst met. There can hardly be found a tribe so dark and bar- barous as to be without some kind of worship, ana some belief in a future state of existence. Now all religions are so far of God that he permits them; he made and preserves the faculties which have invented the false ones, as well as those which comprehend and treasure up the true faith. Reli« gious belief, religious observance, the looking for ward to a future existence, and pointing to a condition in which the deeds done on shall be visited with just recompense, are all facts of universal occurrence in the history and intellectual
habits of the species. Axe they \\ 0 were Kebon' Do they indeed signify nothing? Is tat awe groundless faney, which in al\ places, Wa ay
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 10]
upies and has occupied the thoughts and mingled lf with the actions of all mankind, whether barous or refined ?* 3ut if it be said that the belief of such a state ubservient to an important use, the restraining passions and elevating the feelings, it is ob- us to reply, that so great a mechanism to pro- xe this effect very imperfectly and precariously, years little consistent with the ordinary efficacy | simplicity of the works of Providence, and that : disposition to shun vice and debasement could ye been more easily and more certainly impianted making them disgusting. True, there would m have been little merit in the restraint; but of iat value is the production of such merit, if the nd which attains it and becomes adorned by it 3 no sooner approached perfection than it ceases exist at all? The supposition of a Future State once reconciles all inconsistencies here as before, 1 enables us to comprehend why virtue is taught the hopes of another life, as well as why those pes, and the grounds they rest on, form so large yortion of human contemplation. That the existence of the soul in a new state er the entire dissolution of the body—nay, that » existence of the body itself in a new state, er passing through death, is nothing contrary the analogies‘ which nature presents, has been entimes observed, and is a topic much dwelt on, especially by the ancient philosophers. The traordinary transformations which insects un- fgo have struck men’s imaginations so powet- ly in contemplating this subject, that the soul
* Notes VII. and IX. ‘Le Ie -
102 A DISCOURSE OF
itself was deemed of old to be aptly de under the emblematical form of a butterfl; having emerged from the chrysalis state, fl the air, instead of continuing to crawl on tI as it did before the worm ‘it once was exist. The instance of the fcetus of anim especially of the human embryo, has occu attention of modern inquirers into this int subject. Marking the entire difference in of existence before and after birth, and versity of every one animal function at tl periods, philosophers have inferred, that as ing from the one to the other state of exist mighty a change is wrought, without any tion either of soul or body, a like transit take place at death, and the event which to close our being may only open the port new, and higher, and more lasting conditic far as such considerations suggest analog’ furnish matter of pleasing contemplation, lend even some illustration to the ar Nevertheless they must be regarded as exe feeble helps in this latter respect, if inde aid be not of a doubtful, and even dangero They are all drawn from material objects,— upon the properties and the fortunes of 6 existences. Now the sttonghold of the maintain the Immortality of the Soul, and, all the doctrines of Natural Theology, is tk difference between mind and matter, and th we have constantly around us, and withi: existences as real as the bodies which af outward senses, but resembling thor yx things in no one quality, no one ‘habit ¢ 22 one mode of being.
| NATURAL THEOLOGY, 108
‘Upon the particulars of a future state—the kind \: existence reserved for the soul—the species of its occupations and enjoyments—Natural Theology
{ is, of course, profoundly silent; but not more silent © than Revelation... We are left. wholly to conjecture, and in a field on which our hopelessness of attain- ing any certain result is quite equal to our interest in the suecess of the search. Indeed, all our ideas
are, for the most part, either ‘ively connected
with the senses, or derived from our condition of
weakness here, which occasions the formation of
connexions for mutual comfort and support, and
gives to the feebler party the feeling of allegiance,
to the stronger the pleasure mi protection. Se that,
tever ‘has hitherto. been most ney re-
vealed, or most carefully hidden from its view—
that it may be gratified with the sight of the useful irvest reaped Foy the world from the good seed
yhich it helped to sow. ‘We can only conjecture fancy. it these, and such as these, are plea-
wes in which the gross indulgences of sense have
part, and which are even removed above the
ogee of our moral gratifications: they W®Y,
oh | Do ees consistent with © pure we
¥2
104 ‘A DISCOURSE OF
Perhaps the greatest of all the difficulties whicl we feel in forming such conjectures, regards the endless duration of an immortal existence. All our ideas in this world are so adapted to a limit continuance of life—not only so moulded upyn scheme of a being incapable of lasting beyond’ few years, but so inseparably connected wil constant change even here—a perpetual te1 tion of one stage of existence and beg another—that we cannot easily, if at all, fan eternal, or even a long-continued, endurance 0 same faculties, the same pursuits, and the enjoyments. All here is in perpetual mover ceaseless change. ‘There is nothing in us/or us that abides an hour—nay, an instant. B place there is none for the foot—no haven is p vided where the mind may be still, How th shall a creature, thus wholly ignorant of repo unacquainted with any continuation at all in a portion of his existence—so far abstract his thoug from his whole experience as to conceive a much more a perpetual, duration of the same: powers, pursuits, feelings, pleasures? Here it that we are the most lost in our endeayours (0 reach the seats of the blessed with our imperfe organs of perception, and our inveterate and habits of thinking.* <
4 * The part of Dean Swift's satire which relates to the Stulbrugs may possibly occur to some readers as upon this topic. ‘That the statinch admirers of that larly-gifted person should have been flung into ecstacies ox the perusal of this extraordinary part of his writings. ness not surprise us, Their raptutes were {vl\ easily © put Tam quite clear they have given & WOVE DORM upon its merits a very undeserved pros think that the picture of the Stulbrugs was wwtens
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 105
emains to observe, that all the speculations which we have touched under this second ision of the subject, the moral argument, nilar to the doctrines of inductive science— t to such of those doctrines as are less per- ascertained ; but the investigation is con- | upon the same principles. The most satis- y proofs of the soul’s immortality are those first, or psychological class, derived from ng the nature of mind; those of the second which we have last been surveying, derived che condition of man in connexion with the ites of the Deity, are less distinct and cogent ; rould they be sufficient of themselves; but add important confirmation to the others ; oth are as truly parts of legitimate inductive e as any branch—we may rather say, any branch—of moral philosophy.
1 a love of life, and that it has well accomplished its 2, I am very certain that the Dean never had any ing in view, because his sagacity was far too great perceive that he only could make out this position by undisguised begging of the question. How could any * the most ordinary reflection expect to wean his fel- vatures from love of life by describing a sort of persons a given Jost their faculties, and became doting ing idiots? Did any man breathing ever preten >» wished to live, not only for centuries but even for ore years and ten, bereaved of his understanding, and by the law and by his fellow men as in hopeless in- 2 dotage? The in question is much more to have proceeded from Swift's exaggerated misan- , and to have been designed as an antidote to human by showing that our duration is necessarily limited— ed, it is not rather to be regarded as the work of mere ud caprice.
106 A DISCOURSE OF
SECTION VI.
LORD BACON'S DOCTRINE OF FINAL CAUSES.” _
Tr now appears, that when we said that Natunl Theology can no more be distinguished from the physical, psychological, and ethical sciences, in respect of the evidence it rests upon and the manner in which its investigations are to he eonducted, than the different departments of those sciences can be distinguished from each other in the like respect, we were only making an assertion borne out by4 close and rigorous examination of the subject How, then, comes it to pass, it may be asked, thal the father of Inductive Philosophy has banished the speculation of Final Causes from his system, a if it were no branch of inductiye science? A more attentive consideration of the question will show,,first, that the sentence which he pronouncel has been not a little misunderstood by persons wht looked only at particular aphorisms, without duly regarding the context and the occasion ; and, # condly, that Lord Bacon may very probably hav conceived a prejudice against thesubject altogether from the abuses, or indeed perversions, to whic! a misplaced affection for it had given rise in som of the ancient schools of philosophy.
_ Chat Lord Bacon speaks disparagingly of th
inquiry concerning Final Causes, \poth when)
* Note X.
NATURAL THEOLOGY 107
idles it didactically, and when he mentions it identally, is admitted. He enumerates it among » errors that spring from the restlessness of nd (tmpotentia mentts), which forms the fourth iss Of the idols of the species (idola tribus) or uses Of false philosophy, connected with the culiarities of the human constitution.* In other rts of the same work he descants upon the mis- iefs which have arisen in the schools from mixing e doctrines of natural religion with those of tural philosophy ;f and he more than once treats the inquiry concerning Final Causes as a barren eculation, comparing it to a nun or a vestal con- crated to heaven.{ But a nearer examination this great authority will show that it is not verse to our doctrine. 1. First of all it is to be remarked, that Lord icon does not disapprove of the speculation con- ming Final Causes absolutely, and does not un- rvalue the doctrines of Natural Religion, so long that speculation and those doctrines are kept in eir proper place. His whole writings bear testi- my to the truth of this proposition. In the arasceve to natural and experimental history, tich closes the Novum Organum, he calls the ttory of the phenomena of nature a volume of 2 work of God, and as it were another Bible— rolumen operum Dei, et tanquam altera scrip- a.”§ In the first book of the De Dignitate, he rs there are two books of religion to be consulted
‘ Nov. Org. lib. i. Aph. 48. ‘ Ib. Aph. 96; and De Dig. et Aug. lib. i. “Sterilis et tanquam virgo Deo sacra non pert.’ 3 Dig. Lib. iii. Marasceve, Cc. 9.
108 A DISCOURSE OF
—the Scriptures, to tell the will of God, ay, book of creation, to show his power.**¥ A ingly he maintains elsewheref that a mirace}, never yet performed to convert atheists, bec these might always arrive at the knowledge o Deity by the light of nature: Nor ought we pass over the remarkable passage of the C Visa, in which he propounds the use of Natu Philosophy as the cure for superstition and 1 support of true religion: ‘“ Naturalem Philo phiam, post verbum Dei, certissimam superstitio medicinam, eandem probatissimum fidei aliment esse. Itaque merito religioni tanquam fidatis mam et acceptissimam ancillam attribui, ¢ altera voluntatem Dei, altera potestatem ma festet.”{ If the earlier part of the passage | any doubt of the kind of service which relig was to derive from inductive science, the last wo clearly show that it could only be by the doctr of final causes.
2. But further, he distinctly classes natural ligion among the branches of legitimate scien and it is of great and decisive importance to | present inquiry that we should mark the parti lar place which he assigns to it. He first divi science into two great branches, Theology : Philosophy—comprehending under the former scription only the doctrines of revelation, : under the latter all human science. Now, ai expressly excluding Natural Religion§ from first class, he treaty it as a part of the seco The second, of philosophy, is divided into th
* [jh * + Ib. lib. iii. 13, voni, Cogitata et Visa. ~ Mig. lib. iii. «1.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 109
parts, according as its object is the Deity, Nature, or Man. The first of these subdivisions consti- tutes Natural Religion, which he says may be _ termed Divine knowledge, if you regard its object, ‘ but Natural knowledge, if you consider its nature and evidence (“ ratione informationis scientia na- turalis censeri potest.”*) That he places it in a different subdivision from Natural Philosophy proves nothing ; for he classes anatomy, medicine, and intellectual philosophy also in a different sub- division: they come under the head of Human Philosophy, or the science of man, as contradistin- guished from Natural Theology and Natural Phi- losophy, or the science of God and of external objects. Many objections may undoubtedly be made to this classification, of which it is perhaps enough to say, that it leads to separating optics as well as anatomy and medicinef from natural philosophy. But, at all events, it shows both that Lord Bacon deemed Natural Theology a fit object of philosophical inquiry, and that he regarded the inductive method as furnishing the means by which the inquiry was to be conducted.
3. The general censure upon the doctrine of Final Causes to which we have in the outset ad- verted, as conveyed by certain incidental remarks, is manifestly directed against the abuse of such speculations, and more especially in the ancient schools of antiquity. Lord Bacon justly objects to the confounding of final with efficient or physi- cal causes; he marks the loose and figurative lan- guage to which this confusion has given rise; he
* De Dig. lib. iil. c. 2. Ib. lib. iv. c. 3. He treats of the desiderat under the head of the human mind—‘he senses.
110 A DISCOURSE OF
asks if it is philosophical to describe the eye as Aristotle, Galen, and others do, with, the eyelids | and eyelashes as a wall anda hedge to protect it; | or the bones as so many beams and pillars to sup: \_ port the body ;* and he is naturally apprehensive of the danger which may result from. men intro: ducing fancies of their own into science, and, above all, from. their setting out with such fancies, and then making the facts bend to humour them, This is indeed the great abuse of the doctrine of final causes; and the more to be dreaded in its consequences, because of the religious feelings which are apt to mix themselves with such specu- lations, and to consecrate error.+ 4. The objections of Lord Bacon are the more clearly shown to be levelled against the abnse only, that we find him speaking in nearly similar terms of logic and the mathematics as having impeded the progress of natural science. In the passage already referred to, and which occurs twice in his books, where the Platonists are ac- cused of mixing Natural Religion with philosophy, the latter Platonists (or Eclectics) are in the same words charged with corrupting it by the mathe matics, and the Peripatetics by logic.f Not cer * De Dig. lib, iii. ¢. 4. 3 + This idea is expressed by Bacon, with his wonted feli- city, in the 75th Aphorism. * Pessima enim res est errorum ‘apotheosis; et pro peste intellectis habenda est, si vanis ac- cedat veneratio.” (Nov. Org. lib. i.) He gives an instance of this folly in the perverted use made of some portions of the Bible history—* Huic vanitati nonnulli ex. modernis svmma levitate ita indulserunt, ut in primo eapituk ers et in libro Job et alls scriptuts, wets, Filo Waturalem fandare conati sint; inter viva quereutes wor ¥ Nor. Org. lib, i. Aph. 96; De Dig- Wo. 1.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. lll
tainly that the greatest logician of modern times ‘ould undervalue either his own art or the skill of the analyst, but because Aristotle through dialec- tic. and Proclus through geometrical pedantry, negleeted that humbler but more useful province of watching and interpreting nature, and used the Instruments farnished by logic and the mathema- tics, not to assist them in classifying facts or in reasoning from them, but to construct phantastic theories, to which they made the facts bend. When rightly examined, then, the authority of Bacon appears not to oppose the doctrine which we are seeking to illustrate. Yet it is pos- sible that a strong impression of the evils occa- sioned by the abuse of these speculations may have given him a less favourable opinion of them than they deserved. It appears that he had even con- ceived some prejudice against logic and the ma- thematics from a similar cause; and he manifests #t, not only in the already referred to, but in that portion of his treatise De Dig. et Aug. in which he treats of mathematical as an appendix to physical science, expressing much hesitation whether to rank it as a science, and delivering himself with some asperity against both logicians and mathematicians.*® High as is the authority of this great man—and upon the subject of the pre- gent inquiry the highest of all—yet, if it clearly appears that the argument from Final Causes comes within the scope of inductive science, we are
* De Dig. lib, iii. c. 6.—* Delicias et festum mathematico- rom, qui hanc scientiam physiee fieri im Nescio enim quo fato fiat ut mathematica et cillarum loea erga physicam se gerere debel certitudinem pre se jactantes, domination tant ” a
112 A DISCOURSE OF
bound to admit it within the circle of legitimate human knowledge, even if we found the father of that science had otherwise judged, It is clear that, had he now lived, he would himself have rejected some speculations as wholly beyond. the reach of the human faculties, which he unhesi- tatingly ranges among the objects of sound philo- sophy.* It is equally undeniable that he would have treated others with greater respect than he has shown them. Aboye all, it is certain that he would never have suffered that the veneration due to his own name should enshrine an idol} to ob- struct the progress of truth, and alienate her yotaries from the true worship which he himself jad founded.
That Lord Bacon has not himself indulged in any speculations akin to those of Natural Theo logy is, beyond all dispute, true, ‘There is hardly any writer upon moral or natural science, in whose works fewer references can be found to the power or wisdom of a, superintending Proyidenee. It
* He distinetly considers the “doctrine of angels ani spirits” as an “appendix to Natural Theology,” aud holds that their nature may be investigated by science, inchiding that of unclean spirits or daemons, which he says hold in this inquiry the same place as poisons do in physics, or vices in ethics——(De Dig. lib. iii. c. 2.) Natural magic, the doc- trine of fascination, the discovery of futurity from dreams and cestacies, especially in bad health from death-bed glimpses—in a word, divination—he holds to be branches science deserving of cultivation ; though he warns against foreery, or the pructice of witeheraft—(I libs i. au
ib. ii. ¢. 2.)
+ He complains of treatises of Natural History being
“swelled with figures of animals and plants,and other super Huous matter, instead of being entiched With sO dusee tions.”"—(De D, dice. 3.)
Idolum theatri.
oS
—
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 113
ould be difficult to find in any other author, an- ent or modern, as much of very miscellaneous iatter upon almost all physical subjects as he has rought together in the Sylva Sylvarum, without ne allusion to Final Causes. But it must also be dmitted, that it would not be easy to find in any ther writer of the least name upon physical sub- acts so little of value, and so much that is wholly inworthy of respect. ‘That work is, indeed, a triking instance of the inequalities of the human aculties. Among the one thousand observations f which it consists, hardly one—of the two hun- red and eighteen pages certainly not one—can be ound in which there is not some instance of cre- lulity, superstition, groundless hypothesis, mani- est error of some kind or other; and nothing at ny time given to the world ever exhibited a more ntire disregard of all his own rules of philoso. hizing: for a superficial examination of facts, a iasty induction, and a proneness to fanciful theory, orm the distinguishing characters of the whole ook. Assuredly it is a proof that the doctrine f Final Causes‘is not the only parent of a “ phan- astic philosophy,” though the other base under- towth of “ heretical religion ”* may not be found 1 the recesses of the Sylva.
* This striking and epigrammatic antithesis occurs more ian once in his writings. Thus, in the Nov. Org. lib. i. .ph. 65—* Ex divinorum et humanorum malesana admix- one, non solum educitur philosophia phantastica, sed etiam aligio heretica;” and again, in De Dig. et Aug. hb. ill. | , speaking of the abuse of speculations touching natural eligion, he remarks on the “incommoda et pericula que ¢ eo (abust) tum religioni, tum philosophix iwapenden, vote qui religionem hereticam procudit et poilosopost ntasticam et superstitiosam.”
114 A DISCOURSE OF
Descartes, whose original genius for the abstract sciences fixed an era in the history of pure mathe- matics, as remarkable as Bacon’s genius did in that of logic, like him failed egregiously as a cul-
tivator of natural philosophy ; and he excluded |
Final Causes altogether from his system as a pre- posterous speculation—an irreverent attempt to
penetrate mysteries hidden from human eyes by =
the imperfection of our nature. But it is to be observed, that all the successful cultivators of phy- sical science have, as if under the influence of an irresistible impulsion, indulged in the sublime con- templations of Natural Religion. Nor have they fallen into this track from feeling and sentiment; they have pursued it as one of the paths which inductive philosophy opens to the student of na- ture. To say nothing of Mr. Boyle, one of the earliest cultivators of experimental philosophy, whose works are throughout embued with this
spirit, and who has left a treatise expressly on the
subject of Final Causes, let us listen to the words of Sir Isaac Newton himself. The greatest work of man, the Principia, eloses with a swift transi- tion from its most difficult investigation, the de- termination and correction of a comet’s traj
upon the parabolic hypothesis,* to that celebrated scholium, upon which Dr. Clarke’s argument 4 priort for the existence of a Deity is built. But whatever may be deemed the soundness of that argument, or the intrinsic value of the eloquent and sublime passages which lay its foundation, its illustrious author at the same time points our at- tention to the demonstration from induction, and
* Principia, lib. iii. Prop. xii. and xia.
ieee ee
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 115
1 the most distinct and positive terms sanctions
1e doctrine, that this is a legitimate branch of atural knowledge. ‘‘Hunc (Deum) cognoscimus
er proprietates ejus et attributa et per sapientis-
mas et optimas rerum structuras et causas finales,
t admiramur ob prospectiones.” — ‘‘ Deus sine
ominio, providentia, et causis finalibus, nihil aliud
st quam fatam et natura.”—‘ Et hec de Deo—
e quo utique ex pheenomenis disserere ad philoso-
hiam naturalem pertinet.” — (Scholium Gene-
ale.
had if he could not rest from his immortal
abours in setting forth the system of the Universe,
rithout raising his mind to the contemplation of lim who ‘ weighed the mountains in scales and the. ills in a balance,” so neither could he pursue the
nore minute operations of the most subtile material. gent, without again rising towards Him who said
‘Let there be light.” The most exquisite inves-
igation ever conducted by man of the laws of ature by the means of experiment, abounds in its
itter portion with explicit references to the doctrines
f Natural Theology, and with admissions that the
usiness of physical science is ‘to deduce causes
rom effects till we come to the very First Cause,”
od that “‘ every true step made in inductive phi-
sophy is to be highly valued, because it brings us
earer to the First Cause.” *
* Optics, Book iii. Query 28.— How came the bodies of 1imals to be contrived with so much art, ana for what ends ere the several parts? Was the eye contrived without dll in optics, the ear without knowledge of sound P”’ 360, too, Query 3i, )
Panton’ omen ewe onndinie,
116 - A DISCOURSE OF
SECTION VII.
OF SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT, AND THE ME- THODS OF ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS.
HavineG shown that Natural Theology is a branch of inductive science—partly physical, partly intel- lectual and moral—it is of comparatively - little importance to inquire whether or not it can be kept
apart from the other branches of those sciences.
In one view of this question we may say, that there
is no more ground for the separation than there |
would be for making a distinct science of all the pro-
. sii, Teo.
positions in Natural Philosophy which immediately ;
relate to the human body—whereby we should have
portions of dynamics, pneumatics, optics, chemistry, —
electricity, and all human anatomy and pathology a3:
contradistinguished from comparative, reduced
‘under one and the same head—a classification, in- — -deed, resembling Lord Bacon’s. But in another, and, | as it seems, the more just view, there is a sufficient —
number of resemblances and differences, and the im- portance of the subject is sufficient, to justify the ‘making a separate head of Natural Theology. The ‘question is entirely one of convenience; nothing of ‘essential moment turns upon the classification.; and there is obviously an advantage in having the truths collected in one body, though they are called from.
the various parts of Physical and WMekagiry sical
science to which they naturally belong. Adi Los!
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 117
s needful is, constantly to keep in mind the identity — f the evidence on which these truths rest with that which is the groundwork of those other parts of dhilosophy.
Although, however, convenience and the para- mount importance of the subject seem to require such a separation, it is manifest that much of theo- logy must still be found intermingled with physics and psychology, and there only; for the truths of Natural Theology being sufficiently demonstrated by a certain induction of facts—a certain number of experiments and observations—no further proof is required; and to assemble all the evidence, if it were possible, would be only encumbering the sub- ject with superfluous proofs, while the collection would still remain incomplete, as every day is adding to the instances discovered of design appear- ing in the phenomena of the natural and moral world. It has been said, indeed, that a single well- xstablished proof of design is enough, and that no idditional strength is gained to the argument by nultiplying the instances. We shall afterwards how with what limitations this proposition is to be ‘eceived ; but for our present purpose it is suffi- ‘ient, that, at all events, a certain definite number if instances are of force enough to work out the lemonstration ; and yet in every branch of physics nd psychology new instances are presented at each tep we make. These instances are of great im- ortance ; they are to be carefully noted and reasured up; they form most valuable parts of hose scientific inquiries, conveying, in its purest orm and in its highest degree, the gratification of matemplating abstract truths, in which consists Woes
118 A DISCOURSE OF
if whole of the pleasure derived from science, p: so called—that is, from science as such, independent of its application to uses or enjo
of a corporeal kind.
An apprehension has frequently been ente by learned and pious men—men of a truly sophical spirit—lest the natural desire of : design in the works of ture should carry in too far, and lead them to give scope tc imagination rather than contain their specu within the bounds of strict reasoning. The dreaded the introduction of what Lord Baeo a “‘ phantastic philosophy,” and. have also felt at the injuries which religion may receiv being exposed to ridicule, in the event of t culations proving groundless upon a closer e ation. But i does not appear reasonabi philosophers should be deterred by such eo ations from anxiously investigating the sul Final Causes, and giving it the place which | to it in all their inquiries; provided that t not suffer fancy to intermix with and disturt speculations. If they do, they commit the g error of which reasoners can be guilty—ai against which it is the very object of inducti' losophy to guard; but it is no more an ei this, than in the other investigations of »s He who imagines design where there is no! who either assumes facts in order to builc them an inference favourable to Natural Relig from admitted facts draws such an inference fully, and not logically, comes within the d
tion of a false philosopher: he prefers the thetical to the inductive method, he cx
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 119
with his master, “‘ hypotheses non fingo ;”* he re- nounces the modern, and reeurs to the exploded modes of philosophising. ‘But he is not the more a false philosopher, and does not the more sin against the light of improved science, for commit- ting the offence in the pursuit of theological truth. He would have been liable to the same charge if he had- resorted to his fancy instead of observation and experiment while in search of any other scien- tific truth, or had hypothetically assumed a principle of classifying admitted phenomena, instead of rigor- ously deducing it from examining their circum- stances of resemblance and of diversity.
That any serious discredit can be brought upon the seience of Natural Theology itself, from the failures to which such hypothetical reasonings may lead, seems not very easy to conceive. Vain and superficial minds may take any subject for their ridicule, and ntay laugh, as they heretofore have laughed, at the mechanician and the chemist as well as the theologian, when they chance to go astray in their searches after truth. Yet no one ever thought of being-discouraged from experimental inquiries, because even the strictest prosecution of the induc- tive methdd cannot always guard against error ; nor did the Scriblerus of the combined wits ever deter one student of Nature. It is of the essence of all investigations of merely contingent truth, that they are exposed to casualties which do not beset the paths of the geometrician and the analyst. A conclusion from one induction of facts may be well warranted until a larger induction obliges us to abandon it, and adopt ancther. Yet no one deems chemstry
discredited because a bedy considered in one Bare
* Principia, lib. iii, Sch. Gen.
120 A DISCOURSE OF
of our knowledge to be a compound acid has since appeared rather to be a simple substance, bearing to the acids no resemblance in its composition ; nor would the optical discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton be discredited, much less the science he cultivated be degraded, if the undulatory hypothesis should, as appears likely enough on a fuller inquiry, be come established by strict proof. Yet such errors, or rather such imperfect and partial views, were the result of a strict obedience to the inductive rules of philosophising. How much less ground for cavil against ‘either those rules, or the sciences to which they are applicable, would be afforded by the observations of those who had mistaken their way through a neglect of inductive principle, and by following blindly false guides !
While then, on the one hand, we allow Natural Theology to form a distinct head or branch, the other sciences must of necessity continue to class its truths among their own; and thus every science may be stated to consist of three divisions :—1. The truths which it teaches relative to the constitution and action of matter or of mind ;—2. The truths which it teaches relative to theology; and 3. The application of both classes of truths to practical uses, physical or moral. Thus, the science of pneumatics teaches, under the first head, the doc- trine of the pressure of the atmosphere, and its connexion with respiration, and with the suspension of weights by the formation of a vacuum. Under the second head, it shows the adaptation of the Jungs of certain animals to breathe the air, and the
feet of others to support their bodies, in oo of both being framed in accordance with the forwe doctrine—that is, with the law of pressure—t
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 121
Jnder the third head, it teaches the construction of barometers, steam-engines, &c., while the con- ‘emplation of the Divine wisdom and goodness inculeates piety, patience, and hope.
But it may be said, that in this classification of the objects of science, we omit one ordinarily reckoned essential—the explanation of phenomena. The answer is, that such a classification is not strictly accurate, as no definite line can be drawn between the explanation of phenomena and the analytical process by which the truths themselves are established ; in a word, between analysis and synthesis in the sciences of contingent truth. For the same phenomena which form the materials of the analytical investigation—the steps that lead us to the proposition or discovery—would, in a re- versed order, become the subjects of the synthetical operation: that is, the things to be explained by means of the proposition or discovery, if we had been led to it by another route, in other words, if we had reached it by means of other phenomena of the like kind, referrible to the same class, and falling within the same principle or rule. Thus the experiments upon the prismatic spectrum prove the sun’s light to.be composed of rays of different refrangibility. This being demonstrated, we may explain by means of it the phenomena which form the proofs of the first proposition of the ‘ Optics,” that lights which differ in colour differ in refrangi- bility—as that a parallelogram of two colours refracted through a prism has its sides no longer parallel; or, having shown the different refrangi- bility by the prismatic phenomena, we may exp\2a\% "hy a Jens has the focus of violet rays nearer Woon e focus of red, while this experiment 1s of We
122 A DISCOURGE OF
one of the most cogent proofs of the different re frangibility. It is plain that, in these cases, the same phenomenon may be made indiscriminately the subject matter either of analysis or synthesis. So, one of the proofs given of latent heat is, that after you heat a bar of iromonce or twice by ham- mering it, the power of being thus heated is ex- hausted, until by exposing it to the fire that power is restored. Yet, suppose we had proved the dac- trine of the absorption of heat by other experiments —as by the effects on the thermometer of liquids of different temperatures mixed together—the phe- nomenon of the iron bar would be explicable by that doctrine thus: learnt. Again, another
of the same truth is the production of heat by the sudden condensation of gaseous fluids, and of cold by evaporation, the evolution of heat being: inferred from the former, and its absorption from the latter operation, But if the experiments upon the mix. ture of fluids of different temperatures, and other facts, had sufficiently proved the disappearance of heat in its sensible form, and. its being held ina state in which it did not affect the thermometer, we should by means of that doctrine have been able to account for the refrigerating effect of evaporation, and the heating power of condensation,
It cannot, then, be a real and an accurate dis- tinction, or one founded on the nature of the thing, which depends on the accident of the one set of facts having been chosen for the instruments of the analytical, and the other set for the subjects of the synthetical operation, each set being alike apnli« cable to cither use. For, inorder thatthe syntt
may be correct, nay, in order that Wanay we
|
and not hypothetical, it a obvieasty meowmry ——
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 1238
the phenomena should be of such a description as might have made them subservient to the analysis. In truth, both the operations are essentially the same—the generalization of particulars—the ar- ranging or classifying facts so as to obtain a more general or comprehensive fact; and the explanation of phenomena is just as much a process of gene- talization or classification as the investigation of the proposition itself, by means of which you are to give the explanation. We do not perform two operations, but one, in these investigations. We do not in reality first find by the prism that light 4 differently refrangible, and then explain the rainbow—or show by the air-pump that the atmo- sphere presses with the weight of so many pounds upon a square foot, and then explain the steam- engine and the fiy’s foot-—or prove, by burning the two weighed together and burning iron in one of them, that water is composed of them both, and that rust is the metal combined with one, and then explain why iron rusts in water. But we ob- serve all these several facts, and find that they are related to each other, and resolvable into three tlasses——-that the phenomena of the prism and of the shower are the same, the spectrum and the ‘ainbow being varieties of the same fact, more seneral than either, and comprehending many thers, all reducible within its compass—that the ir-pump, the steam-engine, the fly's foot, are all he same fact, and come within a description still nore genetal and compendious—that the rusting f iron, the butning of inflammable air, and the artia) consumption of the blood in the \unga, ere kewise the same fact in different shapes, and te ‘vable into a fact much more comprehensive.
124 A DISCOURSE OF
If, then, the distinction of investigation and explanation, or the analytical and synthetical process, is to be retained, it can only be nominal; and it is productive of but littleif any convenience. On the contrary, it is calculated to introduce in- accurate habits of philosophising, and holds out s temptation to bypothetical thetical reasoning. Having obtained a general law, or theory, we are prone to apply it where no induction shows that it is appli- cable; and perceiving that it would account for the observed phenomena, if certain things existed, we areapt to assume their existence, that we may apply our explanation. Thus we know, that if the walrus’s foot, or the fly’s, make a vacuum, the pressure of the air will support the animal’s weight, and hence we assume that the vacuum is Yee it is clear that we have no right whatever to do so; and that the strict rules of induction re- quire us to prove the vacuum before we ca arrange this fact in the same class with the other instances of atmospheric pressure. But when we have proved it by observation, it will be said we have gained nothing by our general doctrine. True ; but all that the science entitles us to do is, not to draw facts we are half acquainted with under the arbitrary sway of our rule, but to ex- ° amine each fact in all its parts, and‘ bring it legi- timately within the rule by means of its ascer- tained resemblances—that is, classify it with those others to which we actually find that it bears the common relation. Induction gives us the right to expect that the same result will always happen froin
the same action operating in \ike circumstances; but it is of the essence of this inference ‘hak ha similarity be first shown.
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 125
It may ve worth while to illustrate this further, 23 it is an. error very generally prevailing, and leads to an exceedingly careless kind of inquiry. The fundamental rule of. inductive science is, that no hypothesis shail be admitted—that nothing shall be assumed merely because, if true, it would explain the facts. Thus the magnetic theory of {Epinus is.admitted by all to be admirably con- sistent with itself, and to explain all the pheno- mena—that is, to tally exactly with the facts observed. But there is no proof at all of the accumulation of electrical or magnetic fluid at the one pole, and other fundamental positions; on the centrary, the faets are rather against them: there- fore, the theory is purely gratuitous; and although it would be difficult to find any other, on any sub- ject, more beautiful in itself, or more consistent with all the phenomena, it is universally rejected as a mere hypothesis, of no use or value in scien- tific research. The inductive method consists in only admitting those things which the facts prove to be true, and excludes the supposing things merely because they square with the facts. Who- ever makes such suppositions upon observing a certain number of facts, and then varies those sup- positions when new facts come to his knowledge, so as to make the theory tally with the observation whoever thus: goes on touching and retouching his theory each time a new fact is observed which does not fall within the original proposition, is a mere framer of hypotheses, not an inductive in- quirer—a fancier, and not a.philosopher.
Now, this being. the undoubted rule, does not “e-course of those fall exactly within it, who,
tving upon.a:certain class of phenomena, built © VOL, I. 3 G
6 A DISCOURSE OF
mclusion legitimately and by strict induction, nploy that conclusion to explain other phenomena, rhich they have not previously shown to fall within he same description? ‘Take the example of the Forricellian vacuum. Having by that experiment proved the weight of the atmosphere, we have a right to conclude that a tube filled with water forty feet high would have a vacuum in the upper- most seven feet—because we know the relative specific gravities of water and mercury, and might predict from thence that the lighter fluid would stand at the height of thirty-three feet; and this. conclusion we have a right to draw, without any experiments to ascertain the existence of a vacuum in the upper part of the tube. But we should have no right whatever to draw this conclusion, without ascertaining the specific gravities of the two fluids; for if we did, it would be assuming that the two facts belonged to the same class. & respecting the power of the walrus or the fly t walk up a vertical plane. We know the effects « exhausting the air between any two bodies, ar leaving the external atmosphere to press agai! them: they will cohere. But if from thence explain the support given to the walrus or the without examining their feet, and ascertaining { they do exhaust or press out the air—if, in sh we assume the existence of a vacuum under { feet, merely because were there a vacuum pressure of the air would produce the cohe and thus account for the phenomena—we : only propound a hypothesis. We suppose c circumstances to exist, in order to classify with other facts actually observed, and th ence of which circrmatances iS Necessary -
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 127
that the phenomena may be reducible under the same head.
There is no reason whatever for asserting that this view of the subject restricts the use of induc- tion by requiring too close and constant a reference to actual observation. The inductive principle is this—that from observing a number of particular facts, we reason to others of the same kind—that from observing a certain thing to happen in certain circumstances, we expect the same thing to happen in the like circumstances. This is to generalize; but then this assumes that we first show the iden- tity of the facts, by proving the similarity of the circumstances. If not, we suppose or fancy, and do not reason or generalize. ‘The tendency of the doctrine that a proposition being demonstrated by one set of facts, may be used to explain another set, has the effect of making us suppose or assume
the identity or resemblance which ought to be | proved. ‘The true principle is, that induction is | the generalizing or classifying of facts by observed ' Yesemblances and diversities.
Nothing here stated has any tendency to shackle our experimental inquiries by too rigidly narrowing the proof. Thus, although we are not allowed to suppose any thing merely because, if it existed, other things would be explained; yet, when no other supposition will account for the appearances,
| the hypothesis is no longer gratuitous ; and it con-
; stantly happens, that an inference drawn from an imperfect induction, and which would be, on that state of the facts, unauthorized because equivocal and not the only supposition on which the ‘acts could be explained, becomes legitimate on 2& for-
ther induction, whereby we show that, thougn & G 2
128 A DISCOURSE OFT
facts first observed. might be explained by st other supposition, yet those facts newly obser could to no other supposition be reeenciled. Tl the analytical experiment. on: the constitution water, by passing ‘steam over: red hot-iron, is. conclusive, beeause, although. it tallies well v the position that: water consists of oxygen and drogen, yet it would ‘also tally with: another s position, that. those gasesi were: produced in process, and not merely separated from each otk so that neither oxygen nor hydrogen:existed. in water: any more-than ack: and water. exist in « and. wood;. but only their: elements, aad that, . the acid and water, the products of the destruc distillation of those vegetable -substanees,.the ¢ gen and hydrogen. were compourded and in produced by the process. But: when, beside analytical, we-have the synthetical experiment Mr. Cavendish and: Dr.. Priestley*—when we that by burning. the two gases ina close vei they disappear, and leave a weight of water. ec to their united weights—we havea. fact :not rec cilable to any other:supposition,.except:that.of composition of this faid: It.is.ag when,.in sol; a problem; we‘fix.upon a:point.:in one line, cu * Dr. Priestley drew no conclusion of: the least ‘+ from his experiments. But Mr. Watt, after. therou weighing them, by careful. comparison: with other / arrived at. the opinion. that they proved the compositi water. This may justly be.said to have.been the disco of that great truth in chemical science. I have exar the evidence, and am convinced that-he was-the first d verer, in point ‘of: time, although it is very possibbe thai Ca vendiah 1 may have arrived at the.same truth frem his experiments, without any knowledge of Mr. Wattee
io Mt f. Aragon ening. —See Life of Watt, and Paper or
Ss Eloge.
NATURAL. THEOLOGY. 129
or straight, because it answers one of the condi- tions—it may be the right point, or it may not, for all the other points of the line equally. answer that condition; but -when we also show that the re- maining conditions require the point to be in an- other line, aad that this other intersects the former in the very: poiut we had assumed, then no doubt pf can exist,.and the. point is evidently the one re- i quired, none ether fulfilling all the conditions. , We have used the words analytical and synthe- { tical as applicable to the experiments of resolution and composition ; and in this-sense these terms are strictly correct in reference to inductive operations. But the use of the terms anulysis and synthesis as applicable to the processes of: induction—the former being the investigation of truths by experiment or observation, and the latter the explaining other facts by means of the truths so ascertained—is by no means so correct, and rests :upon an extremely | fallacious analogy, if there be indeed any analogy,
for identity, or:even resemblance, there is none. -The terms are borrowed. from mathematical science, where they denote the two kinds of investigation employed in solving problems and investigating theorems. When, in order to:solve a problem, we suppose a thing :done:which we know not how to do, we reason upon the! assumption that the pre- ‘seribed eonditions have been complied with, and proceed till we &nd something which we already possess the means of doing. This gives us the -eonstruction ; and the synthetical demonstration ‘consists in merely retracing the steps of the analysis. -And-so of a theorem: we assume it to be Troe, BOs reasoning on that assumption, we are ed to some thing which we know from other sources tO
130 A DISCOURSE OF
true, the synthesis being the same opera versed. ‘The two operations consist here, | fest necessity, of the very same steps— being the steps of the other taken in the order. In physics, to make the operations to these, the same facts should be the gr component parts of both. In analysis, w ascend not only from particulars to gene from the same particulars, and then the ; would be a descent through the same step, particular phenomena from the general fac it is a spurious synthesis, unlike the mathe and not warranted by induction, to prove — position by one set of facts, and by that prc to explain—that is, classify—another set, examining it by itself. If we do exami itself, and find that it is such as the prc applies to, then also is it such as might p proposition ; and the synthesis is here, a case of the mathematical investigation, the reversed. As far as any resemblance or goes, there is even a greater affinity bet, inductive analysis and the geometrical s than between those operations which gc same name; and I hardly know anythin; perimental investigation resembling the n tical analysis, unless it be when, from o certain facts, we assume a position, and th that if this be true, some other facts must a which we find (from other proofs) really This bears a resemblance rather to the a investigation than to the composition or sy demonstration of theorems in the ancient g It is not the course of reasoning frequently in experimental sciences; but a most |
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 131
le of it occurs in the second part of Dr. s experiments on Magnesia Alba and Quick the foundation of the modern gaseous che-
in the whole, the use of these terms is apt to 1; and, for the reasons which have been xd, there seems no solidity in the division of ive inquiry into the two classes.*
aen this section was written, I had not seen Mr. ’s learned remarks upon analysis and synthesis in the volume of his Elements, nor was aware of the ob- ns of Dr. Hook, quoted <