late us into the light of glory; I give thee thanks, O Lord and Creator, that thou hast gladdened me by thy creation, when I was enraptured by the work of thy hands." Who dare affirm that these are words of cant or enthusiasm, or that such homage to the Creator is unworthy of science?

A tendency to materialism is doubtless fostered by an overskeptical jealousy as to the subject-matter of science. The habit of ruling out from the sphere of physical science all moral and spiritual truth as irrelevant, leads to the corresponding habit of thinking and speaking upon scientific subjects in the language of materialists. There are some investigators, says Agassiz, to whom "the name of God appears out of place in a scientific work; as if the knowledge of secondary agencies constituted alone a worthy subject for their investigations, and as if nature could teach nothing about its author." But this is much as if the anatomist should confine himself to the description of the simple skeleton, without considering it as a frame-work for the activity of a living man, and by comparative anatomy tracing the superiority of man as a being; much as if the physiologist should describe the functions of vital organs, and studiously exclude all reference to the body as the residence of a living soul. Or it is as if we should expend all our praise upon the steam engine and the locomotive as machines, but never mention Watt or Stephenson because they are not parts of their own inventions, and therefore an allusion to their names would be irrelevant! Rather because the steam engine and the locomotive are such wonderful and invaluable inventions, do we give honor to the names of the inventors, and hand these down from age to age by history and monuments. And so the culminating point of a true physical science is reached, only when we take up this devout aspiration of David: "I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;-marvelous Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well."

are

Newton followed the inductive philosophy up to this high religious thought. He believed in God, not only as a Chris

* Quoted in Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy, Vol. I, p. 9.

tian, but as a philosopher; and he says expressly, that "every true step made in inductive philosophy is to be highly valued, because it brings us nearer to the First Cause." As Lord Brougham so eloquently describes him: "after piercing the thickest veil that envelops nature-grasping and arresting in their course the most subtle of her elements and the swiftesttraversing the regions of boundless space-exploring worlds beyond the solar way-giving out the laws which bind the universe in eternal order-Newton rests, as by an inevitable necessity, upon the contemplation of the great First Cause, and holds it his highest glory to have made the evidence of his existence, and the dispensations of his power and of his wisdom better understood by men."*

Goodwin remarks, almost with a sneer, that "Physical science goes on unconcernedly pursuing its own sphere. Theology, the science whose object is the dealing with God as a moral being, maintains but a shivering existence, shouldered and jostled by the sturdy growth of modern thought, and bemoaning itself for the hostility which it encounters." How finely is this supercilious attempt of science to "shoulder" the Creator out of his own universe, met by a naturalist no whit inferior to Goodwin or to Darwin, who has said that "the laws of nature signify the enunciations of the method or will of God;" and "to him whose mind has become deeply imbued with science, nature becomes a living expression, as full as is possible in finite language, of the perfection of the supreme Architect ;"+-or, as Agassiz expresses it, "systems of science are not the inventions of the human mind, but translations into human language of the thoughts of the Creator."

Whenever, therefore, we observe in cultivators of natural science a tendency to Materialism, we are justified in suspecting either the superficial habit of resting in perceived laws as original and efficient causes, or a pride of intellect, which ministers to its own glory in proportion as it excludes the

* Brougham, Natural Theology.

Prof. J. D. Dana's Address before the American Association.

thought of the Deity, or a skepticism in the letter, which beginning by excluding the name of God from the category of physical science, ends by excluding the idea of God from the soul itself.

But these tendencies toward Materialism lie more in the tone of mind assumed by the scientific investigator, than in the phenomena and laws of Nature, as classified by science. A profounder science grows reverent and religious. The true logical tendency of the study of nature is ever toward the recognition and acknowledgment of a personal God as the Creator of the universe. The admirable method which we trace in all organic structures, and in all the laws of nature, points to the existence of an intelligent and planning Mind as the First Cause of all things. We need not enter at length into the argument from Natural Theology for the existence and attributes of God; nor repeat the unanswered argument of Paley from design; unanswered, we say, for the sophistical reply of Hume, that "we have had no experience of the origin of worlds," such as we have in the products of "human art and contrivance"-is met at once by the fact that our belief in the existence of an intelligent designer in every case of perceived design, does not rest upon experience, but upon the perceived adaptation of means to an end. If from the bottom of a well in the prairies of Illinois an instrument or machine unknown to modern arts should be dug up, the moment we saw it we should say, This is proof that man was here before the present race came upon the soil. The mechanical contrivance, the perceived adaptation of means to an end, argues a planning intelligence in distinction from an established law.

Socrates anticipated both Paley, and Hume by two thousand years, when he said, "Things which exist for some useful purpose must be the productions of intelligence;" and then asks, "does it not seem like the work of forethought to guard the eye, since it is tender, with eye-lids like doors, which, when it is necessary to use the sight, are set open, but in sleep are closed? To make the eye-lashes grow as a screen, that winds may not injure it? To make a coping on the parts above the eyes with the eye-brows, that the perspiration from the head

may not annoy them? To provide that the ears may receive all kinds of sounds, yet never be obstructed? and that the front teeth in all animals may be adapted to cut, and the back teeth to receive food from them and grind it ;" and thus going on through the details of the animal economy, according to the crude anatomy and physiology of his times, Socrates asks, "Can you doubt whether such a disposition of things, made thus apparently with intention, is the result of chance or of intelligence? Do not these appear like the work of some wisemaker who studied the welfare of animals?"* When Socrates goes on to apply this argument to the evidence of design throughout the world and the universe, and asks, "can all this be maintained in order by something void of reason?"-an objector steps forward with Hume's argument and says, "I can hardly suppose that there is any ruling intelligence among that assemblage of bodies, for I do not see the directors, as I see the agent of things which are done here." Socrates replies, "Nor do you see your own soul, which is the director of your body; so that, by like reasoning, you may say that you yourself do nothing with understanding, but everything by chance." It is not experience but the perception of design which causes us to recognize a designer. It is not necessary that we should see any particular watch made in order to believe that every watch must have had a maker. Where there is so much evidence of design as we perceive in all organic structures, and in the laws of nature, chance is out of the question. The only alternative is between the materialism of mere physical laws, and the rational conception of an intelligent Creator and Governor of the universe. Which of these two views do the phenomena of nature warrant, or rather compel us to adopt?

The extent and variety of design apparent in nature forbid us to refer this to mere physical laws, and require us to recognize an intelligent Creator. Dr. Whewell lays it down as an aphorism of science that "the asumption of a Final Cause [or definite purpose] in the structure of each part of animals and plants is as inevitable as the assumption of an efficient cause for

* Mem. B. 1, C. IV, Sec. 4-10.

every event. The maxim that in organized bodies nothing is in vain, is as necessarily true as the maxim that nothing happens by chance."* And he adds that almost all the great discoveries in physiology have been made by the assumption of a purpose in animal structures. Harvey states that he was led to think of a circulation of the blood, because "he noticed that the valves in the veins of the body are so placed that they give a free passage to the blood towards the heart, but oppose the passage of the venous blood the contrary way;-he was thus incited to imagine that so provident a cause as Nature had not placed so many valves without design." Some method or purpose obviously intended in these valves led him to study what that purpose was, and so to make his great discovery. Many other discoveries in physiology have been made in the same way. Now if we found only an exact uniformity in organic structures and natural laws, we might be tempted to rest in the laws of phenomena as being also their causes. And, on the other hand, if we found in nature nothing but irregularity and diversity of operations and results, we might admit the idea of chance. But the unity amid diversity, and the diversity in unity, which we everywhere behold, compel us to recognize a planning and controlling mind. Whence comes it, that while "the vertebral plan" is the same in man and sparrow, and this unity of plan is carried out so far that "the arm of man and the wing of a sparrow correspond to each other in the most exact manner, bone for bone," yet both are modified with manifest contrivance, and "adapted to the nature and life of the creatures to which they severally belong, so that one is an arm and hand for taking and holding, and the other a wing for flying?" Are these the results of divergent physical laws? Nay, "not a sparrow falleth on the ground without your Father-and the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

Professor Agassiz, at the close of his beautiful and luminous survey of the unity of plan in the structure of the most diversified types throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, “And yet this logical connection, these beautiful har

says,

VOL. XIX.

* Novum Organon Renovatum, Aphorism CV.

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