in an amusing manner through the simplicity of the ancient Roman poet of this school. Lucretius maintains that the eye was not made for seeing, nor the ear for hearing. But the terms in which he recommends this doctrine show how hard he knew it to be for men to entertain such an opinion. His advice is, Illud, in his rebus vitium vehementer et istum iv. 823. 'Gainst their preposterous error guard thy mind Undoubtedly the poet is so far right, that a most "vehement" caution and vigilant "premeditation" are necessary to avoid the "vice and error" of such a persuasion. The study of the adaptations of the human frame is so convincing, that it carries the mind with it, in spite of the resistance suggested by speculative systems. Cabanis, a modern French physiological writer of great eminence, may be selected as a proof of this. Both by the general character of his own speculations, and by the tone of thinking prevalent around him, the consideration of design in the works of nature was abhorrent from his plan. Accordingly, he joins in repeating Bacon's unfavourable mention of final causes. Yet when he comes to speak of the laws of reproduction of the human race, he appears to feel himself compelled to admit the irresistible manner in which such views force themselves on the mind. "I regard," he says, "with the great Bacon, the philosophy of final causes as barren; but I have elsewhere acknowledged that it was very difficult for the most cautious man (l'homme le plus reservé) never to have recourse to them in his explanations."* 3. It may be worth our while to consider for a moment the opinion here referred to by Cabanis, of the propriety of excluding the consideration of final causes from our natural philosophy. The great authority of Bacon is usually adduced on this subject. "The handling of final causes," says he, "mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of farther discovery."+ A moment's attention will show how well this representation agrees with that which we have urged, and how far it is from dissuading the reference to final causes in reasonings like those on which we are employed. Final causes are to be excluded from physical inquiry; that is, we are not to assume that we know the *Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme. i. 299. †De Augment. Sc. ii. 105. objects of the Creator's design, and put this assumed purpose in the place of a physical cause. We are not to think it a sufficient account of the clouds that they are for watering the earth, (to take Bacon's examples,) or "that the solidness of the earth is for the station and mansion of living creatures." The physical philosopher has it for his business to trace clouds to the laws of evaporation and condensation; to determine the magnitude and mode of action of the forces of cohesion and crystallization by which the materials of the earth are made solid and firm. This he does, making no use of the notion of final causes and it is precisely because he has thus established his theories independently of any assumption of an end, that the end, when, after all, it returns upon him and cannot be evaded, becomes an irresistible evidence of an intelligent legislator. He finds that the effects, of which the use is obvious, are produced by most simple and comprehensive laws; and when he has obtained this view, he is struck by the beauty of the means, by the refined and skilful manner in which the useful effects are brought about ;-points different from those to which his researches were directed. We have already seen, in the very case of which we have been speaking, namely, the laws by which the clouds are formed and distribute their showers over the earth, how strongly those who have most closely and extensively examined the arrangements there employed (as Howard, Dalton, and Black) have been impressed with the harmony and beauty which these contrivances manifest. We may find a further assertion of this view of the proper use of final causes in philosophy, by referring to the works of one of the greatest of our philosophers, and one of the most pious of our writers, Boyle, who has an Essay on this subject. "I am by all means,' says he, "for encouraging the contemplation of the celestial part of the world, and the shining globes that adorn it, and especially the sun and moon, in order to raise our admiration of the stupendous power and wisdom of him who was able to frame such immense bodies; and notwithstanding their vast bulk and scarce conceivable rapidity, keep them for so many ages constant both to the lines and degrees of their motion, without interfering with one another. And doubtless we ought to return thanks and praises to the divine goodness for having so placed the sun and moon, and determined the former, or else the earth, to move in particular lines for the good of men and other animals; and how disadvantageous it would have been to the inhabitants of the earth if the luminaries had moved after a different manner. I dare not, however, affirm that the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies were made solely for the use of man: much less presume to prove one system of the world to be true and another false; because the former is better fitted to the convenience of mankind, or the other less suited, or perhaps altogether useless to that end." This passage exhibits, we conceive, that combination of feelings which ought to mark the character of the religious natural philosopher; an earnest piety ready to draw nutriment from the contemplation of established physical truths; joined with a philosophical caution, is not seduced by the anticipation of such contemplations, to pervert the strict course of physical inquiry. It is precisely through this philosophical care and scrupulousness that our views of final causes acquire their force and value as aids to religion. The object of such views is not to lead us to physical truth, but to connect such truth, obtained by its proper processes and methods, with our views of God, the master of the universe, through those laws and relations which are thus placed beyond dispute. Bacon's comparison of final causes to the vestal virgins is one of those poignant sayings, so frequent in his writings, which it is not easy to forget. "Like them," he says, "they are dedicated to God, and are barren." But to any one who reads his work it will ap pear in what spirit this was meant. "Not because those final causes are not true and worthy to be inquired, being kept within their own province." (Of the Advancement of Learning, b. ii. p. 142.) If he had had occasion to develope his simile, full of latent meaning as his similes so often are, he would probably have said, that to these final causes barrenness was no reproach, seeing they ought to be, not the mothers but the daughters of our natural sciences; and that they were barren, not by imperfection of their nature, but in order that they might be kept pure and undefiled, and so fit ministers in the temple of God. CHAPTER VIII. ON THE PHYSICAL AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 1. We are not to expect that physical investigation can enable us to conceive the manner in which God acts upon the members of the universe. The question, "Canst thou by searching find out God?" must silence the boastings of science as well as the repinings of adversity. Indeed, science shows us, far more clearly than the conceptions of every day reason, at what an immeasurable distance we are from any faculty of conceiving how the universe, material and moral, is the work of the Deity. But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this; we can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated interpositions of divine power exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws. This, which is the view of the universe proper to science, whose office it is to search out these laws, is also the view of which, throughout this work, we have endeavoured to keep present to the mind of the reader. We have attempted to show that it combines itself most readily and harmoniously with the doctrines of Natural Theology; that the arguments for those doctrines are strengthened, the difficulties which affect them removed, by keeping it steadily before us. We conceive, therefore, that the religious philosopher will do well to bear this conception in his mind. God is the author and governor of the universe through the laws which he has given to its parts, the properties which he has impressed upon its constituent elements: these laws and properties are, as we have already said, the instruments with which he works: the institution of such laws, the selection of the quantities which they involve, their combination and application, are the modes in which he exerts and manifests his power, his wisdom, his goodness through these attributes, thus exercised, the Creator of all, shapes, moves, sustains, and guides the visible creation. This has been the view of the relation of the Deity to the universe entertained by the most sagacious and comprehensive minds ever since the true object of natural philosophy has been clearly and steadily apprehended. The great writer who was the first to give philosophers a distinct and commanding view of this object, thus expresses himself in his "Confession of Faith:" "I believethat notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating since the first Sabbath, yet, nevertheless, he doth accomplish and fulfil his divine will in all things, great and small, singular and general, as fully and exactly by providence, as he could by miracle and new creation, though his working be not immediate and direct, but by compass; not violating Nature, which is his own law upon the creature." And one of our own time, whom we can no longer hesitate to place among the worthiest disciples of the school of Bacon, conveys the same thought in the following passages: "The Divine Author of the universe cannot be supposed to have laid down particular laws, enumerating all individual contingencies, which his materials have understood and obey-this would be to attribute to him the imperfections of human legislation;-but rather, by creating them endowed with certain fixed qualities and powers, he has impressed them in their origin with the spirit, not the letter of his law, and made all their subsequent combinations and relations inevitable consequences of this first impression."* 2. This, which thus appears to be the mode of the Deity's operation in the material world, requires some attention on our part in order to understand it with proper clearness. One reason of this is, that it is the mode of operation altogether different from that in • Herschel on the Study of Nat. Phil. Art. 27. which we are able to make matter fulfil our designs. Man can construct exquisite machines, can call in vast powers, can form extensive combinations, in order to bring about the results which he has in view. But in all this he is only taking advantage of laws of nature which already exist; he is applying to his use qualities which matter already possesses. Nor can he by any effort do more. He can establish no new law of nature which is not a result of the existing ones. He can invest matter with no new properties which are not modifications of its present attributes. His greatest advances in skill and power are made when he calls to his aid forces which before existed unemployed, or when he discovers so much of the habits of some of the elements as to be able to bend them to his purpose. He navigates the ocean by the assistance of the winds which he cannot raise or still: and even if we suppose him able to control the course of these, his yet unsubjugated ministers, this could only be done by studying their characters, by learning more thoroughly the laws of air and heat and moisture. He cannot give the minutest portion of the atmosphere new relations, a new course of expansion, new laws of motion. But the Divine operations, on the other hand, include something much higher. They take in the establishment of the laws of the elements, as well as the combination of these laws and the determination of the distribution and quantity of the materials on which they shall produce their effect. We must conceive that the Supreme Power has ordained that air shall be rarefied, and water turned into vapour, by heat; no less than that he has combined air and water so as to sprinkle the earth with showers, and determined the quantity of heat and air and water, so that the showers shall be as beneficial as they are. We may and must, therefore, in our conceptions of the Divine purpose and agency, go beyond the analogy of human contrivances. We must conceive the Deity, not only as constructing the most refined and vast machinery, with which, as we have already seen, the universe is filled; but we must also imagine him as establishing those properties by which such machinery is possible: as giving to the materials of his structure the qualities by which the material is fitted to its use. There is much to be found, in natural objects, of the same kind of contrivance which is common to these and to human inventions; there are mechanical devices, operations of the atmospheric elements, chemical processes;—many such have been pointed out, many more exist. But besides these cases of the combination of means, which we seem able to understand without much difficulty, we are led to consider the Divine Being as the author of the laws of chemical, of physical, and of mechanical action, and of such other laws as make matter what it is;-and this is a view which no analogy of human inventions, no knowledge of human powers, at all assists us to embody or understand. Science, therefore, as we have said, while it discloses to us the mode of instru |