Chapter II: Philosophy of Design (4)

"Many have expressed their opinion very boldly on the necessary relation between organization and life, who have never extended their views to the system of nature. To place man, an intelligent and active being, in this world of matter, he must have properties bearing relation to that matter. The existence of matter implies an agency of certain forces;--the particles of bodies must suffer attraction and repulsion; and the bodies formed by the balance of these influences upon their atoms or particles must have weight or gravity, and possess mechanical properties. So must the living body, independently of its peculiar endowments, have similar composition and qualities, and have certain relations to the solids, fluids, gases, heat, light, electricity, or galvanism, which are around it. "Without these, the intellectual principle could receive no impulse--could have no agency and no relation to the material world. The whole body must gravitate or have weight; without which it could neither stand securely, nor exert its powers on the bodies around it. But for this, muscular power itself, and all the appliances which are related to that power, would be useless. When, therefore, it is affirmed that organization or construction is necessary to life, we may at least pause in giving assent, under the certainty that we see another and a different reason for the construction of the body. Thus we perceive, that as the body must have weight to have power, so must it have mechanical contrivance, or arrangement of its parts. As it must have weight, so must it be sustained by a skeleton; and when we examine the bones, which give the body height and shape, we find each column (for in that sense a bone may be first taken) adjusted with the finest attention to the perpendicular weight that it has to bear, as well as to the lateral thrusts to which it is subject in the motions of the body."... Again p. 405, seq.

.... "Mr. Hunter illustrated the subject thus:--Death is apparent or real. A man dragged out of the water, and to appearance dead, is, notwithstanding, alive, according to the definition we have given. The living endowments of the individual parts are not exhausted. The sensibility may be yet roused; the nerves which convey the impression may yet so far retain their property, that other motor nerves may be influenced through them; the muscles may be once more concatenated, and drawn into a simultaneous action. That vibratory motion which we have just said may be witnessed in a muscle recently cut out of the body, may be so excited in a class of muscles--for example, in the muscles of inspiration--that the apparently dead draws an inspiration. Here is the first of a series of vital motions which excites the others, and the heart beats, and the blood circulates, and the sensibilities are restored; and the mind, which was in the condition of one asleep, is roused into activity and volition, and all the common phenomena of life are resuscitated. Such is the series of phenomena which is presented in apparent death from suffocation; but, if the death has been from an injury of some vital part, the sensibilities and properties of action in the rest of the body, though resident for a time, have lost their relations, and there is a link wanting in that chain of vital actions which restores animation. Here, then, there can be no resuscitation; and the death of the individual parts of the body rapidly succeeds the apparent death of the body.

"We perceive now that our original conception of life and the terms we use respecting it, in common parlance, are but ill-adapted to this subject when philosophically considered. We early associate life and motion so intimately that the one stands for the other. If we then investigate by anatomy, we find a curious and minute mechanism in operation, an engine and tubes for circulation, and, in short, an internal motion of every particle of the frame; and the anatomist is also led into the error of associating in his mind life with motion and organization. But when we consider the subject more closely, and divest ourselves of habits and prejudices associated with words, we perceive that, without making any vain and even dangerous attempt at definition, life is first to be contemplated as the peculiarity distinguishing one of two classes into which all matter must be arranged; the one class, which embraces all living matter, is subject to a controlling influence which resists the chemical agents, and produces a series of revolutions, in an order and at periods prescribed; the other, dead matter, is subject to lapse and change under chemical agency and the common laws of matter.

"Let us examine the body of a perfect or a complicated animal. We find each organ possessed of a different power. But there is as yet no conventional language adapted to our discourse on this subject, and that is the source of many mistakes; for when a man even like Mr. Hunter had his mind illuminated upon this science, how was he to frame his language, when every word that he used had already a meaning which had no reference to the discovery he had made--to the distinct qualities which he had ascertained to belong to the living parts?...

"The difference between dead and living matter will appear to be, that in the one instance the particles are permanently arranged and continue to exhibit their proper character, as we term it, until by ingenuity and practice some means are found to withdraw the arranging or uniting influence; and then the matter is chemically dissolved: resolves into its elements, and forms new combinations: whilst the life continues, not simply to arrange the particles, and to give them the order or organization of the animal body, but to whirl them in a series of revolutions, during all which the material is passive, the law being in the life. The order and succession of these changes and their duration do not result from the material of the frame, which is the same in all animals, but from that influence which we term life, and which is superadded to the material." (_Ibid._ 408.)

Writing on Function Mr. Herbert Spencer discusses the following question. Its interest to our argument is unmistakable.

"Does Structure originate Function, or does Function originate Structure? is a question about which there has been disagreement. Using the word Function in its widest signification, as the totality of all vital actions, the question amounts to this--Does Life produce Organization, or does Organization produce Life?

"To answer this question is not easy, since we habitually find the two so associated that neither seems possible without the other; and they appear uniformly to increase and decrease together.... There is, however, one fact implying that Function must be regarded as taking precedence of Structure. Of the lowest Rhizopods, which present no distinctions of parts, and nevertheless feed and grow and move about, Prof. Huxley has remarked that they exhibit Life without Organization....

"It may be argued that on the hypothesis of Evolution, Life necessarily comes before organization. On this hypothesis, organic matter in a state of homogeneous aggregation, must precede organic matter in a state of heterogeneous aggregation. But since the passing from a structureless state to a structured state, is itself a vital process, it follows that vital activity must have existed while there was yet no structure: structure could not else arise. That function takes precedence of structure, seems also implied in the definition of Life. If Life consists of inner actions so adjusted as to balance outer actions--if the actions are the _substance_ of Life, while the adjustment of them constitutes its _form_; then, may we not say that the actions to be formed must come before that which forms them--that the continuous change which is the basis of function, must come before the structure which brings function into shape? Or again, since throughout all phases of Life up to the highest, every advance is the effecting of some better adjustment of inner to outer actions; and since the accompanying new complexity of structure is simply a means of making possible this better adjustment; it follows that function is from beginning to end the determining cause of structure."--_Principles of Biology_, by Mr. Herbert Spencer, p. 153, seq.

We now return to Kant, from whom Dr. Whewell quoted the sentence--"An organized product of nature is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means." Passing by a metaphysical paragraph expressed in a manner too technical for the general reader, Kant's practical comment on this sentence runs as follows:--

"Dass die Zergliederer der Gewächse und Thiere, um ihre Structur zu erforschen und die Gründe einsehen zu können, warum und zu welchem Ende solche Theile, warum eine solche Lage und Verbindung der Theile und gerade diese innere Form ihnen gegeben worden, jene Maxime: dass nichts in einem solchen Geschöpf UMSONST sey, als unumgänglich nothwendig annehmen und sie eben so, als den Grundsatz der allgemeinen Naturlehre: dass NICHTS VON UNGEFÄHR geschehe, geltend machen, ist bekannt. In der That können sie sich auch von diesem teleologischen Grundsatze eben so wenig lossagen, als dem allgemeinen physischen, weil, so wie bei Veranlassung des letzteren gar keine Erfahrung überhaupt, so bei der des ersteren Grundsatzes kein Leitfaden für die Beobachtung einer Art von Naturdinge, die wir einmal teleologisch unter dem Begriffe der Naturzwecke gedacht haben, übrig bleiben würde.

"Denn dieser Begriff führt die Vernunft in eine ganz andere Ordnung der Dinge, als die eines blossen Mechanism der Natur, der uns hier nicht mehr genug thun will. Eine Idee soll der Möglichkeit des Naturproducts zum Grunde liegen. Weil diese aber ein absolute Einheit der Vorstellung ist, statt dessen die Materie eine Vielheit der Dinge ist, die für sich keine bestimmte Einheit der Zusammensetzung an die Hand geben kann, so muss, wenn jene Einheit der Idee, sogar als Bestimmungsgrund _a priori_ eines Naturgesetzes der Causalität einer solchen Form des Zusammengesetzten dienen soll, der Zweck der Natur auf ALLES, was in ihrem Producte liegt, erstreckt werden; weil, wenn wir einmal dergleichen Wirkung im GANZEN auf einen übersinnlichen Bestimmungsgrund über den blinden Mechanism der Natur hinaus beziehen, wir sie auch ganz nach diesem Princip beurtheilen müssen und kein Grund da ist, die Form eines solchen Dinges noch zum Theil vom letzteren als abhängig anzunehmen, da alsdann bei der Vermischung ungleichartiger Principien, gar keine sichere Regel der Beurtheilung übrig bleiben würde." _Kritik der Urtheilskraft_, Section 65.

For the benefit of those who find Kant's German difficult we subjoin a neat French Translation from the pen of M. Barni.

"On sait que ceux qui dissèquent les plantes et les animaux pour en étudier la structure, et pouvoir reconnaître pourquoi et à quelle fin telles parties leur ont été données, pourquoi telle disposition et tel arrangement des parties, et précisément cette forme intérieure, admettent comme indispensablement nécessaire cette maxime que rien n'existe _en vain_ dans ces créatures, et lui accordent une valeur égale à celle de ce principe de la physique générale, que _rien n'arrive par hasard_. Et en effet ils ne peuvent pas plus rejeter ce principe téléologique que le principe universel de la physique; car, de même qu'en l'absence de ce dernier il n'y aurait plus d'expérience possible en général, de même, sans le premier, il n'y aurait plus de fil conducteur pour l'observation d'une espèce de choses de la nature, que nous avons une fois conçues téléologiquement sous le concept des fins de la nature.

"En effet ce concept introduit la raison dans un tout autre ordre de choses que celui du pur mécanisme de la nature, qui ne peut plus ici nous satisfaire. Il faut qu'une idée serve de principe à la possibilité de la production de la nature. Mais comme une idée est une unité absolue de réprésentation, tandis que la matière est une pluralité de choses qui par elle-même ne peut fournir aucune unité déterminée de composition, si cette unité de l'idée doit servir, comme principe _a priori_, à déterminer une loi naturelle à la production d'une forme de ce genre, il faut que la fin de la nature s'étende _à tout_ ce qui est contenu dans sa production. En effet, dès que pour expliquer un certain effet, nous cherchons, au-dessus de l'aveugle mécanisme de la nature, un principe supra-sensible et que nous l'y rapportons _en général_, nous devons le juger tout entier d'après ce principe; et il n'y a pas de raison pour regarder la forme de cette chose comme dépendant encore en partie de l'autre principe, car alors, dans le mélange de principes hétérogènes, il ne resterait plus de règle sûre pour le jugement." _Critique du Jugement_, Section 65.

Kant is not in any dress the easiest of thinkers to follow--a result possibly consequent upon the resemblance which his writings bear to trains of reasoning as they pass from the lips of one who thinks aloud. The following paragraph from another work of Dr. Whewell's may be useful to some minds as a comment upon this portion of Kant's teleology.

"There is yet one other Idea which I shall mention, though it is one about which difficulties have been raised, since the consideration of such difficulties may be instructive: the Idea of a purpose, or as it is often termed, a _Final Cause_, in organized bodies. It has been held, and rightly, that the assumption of a Final Cause of each part of animals and plants is as inevitable as the assumption of an efficient cause of every event. The maxim, that in organized bodies nothing is _in vain_, is as necessarily true as the maxim that nothing happens _by chance_. I have elsewhere shown fully that this Idea is not deduced from any special facts, but is assumed as a law governing all facts in organic nature, directing the researches and interpreting the observations of physiologists. I have also remarked that it is not at variance with that other law, that plants and that animals are constructed upon general plans, of which plans, it may be, we do not see the necessity, though we see how wide is their generality. This Idea of a purpose,--of a Final Cause,--then, thus supplied by our minds, is found to be applicable throughout the organic world. It is in virtue of this Idea that we conceive animals and plants as subject to _disease_; for disease takes place when the parts do not fully answer their _purpose_; when they do not do what they _ought_ to do. How is it then that we thus find an Idea which is _supplied_ by our own minds, but which is _exemplified_ in every part of the organic world? Here perhaps the answer will be readily allowed. It is because this Idea is an Idea of the Divine Mind. There _is_ a Final Cause in the constitution of these parts of the universe, and therefore we can interpret them by means of the Idea of Final Cause. We can _see_ a purpose, because there _is_ a purpose. Is it too presumptuous to suppose that we can thus enter into the Ends and Purposes of the Divine Mind? We willingly grant and declare that it would be presumptuous to suppose that we can enter into them to any but a very small degree. They doubtless go immeasurably beyond our mode of understanding or conceiving them. But to a certain extent we _can_ go. We can go so far as to see that they _are_ Ends and Purposes. It is _not_ a vain presumption in us to suppose that we know that the eye was made for seeing and the ear for hearing. In this the most pious of men see nothing impious: the most cautious philosophers see nothing rash. And that we can see thus far into the designs of the Divine Mind, arises, we hold, from this:--that we have an Idea of Design and of Purpose which, so far as it is merely _that_, is true; and so far, is Design and Purpose in the same sense in the one case and in the other."[81]

* * * * *

It will be well worth while to close this present series of illustrations by a review of Professor Huxley's last published and best considered positions on Teleology. He printed, in 1871, an article on Haeckel's "Natürliche Schöpfungs Geschichte," and has now entitled it "The Genealogy of Animals," and included it in his recent volume of Critiques. We may therefore assume that we here find the distinguished Biologist's deliberate opinions. He says, p. 305, "The Teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or one of the higher _Vertebrata_,[82] was made with the precise structure which it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless it is necessary to remember that there is a wider Teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day.

"Consider a kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours, minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries 'cuckoo!' and perhaps shows the phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever clockmaker could predict all it will do after an examination of its structure.

"If the evolution theory is correct, the molecular structure of the cosmic gas stands in the same relation to the phenomena of the world as the structure of the clock to its phenomena."

Mr. Huxley's comparisons[83] are always amusing, partly because they are of an unlooked for description. They also keep up the attention of his readers or hearers. But they have one great fault--the fault we noticed in explaining the nature of analogical argument--they carry away the mind too far, and lead the reader often, sometimes the writer himself, into very serious oversights. Let us take notice how the Professor carries out his present similitude. "Now let us suppose a death-watch, living in the clock-case, to be a learned and intelligent student of its works. He might say, 'I find here nothing but matter and force and pure mechanism from beginning to end,' and he would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous 'tick! tick!' so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism to the pendulum, to the fact that the one thing the clock did always and without intermission was to tick, and that all the rest of its phenomena were intermittent and subordinate to ticking! For all this, it is certain that kitchen clocks are not contrived for the purpose of making a ticking noise.

"Thus the teleological theorist would be as wrong as the mechanical theorist, among our death-watches; and, probably, the only death-watch who would be right would be the one who should maintain that the sole thing death-watches could be sure about was the nature of the clock-works and the way they move; and that the purpose of the clock lay wholly beyond the purview of beetle faculties.

"Substitute 'cosmic vapour' for 'clock,' and 'molecules' for 'works,' and the application of the argument is obvious." (pp. 306, 7.)

One thing is very obvious here--and that is a flaw. State the case as a proposition thus--One or both of the two beetles is to the clock and its maker, as man is to the world and its Maker. A tremendous assumption--surely as sufficient to have startled Francis Bacon as the apparition of a new Idol. Is there any possible reason for elevating a death-watch--thinking in character as a death-watch--into a capable interpreter of clocks? Moreover, the ground principle of our human Teleology is that Man holds a lofty relation, not to the Universe only, but to its Maker likewise. He claims, in a word, the most sublime of all earthly kinships. The very fact that he can look with intelligent and admiring appreciation upon the works of God, justifies his belief that he has a real insight into their excellence, and is so far at least akin to the mind of God. If Mr. Huxley meant that a proportionate degree of insight into clock-making was possessed by his beetles, they would surely have been able to read the clock's dial-plate and understand the lesson conveyed by its pointers. The death-watch would at least say "_labuntur horæ_"--and comprehend that time was being registered--although he might even then fall far short of our human belief "_pereunt et imputantur_," and fail of knowing that time registers itself in a record of moral good and evil.

The truth is that all mixing up manlike attributes with brute animality, and what seems ten times worse, with machines of wood and metal, can be nothing better than an attempt to produce a sound and prolific offspring from some ill-assorted and heterogeneous hybridism.

We have adverted to this peculiarity of style before and venture upon doing so again, because all admirers of Mr. Huxley's great powers (and who can read his writings without such admiration?) may surely be justified in wishing that he would discard it at once and for ever. Its practical effect is apparently to assume the real point at issue and to cover up the tacit assumption. That he is really no chance offender in this respect may be gathered from a few instances noted at random. We have just had a couple of philosophic death-watches[84]--one a Teleologist, the other a Mechanicist--the lucubrations of both being neither exactly human, nor yet Coleopterous. We observed before a righteous clock[85]--regularly moral if regularly wound up. He has besides a machine, undescribed but endued with a gift of ratiocination[86]--and more curious still a piano[87] which listens when it is played upon, and though possessed of only one sense (hearing) succeeds in building up "endless ideas" of a certain cast and cogency. From this self-educated instrument much may of course be looked for, and accordingly we find

"Its cogitative faculties immersed
In cogibundity of cogitation,"

till it evolves from the depth of its consciousness something like an idealistic theory of sound. This hypothesis, Mr. Huxley in reply to his piano, refutes, first by an appeal to the material substance of the instrument itself; and secondly to the existence of a musician who plays upon it. Will he permit us to accept in like manner the fact of our own nobler subsistence, and also the being of One Who attunes its secret heart-strings to notes of sublime melody?

The monsters aforecited irresistibly remind us of a repartee of Goldsmith's. He wittily said that Dr. Johnson would make little fishes talk like great whales. Had they done so it may be doubted whether the Doctor's idolatrous biographer would have discovered a minnowy mind beneath their Johnsonian utterances. And we confess to a difficulty of our own. The righteous clock is indeed genuinely Huxleian, but what shall we say of his mechanical logic, his piano, and his death-watches? By way of illustrating our perplexity let us suppose some rural sexton to mix up his own instincts with those of a biological burying beetle. The destiny of all flesh would naturally be determined in the first place by a decent covering of earth. But what about its final end? Would that be an aldermanic beetle feast or a _Resurgam_?

Think again how a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might breathe a benevolent spirit into a much employed dissecting knife. The sharp thing would certainly entertain a repugnance to the horrors of vivisection. There might also be a denial of its utility based on the scalpel's personal experience, or perhaps a moral doubt as to whether such means are justified by the ends proposed. Would Mr. Huxley listen to the remonstrance and undertake to lift up his powerful voice at Paris or at Berlin besides a few other remote places which need not be particularized?

Or finally what ear would he lend to a magnifying glass accustomed to habits of observation and possessed by the soul of Spurzheim. Suppose it should affirm that a slice of Destructiveness is recognizably different in structure from a section of Benevolence; and Acquisitiveness in like manner distinguishable from Ideality! Yet a humanitarian scalpel or Spurzheim magnifying glass may be thought a Huxleian phenomenon.

A truce to such mongrel meditations. We gladly turn away from them and continue our quotations from the Professor's sentiments delivered _in propria persona_, recommencing at the place where our last extract broke off. (p. 307.)

"The teleological and the mechanical views of nature, are not necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe."

We quite agree with Mr. Huxley that Mechanism never can exclude final causes, and that a thorough-going theory of Evolution (taken apart from its excrescences) disables the theorist from all real disproof of intention or Design. As we said before, the question of how the theorist's primordial arrangement began, is left unprovided for. And if a beginning, so certainly an _end_. The more steadily the first state of the Universe conceivable by Science is contemplated, the wider and more determinate the view thus taken, the more evident it becomes that the ground occupied by Natural Theology is not fenced off by the iron pale of Mechanism. The fencer is (as Huxley says) "at the mercy of the Teleologist."

The Professor's next sentence deserves careful consideration--"On the other hand, if the teleologists assert that this, that, or the other result of the working of any part of the mechanism of the universe is its purpose and final cause, the mechanist can always inquire how he knows that it is more than an unessential incident--the mere ticking of the clock, which he mistakes for its function."

How far this criticism holds good of many well-meant treatises filled with special instances of Design is a question for candid consideration. Meantime the whole sentence amounts to this conclusion:--We must distinguish between such wide arguments as Baden Powell's, and the details of certain writers who have dealt with what they thought good examples and illustrations of a grand universal principle. And that such is Mr. Huxley's meaning we may perceive from another paragraph immediately preceding our first extract. (p. 305.)

"In more than one place, Professor Haeckel enlarges upon the service which the _Origin of Species_ has done, in favouring what he terms the 'causal or mechanical' view of living nature as opposed to the 'teleological or vitalistic' view. And no doubt it is quite true that the doctrine of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and coarser forms of Teleology. But perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer."

Now, such being the state of facts, we may refuse to say with Huxley that the following question (asked p. 307) is "not irrational." "Why trouble oneself about matters which are out of reach, when the working of the mechanism itself, which is of infinite practical importance, affords scope for all our energies?"

We cannot forego our trouble, for two reasons. _First_, according to the statements before quoted, Mr. Darwin's researches have improved the case for Teleology. Advocates of Design may therefore take courage, they have gained a potent alliance. _Secondly_, "the practical working of the Mechanism itself" is very far, we think, from being our All--so far, indeed, that it sinks into insignificance compared with the hope of Immortality. Our highest interest lies in gathering such information as we can regarding Him with Whom we have to do as the Arbiter of our future existence. Above all things, we desire Him to be our Father and our Friend. Perchance His attributes are not matters out of reach. He may be very near to every one of us, if we are indeed His Offspring.

Another opinion of Professor Huxley's is of great auxiliary value to the argument from Design. The structures mentioned have to some minds appeared as its most serious difficulties. "Professor Haeckel," he explains, "has invented a new and convenient name, 'Dysteleology,' for the study of the 'purposelessnesses' which are observable in living organisms--such as the multitudinous cases of rudimentary and apparently useless structures. I confess, however, that it has often appeared to me that the facts of Dysteleology cut two ways. If we are to assume, as evolutionists in general do, that useless organs atrophy, such cases as the existence of lateral rudiments of toes, in the foot of a horse, place us in a dilemma. For, either these rudiments are of no use to the animal, in which case, considering that the horse has existed in its present form since the Pliocene epoch, they surely ought to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which case they are of no use as arguments against Teleology." (p. 307.) It would be hard to overestimate the value of this opinion, still more hard to overrate its genuine and outspoken honesty.

Mr. Huxley places at the end of his recent volume a passage from Bishop Berkeley which we will venture to borrow by way of conclusion to this lengthy note:--

"You see, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain, how it is forced upwards in a round column to a certain height, at which it breaks and falls back into the basin from whence it rose; its ascent as well as its descent proceeding from the same uniform law or principle of gravitation. Just so, the same principles which, at first view, lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense."

_Adsit omen!_ May it be even thus with our large-minded Professor and with all other sovereign princes of Biology--[Greek: Hileôs' Asklêpios]!

FOOTNOTES:

[14] See more particularly Chapter V., "Production and its Law."

[15] Most literary people are aware that it was borrowed by Paley himself. A reference very accessible to ordinary readers may be made to Knight's English Cyclopædia, Article _Nieuwentyt_. "A work," says the biographer, "was published by him at Amsterdam in 1715, in one volume 4to, entitled 'The right use of Contemplating the Works of the Creator': the object of the author is first to convince atheists of the existence of a supreme and benevolent Creator, by contemplating the mechanism of the heavens, the structure of animals, etc.; and, secondly, to remove the doubts of deists concerning revealed religion. It was originally published in Dutch, but has passed through several editions, in German, French, and English. The English editions, translated by Chamberlayne, under the title of the 'Religious Philosopher,' appeared at London in 1718-19 and 1730, in three vols. 8vo. This work, as was first pointed out in the _Athenæum_ for 1848, pp. 803, 907, 930, served as the basis for Paley's 'Natural Theology,' the general argument and many of the illustrations in that remarkable work being directly copied--and without the slightest acknowledgment, though Paley was acquainted with the book--from the 'Religious Philosopher.'"

Lord Brougham, who does not appear to have seen Bernard Nieuwentyt's book, believes that Derham supplied the fountain from which Paley drank so freely. Apparently he used both.

To this note it may be added that the want of Natural Philosophy under which the Archdeacon himself laboured, has been recently commented on in the following terms:--

"Paley kicked his foot unconcernedly against the stone he found on the heath; for anything he knew, he says, it might have been there for ever. Geology was then a practically unknown science, or he might have found epochs of history in the stone, and evidence of all manner of special creations for man's benefit. But Paley was no natural philosopher, only a half-learned theologian, who skimmed over all difficulties, and produced a book which has done immense harm in leading Englishmen to anthropomorphic conceptions of God."--_Report of an Address by A. J. Ellis, President of the Philological Society, in an American Newspaper_ (_the Index_) _for August 10th, 1872_.

[k] So Hume (Inquiry, Section IV.): "A man, finding a watch or any other machine in a desert island, would conclude that there had once been men in that island." And again (Id. Section V.): "A man who should find in a desert country the remains of pompous buildings, would conclude that the country had in ancient times been cultivated by civilized inhabitants but did nothing of this nature occur to him, he could never form such an inference." The inference is, as Hume says, from effect to cause--a subject which he is here investigating _more suo_. To the nature of this inference I have found reason for recurring more than once.

[16] A striking peculiarity of this skeleton is thus described by Professor Huxley ("Manual of the Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals," p. 217). "In many _Lacertilia_ (_Lacertæ_, _Iguanæ_, _Geckos_) the caudal vertebræ have a very singular structure, the middle of each being traversed by a thin, unossified, transverse septum. The vertebra naturally breaks with great readiness through the plane of the septum, and when such lizards are seized by the tail, that appendage is pretty certain to part at one of these weak points."

[l] "God," says Dogberry, "is a good Man." So others besides Dogberry.

Curiously enough, the charge of Anthropomorphism has been brought by a most eminent naturalist against the greatest authorities on Natural Selection.

M. Edouard Claparède writes as follows in the "Archives des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles" for 1870:--

"Mon but est seulement de montrer que les armes dont M. Wallace se sert victorieusement pour attaquer le duc d'Argyll, se retournent contre lui-même. Sans doute, c'est un pur anthropomorphisme que de supposer chez un Créateur un sentiment du Beau entièrement semblable au nôtre, et une telle hypothèse n'a rien à faire avec la science. Mais cet autre anthropomorphisme par lequel les Darwinistes supposent chez les oiseaux un sens du Beau identique au nôtre, est il plus justifié? Soit M. Darwin, soit M. Wallace, expliquent la formation de la belle voix et du beau plumage chez les oiseaux mâles par sélection sexuelle. Les femelles sont censées donner toujours la préférence aux mâles, qui, au point de vue humain, ont la plus belle voix et les plus brillantes couleurs. Au contraire, chez toutes les espèces à cri désagrèable pour l'oreille humaine et à couleur sombre, la nature du cri comme de la couleur a dû sa formation à une autre forme de sélection que la sélection sexuelle. Quel oubli de l'antique dicton: _De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum_! Si ce dicton a été reconnu vrai chez toutes les nations civilisées, il acquiert une force bien autrement grande lorsqu'il s'agit de son application à des oiseaux. Serait il absurde de supposer chez certains oiseaux un goût prononcé pour les couleurs sombres, comme ce goût existe chez beaucoup d'hommes? Et alors ne devient-il pas possible, contrairement à MM. Darwin et Wallace, d'expliquer la couleur terne de certaines espèces par sélection sexuelle? N'en peut-il pas être de même pour la voix criarde de tel ou tel volatile? Certes, il est dangereux de baser un édifice sur quelque chose d'aussi subjectif qu'un sentiment, quelque soit du reste la nature de l'être chez lequel on le suppose plus ou moins gratuitement, oiseau ou Créateur!" (pp. 175-6.)

[m] If any one desires to see how early and how persistently this difficulty attached itself to the Design Analogy, I may be permitted to refer him to a thin volume of my own, entitled "Right and Wrong," pp. 17-22 (text and notes), and Appendix, pp. 58-60.

A similar Dualism (coupled with the charge of Anthropomorphism) is frequently urged against Natural Theology at the present day. The alternative proposed has been called Monism. The fixed unyielding realm of Abiology (inorganic nature) is taken as the type of the universe. The sole supposable Divine principle (or Spirit) is identified with its law, which is in turn pronounced identical with philosophical necessity--that is to say, a necessity not imposed by or flowing from the Divine will, but a necessity which annihilates the possibility of all will. The Divine principle thus supposed is simply that law or force which is embodied in the mechanism of the universe.

Professor Haeckel of Jena is the author of a book which has been styled in Germany, "The Bible of Darwinism." The following passages will show how he treats the subject under consideration in the text. He writes (Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, Book II. cap. vi. sec. 2, "On Creation") to the following effect:--

"THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION is either altogether unimaginable, or at least perfectly inconsistent with that pure intuition of Nature founded on an empirical basis. In Abiology a creation is no longer anywhere spoken of at all, and it is in Biology only that people are still closely wrapped up in this error. The conception of creation is perfectly unimaginable, if by it is understood 'an origination of something out of nothing.' This acceptation is quite incompatible with one of the first and chiefest of Nature's laws--one, indeed, universally acknowledged--namely, with the great law, that ALL MATTER IS ETERNAL." (Vol. i. p. 171.)

There is one general reflection which may fairly strike the honest and ingenuous mind respecting the difficulties thus "Now if the conception of such an immaterial force, discoverable exterior to matter, independent of, yet nevertheless acting upon it, is absolutely inadmissible and inconceivable in itself, then so, too, becomes the conception of a creative power from our point of view; and all the more so, since with it are united the most untenable teleological conceptions, and the most palpable Anthropomorphism."... "In all these teleological conceptions, and similarly in all histories of creation which the poetical phantasy of men has produced, gross Anthropomorphism is so evident, that we may leave the denial of this Creation-idea to the insight of any general reader who thinks for himself, and is not too far involved in traditional prejudices."... "A creation of organisms is, therefore, partly quite unimaginable, partly in such complete contradiction to all knowledge of nature empirically gained, that we cannot in any case allow ourselves to end by accepting this hypothesis. There remains, consequently, nothing else but to suppose a spontaneous origination of the simplest organisms, from which all more perfect ones developed themselves by gradual metamorphosis--that is to say, a self-forming or self-configuration of matter into organization, which is generally called primordial production or spontaneous generation (_generatio æquivoca_). (Ibid. 173-4.)

Haeckel commences his section upon Dualism and Monism (Book I. cap. iv. section 6), with the following quotation from August Schleicher (die Darwinische Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft: Weimar, 1863, p. 8):--

"The tendency of modern thought is undeniably towards _Monism_. _Dualism_--whether you are pleased to define it as the contrast of spirit and nature, of contents and form, of appearance and reality--is no longer a firm ground to stand upon, if we wish to survey the field of modern science. To the latter there is no matter without spirit (_i.e._ without the unavoidable necessity that governs it), nor, on the other hand, is there any spirit without matter. We might say, perhaps, that there is neither matter nor spirit in the usual acceptation of the words, but only a something which is the one and the other at the same time. To charge this view--which is founded on observation--with materialism, is equally unjust as to lay it at the door of spiritualism."

Haeckel concludes this section by avowing an unalterable conviction of the truth of Monism, with which his mind is thoroughly penetrated.

The extracts above given will explain the value of those distinctions respecting Law and Causation, which are drawn in the latter part of this chapter. The wider subject pertains, however, to Chapter V., where it is discussed at some length.

[17] Many readers may be pleased by a perusal of Lord Brougham's "Dissertation on the Origin of Evil." It gives an account of various hypotheses, and ends with some interesting remarks. See his "Dissertations on Subjects of Science connected with Natural Theology," vol. ii.

[18] Even Lord Brougham, whom no one will accuse of a too ardent addiction to metaphysical pursuits, chides Paley very severely for this neglect. Dr. Whewell's censure is more grave. Passages from these criticisms are given in Additional Note A, with some explanations which may conduce to a clear insight of what is meant by bad metaphysics, particularly in relation to the subject before us.

[19] Compare the figure employed in Rev. xxi. 1.

[n] There seems little doubt that the popular phrase "Design proves a Designer" has given rise to an extensive distrust of the Design argument _in toto_. Compare Additional Note B.

[o] Another shape of the objection is stated and examined in Additional Note C.

[20] Essay on the "Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy," Ed. 2, p. 174. The italics and capitals are Professor Powell's.

[p] Were Paley now alive, he might plead the example of Mr. Darwin, whose practice it is to speak of any incidental chasm occasioned by the link sometimes missing from his premises, as "not a long step." "Mr. Darwin's argument," says a reviewer of his "Descent of Man," "is a continuous conjugation of the potential mood. It rings the changes on 'can have been,' 'might have been,' 'would have been,' 'should have been,' until it leaps with a wide bound into 'must have been.'" (_Times_, April 8, 1871.) Any similarity between the reasonings of the Archdeacon and the Naturalist may appear noteworthy. But the coincidence ends here. Paley, though reproved by a Lord Chancellor, had the good fortune to be excused by a Bishop. There is a short account of both censure and defence in the notes to Powell's "Connection of Natural and Divine Truth," pp. 287-9.

[21] P. 177.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Pp. 175-6.

[25] Putting aside workmanship exercised on given material, we may perceive a gliding of thought from the idea of plan, form, or fashion, to adaptation, and so onwards to purpose and intention--that is, conscious adaptation to a designed end.

[26] "Sämmtliche Werke," vol. II., pp. 51, 52.

[27] "Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth," pp. 183-4.

[28] See the work last quoted, pp. 287-9. The Professor substantially agrees with Lord Brougham's censure before referred to, and considers Dr. Turton's defence of Paley an insufficient apology.

[29] "Essays and Reviews," 8vo. p. 125.

[q] The general reader may reasonably feel a difficulty in assigning their proper meaning to terms used in senses so technical. He may possibly be assisted by looking over the field of view thus:--A Force is visible to us as a movement in Nature;--when we try to formulate it intelligently to ourselves, its mental equivalent is Law. If, then, we wish to describe an intelligent præ-conception of Law (such as distinctly involves the Foresight of its operation) we call the Law a Creative Idea, or (less definitely) a Design. Tracing the chain of causation in the reverse or downward direction, the Idea when put in movement appears to our mind's eye as Law; and when we wish to include its actual working upon the realm of Nature we term it a Force.

Both James Mill and his son (a truly affectionate annotator), are careful to point out that the essence of moral causation involves Intention--that is (as Mr. Mill explains), Foresight, or expectation of consequences.--"Analysis of the Human Mind," II., 400, 401.

It should be observed that in many branches of Natural Science the word Law is so employed as to include the conception of Force. Law is in this usage not merely a logical formula expressive of realized facts, but it involves the idea of the coercion or impellent motion which brought those facts into being. "Thus, then," says Dr. Carpenter, "whilst no Law, which is simply _a generalisation of phenomena_, can be considered as having any _coercive_ action, we may assign that value to Laws which express _the universal conditions of the action of a Force_, the existence of which we learn from the testimony of our own consciousness." He had before remarked that "it is the substitution of the Dynamical for the mere Phenomenal idea, which gives their highest value to our conceptions of the Order of Nature."--_Address to British Association at Brighton, August, 1872._ This _Order_ of Nature, as the learned President says in conclusion, is no "sufficient account of its _Cause_."

[30] See how the matter appears to a Satirist:--"By the great variety of theories here alluded to, every one of which, if thoroughly examined, will be found surprisingly consistent in all its parts; my unlearned readers will perhaps be led to conclude that the creation of a world is not so difficult a task as they at first imagined. I have shown at least a score of ingenious methods in which a world could be constructed; and I have no doubt that had any of the philosophers above quoted the use of a good manageable comet, and the philosophical warehouse, _chaos_, at his command, he would engage to manufacture a planet as good, or, if you will take his word for it, better than this we inhabit." Such is the dictum of the profound Knickerbocker,--"History of New York," 8vo, p. 16. His variety of theories concludes with that of "the renowned Dr. Darwin," of Lichfield. If the history were brought down to our day, additional variety might be given to this part of it.

[r] It is upon this confusion that Powell charges Pantheistic theories in which physical speculations are mistakenly supposed to have their natural termination. See Additional Note D, where the passage to which more than one reference has already been made, is given _in extenso_. Compare also our Chapter VI. on Causation.

[31] Essay as above, p. 165.

[32] The signification attached by the Professor to Law and Cause may be most readily explained by a similitude. Let the physical series of antecedents and consequents be represented by a chain of which we see the present links, but both its beginning and its end are invisible. Physical law is this chain. Cause must not be considered its first link, for Cause differs in _kind_ from the series, is in truth _sui generis_, and can be illustrated by no physical phenomenon, but by the fact of our own Moral Volition. Cause, therefore, is external to the chain, and originates, not only the first, but every link of it. Each and all--nay, the universal chain in its entirety--may be viewed as owing its existence to one single fiat of an absolute moral Cause. Compare on this subject Chapters VI. and VII. ensuing.

[33] Essay, pp. 155, 173. It should, however, be observed that Sterling's language has been interpreted two opposite ways, and therefore the obscurity may be verbal. Coleridge's expressions have regard to certain "so-called _Demonstrations_." His own judgment as to the cumulative proofs of Theism was that "there are so many convincing reasons for it, within and without--a grain of sand sufficing, and a whole universe at hand to echo the decision!--that for every mind not devoid of all reason, and desperately conscience-proof, the Truth which it is the least possible to prove, it is little less than impossible not to believe; only indeed just so much short of impossible, as to leave some room for the will and the moral election, and thereby to keep it a truth of religion, and the possible subject of a commandment."--_Aids to Reflection_, Edition 1843, Vol. I. p. 135. First and rare edition, p. 177.

[34] "There is thus no alternative, but either to abandon the inquiry after an immediate intuition of power, or to seek for it in _mind as determining its own modifications_; a course open to those who admit an immediate consciousness of self, and to them only. My first and only presentation of power or causality is thus to be found in my consciousness of _myself as willing_. In every act of volition, I am fully conscious that it is in my power to form the resolution or to abstain; and this constitutes the presentative consciousness of free-will and of power. Like any other simple idea, it cannot be defined; and hence the difficulty of verbally distinguishing causation from mere succession. But every man who has been conscious of an act of will, has been conscious of power therein; and to one who has not been so conscious, no verbal description can supply the deficiency."--_Prolegomena Logica_, p. 151.

[s] It seems singular that this rise of thought has of late years seldom been explicitly put forward as the natural continuation and necessary extension of the argument from Design. "He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?... He that teacheth man knowledge, _shall not He know?_" In other words, if we may argue from the structure of the eye and ear to an Intelligence which comprehends our sense-perceptions, their conditions, and their activities, may we not always argue from the reason of man to an Intelligence comprehending our highest human endowments?

If so, we reflect these attributes back upon our explanation of the natural world. We say, further, that such a Creator would never make a mere _machine_. Humanity was a necessary complement of all that is set under Man. And thus Francis Bacon's aphorism may be applied in a double sense,--Man not only interprets Nature to himself--but he affords in himself a text for her more complete interpretation. Nature and Human Nature are two correlatives.

[35] Take, as example, the scientific theories on Insanity and its melancholy accompaniments. How many theorizers seem to justify Sir William Ellis's old observation, that few of his medical brethren ever got much notion of Mind?

[36] "Natural Theology attempts to demonstrate the existence of a personal First Cause, supreme Reason, and Will. The relations of mankind towards such a Being are called Natural Religion."--_Right and Wrong_, p. 58.

[37] If any one wishes to convince himself that other meanings proposed are open to serious objections, let him peruse Max Müller's first Lecture on the Science of Religion.

[38] Compare Additional Note E, on the extent and divisions of the Science of Natural Theology.

[39] The Soul, p. 32, seq.

[40] Any strictures of ours on the language employed by Natural Theologians must be understood as appeals from individual or peculiar usage to world-wide acceptation and old established custom:--

"Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi."

[41] As regards another important word illustrated in this chapter, it may be useful to add that the term Analogy is often employed in a wide or rather vague signification; not only by careless writers, but by philosophers. There is an important passage in Bacon's Plan of the Instauratio (prefixed to the Novum Organon) which Wood translates thus:--"The testimony and information of the senses bears always a relation to man, and not to the universe, and it is altogether a great mistake to assert that our senses are the measure of things.

The Latin original for "bears a relation" is "est ex analogiâ," but Mr. Ellis prefers rendering it by "has reference to," and confirms his decision by comparing two other Latin phrases;--one, "Materia non est cognoscibilis nisi _ex analogiâ_ formæ"--the other, "Materia non est scibilis nisi _in ordine_ ad formam;--ut dicit" (adds Thomas Aquinas) "Philosophus in primo Physicorum." Mr. Ellis subjoins "That the meaning of the word Analogy was misconceived by S. Thomas, by Duns Scotus, and by the schoolmen in general, is pointed out by Zabarella, _De prim. rerum materiâ_, I. 4."

"Philosophus" means Aristotle, who, however, in the passage referred to is faithful to his own correct definition of Analogy, and his instance may readily be stated in four terms, as will appear on reference to the passage (Ed. Bekker 191, a. 8). Argyropylus translates by "similitudine rationis," and St. Hilaire explains "analogia" for the benefit of the general reader by "rapport proportionnel"--(Leçons de Physique I. 8, s. 18).

That Bacon was really thus vague in his use of "ex analogiâ" may be gathered from his substitution of "in ordine ad" as an equivalent in the closely related passage, Nov. Org. II. 20. Such being the case with so great a writer, some little allowance may be made for difference of phrase employed by ordinary reasoners on Natural Theology.