GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTEENTH.

Four

The teleological argument--Two moments-First, the alleged necessity of thought-It has itself no end-So matter enoughThought itself only a part, limited, imperfect, and in want of explanation-Thought as thought common to us all, Grote, Hume, Erigena, Heraclitus-The sole necessity-Second, the analogy-The supreme cause not situated as other causesOther principles, vegetation, generation-The world an animal -The Empedoclean expedient-The effect only warrants great power, not Almighty power-Evil-Free opinion-Hume's friends Epicurus's dilemma Superstition results suggestions-No pain-Special volitions-Greater strengthExtremes banished from the world-Creation on general principles-Erasmus Darwin-Mr. Froude, Carlyle-Finitude as such, externality as such-Antithesis-Charles V. - Abdalrahman III. - Septimius Severus - Johnson - Per contraWordsworth, Gibbon, Hume-Work, Carlyle-The tradesComparison - Self-contradiction Identity-Hegel "As regards Protoplasm "- The Hindoos-Burton on cause-Sir John Herschel - Brown, Dugald Stewart Spinoza - Erdmann Notions and things, Erigena-Rabelais-Form and matterHume in conclusion.

HUME'S discussion, in his Dialogues, of the teleological argument, the argument from design, random as it runs, requires, in the first place, such arrangement as shall extend to us the ease of intelligence which is so necessary here such arrangement as has been already referred to. The entire scattered discussion, then, we reduce to, and consider in, the following order, an order suggested by the single argument itself, which this discussion would overthrow. That single argument is this. The design which is admitted to exist in the world infers-by the necessity of thought, according to the principle of analogy-the existence also, or coexistence, of a designer. Now, here it is only the inference that is denied, and not the design it founds on the design itself is admitted to exist. But that inference can be opposed only in one or other of its two moments. Either its first moment (A), the alleged necessity of thought, or its second moment (B), the alleged analogy, is the subject of denial and dispute. On the first head, (A) it is first (1) argued, that, granting the necessity of thought, it is not completed or concluded by the inference, but continues to be equally valid further. If a material world, or universe of objects, be such as to require a cause for the arrangement in it; not less will a mental world, or universe of ideas, to which as cause the arrangement has only been transferred, require for itself a cause-a cause of its own. God Himself, that is, if offered as cause for the one world, would constitute in Himself just such other mental world, and would equally stand in need of just such another cause. The explanation is only shifted one step back, thinks Hume; but why stop at the first remove? "If we stop, and go no farther," he says, " why go so far?" "Why not stop at the material world?" "If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end." "That the parts of the material world fall into order of themselves" is as intelligible as that the ideas of the Supreme Being fall into order of themselves." And that being so, "we really assert the material world to be God; and the sooner we arrive at that Divine Being, so much the better." These are Hume's own words; and it is really sufficient reply, so far, to say: There is no principle in matter itself to explain the design it exhibits; only a Designer can explain that. So far we believe our argument valid;

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and so far we challenge disproof. To ask a second question is not to dispose of the first. (2) A second objection to the necessity of thought is: That it does not apply: we are but a part-our thought is but the part of a part; and it is in vain to apply a part in explanation of the whole. Nay, (3) in the third place, our thought, even as in us, requires an explanation; at the same time that, (4) in the fourth place, it is so limited and imperfect that we can place no dependence upon it. I think, however, it will be plain that these are cavils, so far, rather than arguments. It is not true that thought can be characterized as only a part in reference to the whole; nor do we apply it, or wish to apply it, otherwise than as it justifies itself. It may, in individuals, and at times, err indeed; but it is caricature to throw it out of count, because, as Hume says, we never find two persons who think exactly alike, nor does the same person think exactly alike at any two different periods of time." Mr. Grote borrows these words, and relying upon them, cannot help exclaiming in perfect astonishment, "Can it really be necessary to repeat that the reason of one man differs most materially from that of another?" To which, in the very intensity of its shallow conviction, I reply, "Can it really be necessary to repeat that the reason of one man does not differ most materially from that of another; but, on the contrary, the reason of one man is essentially identical with that of another?" Here, in fact, Grote has not only forgot Hume, but Hume has forgot himself; asserting, as he does elsewhere, that "there is a great uniformity among men in all nations and ages, and human nature remains still the same." That is to the effect that there is but one reason, which is the truth and the cosmical fact, though we had to go further back for it than the intellectus of Scotus Erigena, or even the λόγος ξυνός of Heraclitus. Thought is the one generality, the one universality, the one general solvent, the one universal solvent, which nothing may resist. "And what wonder!" says Scotus Erigena, "what wonder if the notion of things which the human mind possesses, concreated with itself, is found to be the true substance of the things themselves of which it is the notion?" The universal, as the universal, is its own principle and its own basis of support. Thought, even as thought, accounts for its own self, if not in the finitude of man, then in the infinitude of God. There it is the one ἀνάγκη, the sole necessity, that that could not not-be!

And with this we may suppose sufficiently met and discussed all that Hume has objected to the necessity of thought. Matter cannot account for its own arrangement; a part may apply to the whole, if that part is thought; which again, as in the race, is not incomplete and partial, but, as primal entity, as sole and primal ἀνάγκη is, with God, the reason for itself. In fact, in the whole of the relative reasoning, there is not one reasonable word why man may not think the design which is as undeniable in his own self as everywhere around him.

The second object of the attack of Hume is (B) the analogy. Man, as a thinking being, recognises in nature such adjustment of means to ends as is in perfect analogy with what he knows to be the product and result of design in the experiences and proceedings of his natural life in common with his fellows upon earth. Now, Hume's objections here may be arranged according as they seem to concern more especially the cause, or more especially the effect.

In the first place, on the first head, he intimates that the cause is not placed as it is placed in the other cases to which we are accustomed. In these, we have usually experience of both terms. If we

infer the step of a man from a footprint in the sand, say, the cause is already known to us from a great number of other effects, and the inference, consequently, does not really depend on the single experience. And then, in point of fact, what we see in matter may depend on principles of its own. We cannot say that motion, or other arrangement, is not native to it: we have never assisted at the origination of worlds; we have not, as elsewhere, any custom, any to and fro of effect to cause, or of cause to effect; we have no experience of the divine. Nay, in the second place, if the design be not original to matter, it may be due to other principles than to the principle of thought, as to vegetation, for example, or to generation. We really do see such principles operative in matter. There is motion in it; not one particle of matter, probably, ever is at rest. Then we do see vegetation and generation both spontaneously operative. The world may be as a tree that sheds its seed; or, as an animal that lays its eggs. A comet may be a seed-a germ, which, ripened from system to system, may itself become further in the inane a system of its own. And so it may have been with this our world, which, in point of fact, exhibits the traces of innumerable changes before it settled down into the orderly arrangement of the present. Indeed, in the third place, the whole world may be just one animal -an animal with a body, and an animal with a soul. This was an idea familiar to the ancients, who could not conceive, as we do, of souls purely as such of souls without a body. The world has really much more analogy with an organized body than with a mechanical contrivance. "A continual circulation of matter in it produces no disorder; a continual waste in every part is incessantly repaired; the closest sympathy is perceived throughout the entire system; and each part or