CHAPTER IV.
Of the Metaphysics which have been
resorted to on the side of Theism.
(MR.
HUME'S OBJECTION TO THE A POSTERIORI ARGUMENT,
(GROUNDED ON THE ASSERTION
THAT THE WORLD IS A SINGULAR EFFECT.)
1. THE doctrine of innate ideas in the mind, is wholly
different from the doctrine of innate tendencies in the mind - which tendencies
may lie undeveloped till the excitement of some occasion have manifested or
brought them forth. In a newly formed mind, there is no idea of nature or of a
single object in nature - yet no sooner is an object presented, or is an event
observed to happen, than there is elicited the tendency of the mind to presume
on the constancy of nature. At least as far back as our observation extends,
this law of the mind is in full operation. Let an infant for the first time in
its life, strike on the table with a spoon, and, pleased with the noise, it
will repeat that stroke with every appearance of a confident anticipation that
the noise will be repeated also. It counts on the invariableness wherewith the
same consequent will follow the same antecedent. In the language of Dr. Thomas
Brown, these two terms make up a sequence - and there seems to exist in the
spirit of man, not an underived, but an aboriginal faith, in the uniformity of
nature's sequences.
2. This instinctive expectation of a constancy in
the succession of events is not the fruit of experience ; but is anterior to
it. The truth is that experience, so far from strengthening this instinct of
the understanding as it has been called, seems rather to modify and restrain
it. The child who elicited a noise which it likes from the collision of its
spoon with the table would, in the first instance, expect the same result from
a like collision with any material surface spread out before it - as if placed
for example, on the smooth and level sand of a sea-shore. Here the effect of
experience would be to correct its first strong and unbridled anticipations -
so that in time it would not look for the wished for noise in the infliction of
a stroke upon sand or clay or the surface of a fluid, but upon wood or stone or
metal. The office of experience here is not to strengthen our faith in the
uniformity of nature's sequences, but to ascertain what the sequences actually
are. The effect of the experience is not to give the faith, but to the faith to
add knowledge. At the outset of its experience a child's confidence in the
uniformity of nature is unbounded - and it is in the progress of its
experience, that it meets with that which serves to limit the confidence and to
qualify it. It goes forth upon external nature furnished beforehand with the
expectation of the invariableness which obtains between nature's antecedents
and her consequents - but it often falls into mistakes in estimating what the
proper antecedents and consequents are. To ascertain this is the great use of
experience. The great object of repetition in experiments is not to strengthen
our confidence in the constancy of nature's sequences - but to ascertain what
be the real and precise terms of each sequence. It is for this purpose that
experiments are so varied - for in that assemblage of contemporaneous things
amid which a given result takes place, it is often not known at the first which
of the things is the strict and proper antecedent - and it is to determine
this, that sometimes certain of the old circumstances are detached from the
groupe and certain new ones added, till the discrimination has been precisely
made between what is essential and what is merely accessary in the
process.
3. This predisposition to count on the uniformity of nature is
an original law of the mind, and is not the fruit of our observation of that
uniformity. It has been well stated by Dr. Brown that there is no more of
logical dependence between the propositions, that a stone has a thousand times
fallen to the earth and a stone will always fall to the earth, than there is
between the propositions that a stone has once fallen to the earth and a stone
will always fall to the earth. "At whatever link of the chain we begin," he
says, "we must always meet with the same difficulty, the conversion of the past
into the future. If it be absurd to make this conversion at one stage of
inquiry, it is just as absurd to make it at any other stage; and, as far as our
memory extends, there never was a time at which we did not make the instant
conversion." The truth is, that experience teaches the past only - not the
future. It tells us what has happened before the present moment - and to infer
from this what will happen afterwards, requires the aid of a distinct principle
- the instinctive principle of belief, in short, whose reality we are now
contending for.
4. The constancy of nature and man's faith in that
constancy do not stand related to each other like the terms of a logical
proposition, or in the way of cause and consequence. There is a most beneficent
harmony between the material and the mental law - but it is altogether a
contingent harmony; and the adaptation of the one to the other is perhaps the
most precious evidence within the compass of our own unborrowed light, for a
presiding intelligence in the formation or arrangements of the universe. The
argument unfolded by Dr. Paley with such marvellous felicity and power, is
founded chiefly on the fitnesses that meet together in man's corporeal economy,
and on the adjustments of its parts to external nature. It is true that our
mental economy offers nothing so complex or so palpable on which to raise a
similar argument; and yet can we instance a more wonderful adjustment, or one
more prolific of good to our species, than that which obtains between the
unexcepted uniformity of nature's processes, and the prior, independent
disposition which resides in the heart of man to count upon that uniformity,
and to proceed on the unfaltering faith of it ? Were it not for this, man
should for ever remain a lost and bewildered creature among the appearances
around him - and no experience of his could in the least help to unravel the
confusion.
The regularity of nature up to the present moment would be of no
avail, without his faith in the continuance of that regularity - and it is only
by the force of this instinctive anticipation, that the memorials of the past
serve him as indices by which to guide his way through the futurity that lies
before him. The striking accordancy is, that there should be such an
expectation deposited in every bosom; and that from every department of the
accessible creation there should be to this expectation the response or the
echo of one wide and unexcepted fulfilment. It is like a whisper to the heart
of man of a universal promise, which can only be executed by a hand of
universal agency - and as if the same Being who infused the hope by an energy
within, did, by a diffusive energy abroad, cause the response of an unfailing
accomplishment to arise from all the amplitudes of creation and providence.
This intuitive faith is not the acquisition of experience; but is given as if
by the touch of inspiration for the purpose of stamping on experience all its
value - not gathered by man from his observation of outward nature; but forming
an original part of his own nature, and yet in such glorious harmony with all
that is around him throughout the innumerable host of nature's sequences, that
he never once by trusting in her constancy is disappointed or deceived. Such is
the steadfastness of her manifold processes that nature never misgives from her
constancy. Such is the strength of his mental instinct that man never misgives
from his confidence. Had it not been for the union of these two man had been
incapable of wisdom. The establishment of both bespeaks at once the wisdom and
the faithfulness of a God.
5. But this harmony between the intellectual
constitution of man and the general constitution of nature, is not only of use
in a theological argument - it might also be applied to strengthen the
foundations of our Philosophy. It forms a demonstration of the perfect safety
wherewith we might confide in our ultimate or original principles of belief. We
have experimental evidence of this in our anticipation of nature's constancy
being so fully realized. This anticipation is not the fruit of experience, but
is verified by experience. It is an instinct of the understanding; and that it
should have been so met and responded to over the whole domain of creation is
like the testimony of a concurrent voice from all things inanimate to the
Creator's faithfulness. Seeing that one of the instinctive tendencies of the
mind has been so palpably accredited from without - we may commit ourselves, as
if to an infallible guidance, in following its other instinctive tendencies.
There is a scepticism that is suspicious, as if they were so many false lights,
of our original and universal principles whether in judgment or taste or morals
- and which looks upon them at best as but the results of an arbitrary
organization.
From the instance now before us it is plain that the arbiter
of our constitution, the artificer of the mechanism of our spirits, has at
least most strikingly adapted it to the constitution and the mechanism of
external things - the hope or belief of constancy in the one meeting in the
other with the most rigid and invariable fulfilment. This is the strongest
practical vindication which can be imagined, of the unshaken faith that we
might place in the instinctive and primary suggestions of nature. It restores
that feeling of security to our intellectual processes which the Philosophy of
Hume so laboured to unsettle: And we again feel a comfort and a confidence in
the exercises of reason - when thus reassured in the solidity of those axioms
which are reason's stepping-stones, in the substantive truth and certainty of
those first principles whence all argumentation takes its rise.
6. But
the mention of David Hume leads to the consideration of that atheistical
argument which has been associated with his name - an argument not founded
however on any denial of the regularity of nature's sequences - but proceeding
on the admission of that regularity; and only assuming the necessity of
experience to ascertain what the sequences actually are. Mr. Hume's argument is
this: After having once observed the conjunction between any two term's of an
invariable sequence - it is granted that from the observed existence of either
of the terms, we can conclude without observation the existence of the other -
that from a perceived antecedent we can foretell its consequent, although we
should not see it; or on the other hand from the perceived consequent we can
infer the antecedent, although it should not have been seen by us. Having had
the observation once of the two terms A and B, and of the causal relation
between them, the appearance of A singly would warrant the anticipation of B,
or of B singly the inference of A.
But then it is required for any such
inference that we should have had the observation or experience, at least once,
of both these terms; and of the conjunction between them. If we have seen but
once in our life a watch made, and coming forth of the hands of a watch-maker;
we, in all time coming, can, on seeing the watch only, infer the watch-maker.
But this full experience comprehensive of both terms is wanting, it is alleged,
in the question of a God. We may have had an experience reaching to both terms
of the sequence in watch-making - but we have had no such experience in
world-making. Had we but seen a world once made, and coming forth from the
observed fiat of an intelligent Deity, then the sight of every other world
might have justified the inference that for it too there behoved to have been
-a world-maker. It is the want of that completed observation which we so often
have in the cases of human mechanism, that constitutes it is apprehended the
flaw or failure in the customary argument for a God - as founded on the
mechanism of nature. It is because the world is to us a singular effect - it is
because we have only perceived the consequent a world, and never perceived the
alleged antecedent the mandate of a Creator at whose forth-putting some other
world had sprung into existence - it is because in this instance we have but
witnessed one term of a succession and never witnessed its conjunction with a
prior term, that we are hopelessly debarred it is thought, from ever coming
soundly or legitimately to the conclusion of a God.
7. The following are
so many of the passages from Hume containing the argument in his own words:
"But it is only when two species of objects are found to be constantly
conjoined that we can infer the one from the other; and were an effect
presented which was entirely singular and could not be comprehended under any
known species, I do not see that we could form any conjecture or inference at
all concerning its cause. If experience and observation and analogy be indeed
the only guides which we can reasonably follow in inferences of this nature -
both the effect and cause must bear a similarity and resemblance to other
effects and causes which we know, and which we have found in many instances to
be conjoined with each other."* Again - "If we see a house, we conclude with
the greatest certainty that it had an architect or builder; because this is
precisely that species of effect, which we have experienced to proceed from
that species of cause. But surely you will not affirm that the universe bears
such a resemblance to a house, that we can with the same certainty infer a
similar cause, or that the analogy is here entire and perfect. The
dissimilitude is so striking, that the utmost you can here pretend to is a
guess, a conjecture, a presumption concerning a similar cause; and how that
pretension will be received in the world I leave you to consider." - - " When
two species of objects have always been observed to be conjoined together, I
can infer by custom the existence of one, wherever I see the existence of the
other; and this I call an argument from experience.
* Hume's Essays, Vol. IL
p. 157, being an extract from his Essay on Providence and a Future State.
"But how this argument can have place, where the objects as in the
present case, are single, individual, without parallels or specific
resemblance, may be difficult to explain. And will any man tell me with a
serious countenance, that an orderly universe must arise from some thought and
act, like the human; because we have experience of it? To ascertain this
reasoning, it were requisite, that we had experience of the origin of worlds;
and it is not sufficient surely, that we have seen ships and cities arise from
human art and contrivance." - - " Can you pretend to show any such similarity
between the fabric of a house, and the generation of a universe? Have you ever
seen nature in any such situation as resembles the first arrangement of the
elements? Have worlds ever been formed under your eye? and have you had leisure
to observe the whole progress of the phenomena, from the first appearance of
order to its final consummation ? If you have, then cite your experience and
deliver your theory."*
* The above extracts are taken from Hume's Dialogues
concerning Natural Religion.
8. Now it appears to us that this argument
of Hume has not been rightly met by any of his antagonists. Instead of
resisting it they have retired from it - and, in fact, done him the homage of
conceding the principle on which it rests. They have suffered him to bear away
one of the prime supports of Natural Theism; and, to make up for this loss,
they have attempted to replace it with another support which I hold to be
altogether precarious. Hume denies that we have any experimental evidence for
the being of a God - and that simply because we have not any experience in the
making of worlds. Had we observed once or oftener the sequence of two terms A
and B - then afterwards on our observing B though alone we might have inferred
A. Had we observed though only once, a God employed in making a world - then
when another world was presented to our notice we might have inferred a God.
But we have never had the benefit of such observation; and hence the conclusion
of Mr. Hume is, that the reasoning for a God is not founded on the basis of
experience. Now how is this met both by Reid and Stuart ? - by conceding that
the argument for a God is not an experimental one at all - the inference of
design from its effects being a result neither of reasoning nor of experience.
When the question is put, on what then is the inference grounded - the
never-failing reply in a difficulty of this sort, and in which more than once
these philosophers have taken convenient refuge is, that it is grounded on an
intuitive judgment of the mind.
9. Our own opinion of this evasion is
that to say the least it was unnecessary - and we think that without recurring
to any separate principle on the subject, Mr. Hume's argument might be
satisfactorily disposed of, though we had no other ground for the inference of
a designing cause, than that upon which we reason from like consequents to the
like antecedents that went before them.
10. It appears to us that these
philosophers have most unnecessarily mystified the argument for a God, besides
giving an untrue representation of the right argument. The considerations on
which Reid and Stewart would resolve the inference of design from its effects
into an original principle, distinct from that by which we infer any other
cause from its effects - even our prior observation of the conjunction between
them, appear to us most singularly weak and inconclusive. They say that we can
only infer design on the part of a fellow-creature from its effects in this
instinctive or intuitive way, because we never had any direct perception of his
mind at all, and therefore never had a view of the antecedent but only of the
consequent. But we have the evidence of consciousness, the strongest of all
evidence, for the existence of our own mind; we have both the antecedent and
the consequent in this one instance, both the design and its effects when
ourselves are the designers ; and, from the similarity of those effects which
proceed from ourselves to those which proceed from our neighbours, we infer on
a sufficient experimental ground that there are design and a designing mind on
their part also. It comes peculiarly ill from Mr. Stewart to say that we know
nothing of mind but by its operations and effects, who himself has so oft
affirmed that all our knowledge of matter comes to us in the same way; and that
the properties of which sense informs us as belonging to the one form no better
evidence for the substantive existence of matter, than that for the substantive
existence of mind afforded by the properties of which consciousness informs us
as belonging to the other.
And even though we should allow that, apart from
all that experimental reasoning by which from the observation of what passes
with ourselves we make inference as to what passes with others of our kind, we
arrive by means of a direct and instinctive perception to the knowledge of the
existence of other human minds beside our own - there is no analogy between
this case and that of the divine mind as inferred from the effects or the
evidences of design in the workmanship of nature. God does not by this
workmanship hold himself forth to observers in visible personality as our
fellow-creatures do. He has left for our inspection a thousand specimens of
skilful and beauteous mechanism; but he has left us to view them as separate
from himself. These philosophers would have us to infer a designing God from
the works of nature, just as we infer a designing mind in man not from the
works of man but from man in the act of working - even as if the divine spirit
animated nature in the same manner as the human spirit animates the framework
by which it is encompassed.
Now the proper analogy is to view a piece of
human workmanship, after it is completed and may be seen separately from the
man himself; and to compare this with the workmanship of nature viewed
separately from God. We take cognizance of the former as the work of man, just
because in previous instances we have seen such work achieved by man. This
consideration proceeds altogether upon experience; and what we have now to
ascertain is, in how far experience warrants us to conclude a designing cause
for the workmanship of nature. We hold that this conclusion too has a strict
experience for its basis; and that, notwithstanding that the principle has been
given up by Stewart as is evident from his following reply to Hume's argument,
"The argument as is manifest proceeds entirely on the supposition that our
inferences of design are in every case the result of experience, the contrary
of which has been already sufficiently shown - and which indeed (as Dr. Reid
has remarked) if it be admitted as a general truth, leads to this conclusion -
that no man can have any evidence of the existence of any intelligent being but
himself."* (here follows a lengthy footnote which I have italicised for clarity
- Ed.))
* Stewart's Philosophy of the Moral and Active Powers, Vol. II.
p. 25.
In this treatise Mr. Stewart has rather presented the opinions of
others, than come forth in propria persona with any sustained pleading of his
own; and, as in most of his other performances, instead of grappling with the
question, he presents us with the literature of the question - made up of
history therefore rather than of argument, and altogether composing but the
outline of what had been said or reasoned by other men, though accompanied with
a very few slight yet elegant touches from his own hand. We by no means agree
with those who think of this interesting personage, that, considering the few
substantive additions which he made to philosophy, he therefore as a
philosopher had gained an unfair reputation. It is true, he has not added much
to the treasures of science ; yet, in virtue of a certain halo which by the
glow of his eloquence and the purity and nobleness of his sentiments he threw
around the cause, he abundantly sustained the honours of it. It reminds us of
what is often realized in the higher walks of society, when certain men vastly
inferior to others both in family and in fortune, do, in virtue of a certain
lofty bearing in which they are upheld by the consciousness of a grace and a
dignity that natively belong to them, not usurp the highest place in fashion,
but have that place most readily awarded to them by the spontaneous consent and
testimony of all. It was thus with Stewart in the world of letters. His rank
and reputation there were not owing either to the number or importance of the
discoveries achieved by him. But he had what many discoverers have not. He had
the sustained and the lofty spirit of a high-toned academic; and never did any
child, whether of science or poetry, breathe in an atmosphere more purely
ethereal. The je ne scats quoi of manner does not wield a more fascinating
power in the circles of fashion, than did the indescribable charm of his rare
and elevated genius over our literary circles ; and, when we consider the
homage of reverence and regard which he drew from general society, we cannot
but wish that many successors may arise in his own likeness - who might build
up an aristocracy of learning, that shall infuse a finer element into the
system of life, than any which has ever been distilled upon it from the vulgar
aristocracies of wealth or of power.
11. Let us therefore resume
our observations on the strong instinctive confidence of the human mind in the
uniformity of nature - and thence apply ourselves to the consideration of this
seemingly formidable argument.
12. We have already remarked on the
perfect agreement which there is between the constancy of nature, and the
instinctive belief which men have in that constancy. There seems no necessary
connexion between these two things. It might for aught we know have been
otherwise. There might have been a tendency in the human mind always to look
for the like event in the like circumstances - and this anticipation on our
part may have been thwarted at every turn by the most capricious and unlooked
for evolutions, on the part of the actual world that is around us. Or there
might have been the same uniformity that there is in nature now - but no such
constitutional propensity with us to count upon that uniformity. In either case
we should not have profited by the lessons of experience. The remembrance of
the past could have furnished no materials on which to ground or to guide our
expectations of the future.
It is not because of one thing, that nature is
constant ; but it is because of two things, that nature is constant and that we
have been endowed with an irresistible faith in that constancy - it is because
of a concurrence in fact between two elements that might have been separated
the one from the other, it is because of an adaptation between the mental
economy in man and that general economy of things in the midst of which he is
placed, that any wisdom at all can be reared on the basis of observation ; or
that, on the appearances which are before our eyes, we can either reason back
to those which have preceded, or forward to those which are hereafter to ensue
from them.
13. Our expectation of the constancy of nature in all time
coming, because of our experience of that constancy in all past time, is not a
deduction of reason - but an immediate and resistless principle of belief in
the human constitution. It is no more the fruit of an argumentative process
than any sensation or emotion is. That, on the observation of a certain event
in given circumstances, there should be a confident anticipation of the same
event in the same circumstances - this is the assumed principle of many a
reasoning; but it is not reasoning which has conducted us thereto. It is an
underived and intuitive belief, and not a belief that we reach by a succession
of steps - and is, as far as we can discern, as strong in infancy as it is in
mature and established manhood. It is vain to say that the constancy of nature
throughout every former generation of the world, is a reason for the constancy
of nature throughout every future generation of it. The two statements are
distinct, the one from the other - and there is surely no logical necessity why
because the first statement is true, the second should be true also.
Nevertheless, and without reasoning, we are led from believing by observation
in the first, irresistibly to believe by anticipation in the second. There is a
harmony, but it is a contingent harmony, between our strong instinctive
conviction that it shall be so, and the unfailing universal accomplishment of
it. The very strongest among the principles of the human understanding is
faithfully responded to by the very surest among the processes of external
nature; and this adaptation, due to no will and to no reasoning of ours, yet
without which reasoning would be left without a basis - is perhaps the most
striking proof which can be given, that man, even when stalking in the pride of
his intellectual greatness along the high walk of philosophy, is but the
creature of an instinct that should ever be leading him astray - had not God
made the laws and the arrangements of his universe to correspond with it.
14. But while we thus advocate the independence of the two laws on each
other, that is, of the mental or subjective law of man's instinctive faith in
the constancy of nature, on the external or objective law of nature's actual
constancy - it should well be understood, that the view we are now to give of
Hume's atheistical argument does not rest on any metaphysical theory whatever,
as to the origin of this universal belief. Whether it be distinct from
experience or the fruit of experience, it is not upon this that we join issue
with our antagonist. Inquirers may differ as to the origin of our belief in the
uniformity of nature's successions. On this topic we exact no particular
opinion from them. It is enough if we agree in the soundness of that belief,
whatever the descent or the derivation of it may have been. It is man's
universal judgment, that the same consequents are ever preceded by the same
antecedents, and the two questions are altogether distinct from each other -
whence does that judgment take its rise, and whether that judgment is a true
one. We may differ or agree upon the first. It matters not, if we agree upon
the second, which forms the basis of Hume's reasoning. We concede to him his
own premises - even that we are not entitled to infer an antecedent from its
consequent, unless we have before had the completed observation of both these
terms and of the succession between them. We disclaim the aid of all new or
questionable principles in meeting his objection, and would rest the argument a
posteriori for the being of a God, on a strictly experimental basis.
15. The uniformity of nature lies in this, that the same antecedents
are always followed by the same consequents. Grant that the former agree in
every respect - then the latter will also agree in every respect. This
invariable following of two events, the one by the other, is termed a sequence;
and there is not a more unfailing or universal characteristic of nature than
the constancy of these sequences.
16. For the argument of this chapter
it is enough that we and our antagonists have a common belief in the constancy
of these sequences - though they who think, as we do, that the belief is of
instinctive origin, cannot but feel how wondrous the coincidence is between the
constancy itself and the fact, that from the very first dawnings of mental
perception this constancy is counted upon. It does not at all appear that the
experience of nature's constancy is first waited for ere it is anticipated by
the mind. And even although it had to be waited for; and the observation had
been made for years of nature's constancy - it is still to be explained why we
should infer from this the same constancy in the years which are to come. It
does not follow that because nature hath proceeded in a certain invariable
course throughout the whole retrospect of our experience, it must therefore do
the same throughout the whole range of our future anticipations. The one fact
does not necessarily involve the other. There has been an unfailing constancy
in nature through the years that are past - and there appears no necessity
which can be assigned, why on this account there should be as unfailing a
constancy of nature through the years that are to come. It may be, or it may
not be, - but yet the firm impregnable conviction of all, is that most
certainly it shall be - and this anticipation, which all without exception
have, is followed up by the most unexcepted fulfilment.
17. The heat
that is of a certain temperature will always melt ice. The impulse that hath
once given direction and velocity, will always in the same circumstances be
followed up with motion. The body that is raised from the earth's surface, and
then left without support, will always descend. The position of the moon in a
certain quarter of the heavens, will always be responded to by the rising or
falling tides upon our shores. These antecedents may be variously blended; and
this will give rise to different results; but the very same assemblage of
antecedents will always be followed by the same consequents. Our own personal
experience may have been limited to a few square miles of the earth that we
tread upon - yet this would not hinder such a faith in the immutability of
nature, that we could bear it in confident application all over the globe. In
other words, we count upon this constancy far beyond what we ever have observed
of it - and still the topic of our wonder and gratitude is, that a belief in
every way so instinctive should be followed up by an accomplishment so
sure.
18. But we shall dilate no further on the general position, that
our faith in the future constancy of nature is intuitive, and not deduced by
any process of reasoning however short, from our observation of its past
constancy. Let us here recommend the masterly treatise of Dr. Thomas Brown on
Cause and Effect - a philosopher who, with occasional inadvertencies in the
ethical department of his course, hath thrown a flood of copious and original
light over the mysteries of the human understanding; and who seems, in
particular, to have grappled successfully with a question at one time dark and
hopeless as the metaphysics of the schoolmen.
19. Without, therefore,
expatiating any farther on the origin of this belief, and certainly without
laying the least argumentative stress upon it in the reasonings which we have
now to offer - let it suffice for the present that there exists such a belief
in our mind, and that it meets with its correspondent reality in nature.
20. There are two processes of inference, which, however identical in
their principle, may be distinguished the one from the other. When there is an
invariable connexion between certain antecedents and certain consequents -
then, upon our seeing the antecedents, we look confidently forward to the
appearance of the consequents - or, when we see the consequents, we conclude
that their proper antecedents have gone before them. But it may so happen, that
various antecedents shall be mingled together at the same time - some of which
have an influence upon the result, and some of which have none; but still so as
to make it a necessary exercise of mind to disentangle the trains from each
other, and to discriminate what be the terms which stand to each other in the
strict relation of a sequence that is invariable.
21. But to descend
from the obscure language of generalities upon this subject. Let us take the
case of a watchmaker, and a watch, the former being the antecedent and the
latter the consequent - both of which, and the actual conjunction of which, we
have already observed, if we have ever seen a watch made. Now, on looking first
to the antecedent, there is room for distinguishing between the proper and the
accidental. It were wrong to say of this antecedent, that it comprises all the
particulars which meet and are assembled together in the person of the
watchmaker. It has nothing to do, for example, with the colour of his hair, or
with the quality of his vestments, or with the height of his stature, or with
the features of his countenance, or with the age and period of his life. The
strict and proper antecedent is distinct from one and all of these particulars;
and may be said to lie enveloped, as it were, in a mass or assemblage of
contemporaneous things which have nothing to do with the fabrication of the
watch. The watch, in fact, is the consequent of a purposing mind - putting
itself forth in the execution of a mechanism for the indication of time, and
possessed of competent skill and power for such an execution. The mind of the
observer separates here the essential from the accessary. Should he ever again
meet with the forth-putting of the same essential antecedent as before, he will
expect the same consequent as before - even though he should never meet with an
antecedent compassed about with the same accessaries. The next watchmaker may
differ from any he had ever before seen, in a multitude of particulars - in
age, in stature, in dress, and general appearance, and a thousand other
modifications which it were endless to specify. Yet how manifestly absurd to
look for another consequent than a watch because of these accidental
variations. It is not to any of these that the watch is a consequent at all. It
is solely to a purposing mind, possessed of competent skill and power - and
this was common both to the first and the second watchmaker.
The next time
that we shall see a watchmaker addressing himself to his specific and
professional object, there is little probability that we shall see in him the
very same assemblage of circumstantials that we ever witnessed before in any
other individual of his order. And yet how absurd to say that we are now
looking to a different antecedent from any that we ever before had the
observation of - that, just as Hume calls the world a singular effect, we are
now beholding in this new watchmaker the operation of a singular cause - and
that therefore it is impossible to predict what sort of consequent it may be,
that will come out of his hands. It is true that there are many circumstantial
things in and about the man which, if we admit as parts of the antecedent, will
make up altogether a singular antecedent. But in the strict essential
antecedent there is no singularity. There is a purposing mind resolved on the
manufacture of a watch, and endowed with a sufficient capacity for the
achievement of its object. This is what we behold now, and what we have beheld
formerly - and so, in spite of the alleged, and indeed the actual singularity
of the whole compound assemblage, we look for the very same consequent as
before.
22. What is true of the antecedent is true also of the
consequent. There may be an indefinite number of accessary and accidental
things, associated with that which is strictly and properly the posterior term
of the sequence. In a watch it is the adaptation of rightly shapen parts to a
distinctlv noticeable end, the indication of time which forms the true
consequent to the thought and agency of a purposing mind in the watchmaker. But
in this said watch there are a thousand collateral things which, rightly
speaking, form no part of the essential consequent - though altogether they go
to a composition different perhaps, in some respects, from any that was ever
exemplified before; and therefore go to the construction of a singular watch.
There is the colour of the materials, there is their precise weight and
magnitude, there is the species of metal - each of these and of many other
things apart from that one thing of form and arrangement, which indicates the
work and contrivance of an artist. Were the things with their existing
properties presented before me in a confused mass, the inference of a designing
cause would instantly vanish. It is the arrangement of things, obviously
fashioned and arranged for the measurement of time, that forms the sole
consequent - a consequent which does not comprise all the other circumstantial
peculiarities that we have now specified, but which rather lies enveloped in
the midst of them. These circumstantial things, it is very possible, were never
precisely so blended, as they are in the specimen before me. There never, it is
most likely, was just such a colour, united with just such a weight, and with
just such a magnitude, and with just such an exact order of parts in. the
machinery, as altogether obtain in the individual watch upon which I am now
reasoning. When looked to, therefore, in this general and aggregate view, it
may be denominated a singular effect. Yet who does not see that the inference
of a designing cause is in no way spoiled by this ? As a whole it may be
singular but there is that in it which is not singular. There is the
collocation of parts which has been exemplified in all other watches; and on
which alone the inference is founded, of an artist with skill to devise and
power to execute, having been the producer of it. It is this which the observer
separately looks to, and singles out, as it were, from all the collateral
things which enter into the assemblage that is before his eyes. In the effect,
the strict and proper consequent is the adjustment and adaptation of parts for
an obvious end. In the cause, the strict and proper antecedent is a designing
intelligence, wherewith there may at the same time be associated a thousand
peculiarities of person, and voice, and manner, to him unknown - but to him of
no importance to be known, for the purpose of establishing the sequence between
a purposing mind which is not seen, and the piece of mechanism which is
seen.
23. But ere we can bring this reasoning to bear on the Atheism of
Hume - there is still a farther abstraction to be made. Hitherto we separated
the essential consequent from the accessaries in a watch - so that though each
watch may be singular in respect of all its accessaries taken together - yet
all the watches have in common that essential consequent from which we infer
the agency of design in the construction of them. That consequent is adaptation
of parts for the specific end which the mechanism serves - that is, the
measurement of time. But it should be further understood that, for the purpose
of inferring design, it is not necessary that the end of the arrangement in
question should be some certain and specific end. It is enough to substantiate
the inference that the arrangement should be obviously conducive to some end -
to any end. From what the end particularly is, we learn what the particular
object was which the artist had in view - but for the purpose of warranting the
general inference that there was an artist who had a something in view, it
matters not what the end particularly is. It is enough that it be some end or
other - and that, an end which the structure or working of the machine itself
obviously announces.
In the case of a watch the following are the
counterpart terms of the sequence. The consequent is a mechanism adapted for
the measurement of time. And its counterpart antecedent is an intelligent
adaptation, putting forth his ability and skill on the production of a
mechanism for the measurement of time. But though we should lop off, as it
were, the measurement of time or this specific end from each of these terms;
and substitute in its stead an end generally, or a whatever end, the inference
of an intelligent adaptation would still hold good. The consequent then would
be a mechanism adapted for a whatever end (and that an end to be learned from
the examination of the mechanism itself); and its counterpart antecedent would
be an intelligent adaptation for that whatever end. For either the more special
or the more general inference, we equally arrive at an intelligent adaptation.
When we in the consequent restrict our attention to what the end particularly
is, then we proportionally restrict the antecedent to an intelligent mind bent
on the accomplishment of that specific end. But when in the argument we make
but a general recognition in the consequent of some end or other, the
conclusion is equally general of an intelligent mind bent on the accomplishment
of that some end or other.
All this might be provided for in the reasoning,
by laying proper stress on the distinction between the adaptation of parts for
the end, and the adaptation of parts for an end. The latter, in fact, is the
only essential consequent to the antecedent. of a purposing mind - and from the
appearance of the latter we are entitled to infer this antecedent. By taking
this distinction along with us, we come to perceive how far the argument of
final causes may be legitimately extended.
24. We already understand
then how on having seen one watch made, we are entitled to infer a maker for
the second watch - though in many of its accessaries it may differ most widely,
and therefore differ most widely on the whole or as a compound assemblage from
the first. With all these contingent variations in the two machines, there is
one thing which they have in common - adaptation of parts for the end of
measuring and indicating time; and this justifies the inference of a common
antecedent - even a purposing mind that had this specific object in view. But
we contend that, in all sound logic, we are warranted to extend the inference
farther - not merely to a second watch but to a second machine of any sort,
though its use or the end of its construction was wholly different from that of
a watch. If, for example, instead of a mechanism which served to mark a
succession of hours, there were presented a mechanism which served to evolve a
succession of musical harmonies, we should just as confidently infer an
intelligent artist in the one case as in the other, although we had only seen
the making of a watch, and never seen the making of an harmonicon. The truth is
that it is not the particular end either of the one machine or the other, which
leads to the inference of an intelligent maker - but the inference rests
nakedly and essentially on this, that there is adaptation of parts for any end
at all. Between one watch and another there is this common consequent -
adaptation of parts for the end; and on this we ground the conclusion of there
having been design and a designer in the fabrication of each of them.
But
between the watch and the musical apparatus there is also a common consequent -
not adaptation of parts for the end, but still adaptation for an end; and on
this we are equally warranted to ground the conclusion of design having been
employed in the formation of each of them. The definite article is always
comprehensive of the indefinite, so that whenever there is the end, there is
always an end. But the indefinite is not also in the same way comprehensive of
the definite, so that in the case of an adaptation having an end, it may not be
the end which we have ever witnessed in the putting together of any former
adaptation. Still it matters not. The inference, not of a mind purposing the
specific thing for which we have formerly observed both a contrivance and a
contriver, but still of a mind purposing something or a purposing mind, is as
legitimate as ever. And so there lies enveloped in the watch this consequent -
the adaptation of parts for the end - but there also lies enveloped there, the
adaptation of parts for an end - and the latter we distinctly perceive to be in
the music-box as well as in the time-piece. When we look to the latter machine
we feel sensible that we never before witnessed the putting forth of
intelligence in the adaptation of parts for the end. In this respect there is
novelty, because we never before saw a machine made for the performance of
tunes. But we at the same time are abundantly sensible, that whether in the
example of a watch or of something else, we have a thousand times witnessed the
putting forth of intelligence in the adaptation of parts for an end. In this
respect there is no novelty; so that whether it be the watch that we have seen
made or the music-box that we have not seen made, there is the same firm basis
of a sure and multiplied experience on which to rest the conclusion of an
Intelligent Maker for both.
25. And thus it is that we do not even
require a special experience in watch-making to warrant the application of this
argument from final causes either to this or to any other machines whatever.
There may be a thousand distinct products of art and wisdom in which our
observation has been restricted to the posterior, and has never reached to the
prior term of the sequence - that is, where we have seen the product, and never
either witnessed the production nor seen the producer - and yet we have a firm
experimental basis on which to rest the inference, that a producer there was,
and one too possessed of skill to devise and power to execute. The truth is
that we every day of our lives, and perhaps every hour of each day, witness the
adaptation of means to an end, in connexion with design and a designer - though
never perhaps to the end in any instance of hundreds of distinct machines which
could be specified - and which therefore, are in this respect to us singular
effects. But still each of these machines has in it adaptation to an end, as
well as adaptation to the end; has in it therefore that posterior term, of
whose connexion with the prior term of an intelligent cause we have had daily
observation. It is not, we should remark, on the adaptation to any object
quoad the end - but on the adaptation to it quoad an end that the
inference is grounded. It is thus that though introduced for the first time to
the sight of a watch or a gun-lock or a cotton-mill or a steam-engine, we are
as sure of intelligence having been engaged in the execution of each of them as
if we had been present a thousand times at their fabrication. The truth is that
we have been present many thousand times, though not at the process of
formation in either of these individual pieces of mechanism, yet at other
processes which have enough in common with the former ones to make an
experimental argument in every way as good. We have had lessons every day of
our life, by which to read what the characteristics be of those arrangements
that indicate a mind acting for purpose; though not a mind acting for the
purpose.
This matters not. The conclusion is as good the one way as the
other - the valid conclusion, if we will but reflect upon it, not of a subtle
but of a sound and substantial process of reasoning.
26. And if we can
thus infer the agency of design in a watch-maker, though we never saw a watch
made - we can on the very same ground infer the agency of design on the part of
a world-maker, though we never saw a world made. We concede it to our
adversaries, that, when reasoning from the posterior term or consequent to the
prior term or antecedent of a sequence, both terms must have been seen by us in
conjunction on former occasions - else we are not warranted to infer the one
from the other of them. We are aware of the use which they make of this
principle. They tell us that we cannot argue from a world to a God - because
the world, if an effect, is a singular effect - that we have no experience in
the making of worlds, as we may have in the making of watches - that had we
seen a world made and a God employed about it, then on being presented with
another world, we might have inferred the agency of a God in the creation of it
- and this they contend to be the whole length to which our experience can
carry us. But they overlook the distinction between what is essential in the
consequent, and what is merely circumstantial therein; and it is here that the
whole mistake lies. The essential consequent we have seen produced or we have
seen in conjunction with its proper antecedent a thousand times - and thus it
is, that we should confidently infer a designing artificer from the view of a
watch, though we had just as little experience in the making of watches as we
have in the making of worlds. We may never have seen a watch made - but in the
watch before our eyes, we see the manifest adaptation of means to an end; and
this we have frequently before witnessed, as the posterior term of a sequence,
in connexion with the forth-putting of sagacity and skill on the part of a
purposing mind, as its prior term., We have not seen the whole consequent named
a watch produced by the whole antecedent named a watchmaker - but we have seen
daily and familiarly that which is in the watch, adaptation of means to an end,
produced by that which is in the watch-maker, a designing intellect. These two
terms we have seen in constant conjunction in thousands of other instances; and
we have therefore the warrant of a manifold experience for inferring that they
were conjoined in this instance also.
We carry the inference no farther
than to the skill and power of the artificer. It is this part and this only,
that we make the antecedent to the observed consequent before us. We may have
never seen a watchmaker in contact with a watch - but we have often seen the
effort and skill of a designing mind in contact with the adaptation of useful
and subservient means. This has been a frequently observed sequence, from
either term of which we may infer the other. Now the consequent of this
sequence, the adaptation of useful and subservient means, lies enveloped in the
watch; and we infer that the antecedent in this sequence, the effect and skill
of a designing mind, lies enveloped in a watch-maker so that though we should
never have seen a watch made, and never seen a watch-maker employed in the
formation of one, though we should never have had this particular experience,
yet we have had experience enough to infer from the mechanism thereof the
wisdom that presided over the fabrication.
27. In the case of God and
the world we have only one term of the sequence before us. We see the world -
but we have never seen God; and far less have we ever seen Him employed in the
formation of a world. We never saw the whole consequent, a world actually
emanated and brought forth by the whole antecedent a God. But both in the
mechanism of the world, and in the innumerable products wherewith it teems, do
we see the adaptation of means to desirable ends - and this we have seen
emanated and brought forth in many hundreds of instances by a purposing mind as
its strict and proper antecedent. It is thus that we hold ourselves to be
abundantly schooled, and that too on the basis not of a partial but of a full
experience, for the inference of a God. We carry the argument upward from the
adaptations in nature to a contriving intellect; just because we have often
witnessed similar adaptations, and witnessed them too in conjunction with an
antecedent wisdom that planned and that performed them. It is because we have
had manifold observation, and observation inclusive of both terms of the
sequence, that from the one term in the present instance even the adaptations
which nature offers to our view, we infer the other term even a designing mind,
at whose will and by whose power and wisdom they have been effectuated. We have
never seen a whole nature ordered into being - and which therefore in its
entireness and totality may be denominated to us a singular effect - just as on
the first sight of a watch, the watch regarded as a whole is to us a singular
effect. But neither with the one nor the other is there any singularity in the
essential consequent. The singularity lies only in certain circumstantials
which have properly no part in the reasoning, and which for the proof of an
antecedent wisdom in either case may be dismissed from the sequences
altogether. In that which the mind strictly bears regard to in this argument
there is no singularity. We have seen a multitude of times over that which is
in the watch, accommodation of parts to a desirable end - and whenever we had
the opportunity of perceiving also the antecedent term, there was uniformly the
mind of one who devised and purposed the end - and so, on the principle which
gives truth to all our reasoning from experience, we infer the agency of such a
mind in the formation of a watch, though it be a formation that we never
witnessed. And the same of this world, though we never saw the formation of a
world. Our present state gives us to see the posterior term - even all of
creation that is visibly before us. Our past history hath not given us the
opportunity of seeing the creation itself or of seeing the anterior term,.even
that agency by which it was effected. But in the course of our experience we
have seen adaptations innumerable conjoined with a prior agency that in every
instance was the agency of a scheming and a skilful intellect - and just as not
from the watch but from the adaptations in it, so not from the world but from
the adaptations in it, do we on the basis of an accumulated experience,
reaching to both terms of many an actually observed sequence, infer the
existence of a world-maker, who contemplated and devised the various ends for
which we behold so manifest a subserviency of parts in the universe around
us.
28. After all then the economy of atheism would be a very strange
one. We are led by the Constitution of our minds to count at all times on the
uniformity of nature - and it is an expectation that never deceives us. We are
led to anticipate the same consequents from the same antecedents, or to infer
the same antecedents from the same consequents - and we find an invariable
harmony between the external truth of things and this inward trust of our own
bosoms. Within the limits of sensible observation we experience no
disappointment - and from such an adaptation of the mental to the material, we
should not only argue for the existence of an intelligent Designer, but should
hold it to be at once an indication of His benevolence, and His truth that He
so ordered the succession of all objects and events, as to make of it an
universal fulfilment to the universal conviction which Himself had implanted in
every human bosom. It were strange indeed if this lesson of nature's
invariableness which is so oft repeated, and which within the compass of
visible nature has never been found to deceive us, should only serve to land us
in one great deception when we come to reason from nature to nature's God - or
that in making that upward step which connects the universe with its
originating cause, there should for once and at this great transition be the
disruption of that principle whereof the whole universe, as far as we can
witness or observe, affords so glorious a verification.
Throughout all the
phenomena in creation we find no exception to the constancy or the uniformity
of sequences - and it were truly marvellous if the great phenomenon of creation
itself, offered the only exception to a law, which, throughout all her
diversities and details, she so widely exemplifies - or if, while in every
instance along the world's history of a produced adaptation we find that there
have been contrivance and a contriver, the world itself with all the vast and
varied adaptations which abound hi it, instead of one great contrivance, is
either the product of blind necessity, or some random evolution of unconscious
elements that had no sovereign mind either to create or to control
them.
29. And here we may observe that the very abstraction which we
find to be necessary for the vindication of our cause from the sceptical
argument of Mr. Hume, is that, too, on which we might found one of the proper
refinements of a rational Theism. To preserve our argument, we had to detach
all the accessaries from that which is common to the works of nature and of
art, and so to generalize the consequent into adaptation for an end. In like
manner should we detach all that is but accessary from the authors of nature
and art - and so generalize the antecedent into that which is common to both,
even an intelligent and a purposing mind. When we thus limit our view to the
strict and proper consequent, we are led to limit it in like manner to the
strict and proper antecedent. All we are warranted to conclude of the
antecedent in a deduction thus generalized and purified is that it is purely a
mental one. This is the alone likeness between God and man to which the
argument carries us. The gross imaginations of anthropomorphitism are done away
by it - and the argument by which we thus establish the reality of a God,
serves also to refine and rationalize our conceptions of Him.
30. It is
thus then that we would meet the argument by Hume, of this world being a
singular effect. We have already said that though unable to demonstrate a
primitive creation of matter, we might have still abundant evidence of a God in
the primitive collocation of its parts. And we now say that though unable to
allege our own observation or presence at the original construction of any
natural mechanism - though we never saw the hand of an artist employed in the
placing and adaptation of parts for the end of any such mechanism - yet,
beholding as we do every day from our infancy adaptations for an end, and that
too in conjunction with an antecedent mind which devised them - we have really
had experience enough on which to ground the inference of a living and
intelligent God. On comparing a work of nature with a work of human art, we
find a posterior term common to both - not adaptation for the end, because each
has its own specific use, and the one use is distinct from the other - but
adaptation for an end. It is on the strength of this similarity that we can
carry the inference of a designing cause from the seen to the unseen in
specimens of human handiwork; and, by a stepping-stone in every way as sure,
from the seen handiwork of man to the unseen handiwork of God.
In each we
behold not subserviency to the same end, but subserviency to an end - and on
this generality in the consequent of each, we infer for each an antecedent of
like generality - a mind of commensurate wisdom to devise, and of commensurate
power to execute, either of the structures that are placed before our eyes. It
is not brute matter in lumpish and misshapen masses that indicates a deity. It
is matter in a state of orderly arrangement as in the great apparatus of the
heavens; or matter more finely and completely organized, as in the exquisite
structures of the animal and vegetable kingdom. It is true we never saw such
pieces of workmanship made - but we have seen other pieces made dissimilar to
these only in the end of their fabrication, yet like unto these in subserviency
to an end - dissimilar therefore in that which is not essential to our
argument, but similar in that which is fully sufficient for our argument. It is
precisely in the oversight of this distinction that the fallacy of the
atheistical reasoning lies. The singularity that has been charged upon the
world belongs to certain circumstantial things which have really no place in
the premises of our argument, and are therefore not indispensable to the
conclusion. In the essential premises there is no singularity. The formation of
the whole world is like to nothing that we have ever witnessed - but in the
formation of .all that in the world holds out to us the lesson of a Divinity,
there is likeness to that which we have often witnessed. We have, times and
ways without number, had experience of both terms in the adaptation of parts to
an end. It is on this experience - the experience of a completed sequence, that
reason founds her conclusions. We never with the eye of sense have perceived
the actual emanation of a creature from the fiat of its Creator. But we have
often seen the succession between the working of a mind, and its workmanship,
in a piece of fashioned and adjusted materialism. And therefore it is that the
thousand goodly complications which be on the face of our world - the trees,
and the flowers, and the insects, and the feathered birds, and the quadrupeds
that browse upon the earth, and the fishes of the sea whose peculiar habitudes
fit them for peopling that else desolate waste of mighty waters; and lastly,
amidst this general fulness both of animal and vegetable life, erect and
intelligent man, curiously furnished in body and in mind, with aptitudes to all
the objects of external nature, and which turn into a theatre of busy interest
and enjoyment the crowded and the glowing scene over which he expatiates -
therefore it is, we say, that all bears so legibly the impress of a governing
spirit, that all speaks in reason's ear so loudly of a God.
31. By this
reasoning we avoid the necessity of recurring to a new principle in order to
repel or ward off an assault of infidelity - an expedient, which, unless the
principle be very obvious in itself, gives an exceeding frailty to the
argument, and causes it to be received with distrust. Perhaps the tendency both
of Reid and Stuart, was to an excessive multiplication of the original laws in
our mental constitution, which they all the more readily indulged, as it
savoured so much of that unshrinking Baconian philosophy, from the application
of which to the science of mind, they augured so sanguinely - and in virtue of
which, unseduced by the love of simplicity, they would take their lesson as to
the number of ultimate facts whether in the world of mind or matter from
observation alone.
Now it is well to acquiesce in every phenomenon, like
that of magnetism, as if it were a distinct and ultimate principle of which no
further account can meanwhile be given - so long as it withstands all the
attempts of analysis to resolve it into another phenomenon of a more general
and comprehensive quality. But this is very different from a gratuitous
multiplication of first principles, and more especially from the confident
affirmation of one before unheard of till framed for the accomplishment of a
special service. It appears to be a resting of the theistical argument on a
very precarious foundation, when the inference of design from its effects, is
made a principle sui generis - instead of making it what it really is one case
out of the many, where by a principle more comprehensive, we, on the recurrence
of the same consequent as before, infer the same antecedent as before. We
deprecate the introduction of such an auxiliary as calculated to give a
mystical and arbitrary character to the Philosophy of Religion; and hold it a
far better offering to the cause, when it is palpably made to rest on no other
principles than those which are recognised and read of all men.
END OF
SCANNED SECTION
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