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It (nature) is not there independently, self-subsistently, and on its own account; it is there only for a purpose and as a means. "As a dancer," it is said, "having exhibited herself to the spectator, desists; so does nature desist, having manifested herself to soul. He (the spectator) desists because he has seen her; and she (the dancer) desists because she has been seen." That is, the work has been accomplished; what was to be done has been done; and the implements withdraw.

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As regards the reference on the part of Colebrooke to the Theogony of Hesiod and certain resemblances in its traditions to those of the Indians, there cannot be a doubt of its correctness. Both ring with assonances to the cosmogony of the Pentateuch; and it is impossible to avoid believing, in reference to all three, that they echo to us some of the most ancient utterances of the

race.

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Mr. Paley, the learned editor of Hesiod, observes in his preface (xv.) that in the Theogony we have "traces of what appear to be primitive and nearly universal traditions of the human family traditions SO immensely ancient, that all traces of anything like a history of them had, long before Hesiod's time, been utterly and irretrievably lost. The coincidences between the earliest known traditions of mankind and the Mosaic writings are much too numerous and important to be purely accidental, and much too widely dispersed to have been borrowed solely from that source." So writes Mr. Paley. The traditions in Hesiod, therefore, in regard to primitive being, infinite and divine, are in nowise discordant from those of the East. We shall allow Hesiod, accordingly, to be, so far, the bridge from the East to the West, from the Indian to the Greek, where and among whom we shall find at last the scientific beginning, historically, as well of Teleology as of Ontology, with all the ethical and other consequences desiderated by Lord Gifford.

GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRD.

Final causes-The four Aristotelian causes-Are there final causes in nature-Matter and form-Other causes only to realize the final causes-Cudworth-Adam Smith-The proofs, number, order, etc. Teleology-Anaxagoras-Socrates in the PhædoXenophon - Plato - Socrates on Anaxagoras The causes together, concrete - "Abstract" - Forces, Clerk Maxwell Heraclitus-Newton- Buckle - Descartes - Gassendi - Bacon on causes, metaphysics, and forms-The νοῦς (nous) of Anaxagoras-Bacon on design-Reid, Newton, Hume on designNewton.

FEARING that we should find the present lecture dull, I have been at considerable pains this week in the rewriting of it; for I desire to be at least intelligible, if not interesting or popular. My reason for fear was that I had been led to speak at some length of final causes, and the subject appeared a somewhat dry one. Still, let it be as it may, it is one that in such a course as this is unavoidable. For the very existence of our science, the very existence of Natural Theology, is bound up with the existence of final causes. Destroy final causes once for all, and you destroy Natural Theology for ever.

The origin of the term, as is well known, lies in the Aristotelian quadruplicity of causes as such; final causes being but one of its members. We are told in our classrooms, namely, of material causes, formal causes, final causes, and efficient causes; and the usual example given is that of a watch, in regard to which, the metals are the material causes; the wheels, pinions, cylinders, etc., the formal causes; the watchmaker, the efficient cause; and the pointing of the hour, the final cause. Warmth is the final cause of a blanket; but so much sheep's wool is its material cause. The final cause of a bridge is the passage of a river; its material cause, the stones; its formal cause, the arch; and its efficient cause, the architect with his workmen. Now, though we can hardly say with Dr. Reid (WW.526) that these four causes are but four shades of the same meaning, we can certainly maintain that, for the most part, they constitute together but a single concrete; as we can readily see in the examples of the watch and the bridge. It is evident, however, that such examples as these, let them be as explanatory as they may, can have no application to, or vitality in, Natural Theology, so far as, in its very terms, it is to be considered a manifestation of nature. That there are these causes existent in human affairs, even to an almost endless extent, is not the question. We have only to know a house, or a ship, or a canal, or a railway, or a telegraph, or a garter, or a shoe tie, or a button, or a knife, fork, and spoon, to understand all that. But are there also such things in nature ? that is the question; and there are those who answer it in the affirmative; while there are others, again, who meet it with a direct negative. And this is the clash: here is the very edge -here is the very knot, and point, and core of the battle. The whole business of Natural Theology lies there is there, or is there not, design ? Is there, or is there not, a final cause in nature? If there be anything such in nature if there be anything in nature that, by very formation, shows design, purpose, intention to have been its origin, then there is also proof in nature of an efficient cause that gave at least form to matter. And in this way, even in nature, the four causes would be seen to constitute together but a single concrete quite as much and as manifestly as they do in art. Already, indeed,

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we can see as much as this to be at least the case with the material and the formal causes, let it be as it may with the others. That is, either apart is at once seen to be null. If matter were without form, it would be incognizable, a nonentity, a void, something nowhere to be seen or touched or heard. Lump-paste, lump-clay, lumpmetal may seem formless to us, and yet cognizable; but this is not so. Lump-paste, lump-clay, lump-metal are substances, each with its own qualities; and these qualities are to each its form. The qualities of paste are not the qualities of clay; nor are these the qualities of metal. Consequently, all three are distinguishable the one from the other. A substance without a quality were a nonens, and a quality without a substance were but a fiction in the air. Matter, if to be, must be permeated by form; and equally form, if to be, must be realized by matter. Substance takes being from quality; quality, actuality from substance. That is metaphysic; but it is seen to be as well physic, - it is seen to have a physical existence; it is seen to be in rerum natura. Form is, as it were, the thought, the soul of matter; and matter, as it were, the body, the externale of form. So it is that a thing is understood when we see the externale in the internale; and, quite as much, the internale in the externale. Form and matter are the same synthesis, or, what is equally true, they are the same antithesis. But, taking it for granted that this will be readily admitted to be the case as regards matter and form, it will not be so readily acknowledged, we may assume, that final causes are in similar vital relation with the material and formal ones. That these latter causes are but the vehicles in realization of final causes, this, in fact, is but the matter in dispute, and can never be expected to be accepted by those who oppose final causes themselves. What we have presently historically to see, however, is pre

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cisely this doctrine in Greece - that material causes (with formal) are but the implements, and instruments, and scaffolding of final causes. It is in this mood that Cudworth says, "To take away all final causes from the things of nature is the very spirit of atheism: it is no prejudice or fallacy imposed on ourselves to think that the frame and system of this whole world was contrived by a perfect understanding and mind." As another modern illustration, we may say that there is a passage in the Theory of Moral Sentiments which almost bears out the supposition that even Adam Smith saw the one set of causes to be but the complement of the other. "In every part of the universe," he says, we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant or animal body, admire how everything is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species. But in these, and in all such objects, we still distinguish the efficient from the final cause of their several motions and organizations. The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, and the secretion of the several juices which are drawn from it, are operations all of them necessary for the great purposes of animal life; yet we never endeavour to account for them from those purposes as from their efficient causes, nor imagine that the blood circulates, or the food digests, of its own accord, and with a view or intention to the purposes of circulation or digestion." That is, we never fancy that the one side suffices. The purposes," which are the final causes, do not, alone and by themselves, realize themselves; neither do we imagine of the blood and the food, which are the material causes, that the one circulates, or the other digests, of its own accord. Plainly, Adam Smith here has excellently

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