CAUSES AND FINAL CAUSES.

A

SCHOOL-BOY found the word GOD boldly printed in his first reading-lesson. He had whiled away many happy hours at home with his alphabetic blocks, and had become familiar with the letters used to spell the names of his playmates and playthings; and when his teacher pointed to this group of well-remembered characters, he immediately pronounced it DOG. Such is too often the way we children of philosophy read the great lessons of creation and providence. Read direct, as the Great Instructor writes them out for us, they reveal the infinite purposes of love and care of an Infinite Creator; read backward, only a blind obedience to a blind fate.

In reading nature backward, we may learn valuable lessons of a certain kind. Sometimes nature is more easily read thus, and through inference we more clearly learn the path of duty. Having traced back sickness to over-indulgence or over-exertion, we are led to fix some practical limits to exertion and indulgence beyond which it is not safe for us to go. The positive command of parents might teach the same lesson in another way. By the one process we trace nature back from effect to cause, by the other we read the law of duty directly. Thus we are taught continually to look backward and forward for future direction.

Two model teachers in these two lines of instruction are Experience and Conscience. But these are not our only teachers. Of every fact

against which we stumble, and event with which we are involved, we ask two questions: "What is its cause?" "What is its purpose?" However we explain the origin of these questions, they are equally natural, and press with equal insistency for an answer. We are not always equally satisfied with the answers given. In some cases, we think we understand the cause more clearly, in other cases the purpose; but we trust equally to either, according as the one or the other is the more clear. The mechanic examines a theodolite. He can soon learn that turning the screws will change the position of the different parts of the instrument, but he would never guess its use. The philosopher examines the eye of an eagle. However skilled he may be in the knowledge of material forces, he can never explain how such an organ was made, but the purpose he quickly perceives. It was made to look upon the sun, and the sun was made as it is to give light to just such organs.

But in whichever direction the understanding seeks satisfaction, it must stop with limited results. Somewhere in the chain of cause and effect we must stop; somewhere we must stop in tracing the never-ceasing current of results. In one case we can trace back a result to a cause so general that we despair of being able to explain by human reason the cause of so great a cause, and we rest there comparatively satisfied. For example: If we find the principle of gravitation sufficient to account for any change of position in a body, we consider that we have explained the change. In another case we can trace some result of such beneficent value, and so clearly worthy the intelligence displayed in planning the means employed, that we think our conclusions in this case are practically reliable and satisfactory, if not ultimate and completely comprehensive.

It is the purpose of this essay to set forth some of the reasons why we should trust to the validity of the notion of design with as much confidence, in seeking for a solution of the problem of existence, as to the notion of physical causation. It is not my purpose to seek the limits of the argument from design, nor to consider its force in any intricate or doubtful cases. How far it may be used as evidence of the attributes of any controlling Intelligence in nature, or what purposes may have been in view in creation, are questions with which I do not intend here to deal. I only maintain that the notion of design, and of intelligence inferred from marks of design, are as valid as the notion of natural causation and the deductions of physical science.

I. The teleological argument antedates the Christian era, and has been more elaborately developed, perhaps, than any other argument

ever stated in logical form; and it would be just to demand my reasons for this new discussion of it. I reply, therefore, that an aggressive and influential section of scientific men deny its validity. According to these men, no explanation of any phenomenon is worth a moment's thought except that of material causality. La Place constructed a "System of the Universe," which he declared did not need a Deity. Mr. Darwin says: "If the doctrine. . . . . that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of man" is true, "it would be fatal to my theory." In professing to believe his theory, he denies his ability to believe we can legitimately trace any idea of purpose in any structure or form of animal life, to anything outside of that in which it exists or was developed. The German advocates of evolution deny teleology, and originally criticized the "Origin of Species" because they thought it taught design. But Prof. Huxley hastens to charge the German critics with misunderstanding their English neighbor, and expresses his own belief that "teleology, as commonly understood, has received its death-blow at Mr. Darwin's hands."

It is not necessary to quote further to show the hostility of these "scientists" to the argument from design, and how fatal they consider its acceptance would be to their notions of science. They do not dogmatically deny the existence of a Designer outside of what we call nature, but they do affirm that we cannot know anything of him. from creation. Says Prof. Huxley: "Till we know all the consequences to which all possible combinations continued through infinite time can give rise, any hypothesis is better than the miserable presumption. . . . . that any phenomenon is out of the reach of natural causation." But no one understands better than he that we can never hope to know all this; and his language is a plain denial of the validity of all argument except that of cause and effect.

Let us now for a moment imagine ourselves shut up absolutely to such a belief as this, and look around upon our situation. In the first place, there is no evidence of the future continuance of existing physical conditions. We have now, remember, given up expecting any purpose to be fulfilled; there is no longer anything to be aimed at, and no monstrosity of physical change or development ought at any time to surprise us. This the old Epicureans consistently admitted. We know not, nor is there anything that can teach us, even to a degree of probability, what new combination of causes the morrow is likely to reveal; and who knows how soon we may revert to lower animal life, or develop into fiends? Then, we feel an utter lack of 1 Origin of Species, p. 178. (Am. ed.) 2 Lay Sermons, p. 282.

sympathy between ourselves and everything around us. At best we are in no better condition than pebbles on the sea-shore, grating harshly against each other, or ground to powder between larger stones.

Again, there is no basis for morality. If we would seek a basis in the principle of the greatest good to the greatest number, we are met by the fact that now all good is contingent upon blind physics, and as future physical conditions are uncertain, nothing can assure us that what is good to-day will be good to-morrow, or the day following, or at least, all so called good and evil may be reversed in some future time, not many ages distant. If we rely on conscience, it no longer says, "An omniscient Creator planted me in the soul," but it refers us only to the history of the past, and finds no sanctions of future retribution or delight. If we ask to know a single step beyond this life, we are told it is a leap into utter darkness. We do not know whether we shall be conscious or unconscious; or, if we could be assured of consciousness, whether we shall be virtuous or wicked, with a new combination of circumstances—whether we shall have happiness or misery. Mr. Darwin says there need be no fear but the race will continue to grow in intelligence, and improve in what he calls morals. But how does he guess at that? What fixes for him the acme of perfection to which purposeless forces will elevate the race? What is meant by improvement or perfection, when every stone fits snugly in its bed of mortar, and cannot do otherwise? Reasoning on the future is all out of place. We can only know the past, and that to no purpose.

Objection may be made to this discussion that the extreme denials spoken of are confined to a small number of men, and have only a theoretical influence with them. It may be said that materialists do not agree among themselves, and that there is no fear but true reason will finally prevail, and false theories, if left to themselves, will perish from their own want of consistency. But it is only too apparent that theoretical opposition to a belief in the supernatural is gaining a wide-spread practical influence over the popular mind. We may see this in the tone of the public press, and in the guarded forms of expression which men feel themselves everywhere compelled to make, if they would avoid being called superstitious. The claims of Christianity to the divine sanctions of prophetic vision, miraculous power, and providential control, which were once the undeniable defence of the truth, have become the most difficult obstacles to its acceptance, in the minds of many just beginning to reason on the profound principles of existence.

Again, we cannot rely on the effectiveness of old arguments to meet

new forms of error. Skepticism is continually changing its front. No pains are taken by evolutionists to deny the statement that marks of design in nature would argue an intelligent cause. It is denied that there are marks of design. "Far from imagining that cats exist in order to catch mice well," says Prof. Huxley, "Darwinianism supposes that cats exist because they catch mice well." A cat not only would not have been a cat, it would not have been anything, it would have gone under in the struggle for existence, if it had not caught mice well.

II. As materialists take the defensive in this argument, and content themselves with simple denials, it is impossible to tell what or how much they will admit. It is necessary, therefore, to go back to first principles, and inquire whether the human mind is justified in inferring design at all or not-whether or not we can find any valid testimony in nature, except that which merely affirms physical force. This is a simple question, and requires no elaborate argument. It is primitive, and the chain of evidence has but one link. Does this make real connections that we may trust it to anchor us to the unknown, or is it an illusion?

I suppose that no one would think me so foolish as to write this article with no design, no purpose; or, rather, I suppose that I could not write it unless I had some purpose as a motive for writing, as well as some ability to express my thoughts. In writing this paragraph I am as conscious that an end in view is necessary to secure my attempting to write, as that an ability to use words that will express my thoughts is essential to the act itself. There may be a prospect of making money, of gaining a reputation, or of influencing men to think as I desire to have them think. Whatever it is that influences me to write I call a purpose. As this purpose is that which causes me to write, it is also a cause.

I perceive then two kinds of causes. The purpose or reason I have for writing is the cause of the attempt to write and so the cause of the writing, and the writing is the instrument or cause by means of which the end is secured. I am conscious of the influence of the end in view before it has anything more than an ideal existence, and it may in fact never be more than ideal. As a power with me it is independent of the effort I put forth; for in its influence it antedates the effort. But my effort, or my writing, is not independent of this motive, and cannot be; therefore, while the writing will be the efficient cause of the accomplishment of my purpose, if I gain my object, the purpose is in a deeper sense the cause of its efficient cause. Aristotle

1 Lay Sermons, p. 303.