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Attempt to overturn the Argument of Paley.

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according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently." He, in his ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at His pleasure. "God from all eternity did, by the most holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established."-(Westminster Confession, cap. v.) Nor can we advert to his theory of moral causation, or the influence of motives on mind, in which, founding on his previous conclusion, that " an Intelligence is the only cause of action," he denies that a Motive can in any correct sense be termed a cause, and concludes-" I am myself my own MOTIVE, the cause of my own actions." But we must confine ourselves to the doctrine of Final Causes, to the exposition of which these more general speculations are introductory; and examine the reasons which he assigns for objecting to the popular argument from design in connexion with his peculiar theory as to the right application and legitimate use of" facts of fitness."

In discussing the popular argument, as stated by Paley, Mr. Irons avails himself of most of the objections which have been urged by sceptics against the validity of the proof. He objects to the argument from design, as "not a correct a posteriori process;" and, while he admits that design does exist in nature, and that God is the author of it, he maintains that this design cannot be discerned until God is revealed or otherwise proved; that the argument presupposes a prior knowledge of His purposes and ends; and that "the believer in revelation alone has any right to entertain the doctrine of design." He attempts to show that "the facts of fitness," on which so much stress is laid, do not afford of themselves a valid proof, although, with the aid of revelation, they may be useful illustrations, of theology; and for this end he points out what he conceives to be the incurable defects of the argument. He insists, first of all, that the words design and designer are like cause and effect, relative terms; and this consideration leads him "at once to suspect Paley's argument to be a mere assumption, a bare-faced petitio principi." He seems to be aware, indeed, that it is capable of being stated in a strictly syllogistic form, without so much as the appearance of anything like begging the question, and that there may therefore be "a fair and unanswerable a posteriori argument, but one, as he thinks, of little use to the natural theologian. He states it thus, premising, however, his previous conclusion, that "by the word cause is meant an intelligence."

"Whatever begins to be has a cause.

Certain objects in nature begin to be, (e.g., the buds and leaves of the garden and the forest in spring)

Therefore, they have a cause.'

"There is no petitio principii here," he says. Is there more or less appearance of it in the syllogism of Archbishop Whately"Whatever exhibits marks of design had an intelligent author. The world exhibits marks of design.

Therefore, the world had an intelligent author."

But apart from this formal objection, he insists that ORDER does not necessarily imply choice, nor adaptation design, and he refers to "the order of basaltic pillars, seeming at times to rival that of human architecture." Whether the symmetry of form and structure observable in these and many other natural objects may not indicate design, as well as the adaptations of animal life, is a question which we shall not at present discuss. We shall only observe, that we have not the same means of showing what ends are served in the former as we have in the latter class of cases; and that, while we believe all nature to be pervaded by design, we should not select basaltic pillars, or crystallized minerals, as a proof of it, simply because our knowledge of the uses of these wonderful productions is comparatively imperfect. But unexplained phenomena may well be presumed to have wise ends, although they have not been discovered, on the strength of the superabundant evidence which evinces design in other cases better understood. Mr. Irons can scarcely be ignorant that, in former times, certain stones, exhibiting a regular structure and symmetrical arrangement of parts, were triumphantly referred to by infidels as rivalling the forms of organized being; and that the subsequent progress of science has conclusively annihilated the objection founded on these stones, by showing that they were neither more nor less than FOSSIL REMAINS !-animal structures retaining legible traces of the original conformation even in the petrified state. In addition to these arguments, he founds on the existence of evil, as an unanswerable objection, on mere natural principles, to the doctrine which affirms the being and perfections of God. boundless power of God being assumed, it is held that "we must impeach His goodness if but one solitary evil be found in His dominions." Mr. Irons believes that Christianity solves that great mystery; but is it by disproving the existence of evil? and if not, is it by denying either the goodness or the power of God? Is it not rather by showing us that there may be ends of which, with or without a revelation, man's reason is not competent to judge, and by teaching us humbly and meekly to bow before Him whose ways we cannot fully comprehend?

The

But Mr. Irons, while he objects to the popular argument from

Difference between Ancient and Modern Speculations.

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design, as stated by Paley, has a peculiar theory of his own as to the right application of final causes. He objects, indeed, to the phrase, and with his views of causation, it is not wonderful that he should; but, understanding it as meaning merely the final reason or ultimate intention of things, or the end or purpose which anything answers, he does not object to the investigation of final causes in this sense, but only to the theological inferences which have been drawn from them. He attempts to show that the ancient doctrine of final causes was essentially different from

the modern.

"The doctrine of the ancients was not an immediate deduction from the law of efficient causation, as the modern doctrine is said to be. It was simply an abstract statement concerning certain facts of nature. They believed it to be man's duty to conform to nature, and they therefore inquired into the facts of nature. But they were not in the habit of drawing any farther theoretical inferences. The moderns, on the contrary, build up a doctrine wholly on inferences. The ancients argued to nature, and then they stopped; the moderns there take it up, and argue from nature to something beyond it."—"The ancient doctrine of final causes was founded on a simple inquiry into the ultimate tendencies of things. The whole process was an examination of facts, and a statement of the result. It was, in the strictest sense of the words, a scientific doctrine. It admitted of proof in the same manner as any physical truths admit of it. A ball on an inclined plane has a tendency to roll down. Man, in every gradation of savage or civilized life, has a tendency to society. The facts are before our eyes; we cannot dispute them. The modern doctrine of final causes is of a very different character. Instead of being an argument of an inductive kind, it is wholly hypothetical."-" The old philosophy argued to final causes; the modern from them to something beyond them; so that the modern argument appears to be-what the ancient was not an inference from an effect to a cause."

We think that Mr. Irons has greatly exaggerated the difference between the ancient and modern speculations on this subject. No doubt instances may be found in Aristotle and other writers, of arguments whose only object is to point out the ultimate tendency of terrestial arrangements without any reference to the proof which they afford of a higher power; but similar instances may be found in modern authors, who often employ the principle of design as a guide in inductive inquiry, while they overlook or neglect its theological application. In the writings of classical antiquity, the argument from final causes to a Supreme Intelligence, is often beautifully stated and powerfully enforced. Mr. Irons himself admits that there is something like it in Xenophon's Memorabilia; and Professor Sedgwick affirms that "The argument for the being of a God derived from final causes, is as well

stated in the Conversations of Socrates as in the Natural Theology of Paley." We might refer also to the writings of Plato and of Cicero; but it is the less necessary, since our author's argument amounts to nothing more than what was long ago stated by Boyle and afterwards by Stewart; viz., "That there are two ways of reasoning from the final causes of natural things that ought not to be confounded; for sometimes from the uses of things men draw arguments that relate to the Author of Nature, and the general ends He is supposed to have intended in things corporeal; and sometimes upon the supposed ends of things men ground arguments, both affirmative and negative, about the peculiar nature of the things themselves." In other words, "The study of final causes may be considered in two different points of view, first, as subservient to the evidences of natural religion; and, secondly, as a guide and auxiliary in the investigation of physical laws." The latter may have been mainly the use made of it by Aristotle, whose religious sentiments seem to have been weak and wavering; the former was exemplified both by Socrates and Plato, and the two, although different, are by no means opposite or contradictory; the physical serves only to pave the way for the physico-theological. It is quite possible to assume the principle of design, and to use it as a clue to further discoveries, as Aristotle did, when founding on the axiom that "nature does nothing in vain," he inferred from the manifest indications afforded by the adaptation of the sexes to one another, and other collateral considerations, that "the tendency of man's nature is to society." This is one legitimate use of the doctrine of final causes, but it does not conflict with, nor should it supersede, the application of the same "facts of fitness" as proofs of a designing mind.

Mr. Irons lays much stress on the difference subsisting betwixt two branches of the a posteriori argument, the one of which rests on the idea of efficient, the other on that of final causes. There is a difference, and a very important one, which has been too often overlooked, between these two lines of proof, the one proceeding on the general axiom of causation, that whatever begins to be must have a cause; the other on the more special axiom that adaptations indicating design in the works of nature imply the existence of an Intelligent Author. There is the same difference between these two lines of proof, as there is between the general law of causality and the special form of that law which is founded on in the theory of force or motion; but both are legitimate, and each is useful for its own purpose and in its proper place. The more general law of efficient causation is presupposed or subsumed as an axiom without which the proof were impossible; while the more special law of intelligent and voluntary causation is the proximate groundwork of theology. Mr. Irons not only marks

Mr. Irons' own Doctrine of Final Causes:

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the distinction between the two, but distinguishes the argument of final causes from the argument a posteriori, (as if both were not a posteriori, if either be,) understanding by the latter the argument founded on efficient as contradistinguished from final causes. He tells us," It is now concluded, Ist, That the argument from final causes is untenable, inasmuch as it does not result from the true doctrine of causation; it is inconsistent with all the principles of sound argument, and is clearly a mere petitio prinсіріі. 2dly, That the argument a posteriori for the being of God, is sound and correct as far as it goes, and indeed inevitably results from the true doctrine of causation; but this argument will not teach us anything of the character of the Deity." Now, instead of pitting these two lines of proof against each other, as if they were competing or conflicting, we would combine them as conspiring forces, tending in the same direction and towards the samė result. On the more general axiom that every thing must have a cause, we cannot, when it is viewed alone and in this general form, construct a complete proof of the being and perfections of God; but it constitutes at least a solid groundwork for the conclusion that whatever exists in nature must have had a cause; then, on the more special but equally certain axiom of intelligent and voluntary causation, we rear the peculiar proofs of theology from a survey of the innumerable marks of design which nature everywhere displays. There is no contrariety between these two modes of reasoning; each of them is equally legitimate, and both are necessary to the full exhibition of the proof.

We have said, however, that Mr. Irons himself has his own doctrine of Final Causes. He has a chapter entitled "Religion a Final Cause of the Human Mind," in which he expressly founds on "facts of fitness" with the view of discovering whether there be "any general tendency, i.e. any Final Cause of human beings as such." He endeavours to show that "man is made for religion, in the same sense as he is made for society"—that man, "by the very constitution of his being is adapted to religion;" and by examining "some facts of the human mind," he hopes "to establish a plainer statement of its final cause'-its natural tendency as the only possible prerequisite to religion, in the place of the spurious naturalism which has been before disproved." He founds on the universal prevalence of some kind of religion, and the inveterate propensity of mankind towards it-on the natural instinct of gratitude which prompts us to acknowledge some superior Power and Benevolence, as the Author of our mercies; on the moral instincts of our nature, which lead us to mark the inequalities of this world, and to expect another as state of retribution; on the inward sense which every man has of the "very nothingness of this life," and the unsatisfying

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