to be established against all analogy; while evidence that what were crows in everything else but color, were sometimes gray instead of black, would have the antecedent improbability against it almost all removed by what is familiar in regard to variability of color in other birds and animals. In consenting to this statement of the case, however, we do not abandon the assumption of final cause, but only prepare the way for introducing it in another form.

III. Let us now give formal and fuller statement to the exact truth regarding the extent of our knowledge upon this subject.

The assumptions which underlie all inductive reasoning are four in number:

1. The "good of being" is the absolute final cause of all things.

2. God's choice of the good of being and his wisdom in promoting it are the only actual and absolute uniformities.

We do not discuss here the genesis of these ideas; that is remanded to natural theology and metaphysics proper. Nor do we propose to show how with these postulates all the difficulties of the universe can be solved, for it would require an infinite mind to understand all that an infinite mind might do. It will be seen at once that with

1 For a brief discussion of this theme see the author's Logic of Christian Evidences. Part II. Chap. 1.

these postulates alone a finite being could not do much either at world-making or at world-interpreting. On mere a priori grounds we cannot determine accurately the proximate ends that would conduce to the good of being; and with our limited experience we can hope to determine proximate ends only about as accurately as we can guess how many grains of sand make a handful. That the creation is calculated to promote the good of being we may be sure. This involves only the two assumptions that the goodness of God designed it for that end; and that his wisdom has not been amiss in its arrangements.

3. We assume that the universe is a 66 solidarity" that nothing is made in vain that every part is a complement to every other part. That is a corollary from the wisdom of God; but is not exactly the same principle as what is usually styled the law of parsimony.

The simplest means for attaining certain ends cannot be determined till we know what the ends are. Men whose business is transportation might insist that the law of parsimony demanded that all rivers should be straight and of gentle current, if, indeed, of any current at all. Whereas farmers and mill-owners would enlarge the conception of the law so as to have it include their individual ends. Thus the law of parsimony really can exist only in relation to the final cause as we have

defined it above. The economy of contrivance can be estimated only from its fitness to promote the good of being in general. Hence, we cannot say that the law of parsimony characterizes any contrivance in its relation to any single or proximate end.

The difficulty in the way of our interpretation of nature lies in our limited capacity and experience. Were there another infinite mind, he could understand the meaning of the whole universe from an inspection of any part. To such a mind, "the part brings the whole with it, as absolutely as the whole brings the part."

The problem, then, in inductive reasoning is not merely to ascertain what appears in the narrow circle of our observation, but rather to determine the significance of what appears, — to divine what other phenomena they indicate as connected with them, and thus to enlarge our knowledge by reasoning upon the facts of experience. Properly we assume that nothing would have been just what it is except everything else had been just what it has been. Putting our experience and our a priori ideas together, our great business in life is to strike out before us a line of practical belief and action. The nature and difficulties of the problem will be illustrated by those that would meet a shipbuilder while inspecting a strange vessel in process of construction. He has this positive knowledge

to start with, that every portion of the vessel represents some idea of the builder; but in interpreting that idea he labors under several very serious embarrassments. He may not know whether his own ideas of economy of construction are the same with those of the builder. That the ship is designed for the good of being he may be sure, but by just what methods it is designed to promote the good of being, whether by its fast-sailing properties or by its strength, he cannot know, except from the indications given in the part before him. If he were examining the engine designed for a Monitor, its strength might suggest a fast-sailing steamer, or one designed for long ocean voyages. While a Monitor was being put in shape by Ericson, one who had no conception of the wants of modern warfare would have had insuperable difficulties in inferring the idea of it from an incomplete specimen. A Phoenician mariner might examine even a completed one without catching the idea at all. So it must be admitted that we are most incompetent judges of the practical reasons for the creation of such crafts as the infinite mind has launched on eternity's sea. Still it would not do for us to deny ourselves all power of interpreting proximate ends. Build we should, and build we must. It is of infinite concern that we know what our foundation is, that we may determine how high it is safe to build.

4. The Veracity of God.

An appeal is sometimes made to the veracity of God, as if that gave the ground of confidence in inductive reasoning. When God has done a thing nine times we take this as a promise that he will do it the tenth time. In effect this postulate is equivalent to that of the uniformity of nature. It should be noted, however, that God's veracity cannot be made manifest to us absolutely, except with reference to the ultimate end of all things. For we cannot perfectly translate the language of an infinite being we cannot fully understand any contrivance designed to secure an end so far off, and composed of so many items, as the general good of being. Hence it is, both in theory and in fact, that only by the most laborious processes do we sift out the things that seem in nature from the things that are. Great pains are taken in the universe, as Coleridge says, to" show how cheap dirt is." Numerous elaborate material contrivances seem to have been made for the purpose of being destroyed, so that thereby the moral creation might be forced to think of its own superlative worth. The gourd grew not so much to shelter Jonah's head as to point a moral when it was withered. The Paley line of argument respecting design in nature is especially faulty in the exaggerated importance it attaches to economy of contrivance for the accomplishment of mere material ends. God's