FROM TIIK LIKKAKV OF 
 
 DR. FRANCIS LIEBER, 
 
 Professor of History :iml Law in Columbia Coll.-yro, Now York, 
 
 THK. (Ul T OF 
 
 MICHAEL REESE, 
 
 Of San Francisco. 
 1 M T :\ . 
 
LOWELL LECTURES, 
 
 APPLICATION 
 
 OP 
 
 METAPHYSICAL AND ETHICAL SCIENCE 
 
 TO THE 
 
 EVIDENCES OF RELIGION; 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE LOWELL INSTITUTE IN BOSTON, 
 IN THE WINTERS OF 1848-49. 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS BOWEN. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN. 
 1849. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by 
 
 JOHN AMORY LOWELL, 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 MKTCALF AND COMPANY 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
TO 
 
 ANDREWS NORTON, 
 
 IN TOKEN OF RESPECT 
 FOE HIS EMINENT SEEVICES TO THE CAUSE OF LETTERS, MORALS, AND RELIGION, 
 
 AND OF GRATITUDE 
 
 FOR MANY WORDS OF COUNSEL AND ACTS OF KINDNESS, 
 THESE LECTURES ARE INSCRIBED. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE substance of two of these Lectures, the second 
 and the twelfth of the Second Course, has already 
 appeared in print in the North American Review. 
 In a few other instances, also, a paragraph has been 
 borrowed from essays that have been for some time 
 before the world. Whenever I have had occasion to 
 adopt the language of others, the quotation has been 
 distinguished in the ordinary way, and referred to its 
 author. 
 
 Some apology may seem to be due from one who is 
 not a clergyman, and who has never been, in the tech- 
 nical meaning of the phrase, a student of theology, 
 for undertaking to lecture upon such a subject as the 
 Evidences of Religion. For the many imperfections 
 of my work, indeed, I am quite willing to plead the 
 want of professional training as an excuse. But I am 
 not sure that the public discussion of this subject 
 ought to be given up altogether to the professed teach- 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 ers of Christianity. Religion is a matter of personal 
 interest and vital importance to every human being ; 
 the question respecting its truth or falsity is one that 
 he must investigate for himself, and determine upon 
 his own responsibility. The subject presents itself 
 under various aspects to different minds ; and though 
 the unprofessional student of it certainly labors under 
 a serious disadvantage, from the want of that com- 
 prehensive and exact information which systematic 
 instruction alone can give, he may deem that this 
 defect is in some measure compensated by the greater 
 freshness of the theme to him, and by the fact that he 
 approaches it from a different point of view, and that 
 his testimony is not exposed to the imputation of 
 professional bias. Most of the clergy, I am confi- 
 dent, will not harshly reject the proffered services of a 
 volunteer, who, though he may be unskilful in the 
 use of his arms, is perhaps better acquainted than 
 they, from their habits of professional seclusion, can 
 be expected to be, with the nature of the perils from 
 without with which their cause is threatened. One 
 who is not a theologian can best declare the nature of 
 the difficulties with which the subject is surrounded 
 in the minds of those the great majority of the 
 world who have had as little experience and in- 
 struction as himself. 
 
 Though so many volumes have been written upon 
 
PREFACE. VU 
 
 & 
 
 the Evidences of Religion, it does not appear that the 
 subject is exhausted, or that the productions of a for- 
 mer age are in every respect suited to the exigencies 
 of our own times. There are peculiar forms of infi- 
 delity, or peculiar causes of latitudinarian opinions 
 in religion, which are more prevalent in one age than 
 another. I have endeavoured in these Lectures to 
 meet those objections and difficulties which are most 
 current in our own day; to meet them with that 
 course of argument and illustration which has seemed 
 most satisfactory to my own mind, and without fear 
 of incurring the charge of a want of originality on 
 the one hand, or of a fondness for novel and abstruse 
 speculations on the other. I have not been afraid, 
 either to follow in the footsteps of others, if their 
 arguments happened to be best adapted to my pur- 
 pose, or to strike off intd a new path, if I might 
 thereby more surely and safely attain the great 
 object in view. Those who find little that is new in 
 this book may be assured that it was not written for 
 them, but for a class of readers who are less ade- 
 quately informed upon the subject. Those who dis- 
 like abstract speculations may pass it over for a similar 
 reason ; if they have never been entangled in a web 
 of metaphysical subtilties, a clew to the labyrinth will 
 be of no service to them. 
 
 Some repetitions will be found in these Lectures, 
 
V1U PREFACE. 
 
 of which they might have been cleared by a more 
 thorough revision than I have had time to make. 
 In general, I have been more willing to incur the 
 charge of prolixity and a frequent recurrence to the 
 same line of remark and argument, than of obscurity 
 or an affected abstruseness. The nature of the objec- 
 tions considered has unavoidably led me into some of 
 the dark corners of speculation; but I have honestly 
 tried to dissipate rather than increase the obscurity, 
 and for this purpose have often held up the same 
 subject in many different lights, and looked at it from 
 various points of view. A few additions have been 
 made while the work was passing through the press ; 
 but the Lectures are printed mainly as they were 
 delivered. To have elaborated them less carefully for 
 the lecture-room than for the press would have been 
 unpardonable disrespect to the audience who listened 
 with so much kindness and patience to the discussion 
 of themes which promised very little variety or en- 
 tertainment. Though the recapitulation, at the begin- 
 ning of one Lecture, of the argument in the preceding 
 one is not so useful for the reader as the hearer, I 
 have allowed it to remain as it was written, because 
 when an argument has been once explained at length 
 and with some minuteness, a brief summary of it often 
 makes the connection of its parts more obvious, and 
 the reasoning itself more clear and convincing,. 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 In alluding to some of the novel opinions and theo- 
 ries in science and philosophy, which have gained a 
 little popularity of late both in England and America, 
 though their place of origin must be sought else- 
 where, it has not been my wish to provoke contro- 
 versy. Opinions may be freely discussed without 
 causing offence ; I have never referred to the individu- 
 als or sects who entertain and defend them. Some 
 of these opinions, I am well aware, are held by many 
 persons who unite with them a lively and steadfast 
 faith, a devotional spirit, and a religious life ; but 
 they have been stumbling-blocks to others, for whom 
 alone I have endeavoured to surmount or remove 
 them. The discussion of them has sometimes led 
 me farther into the territory of the natural sciences 
 than it was perhaps prudent for one to venture who 
 has only a general acquaintance with these subjects, 
 and has never made them objects of special pursuit. 
 But in these days, when knowledge is so widely dif- 
 fused that the latest theories and discoveries in science 
 are familiarly discussed in the newspapers, the bear- 
 ing of these theories upon the religious belief of the 
 multitude cannot be safely neglected. I have no 
 fears of any conflict between the truths of real science 
 and those either of natural or revealed religion. The 
 voice of nature, when rightly interpreted, never con- 
 tradicts itself, and the truth that is fully compre^ 
 b 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 hended is always sufficient for its own defence. But 
 when sciolism is almost universal, speculations which 
 usurp the name and garb of science may often give 
 a rude shock to the convictions of a large class who 
 are not well instructed enough to be able to separate 
 hypotheses from established facts, and who can be 
 dazzled by the fluent use of scientific phraseology. 
 Such speculations are easily exposed in their true 
 character even by those whose studies have not gone . 
 beyond the limit which every educated person at the ' 
 present day is supposed to have reached. 
 
 The business of a lecturer upon the Evidences is to 
 reason, and not to preach. I have endeavoured to 
 show, that the fundamental doctrines of religion rest 
 upon the same basis which supports all science, and 
 that they cannot be denied without rejecting also the 
 familiar truths which we adopt almost unconsciously, 
 and upon which we depend for the conduct of life and 
 the regulation of our ordinary concerns. The applica- 
 tion of these doctrines to the heart and the life is the 
 business of the professed teachers of Christianity, into 
 whose province I have not felt competent to intrude. 
 Some may think that I have been too cautious in this 
 respect, and have placed too little stress upon senti- 
 ment, and too much upon argument, as if religion were 
 less an affair of the heart than of the intellect. To 
 this objection it may be answered, that belief is one 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 thing, and the regulation of conduct according to that 
 belief is another. A cold and passive assent to the 
 doctrines of Christianity is not enough to constitute a 
 religious life ; but no one will maintain that a Chris- 
 tian life is compatible with a denial of those. doctrines, 
 or with indifference upon the question whether they are 
 true or false. Emotion which is not directed towards 
 any object, nor excited by the contemplation of any 
 truth, may spring from a source as low as mere physi- 
 cal stimulus; it is then animal rather than spiritual 
 in its nature. Religious emotions must rest upon 
 religious ideas and convictions, or they will be as 
 transitory as they are vehement. The heart and the 
 intellect must move together and in concert, for noth- 
 ing can be more barren than their separate action, or 
 more pitiable than a conflict between them. If there 
 are any whose enjoyment of spiritual truth is never 
 darkened or perplexed by doubts and questionings, 
 they are those who have first acquired clear and dis- 
 tinct conceptions of what that truth is, and have 
 then satisfied themselves by study and experience that 
 it is founded upon a rock. It is doing no honor to 
 our religious faith to place it upon the footing of a 
 necessary prejudice. 
 
 But as this subject is considered at length in some 
 of the following Lectures, there is no occasion to pur- 
 sue it here. I wished only to express my earnest 
 
Xll PBEFACE. 
 
 dissent from the doctrine which is now not infrequent- 
 ly avowed, even from the pulpit, that any study of the 
 Evidences of Religion is unprofitable and vain. On 
 the contrary, I believe that there has seldom been a 
 time when, such study has been more necessary than it 
 is at the present day. Religious fanaticism has given 
 way to religious indifference ; the strife of sects with 
 each other has somewhat cooled, but the strife of opin- 
 ions upon all the great subjects that are interesting 
 to humanity is more active and universal than ever. 
 The thirst for innovation has greatly increased, and 
 all restraint upon speculation in science, philoso- 
 phy, politics, and social economy is taken away. In 
 France and Germany, at this hour, we see the mourn- 
 ful consequences of this chaotic state of public opinion, 
 this upheaval of the foundations of belief. The best 
 minds of the former country are even now engaged 
 in an attempt to undo their own work, and to 
 resettle the belief of the people upon those subjects 
 in relation to which they had formerly conspired to 
 shake it. The philosophical party in the French 
 Institute, after being at open war with the clergy 
 for a century, are now zealously cooperating with 
 them in the endeavour to teach the fundamental truths 
 of religion to the deluded and exasperated people. 
 If society in our own country is not to experience 
 a similar crisis, it must be through the efforts of the 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 educated laity, working in concert with the clergy, to 
 erect a barrier against the licentious and infidel specu- 
 lations which are pouring in upon us from Europe 
 like a flood. The time seems to have arrived for 
 a more practical and immediate verification than the 
 world has ever yet witnessed of the great truth, that 
 the civilization which is not based upon Christianity 
 is big with the elements of its own destruction. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, August 12, 1849. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FIRST COURSE. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL 
 
 SCIENCE, 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 ' THIS DISTINCTION APPLIED TO PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY, 22 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE, .... 44 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE IDEA OF CAUSE, AND THE NATURE OF CAUSATION, . 68 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL, 90 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT FOR FREE AGENCY CONTINUED : REASONING 
 FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE, 112 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 ALL EVENTS IN THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE A PROOF OF THE 
 PRESENCE AND THE AGENCY OF GOD, 133 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 INFERENCES FROM THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE PHE- 
 NOMENA OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, 155 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN, 177 
 
 SECOND COURSE. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SKEPTICISM OF OUR OWN DAY, . 201 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE HUMAN DISTINGUISHED FROM THE BRUTE MIND, . . 222 
 
CONTENTS. XVU 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF ACTIVITY IN HUMAN NATURE, . . . 244 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIENCE, .... 266 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 
 
 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT, 288 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE CONTENTS OF THE MORAL LAW A REVELATION OF 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE DEITY : THE ENFORCEMENT OF 
 THE MORAL LAW, 311 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 THE GOODNESS OF GOD, 333 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL, 356 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 THE UNITY OF GOD, 378 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL CANNOT BE PROVED WITH- 
 OUT THE AID OF REVELATION, 401 
 
 c 
 
XVU1 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 
 THE RELATION OF NATURAL TO REVEALED RELIGION, . . 423 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE OF A REVEALED RELIGION, 444 
 
FIRST COURSE 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 THE subject which I have undertaken to consider in these 
 lectures, not without a painful sense of my own incompetency 
 for the task, is the oldest, the most comprehensive, and the 
 most important, that has ever tasked the human faculties. Upon 
 the answers to the great questions that are involved in it depend 
 all our knowledge, all our duties, and all our hopes. In no age 
 of the world, of which we have any clear and trustworthy record, 
 in no condition of the human race, save that of the lowest forms 
 of barbarism, have these questions ceased to occupy, in a greater 
 or less degree, the attention of man, and to influence his con- 
 duct. In one point of view, they may be said to require the 
 most profound learning and the largest scope of intellectual 
 ability in him who would consider and discuss them to advan- 
 tage ; in another aspect, they seem to come within the sphere of 
 the narrowest intellect, and to offer the plainest and most prac- 
 tical considerations to every member of the human family. And 
 herein lies a sufficient apology for what might otherwise appear 
 an act of presumption, the attempt on the part of an individual, 
 however humble and unfitted for the task by the lack of profes- 
 sional training, not merely to form clear ideas for himself upon 
 these subjects, but also to endeavour to impress them upon others. 
 For they are matters of immediate and universal concern ; the 
 duty of examining our opinions respecting them is incumbent 
 i 
 
2 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 upon all, under an awful weight of responsibility, if not to the 
 full extent for the correctness of our conclusions, at any rate for 
 the diligence, earnestness, and fidelity with which we have 
 prosecuted the inquiry. The imposing names of Philosophy and 
 Theology do but cover up those direct and momentous questions, 
 which even the most incurious disposition at times must ask, 
 What must I believe, and upon what standard, or by what au- 
 thority, must I regulate my conduct ? All other things are of 
 temporary, these are of eternal interest. 
 
 And this duty of examination is one which is perpetually re- 
 newed, as from age to age the nature of the problem shifts, or 
 we encounter new difficulties in the way of the inquiry, proceed- 
 ing from new habits of thought, from the progress of science 
 and speculation, and from the altered relations of man to man 
 which spring from political changes and new forms of society. 
 The evidences of religious truth need to be constantly taken 
 up anew, and presented under a variety of aspects, to suit the 
 changing emergencies of the times. Political fanaticism some- 
 times turns its destructive rage against the institutions of our 
 faith ; new doctrines in philosophy, proposed at first as mere 
 exercises of fancy, gradually harden into fixed dogmas, and se-, 
 cretly undermine the foundations of belief ; and, lastly, the nat- 
 ural allies of religion, perverted by malign influences, sometimes 
 become its opponents, and the cause of divine truth suffers from 
 the fanaticism of philanthropy and reform. Against all these 
 enemies, which often carry on their warfare, not from without, 
 but in the silence of his own meditations, the believer needs to 
 be constantly armed, if he would not have his faith degenerate 
 into a mere prejudice, or shield itself under the hard covering of 
 a stern and irrational dogmatism. 
 
 According to the common notion, Philosophy and Theology 
 are sister sciences, so closely allied that it is often difficult to 
 make a distinction between them. Every person must hold some 
 opinions relative to each, and these opinions form two mutually 
 dependent creeds, which may be, in a greater or less degree, 
 peculiar to himself, and of which the action and reaction are so 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 3 
 
 nearly equal that it is often difficult to determine which is the 
 parent of the other. Every theory respecting the origin and 
 first principles of human knowledge must bear a close relation to 
 that subject in regard to which knowledge is of the highest 
 value, the doctrine of God, duty, and immortality. The 
 religion of the Greeks and Romans, so far as it existed in a 
 definite and consistent form, that is, as it was conceived by 
 enlightened and thinking men among them, was wholly drawn 
 from their philosophical tenets, or, more properly speaking, it 
 was identical with those tenets. And so it has been in modern 
 times. Skepticism in philosophy and skepticism in religion, if 
 not the same thing, at least usually go together. 
 
 This, I say, is the common view of the subject ; and we might 
 therefore well expect, what often happens, that the claims of the 
 two sciences, so called, should seriously conflict. Men are 
 drawn different ways by opposite fears, by their dread on the 
 one hand of an irreligious philosophy, and on the other of an 
 unphilosophical religion. Loyalty to truth, which is the highest 
 claim that can be made upon human reason, is drawn into open 
 hostility with our sense of duty to God, which is the most awful 
 and imperative of all obligations. The course of the student of 
 science, the honest and sincere inquirer after knowledge, often 
 appears adverse or injurious to the feelings or the faith the 
 prejudices, if you like of the religious believer, the devout 
 worshipper of an Omnipotent Father and Friend. And even 
 where direct opposition is avoided, a disputed claim to prece- 
 dence is set up, and sometimes brings with it an intolerable 
 burden of anxiety and doubt. On the one hand, it is maintained 
 that every religious creed must be tried at the bar of human sci- 
 ence, and its doctrines accepted or rejected according to their 
 agreement with the speculative dogmas which the unaided reason 
 has evolved as the limits and criteria of truth ; on the other, the 
 sacredness of the subject is unwarily held up to shield it from all 
 investigation, and not infrequently discoveries in science are de- 
 nounced, if they are at variance with the supposed dictates of 
 revelation. If metaphysics are made a test of the truth of Chris- 
 
4 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 tianity, it seems but equal justice to make Christianity a test of 
 the correctness of metaphysics. Sometimes a compromise is 
 proposed, which is no less shocking to the feelings of the believer 
 than a contumelious rejection of his faith. Philosophy is repre- 
 sented as candid and liberal ; as superseding religion, it is true, 
 in the minds of the cultivated and reflecting classes, but continu- 
 ing to respect it as an imperfect likeness of itself in the bulk of 
 mankind. According to this theory, there are many stages of 
 progress for the human intellect, and men pass on from religion 
 to philosophy as they do from barbarism to civilization. 
 
 Now, before conflicting claims like these can be reconciled, 
 it is necessary to get clearer ideas of the subjects of dispute, to 
 determine their respective boundaries, to see how far, if at all, 
 they encroach upon each other, and, if possible, to settle the 
 logic of the inquiry. Perhaps it will be found, after all, that the 
 provinces of Philosophy and Theology are entirely distinct, so that 
 there is no proper interference, and no cause for controversy be- 
 tween them. To establish this point is the object of the present 
 lecture. We must begin with definitions, and if these appear 
 somewhat abstruse at first, I hope they will become clearer as 
 we go on. 
 
 The simplest as well as the most comprehensive classification 
 of all objects of knowledge is that which separates them into re- 
 lations of ideas and matters of fact. I borrow the language of 
 him who was at once the most subtile logician and the most con- 
 sistent skeptic of modern times : "All the objects of human 
 reason or inquiry," says Hume, " may naturally be dividend into 
 two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact." 
 This coincides very nearly with the familiar distinction between 
 physics and metaphysics, except that the meaning of the latter 
 must be so far extended as to embrace the cognate sciences of 
 grammar, logic, and mathematics. Stating the proposition in 
 other words, we say that all science may be reduced to two 
 branches: 1. The stuo'y of things physical, -or those which 
 exist distinct from our thoughts ; 2. The study of things meta- 
 physical, or those which do not exist apart from our thoughts. 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 5 
 
 No one can fail to see an essential difference between a fact and 
 an abstraction, or a pure idea, like that of cause, goodness, power, 
 existence, and the like. The former is an object of sense, some- 
 thing which can be seen, heard, felt, or touched, whether we 
 have had sensible evidence of it ourselves, or rely upon the tes- 
 timony of others who have had such evidence, or infer its ex- 
 istence from inductive reasoning, or from the presence of its 
 effects. The latter is a pure mental conception, which has no 
 existence except in relation to the mind which forms it. Such 
 conceptions are called realities only by a figure of speech ; they 
 are so called to mark our strong sense of the correctness with 
 which a certain quality is attributed to a substance or an action. 
 Thus, virtue is said, figuratively, to be a reality", only to mark 
 our firm belief that there are such things as virtuous actions. In 
 this class must be ranked all the abstractions of the geometer and 
 the algebraist. There are no such things in nature as circles and 
 triangles ; the only proper realities are circular objects and tri- 
 angular objects. 
 
 But the nature of these abstractions may be most clearly ap- 
 prehended by considering, in the first place, what we mean by 
 matters of fact. These may be distinguished into things which 
 exist and events which take place. All the objects of natural 
 history and physical science stones, shells, plants, and ani- 
 mals are ranked in the former class; all the laws, so called, 
 of physical science, the laws of motion, for instance, all the 
 habits observed by the naturalist, such as the modes of growth 
 and reproduction of plants and animals, are comprehended in the 
 latter. Both alike are matters of fact. It is a fact that the earth 
 exists, or is ; it is equally a fact that the earth moves. That 
 there is a sun in the heavens is a fact of one order ; that this sun 
 illumines objects on the earth is a fact of a different order, it 
 is an event which takes place. We have sensible evidence of 
 both. '> 
 
 I am dwelling too long, perhaps, on a very familiar distinc- 
 tion ; but it is one that is fundamental to the present inquiry, 
 which cannot proceed without the fullest and clearest compre- 
 
6 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 hension of it. These two classes, which comprehend all objects 
 of knowledge, are distinguished from each other, not merely by 
 the broad and obvious lines of distinction inherent in their na- 
 ture, which have been already explained, but by radical differ- 
 ences in the modes of inquiry and reasoning which are respectively 
 applicable to them. The relations of ideas that is, of abstrac- 
 tions, or pure ideas are made known to us by intuition or re- 
 flection ; and reasoning about them proceeds by the demonstrative 
 method, the conclusions at which we arrive being absolutely cer- 
 tain. According to the absolute laws of the human understand- 
 ing, I speak it reverently, it is not within the power of 
 Omnipotence to disprove these results, or even to render them 
 doubtful. Their falsity would involve a contradiction ; to main- 
 tain that they are untrue is to say that it is possible for a thing 
 to be and not to be at one and the same moment. All the truths 
 of pure mathematics, pure logic, and pure reason are metaphys- 
 ical truths, and we can no more doubt them than we can question 
 tiie accuracy of the multiplication- table. Their falsity is incon- 
 ceivable. This attribute of logical certainty proceeds from the 
 pure, abstract, and perfectly simple or uncompounded nature of 
 the ideas which enter into such reasoning. These ideas are pure 
 creations of the intellect ; in their uncompounded and abstract 
 character they are not derived from observation, and are there- 
 fore not perverted by that great source of error, the imperfection 
 of our senses, or the limitations of our power of perception. 
 When we entertain these ideas, or reason about them, the mind 
 is closed to all outward impressions, and freed even from the 
 memory of their former occurrence. The ideas that are con- 
 templated then are contemplated in their entireness ; for, being 
 uncompounded, if they are apprehended at all, they must be per- 
 fectly apprehended, and consequently the relations between them 
 are discerned at once, or by intuition. Demonstrative reasoning 
 proceeds by a series of such intuitions, and hence the absolute 
 character of its results. If the chain of such reasoning be too 
 far extended, indeed, without a system of notation, the imper- 
 fections of memory may come in, some steps may be forgotten, 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 7 
 
 and mistakes will be committed. But this cause of error never 
 affects a simple intuition, or a step in the process when taken by 
 itself. Here the certainty is absolute. 
 
 Now what is the method of inquiry or procedure for the other 
 class of objects of knowledge, for matters of fact ? "We enter 
 upon totally different ground here. Instead of abstractions, we 
 have realities ; instead of shutting out sensible evidence alto- 
 gether, we are obliged to rely upon it exclusively ; instead of 
 intuitions, we have observations "and experiments ; instead 
 demonstration, we have induction ; instead of the objects of in- 
 quiry being perfectly simple and uncompounded, they are made 
 up of an unknown and unknowable number of elements and 
 qualities ; and instead of arriving at conclusions which are abso- 
 lutely true, we gain those only which are morally certain. I 
 speak now of both kinds of matters of fact, both of things 
 which exist, and of events which take place. The imperfections 
 of the senses come in here to their full extent, as causes of pos- 
 sible error. The objects of physical science must always be 
 imperfectly known ; we never can be sure that our analysis of 
 them is complete, or that our observation has taken in all their 
 outward qualities. The attractive power of the loadstone was 
 known for ages before its attribute of polarity was discovered ; 
 yet what is apparently more simple and obvious than this quality, 
 which can be detected at once by floating a magnet on a piece 
 of cork in a basin of water ? Down to the times of Watt and 
 Cavendish, water was supposed to be a simple element, and it 
 figures as such in some of the most remarkable of the ancient 
 theories of cosmogony ; these chemists, about a century ago, dis- 
 covered that it was compounded of two gases. But it is useless 
 to multiply instances. The chemist will ^tell you that it is not 
 impossible, that it is even probable, that every one of the sixty 
 substances now counted as elementary will ultimately be decom- 
 posed. Of course, the vast number of compounded objects of 
 which natural history takes cognizance are still more imper- 
 fectly known in their qualities and relations than those substances 
 which as yet are reckoned elementary. This limited acquaintance 
 
8 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 with the subjects of investigation must lead only to qualified, and, 
 in the logical meaning of the term, uncertain, conclusions respect- 
 ing them. 
 
 If this is the case with things which exist, it holds still more 
 obviously true of events which take place. Our knowledge of 
 past events depends either on memory, with its acknowledged 
 manifold defects, or on the testimony of others, with the multi- 
 plied causes which bring either their intelligence or their veracity 
 into doubt. As to future occurrences, the field of positive sci- 
 ence is yet more limited ; the truth of every proposition respecting 
 them depends on the axiom, that the course of nature is uniform, 
 and under similar circumstances we may look for similar effects. 
 Now, in the first place, we never can be sure that the circum- 
 stances are perfectly similar ; and, secondly, the truth of the 
 axiom itself depends wholly on empirical evidence. It is possi- 
 ble, that is, it is conceivable, that the sun may not rise to-mor- 
 row ; but it is not conceivable that two and two should make 
 five, or that a straight line should not be the shortest distance 
 between two points. The laws of motion are instances of the 
 highest generalization and of the most cautious and rigid induc- 
 tion which the whole field of physical science can afford ; but 
 what assurance have we that these laws will hold good for one 
 moment beyond the present time ? Obviously, we can have only 
 a moral certainty of their future operation ; intuition or demon- 
 stration is here out of the question. 
 
 There is, then, a radical difference, or a difference in kind, 
 between the two methods of investigation which are applicable 
 respectively to physical and to metaphysical science. But so 
 far as the truth of the conclusions, in either case, is concerned, 
 this difference is not one of degree ; our conviction is just as 
 firm in the one case as in the other. No one complains of the 
 insufficiency of the evidence on which rest all the truths of phys- 
 ical science and all the facts of history. Our persuasion of the 
 reality of our past experience, and of the truths which depend 
 on that experience, would not be affected, certainly would not 
 be increased in the slightest degree, by a technical demonstration 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 9 
 
 of that reality or of those truths. In fact, the theorems of geom- 
 etry are received, and practically applied, by multitudes who are 
 incapable of demonstrating them. The carpenter, for instance, 
 makes almost daily use of the forty-fifth proposition of Euclid, 
 though he is not usually able to supply the steps of its logical 
 proof ; he knows that it is correct by the results of his applica- 
 tion of it, and because he is told that others have demonstrated 
 it, and that he could easily follow out the demonstration himself, 
 if he were to give the requisite time and attention to the process. 
 The mariner, also, steers his ship by the aid of his Practical 
 Navigator and Nautical Almanac, though he cannot give the ra- 
 tionale of one of his own calculations. Instruct him in this re- 
 spect, teach him trigonometry enough to demonstrate the rules of 
 plain sailing, and you will enlarge the sphere of his ideas and add 
 to his sources of intellectual enjoyment ; but you will not increase 
 by one iota the strength of his belief in the correctness of the pro- 
 cesses. The moral evidence on which it formerly rested in his 
 mind was sufficient ; the strength of the conviction produced by 
 it could not be increased. 
 
 It is more pertinent to my present object to remark, that the 
 conduct of human beings is governed exclusively by the evidence 
 and the reasoning which are applicable to matters of fact, or, in 
 other words, by experience. It is the only proof they have that 
 food will nourish, fire burn, or water drown them, that any 
 place exists which they have never visited, or that any person 
 lives with whom they have not conversed. These contingent 
 truths enter into all our inferences from the past, and all our cal- 
 culations for the future ; man's life is guided by them, from the 
 cradle to the grave. If it be objected to this view, that our 
 convictions of duty are intuitive, and therefore absolute, I an- 
 swer, that duty relates only to motives and a choice of ends ; 
 action is always a use of means, and the selection of means is 
 the work of experience. The moral law, for instance, bids me 
 cultivate honest and humane intentions towards my fellow-man ; 
 how those intentions shall be most properly manifested in out- 
 ward conduct is a question for the intellect, and one that can be 
 
10 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 answered only by the lessons of experience. The sense of ob- 
 ligation stops short with the active intent. 
 
 Here, then, we rest the basis of our inquiry. A11 objects of 
 human knowledge are divided into two classes, perfectly distin- 
 guishable from each other ; a distinct method of investigation, and 
 a peculiar logic, or reasoning process, being appropriate to each. 
 The conclusions at which we arrive in the two cases are equally 
 well-founded, equally deserving of confidence ; but they differ 
 widely in the kind or character of the conviction on which they 
 rest, and in the nature of the process by which they were ob- 
 tained. 
 
 My next proposition is, that these two modes of inquiry are 
 not interchangeable, but confusion, uncertainty, and error inva- 
 riably result from mistaking one for the other, or from attempting 
 to extend the limits of either beyond its proper province. Mat- 
 ters' of fact cannot be demonstrated ; the attempt at a demonstra- 
 tion leads directly to that insane skepticism which teaches us to 
 distrust or reject all experience. The relations of pure ideas 
 cannot be ascertained by the inductive method ; they can neither 
 be proved by testimony, nor learned from experiment and ob- 
 servation. The trial of these inadequate media of proof will 
 tend only to deprive the soul of its highest convictions, and will 
 terminate in a mean and shallow empiricism. The history of 
 science, from the earliest period down to the present day, affords 
 numberless illustrations of the evil of confounding these two 
 methods. The physical inquiries of the ancients were all fruit- 
 less, because their false notions of the dignity of science made 
 them despise particulars and begin with general ideas, from 
 which, by logical deduction, they hoped to obtain all special 
 truths ; that is, from abstractions they sought to infer matters of 
 fact, and thus to change the labor of the inquirer from observa- 
 tion to reflection. Their physics were all metaphysics. u The 
 early philosophers of Greece," says Mr. Whewell, cc entered 
 upon the work of physical speculation in a manner which showed 
 the vigor and confidence of the questioning spirit, as yet untamed 
 by labors and reverses. It was for later ages to learn that man 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 11 
 
 must acquire, slowly and patiently, letter by letter, the alphabet 
 in which nature writes her answers to such inquiries ; the first 
 students wished to divine, at a single glance, the whole import of 
 the book." As their first inquiry, they endeavoured to discover 
 the origin and principle of the universe. Thales maintained that 
 it was water ; according to another, it was air ; while a third con- 
 sidered fire as the origin of all things. This last hypothesis, it 
 may be remarked, has been revived by a popular cosmogonist of 
 our own day, who has found the seminal principle of all things, 
 including the various ranks of animate being, the body, and even 
 the soul, of man, in a primitive fiery mist. These wide and am- 
 bitious doctrines, it has been well remarked, are " better suited 
 to the dim magnificence of poetry than to the purpose of a phi- 
 losophy which was to bear the sharp scrutiny of reason. When 
 we speak of the principles of things, the term, even now, is very 
 ambiguous and indefinite in its import ; but how much more was 
 that the case in the first attempts to use such abstractions ! " 
 
 The history of physical science, as it was studied by the 
 schoolmen during the Middle Ages, is quite as unsatisfactory as 
 the record of its treatment by the ancients. Logic, which I have 
 ventured to class with the metaphysical sciences, because it is 
 exclusively concerned with the relations of ideas, or with abstrac- 
 tions of the highest order, now claimed the chief attention in the 
 schools. There were two reasons for giving it this preference : 
 first, because it was held, as before, that all knowledge might be 
 deduced from general ideas, so as to avoid the necessity of study- 
 ing nature or observing particulars ; and secondly, because it was 
 believed that the ancients had already exhausted the inquiry and 
 completed the work, so that all truth might be ascertained, and 
 all controversies terminated, by a right interpretation of the works 
 of Aristotle and his commentators, this interpretation being gov- 
 erned, of course, by the rules of a sound logic. The scholastics 
 held, u that all science may be obtained by the use of reasoning 
 alone, that by analyzing and combining the notions which com- 
 mon language brings before us we may learn all that we can 
 know." The fallacy of this, it has been well remarl^d, con- 
 
12 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 sists in mistaking the universality of the theory of language for 
 the generalization of facts. All words, excepting proper names, 
 denote either general conceptions or abstract ideas ; and the 
 study of the relations of words is therefore a study of the re- 
 lations of ideas, and must proceed by the former of the two 
 methods which we have been considering, that is, by intuition 
 and demonstration. 
 
 We might well expect that physical science, or the study of 
 matters of fact, when pursued by this method, would produce 
 only nugatory or profitless results. It has been stated on high 
 authority, that not one step had really been taken in physical sci- 
 ence down to the period of the Revival of Letters, not a foot 
 of ground had been gained by the labors of more than two thou- 
 sand years. This statement is perhaps too strong ; for something 
 was undoubtedly accomplished in astronomy by Hipparchus and 
 Ptolemy, something in natural history by such observers as Aris- 
 totle, Theophrastus, and Pliny, while the medical profession, even 
 at the present day, does not wholly repudiate the authority of Hip- 
 pocrates and Galen. But how little real progress the human mind 
 had made during this long lapse of centuries may be correctly 
 inferred from the round of studies pursued at the universities ; 
 the course of seven sciences, included under the fantastic names 
 of the trivium and the quadrivium, comprised grammar, logic, 
 and rhetoric, together with arithmetic, geometry, music, and 
 astronomy. Of these, only the last can be ranked among the 
 physical sciences, as music was then only an art which had not 
 been reduced to its scientific principles. The others are all 
 metaphysical in character, and the only organon, or method of 
 investigation, which was then in use, being appropriate to these, 
 the success with which they were cultivated affords a striking 
 contrast to the barrenness of physical inquiry. Logic came al- 
 most perfect from the hands of him who may be called its in- 
 ventor. Sir William Hamilton, the most accomplished logician 
 of our own day, asserts distinctly, that there has been, " in fact, 
 no progress made in the general development of the syllogism 
 since th^ time of Aristotle.'' The case of mathematics is nearly 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 13 
 
 as strong, the geometry of Euclid and Archimedes being still the 
 boast of the science. These were the results of applying the 
 appropriate mode of reasoning to the metaphysical sciences, or 
 those which are concerned exclusively with the relations of 
 ideas ; while the inappropriateness of this same mode of reason- 
 ing to physical science, that is, to matters of fact, is proved by 
 the almost total failure of all attempts in this department for more 
 than twenty centuries. 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell here on so familiar a history as 
 that of the sudden rise and extraordinary development of phys- 
 ical science at the close of the sixteenth century. The rapid 
 succession of brilliant discoveries made by Galileo, Stevinus, 
 and Gilbert, was in itself a proof that they had at length hit upon 
 the true method of physical investigation, just before the illustri- 
 ous Englishman himself hardly capable of reducing any one of 
 his own rules successfully to practice, but gifted with an intellect 
 no less clear and penetrating than comprehensive and profound, 
 and with a sagacity and hopefulness which unrolled before him 
 the history of the future triumphs of science almost as distinctly 
 as the record of its past defeats supplied the rationale of this 
 method, reduced it to a complete system, and evolved and stated 
 with wonderful precision the rules for its successful use, in those 
 immortal works which have gained for him the deserved title of 
 Father of the Inductive Philosophy. To say that the inductive 
 method was practised in some cases before the time of Bacon 
 is about as idle as to assert that men sometimes reasoned cor- 
 rectly before Aristotle wrote his Logic ; though the assertion in 
 the former case is not true to the same extent as in the latter, 
 since the latter half of the century ill which Bacon was born, 
 though not that in which his principal works were published, wit- 
 nessed the first successful application of this method to physical 
 science. The merit of these two great men is of the same 
 order ; each wrought out with scientific precision and complete- 
 ness the logic of discovery and proof in one of the two great 
 departments of human knowledge. The one taught us the the- 
 ory of reasoning syllogistic ally, or to a demonstration, about the 
 
14 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 relations of ideas ; the other showed us the theory of reasoning 
 inductively from matters of fact. 
 
 The extraordinary success of physical inquiry after Bacon's 
 time tended naturally to the depression, and somewhat to the 
 injury or corruption, of abstract science. The undue extension 
 of the inductive method to the region of pure ideas produced the 
 ethical system of Hobbes, himself a friend and disciple of the 
 great master, but whose philosophy is now a byword from its de- 
 grading principles, and its tendencies to selfishness in morals, to 
 materialism in philosophy, and to despotism in politics. Among 
 his successors maybe counted Mandeville, " the buffoon and 
 sophister of the ale-house," and the English school of deists of 
 the early part of the last century, including Bolingbroke, the 
 friend and philosophical instructor of Pope. From him his sa- 
 tirical pupil learned to sneer at the metaphysicians of the older 
 school, who, in the Universities or the Church, distrustful of the 
 tendencies of modern physical science, and perhaps ignorant 
 alike of its principles and its practice, still kept up their fondness 
 for ancient and abstract learning. Prophesying the triumph of 
 dullness and obscurity, the poet exclaims, 
 
 " As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppressed, 
 Closed one by one to everlasting rest, 
 Thus, at her felt approach and secret might, 
 Art after art goes out, and all is night. 
 See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, 
 Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head ; 
 Philosophy, that leaned on heaven before, 
 Shrinks to her hidden cause, and is no more. 
 Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, 
 And Metaphysic calls for aid to Sense : 
 See Mystery to Mathematics fly ; 
 In vain ; they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die." 
 
 A later instance of the erroneous application of the method of 
 physical inquiry to metaphysical subjects may be found in the 
 writings of the celebrated David Hartley, who endeavoured to 
 account for the course and association of our ideas by vibrations 
 and vibratiuncles in the medullary substance of the brain. Of 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 15 
 
 the same school was Dr. Priestley, whose just fame for his bril- 
 liant discoveries in natural science inclines one to speak tenderly 
 of his philosophical speculations, though his habits, formed in the 
 laboratory and other schools of experimental investigation, be- 
 trayed him into the avowed support of materialism, and of what 
 he calls the doctrine of "philosophical necessity." The influ- 
 ence of the same cause of error may be traced in the works of 
 the Fremch philosophers, so called, of the last century, especially 
 in those of Helvetius, Volney, D'Holbach, and Condillac. Hel- 
 vetius, for instance, refusing to receive any other evidence than 
 that of the senses, tracing all ideas to this source, and assuming 
 the inductive method to be the only guide to knowledge, can find 
 no cause for the superiority of man over the brute, except that 
 the human hand is a more convenient instrument than the foot of 
 a quadruped, which terminates in horn, nails, or claws. " The 
 life of animals, in general," he observes, "being of a shorter 
 duration than that of man, does not permit them to make so 
 many observations, or to acquire so many ideas ; and animals, 
 being better armed and better clothed by nature than the human 
 species, have fewer wants, and consequently fewer motives to 
 stimulate or exercise their invention. Who can doubt, then," 
 he triumphantly asks, " that if the wrist of a man had been ter- 
 minated by the hoof of a horse, the species would still have 
 been wandering in the forest ? " 
 
 Such vagaries of speculation are not a whit more respectable 
 than the opposite errors of the schoolmen, who sought to inter- 
 pret nature by the relations of abstract ideas, or, in other words, 
 to ascertain facts by the aid of a transcendental logic. It would 
 be very unjust to accuse the inductive method of leading to these 
 gross blunders, which have arisen solely from a misapplication of 
 that method, from an extension of it to a province which it was 
 never formed to govern, namely, the region of pure mental con- 
 ceptions. We shall be likely to avoid both causes of error by 
 keeping constantly in view the axiom, that the methods as well 
 as the objects of physical and of metaphysical inquiry are radi- 
 cally different. We never can demonstrate a matter of fact ; we 
 
16 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 can have no sensible evidence of the relations of abstract ideas. 
 There is no question of dignity between the two methods ; each 
 is sovereign in its own sphere. There is no superiority of the 
 one kind of evidence over the other, when considered as a founda- 
 tion of belief ; both lead to positive and well-founded convictions. 
 
 The latest historian of the Inductive Sciences is not satisfied 
 with this exclusion of metaphysical ideas from the domain of 
 physical investigation ; his work upon the Philosophy of these 
 sciences, which is an elaborate attempt to enlarge the inductive 
 method by the doctrines, and to clothe it in the terminology, of 
 Kantian metaphysics, is a virtual restoration of the scholastic 
 method, or the philosophy of the Middle Ages, and must be 
 considered as " a remarkable instance of what has been aptly 
 called the peculiar zest which the reaction against modern ten- 
 dencies gives to the revival of ancient absurdities." When 
 Mr. Whewell, in his glowing admiration of the brilliant discov- 
 eries recently made in natural science, expresses his confident 
 hope that the mere physical inquirer wih 1 soon pass on from a 
 determination of the laws of phenomena to a knowledge of the 
 efficient causes of these phenomena, and gives as a reason for 
 this expectation the light that has recently been thrown upon the 
 action of polar forces, one may be permitted to doubt whether 
 he knows the meaning of the words he uses,, or is able to dis- 
 tinguish efficient from occasional causes. A far more cautious 
 thinker, Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his zeal for inductive logic, 
 falls into an error of the opposite character, by boldly taking up 
 the doctrine, that even the axioms of the mathematician are but 
 generalizations from experience, that there is no distinction be- 
 tween necessary truths and facts of observation, and, consequent- 
 ly, that the reasonings of the geometer do not differ in kind from 
 the inductions of the optician or the chemist. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to say, that the common opinion of the scientific world lies 
 between the extreme doctrines maintained respectively by these 
 two theorists. 
 
 The case of the mixed sciences deserves consideration here, 
 as it really corroborates the principles that have been advanced, 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 17 
 
 though it may appear at first sight to conflict with them. Pure 
 logic and pure mathematics are not so much sciences as methods 
 of scientific inquiry, or organa of investigation and proof. They 
 are modes of reasoning, irrespective of the subjects or facts about 
 which we reason, and therefore applicable to all subjects. In 
 the syllogism, for instance, the conclusion follows with absolute 
 certainty from the premises, the truth of the premises being pre- 
 supposed ; whether this truth rests upon sensible evidence, or 
 intuition, or a previous demonstration, is of no consequence. 
 The principles of the syllogism, then, are pure abstractions ; and 
 the letters of the alphabet, or purely arbitrary marks taken as 
 signs of any ideas or facts whatsoever, are the most convenient 
 notation for expressing them. If the premises are matters of 
 fact, or contingent truth, the conclusion will also be a matter of 
 fact, or contingent truth ; only the relation between premises and 
 conclusion is a metaphysical truth, and as such is made known 
 by intuition. 
 
 The case is precisely similar with mathematics, in which 
 we employ a notation of the same sort. In its pure form, this 
 science proceeds from abstraction to abstraction, the truth de- 
 veloped by it having no foundation in fact, and never being 
 exemplified in the external world. If an event in the physical 
 world, or a proposition founded op experience, be taken as a 
 datum, or point of departure for the inquiry, however long the 
 chain of mathematical reasoning may be which proceeds from it, 
 the result at which we arrive is a truth of the same order with 
 the one which formed the basis of the investigation. It has lost 
 nothing, and it has gained nothing, in point of logical certainty, 
 through the process to which it has been subjected. Take, for 
 instance, the most brilliant achievement that is recorded in the 
 whole history of mathematical science, the recent discovery 
 by Adams and Leverrier of a new orb on the farther verge of our 
 planetary system. Its existence was long before suspected, for 
 it was said that its influence had been felt trembling along the 
 far-extended line of our delicate analysis. But how was this in- 
 fluence detected ? It was through repeated observations, made 
 
18 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 by the telescope, of certain irregularities in the motion of Ura- 
 nus, observations so delicate, and irregularities so slight, that 
 many years elapsed before it could be said with certainty that the 
 latter were real, or before they could be measured so nicely as 
 to afford a basis for the calculations which were to r.eveal the 
 mass and the position of the body that caused them ; I say the 
 mass and the position, for the general fact of the existence of such 
 a body was inferred at once, by strict induction, from the mere 
 knowledge that there were such irregularities. 
 
 A boat, moored at night by the side of a placid stream, sud- 
 denly heaves and oscillates as a few slight ripples move over the 
 surface of the waters ; and the watcher in that little boat, though 
 he can descry nothing in the darkness, knows at once that some 
 large object not far off is passing up or down the river, and 
 throwing off those waves which extend obliquely from its wake. 
 Had he instruments nice enough to measure the exact size and 
 force of these ripples, and the aid of an empirical law, like that 
 of Bode, to teach him that the object could move only through 
 a certain channel at a known distance from him, he might calcu- 
 late the size and exact position of the moving mass, so as to 
 turn his night-glass directly upon it. This is precisely what was 
 done by Adams and Leverrier. The calculation alone was 
 mathematical ; the existence of the new planet had previously 
 been made known by induction, and the data used by the com- 
 puters were all observed facts. And it was not the mathematical 
 process which afforded any new evidence, or added to the con- 
 victions of astronomers that a hitherto unobserved planet rolled 
 beyond the path of Uranus. The calculations left this supposed 
 fact precisely where it was before, with the exact measure or kind 
 of certainty which belongs to a truth of induction. The crown- 
 ing labor of the whole, the real discovery, which, in legal phrase, 
 changed circumstantial to direct evidence, was made when Chal- 
 lis at Cambridge and Galle at Berlin turned their telescopes to 
 the region indicated, and actually saw the new orb which was 
 causing this ripple in the heavens. In what sense, or with what 
 color of reasoning, then, can it be said that moral evidence, the 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 19 
 
 testimony of the senses, is inferior in degree to mathematical 
 certainty ? 
 
 It would not be difficult, in the case of any of the mixed sci- 
 ences, to separate demonstrative from empirical truths by simply 
 inquiring whether the terms of the proposition express abstract 
 or concrete ideas. Ethical science has this mixed character, 
 quite as much so as mechanics. Casuistry consists in the appli- 
 cation of the general and abstract principles of ethics to particu- 
 lar cases ; and here, from the difficulty of getting at or expressing 
 all the facts in the case, doubt comes in. If I say that veracity 
 is a duty of paramount obligation, I affirm what no human being, 
 in the full possession of his reason, will dare to deny, any more 
 than to question the conclusions of the geometer. But if in- 
 formed, on some express occasion, that I am bound to tell the 
 whole truth to a sick person or a madman, I demur; here is 
 a particular case, and all the attendant circumstances must be 
 noted ; it seems necessary to inquire what are the motives for 
 giving intelligence to such a person, and what will be the prob- 
 able consequences of imparting to him the whole truth. I do 
 not undertake to decide the point ; moralists differ about it ; and 
 this difference is quite enough for my purpose, which is to show, 
 that whenever we come down from the abstract to the concrete, 
 doubts may reasonably and righteously be entertained. We have 
 left the region of abstract truths, of intuition and demonstration, 
 and come down to a practical application, to the world of reali- 
 ties, where a different method must be pursued ; we must here 
 observe facts, weigh probabilities, estimate consequences, and 
 bring all the resources of the inductive logic into play. Let it 
 not be said, that this is removing the certainty of moral obligation 
 to a point whence it can never actually guide the conduct of men. 
 In vastly the greater number of instances, the light which obser- 
 vation and experience afford for the application of the rule is 
 quite as clear and convincing as the boasted demonstration which 
 supports the abstract principle ; and in the few remaining cases, 
 as the moral law relates exclusively to motives, there is no dan- 
 ger of fatal error. 
 
20 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 And herein, as it seems to me, is one great cause of the abuse 
 of general principles in morals, politics, and jurisprudence, and 
 of the intolerable evils which are occasioned by fanaticism of be- 
 lief and a reckless ultraism. It may be granted that the abstract 
 principle, the grand object in view, is one of awful and impera- 
 tive obligation, overriding all considerations of personal interest, 
 and needing to be prosecuted with a martyr's zeal perhaps even 
 to a martyr's fate. But this admission does not justify me, on a 
 particular occasion, in shutting my eyes and rushing at that object 
 like a mad bull, careless of the injury or ruin that I may cause, 
 or of the other duties that I may trample down in my path. The 
 question respecting the validity of the principle is totally distinct 
 from that which concerns the choice of means, of the time and 
 manner of carrying it into effect. The former is determined by 
 intuition, by u the inner light," if you will, by the candle 
 which the Lord hath set up in every unperverted conscience, 
 lighting him on to that clear, absolute, and immediate conviction 
 which knows no doubt, and quails not at any personal sacrifice. 
 The latter is to be settled by careful and anxious observation of 
 the particular circumstances of the case, by a cautious induction 
 of examples illustrating consequences, by examining needfully 
 and reverently all the other duties that may possibly be violated 
 by our conduct. If this scrutiny be neglected, not even the 
 glory of self-sacrifice wih 1 avail to cover up the awful error, ex- 
 cept, perhaps, in our own esteem. Omitting this, though the 
 zealot should follow his principles even to the scaffold or the 
 stake, his name shall not be encircled with the glory of a martyr, 
 but it shall be said of him, that he " died as the fool dieth." 
 
 Coming back for a moment to the main subject of discussion, 
 it may be observed, that the peculiar clearness and force of de- 
 monstrative reasoning seem to depend on that perfect knowledge 
 of the subjects of inquiry which results from their simplicity or 
 uncompounded character. In the science of Medicine, at least 
 in the therapeutical branch of it, we need to know many or all 
 of the qualities and constituents of very complex objects, the 
 medicinal qualities of the drugs, the peculiarities of the patient's 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE. 21 
 
 constitution, and the circumstances of the moment, which may 
 greatly modify the action of the former upon the latter. Obvi- 
 ously, this is the business of sheer empiricism, being in many in- 
 stances no better than guess-work. In Chemistry, we go a step 
 higher, as it is necessary to attend, at most, to the qualities or 
 elements of but one class of objects ; still, we never can know 
 that the analysis is complete, or the observation perfect, and are 
 therefore obliged to grope our way by experiment and very lim- 
 ited induction, perhaps never establishing a universal principle by 
 a priori evidence. In the science of Mechanics, we make a great 
 advance, as many abstractions are employed, friction, the rigidity 
 of materials, and the resistance of the air, being generally put 
 aside ; mathematical reasoning here comes into play, which had 
 no application in the former sciences, and our conclusions are 
 more abstract, more general, and therefore less practically avail- 
 able. In Celestial Mechanics, it happens curiously, that the 
 abstractions are, as it were, ready-made by nature, gravitation 
 being the sole quality that it is necessary to take into view. 
 Friction and a resisting medium though of this last there may 
 be some doubt are eliminated by the nature of the case ; the 
 problem is complicated only by the gravitating effect of different 
 bodies on each other. Our conclusions are very general, then, 
 but also very limited, as they relate exclusively to position and 
 motion. Astronomy, it was remarked many years ago, is a 
 perfect science ; and so it is, the theory of it, though the im- 
 provement of instruments is daily bringing to light new facts. 
 
 Thus it appears, that we approximate the sphere of metaphysi- 
 cal evidence and demonstrative reasoning just in proportion as 
 we leave the world of realities and facts, and abandon the consid- 
 eration of objects in their entireness, or in all their relations. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THIS DISTINCTION APPLIED TO PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 IN my last Lecture, I endeavoured to define and distinguish the 
 nature and scope of physical and metaphysical inquiry, to show 
 that the one was properly confined to matters of fact, and the 
 other to relations of ideas. Demonstrative reasoning, I attempt- 
 ed to prove, belongs exclusively to the latter, and its conclusions 
 are always abstract ; the truths of physical science are obtained 
 only by the inductive method, by observation and experiment, 
 and by generalizations extending from individuals to a class. 
 Yet the former method has no superiority over the latter, when 
 considered simply as a foundation of belief. Both alike com- 
 mand our assent on indisputable grounds, though the media of 
 proof are radically unlike. Sensible evidence and inductive 
 reasoning, it is true, admit of degrees, and lead to all shades of 
 belief, from the faintest probability up to what is called moral 
 certainty. Demonstrative reasoning, on the other hand, has no 
 degrees ; a proposition is established by it either conclusively or 
 not at all. If successful, it would be contradictory and absurd 
 to deny the conclusion, the proof being then equivalent, but not 
 superior, to that which in the former case renders a fact morally 
 certain. To adopt Locke's distinction between insanity and 
 idiocy, we might say that only a madman can reject a mathe- 
 matical proof after it has been once explained to him, while to 
 be incapable of governing one's conduct by that sensible evi- 
 dence which controls the actions of our fellows is simple idiocy. 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 23 
 
 Such a person is usually said to be incapable of keeping out of 
 fire and water, because he is not able to learn from induction, 
 or repeated experiment, that the former will burn and the latter 
 will drown him. A very brief glance at the history of science 
 was intended to show, that most of the mistakes, retrogressions, 
 and absurdities which have hindered the progress of it may 
 be traced to ignorance or forgetfulness of the distinction here 
 pointed out, to an attempt to deduce facts from abstract con- 
 ceptions, or to draw down pure ideas to sensible observation and 
 material tests, to calling for demonstration in physics, or fol- 
 lowing the guidance of the senses only in metaphysical investiga- 
 tions. Illustrations of this error might easily be multiplied from 
 the whole domain of science and speculation, not less numerous 
 and apt in our own day, perhaps, than they were among the an- 
 cients or in the times of the schoolmen ; but less conspicuous, 
 affecting a smaller class of minds, and therefore less likely, we 
 may hope, to be chronicled for the mingled amusement and pity 
 of future generations. They are now the follies of a sect, a 
 party, or a clique, usually a small one ; while in former days 
 they were the indications of a universal evil, proceeding from ill- 
 formed habits of thought, and offering a far-extended and almost 
 insuperable barrier to the progress of knowledge. 
 
 Leaving the task of mere illustration, then, I proceed to in- 
 quire how far the distinction now pointed out may be made 
 available for one great purpose of these lectures, to determine 
 clearly the respective limits of religion and philosophy. It is 
 obvious that the latter term, which is often applied very generally 
 to the pursuit of all knowledge, must here be used in a restricted 
 sense, and be made synonymous, in fact, with metaphysics. It 
 cannot be defined more clearly without a tedious enumeration of 
 all the questions and problems which it comprehends. It is 
 concerned with the origin and explication of our ideas of cause, 
 power, infinity, knowledge, free-will, identity, substance, and the 
 like, all of which are pure abstractions, so that we must reason 
 about them demonstratively, or not at all. Philosophy, in this 
 narrow meaning of the word, includes precisely that class of sub- 
 
24 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 jects which Milton assigned for contemplation to one band of the 
 spirits fallen from heaven, who, in their place of punishment, 
 
 " apart sat on a hill retired, 
 In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high 
 Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
 Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, 
 And found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 
 
 All science proceeds from one generalization to another, and 
 must therefore end at a point, in a science that surveys the basis 
 of all the others, determines their proper relations, and binds the 
 whole into one orderly system of knowledge. This seems to 
 have been Lord Bacon's conception of the matter, when, in his 
 general scheme of knowledge, he says, " The basis is Natural 
 History, the stage next the basis is Physics, the stage next the 
 vertical point is Metaphysics." To examine in turn all the 
 questions with which metaphysical philosophy is conversant, so 
 as to exhibit their abstract character, would be a long and, it 
 may be, an unprofitable undertaking. I shall not attempt it, as 
 the fact, perhaps, is apparent enough from a mere enumeration 
 of the subjects, and because all of them which are immediately 
 connected with my principal theme will come up for subsequent 
 consideration. It will be enough for the present briefly to allude 
 to a few of them, the purely ideal character of which may per- 
 haps be questioned. 
 
 And here a distinction is to be made, as one portion of what 
 is usually called the philosophy of mind is certainly occupied 
 with matters of fact, and comes within the province of inductive 
 reasoning. Psychology is the latest designation in use, and per- 
 haps the most convenient one, for that science which bears the 
 same relation to mind that Anatomy and Physiology do to our 
 corporeal nature. Certainly there are facts of consciousness, no 
 less than those which are evident to sense ; the human mind, to a 
 certain extent, is a subject of observation and experiment, as the 
 supposed seat or origin of various phenomena that admit of num- 
 ber, arrangement, and classification. These phenomena, again, 
 are not produced fortuitously, or at random, but are subject to 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 25 
 
 fixed laws, more or less obvious, that may be definitely ex- 
 pressed. I need only refer to the great laws of association, or 
 suggestion, which every one has occasion to observe who seeks 
 to call up subjects that are related to each other, or to discipline 
 his memory. The phenomena of mind, also, are often complex, 
 and need to be analyzed and reduced to their simplest elements. 
 Imagination, for instance, is a compound faculty, embracing sim- 
 ple suggestion, conception, or the picturing forth of an object, 
 abstraction, and the power of forming novel combinations from 
 the elements thus obtained. 
 
 I speak of this science as confined entirely to mind, without 
 forgetting that one important point in it is the question, whether 
 there be any such separate existence as mind distinct from mat- 
 ter. If this question be determined in the negative, it w r ould 
 appear, at first sight, that no division can be made, that there 
 is no room for any science separate from that which treats of the 
 laws and properties of bodies. Yet the subject is not really 
 affected by the determination of this doubt. Every one is con- 
 scious of thinking, reasoning, willing, of pleasure, love, and 
 hatred ; and these qualities or phenomena are wholly unlike bulk, 
 figure, extension, and other qualities usually attributed to matter. 
 Now we do not need to assume, in the outset, that there is a 
 separate existence, or entity, in which the first class of these 
 attributes inhere. There is no doubt that the two sets of phe- 
 nomena are perfectly distinct from each other ; there is no dan- 
 ger of confounding them. Avoiding all hypotheses and mooted 
 questions, therefore, it may be said that psychology, treating of 
 those facts which we learn from consciousness, is a branch of 
 physical science, the other subdivisions of which relate to those 
 facts which come to our knowledge through the senses. 
 
 But it is certainly no part of psychological inquiry to seek 
 after the origin of our notion of cause, or to analyze our idea 
 of infinity. Observation cannot aid us here. In the external 
 world, and in the succession of our thoughts, we witness only 
 events or changes ; we observe only sequences of phenomena ; 
 and to bind together the two terms of a sequence in the relation 
 
26 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 of cause and effect is the work of pure reason, unaided by the 
 perceptive faculty. So, also, whatever we observe, whether in 
 external nature or in the world within us, is finite, limited, and 
 contingent ; the idea of infinity is superadded by reason, tran- 
 scending the sphere of sense and reflection, and baffling even the 
 power of the imagination to seize or comprehend it. Our ideas, 
 moreover, of space and time are abstract conceptions, which rise, 
 indeed, on occasion of experience, but cannot be deduced from 
 experience, nor explained by its teachings. To speculate on 
 these things is the work of metaphysical philosophy properly so 
 called, of that science which goes beyond facts to principles, 
 which begins from intuitions and ends in demonstrative certainty. 
 
 It may be said, however, that metaphysical inquiries are not 
 concerned exclusively with relations of ideas, since Ontology, 
 which is an important and the most abstruse branch of this sci- 
 ence, relates avowedly, and as its name imports, to real entities, 
 which are conceived to exist out of the mind, or independently 
 of thought. I answer, that the realities which are the objects of 
 ontological inquiry are few in number, and though supposed to 
 exist out of the mind, they are known to us only as abstract con- 
 ceptions ; and the sole purpose of ontology, the only problem 
 which it attempts to resolve, is the question whether they are 
 realities or not. This point cannot be ascertained by observa- 
 tion and experiment, which are the great instruments of physical 
 inquiry ; it can be determined only by studying the relations of 
 our ideas. 
 
 Take, for instance, the idea of material substance, which we 
 conceive of only as the unknown something that supports and 
 manifests certain qualities, even these qualities being known to 
 us only as the hidden causes of certain sensations, or states of 
 mind ; and this idea, these states of mind, are the only media 
 the study of which can furnish an answer to the question as to 
 the reality of this substance. Aristotle calls this substance " the 
 primary matter," to distinguish it from the secondary forms of 
 matter, that are the only objects of which we take cognizance 
 through the senses. " The primary matter," he says, "is that 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 27 
 
 without which nothing could formally exist. It is neither earth, 
 nor air, nor fire, nor water. It is neither hot, nor cold, nor dry, 
 nor moist, nor solid, nor extended. It is the universal element, 
 but can never become objective to sense." How, then, can we 
 obtain a view of this elementary being ? "We gain a glimpse 
 of it," says the learned author of Philosophical Arrangements, 
 " by abstraction, when we say that the first matter is not the 
 lineaments and complexion, which make the beautiful face ; nor 
 yet the flesh and blood, which make those lineaments and that 
 complexion ; nor yet the liquid and solid aliments, which make 
 that flesh and blood ; nor yet the simple bodies of earth and 
 water, which make those various aliments ; but something which, 
 being below all these, and supporting them all, is yet different 
 from them all, and essential to their existence." Certainly, this 
 idea is a pure abstraction, quite as much so as the infinitesimal 
 quantities of the algebraist ; and though reality may be predicated 
 of it, if we believe in its existence, it is only in the same sense 
 in which quantities infinitely small may be said actually to exist 
 anywhere in measurable extension. " We obtain a sight of it 
 [metaphorically] when we say, that as is the brass to the statue, 
 the marble to the pillar, the timber to the ship, or any one sec- 
 ondary matter to any one peculiar form, so is the first and origi- 
 nal matter to all forms in general." Obviously, a dim analogy 
 like this affords very insufficient ground for a physical investiga- 
 tion ; and the whole subject must be put over to the department 
 of metaphysical science.* 
 
 And here, it may be observed in passing, we have an illustra- 
 tion of the radically vicious method in which the ancients under- 
 took the study of nature ; omitting altogether the observation 
 of particular facts, and seeking to deduce from grand but vague 
 abstractions, like this of " the primary matter," the individual 
 truths which they disdained to collect from patient induction. It 
 was as if a botanist should attempt to evolve by meditation the 
 
 * The quotations in this paragraph are taken from Sir W. Drummond's 
 Academical Questions, a metaphysical work of some repute forty years 
 ago. 
 
28 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 grand archetypal idea of a plant, from which to deduce by logical 
 analysis and strict demonstrative reasoning the several forms which 
 all existing plants must assume. We ought not rashly 'to infer 
 that there is no longer any danger of committing flagrant mistakes 
 like this in the pursuit of knowledge. Error tends to come round 
 in cycles ; and the reaction against the Baconian method, to which 
 I alluded in my last lecture, has given some currency to specula- 
 tions in natural science which seem the legitimate descendants of 
 the reveries of the schoolmen. I need not go for illustration to 
 a scheme so extravagant as the system of natural history which 
 was devised by Oken, a philosophical pupil of Schelling, which 
 still has many disciples and followers in Germany, though Menzel, 
 himself a favorer of it, acknowledges that it " corresponds per- 
 fectly to the philosophy of Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians in 
 the Middle Ages." I find a more respectable instance in the 
 infant science of Morphology, applied to animals by St. Hilaire, 
 and to plants by Goethe, and which has recently been made 
 popular, at least in some of its applications, by the author of the 
 Vestiges of Creation. According to this speculation, "plants 
 and animals, in the process of growing up from their germs, have 
 a tendency to develop themselves in a much more uniform man- 
 ner than they in fact do, and the differences for example, of 
 leaf, flower, and fruit are mere modifications of one general 
 phenomenon." The theory assumes that the type, or grand 
 purpose of nature, though constantly struggling to manifest itself, 
 is realized only in a few cases, which are admitted monstrosities, 
 the system resting on these, and the induction from a few anoma- 
 lous instances thus overriding the conclusion derived from the 
 great majority of cases. The doctrine naturally succeeds, that 
 all the races of animals tend, as it were, to pass into each other, 
 in their progress to or from the typical creature, which forms 
 either the commencement or the end of the scale. The distinc- 
 tions of species thus disappear, races cease to be permanent, and 
 man acknowledges fraternity, or a common pedigree, with the 
 reptile and the brute. A purely speculative notion is here super- 
 induced upon the inductions of experience, though a lingering 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 29 
 
 respect is still manifested for the Baconian method, the theory 
 being defended by a spurious induction from a few monstrosities. 
 And this view we are invited to entertain as a substitute for the 
 doctrine of final causes ! * 
 
 But this is a digression ; I return to the only other question in 
 metaphysical science which it is necessary to consider here as a 
 seeming exception to the doctrine, that this science is concerned 
 exclusively with the relations of abstract ideas. I refer now to 
 the discussion respecting the real existence of the external world, 
 a question distinct in some respects from the one already noticed, 
 respecting the abstract conception of material substance. And 
 here a distinction is to be made between the popular belief and 
 the philosophical doctrine, or rather between the causes that 
 actually create our assent to the proposition, and the reasons by 
 which, when subsequently called upon, we undertake to justify 
 that assent. Certainly, to all minds not yet accustomed to philo- 
 sophical inquiries, the existence of an external world is a fact, 
 and as such is learned by induction. There can be no rea- 
 sonable doubt, I think, that the sensations of an infant are not 
 accompanied by what we call perception ; that they are not re- 
 ferred by it to an external cause ; that they give it no information 
 at first respecting outward realities, but are to it merely so many 
 sources of pleasure or pain. By a gradual process, that is, by 
 induction, finding that the sensations recur in a fixed order under 
 given circumstances, that they are wholly independent of the will, 
 that muscular exertion can sometimes be made without restraint, 
 and at others is checked or resisted by a foreign obstacle, the 
 infant mind comes at last to a conception of outward things, or 
 of existences foreign to itself. 
 
 Whether this induction is so complete that we can consider 
 the independent existence of brute matter as proved by it is 
 another question. It does prove that there must be some cause 
 of these sensations, which cause is foreign to our own minds ; 
 
 * Schiller made the best criticism upon this theory, when it was first ex- 
 plained to him by Goethe, who was one of its earliest advocates, if not its 
 inventor. " This," said Schiller, " is not an observation, but an idea.'" 
 
30 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 and this is enough to disprove the monstrous idealism of Fichte, 
 that we create every thing from ourselves, though the doctrine 
 of Berkeley remains quite as plausible as the vulgar belief, and 
 rests, perhaps, on a more philosophical basis. Those who ridi- 
 cule it, it is safe to say, do so from ignorance of its true charac- 
 ter ; and this remark will apply even to the great English moralist, 
 who, when teased by his biographer about this doctrine, under- 
 took to decide the case in his own peculiar manner. " I never 
 shall forget," says Boswell, "the alacrity with which Dr. John- 
 son answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large 
 stone, till he rebounded from it, C I refute it thus.' " The 
 argument implied in this act proves nothing but the essential shal- 
 lowness of Johnsonian dogmatism ; for it is an appeal to facts, 
 to sensible evidence, to settle an abstract philosophical question. 
 As mooted by philosophers, this question refers to the objective 
 validity of our abstract idea of outward things, and as such it 
 must be settled, if at all, by metaphysical reasons ; and he who 
 brings into this discussion the testimony of the senses acts quite as 
 absurdly as a metaphysician would do, who by his abstract specu- 
 lations should undertake to confound a common man's belief in 
 the reality of things about him. Here, as everywhere else, the 
 physical fact rests upon its appropriate inductive evidence ; while 
 the philosophical question must be treated philosophically, or 
 by metaphysical considerations. The speculative attempts, ex- 
 tended, modified, and perpetually recurring through the whole 
 history of philosophy, to demonstrate the independent existence 
 of matter, have left the question precisely where it was, have 
 created nothing but an interminable logomachy, or war of words, 
 between the realists and the idealists. The result of this warfare 
 was pithily summed up by Dr. Brown, when speaking of the two 
 great champions in Scotland of the opposite doctrines on this 
 subject : " Reid bawled out, c We must believe in an external 
 world,' but added in a whisper, c I own we can give no reason 
 for this belief ; Hume cried out, 'We cannot prove the existence 
 of matter,' but he whispered, c I confess we cannot help believ- 
 ing it.'" 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 31 
 
 Enough has been said to show the true purpose of metaphysi- 
 cal philosophy, the nature of the subjects with which it is con- 
 versant, the kind of reasoning employed, and the proper limits 
 of the discussion. Let us pass on, then, to a precisely similar 
 inquiry respecting religion. What is the nature of religious be- 
 lief, properly so called ? and by what kind of testimony is it sup- 
 ported ? Are we here concerned with realities, or with abstract 
 speculations ? and do we look to demonstration, or to moral cer- 
 tainty, as the result of the inquiry ? The question is not yet, be 
 it observed, whether the belief is legitimate, or the testimony 
 sufficient ; of that, hereafter. I do not now ask whether religion 
 be true, but how we are to prove or to disprove it ; what argu- 
 ments are to be admitted into the discussion, and what considera- 
 tions shut out as irrelevant. I use the word religion here in its 
 most comprehensive sense, including both theology, as a system 
 of doctrines and principles, and practical piety. 
 
 The central truth of religion, on which all its other doctrines 
 and its practice depend, is the being of a God. Is there, in 
 very truth, a creating and sustaining Deity, or is this universe an 
 orphan, and we, most miserable, but accidental formations from 
 the clod, living only to consume life, relying on no support but 
 our own strength, and looking forward to painless extinction as 
 the happiest possible termination of our short and troubled ca- 
 reer ? Surely, we are able to say that the Divine existence, if 
 proved, is a fact, and the most momentous of all facts ; it is at 
 once the most consoling and the most awful of all realities. I do 
 not forget that the name of the Supreme Being is often vaguely 
 used ; because it is said that his existence is a mystery, and his 
 essence is unknown, for the finite creature cannot comprehend 
 the Infinite. So neither can we comprehend ourselves ; our own 
 existence is a mystery, and we are surrounded with problems that 
 we cannot solve. The lowest and the highest manifestation of 
 life is alike a secret that baffles the most cunning researches of 
 science ; we can describe, meagrely and imperfectly, it is true, 
 but we cannot explain it. If no knowledge is admissible, .or de- 
 serves its name, except it be perfect, then indeed we are doomed 
 
32 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 to hopeless and perpetual ignorance. In this respect the grand 
 dogma of the being of a God is on a par with the simplest fact 
 of physiology, or with a belief in the actual existence of any 
 fellow-mortal whom we have never seen. 
 
 But I go much farther ; considered as a truth of religion, the 
 being of a God is a sufficiently definite and intelligible fact to 
 enable us to pronounce at once on the general character of the 
 evidence by which, if at all, it must be proved. If we discard 
 all notion of an overruling Providence, and adopt only the Epi- 
 curean idea of the Supreme Being, as one sitting apart from his 
 works, and allowing them to go on without interference, over- 
 sight, or regard, then indeed the question concerning the reality 
 of such an existence is one of pure curiosity, to be ranked with 
 other problems in science, as a matter of no immediate interest 
 except to the student. We may sublimate that existence into an 
 abstract conception, or identify it with material nature ; and as 
 either alternative is adopted, we may attempt to support it by 
 physical or metaphysical reasoning. But the religious aspect of 
 the subject compels us to bring down the question to the actual 
 existence of a Moral Governor of the world. We care not 
 whether the dogma, considered simply as a fact or a proposition 
 in science, be established or refuted. Our only interest in the 
 matter, looking at it, not as philosophers, nor as students of sci- 
 ence, but as men, arises from the influence which the fact, if 
 proved, will have upon our conduct and the regulation of our 
 hearts and lives. The question does not affect us, unless it be 
 understood to relate to the being of a personal God, the Creator 
 of heaven and earth, really distinct from nature, though pervading 
 it with his presence, all-wise and all-powerful, the conscious Cause 
 and present Ruler of all things. I am not taking these attributes 
 for granted, but simply stating the question, the only question 
 which as moral beings we are concerned to answer. Whatever 
 might be made of the philosophical conception of a Deity, or 
 however curious and interesting to the merely rational mind might 
 be the solution of the problem respecting the mode of his exist- 
 ence, or the reconcilement of his attributes with each other, it 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 33 
 
 does not affect us, considered simply as seekers after religious 
 truth, or as endeavouring to satisfy the longings of that religious 
 sentiment which, like the desire for society, or the domestic 
 affections, or the inherent love of right, I firmly believe to be a 
 constituent and ineradicable principle of human nature. The 
 proper object of that sentiment is a person, a moral being ; its 
 natural and even irresistible expression is in worship and prayer. 
 We must seek to gratify it, then, just as we might attempt, if 
 suffering under a sense of loneliness, to appease our social crav- 
 ings ; first, to ascertain the fact that a companion can be found, 
 and then to draw near to him in that spirit of loving trust, and, if 
 necessary, of self-sacrifice, which will be sure to make him, when 
 found, our friend. 
 
 We cannot, then, demonstrate the existence of a God. If 
 there is any force in the considerations which I have tried to lay 
 before you, this admission is not an alarming one. We do not 
 here attempt to weigh the abstract argument for this end, and 
 pronounce it to be weak or insufficient ; opinions might differ on 
 this point ; we put it aside altogether, as illogical and irrelevant. 
 It has nothing to do with the matter in hand. We reject it for 
 the same reason that an historian would reject, as an idle exercise 
 of ingenuity, an attempt, made without any reference to the tes- 
 timony of persons, books, or monuments, to prove from abstract 
 conceptions and the laws of the human mind, that a great battle 
 must have been fought nearly twenty-five hundred years ago on 
 the plains of Marathon, and that the Grecian forces in this battle 
 must have been commanded by a general called Miltiades. We 
 say that metaphysical reasoning is inapplicable here, on the same 
 principle on which the chemist, when about to investigate the 
 affinities of a newly discovered substance, would refuse to sub- 
 stitute pure mathematical analysis for the logic of the crucible, 
 the scales, and the blowpipe. He would say that the former 
 mode of investigation was precluded by the nature of the case ; 
 and as the selection of the proper means of research is a ques- 
 tion of pure logic, whidh is itself one of the metaphysical sci- 
 
34 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 ences, it would not be going too far for him to assert that he 
 could demonstrate the inapplicability of demonstration. 
 
 It may be asked, why I have taken so much pains with this 
 preliminary matter, which is merely the logic of natural theology. 
 Why seek to strike out abstract reasoning, and to bring the ques- 
 tion down to the limits and principles of the inductive method, 
 so that our researches may be governed by the rules of physical 
 inquiry ? Unquestionably, every sincere believer would be glad 
 to accept a demonstration of the truths of religion, if it could be 
 had ; why endeavour to cut him off even from the hope of a pos- 
 sible future enlargement, in this way, of the grounds of his faith ? 
 
 I answer, first, that it is of great importance so to arrange the 
 system of our belief, that proofs of the same general character 
 may be classed together, and the relative strength of different 
 arguments may be clearly ascertained. They lose their proper 
 weight in our estimation, if brought to a false standard, or tried 
 by an insufficient test. A pretended demonstration of a matter 
 of fact, if compared with the reasoning of Euclid or Laplace, 
 must appear, I dp not say feeble, but illogical and false ; and the 
 failure of a favorite argument is very likely to draw down with 
 -it, in the mind of the inquirer, all faith in the doctrine itself, its 
 other supports being then disregarded or held in light esteem. I 
 would save the earnest seeker after truth from the anguish of dis- 
 appointment, in looking after what cannot be found, and thereby 
 enable him duly to appreciate the strength of the proofs within 
 his reach. There" can be no fears for the strength of our relig- 
 ious*feith, if it stands upon "the same' platform with the whole 
 round of the physical sciences, so that no assault can reach even 
 its outworks until the entire fabric of these shall be demolished, 
 and it be made, to appear that all the boasted attainments of the 
 last three centuries in the study of nature have been unprofitable 
 and vain. 
 
 Th theological argument is of the same kind with that which 
 supports jhef conclusions of the physical inquirer ; but it is supe- 
 rior, immeasurably superior, in degree. The proofs of design, 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 35 
 
 * 
 
 for instance, which form the basis of one portion of this argu- 
 ment, are numerous beyond calculation. They are diffused 
 everywhere, above, around, and within us. They are not 
 drawn only from a few scratches on mountains of rock, or from 
 fossil remains here and there dug up from the earth, put together 
 with slow toil, and then* history with difficulty spelt out. They 
 do not rest on a few experiments carefully devised and with great 
 labor repeated. The study of years is not required before their 
 import can be made known even to a few, while the bulk of man 1 
 kind must ever remain ignorant of the doctrine, or receive it on 
 trust. These are difficulties with which the geologist, the chem- 
 ist, the astronomer, must contend. But the marks of contrivance 
 that form the language in which the sublime dogma of God's ex- 
 istence is written fill the earth arid skies, and are open alike to 
 the- most elevated and the meanest capacity. They are equally 
 obvious. in the structure of every blade of grass, and in the mech- 
 anism of the heavens. They exist alike in the object perceived, 
 and in the percipient mind ; in the hand that fashions, the ear that 
 hears, and the lungs that breathe. They are found in the -bones 
 
 'of extinct races, and in the habits of all living things ; in the 
 skeleton of the mammoth, and in the instinct which teaches the 
 bee to frame its wonderful cell, and guides the water-fowl to its 
 nest. The atmosphere, that wraps the earth in a garment, testi- 
 fies His presence ; and the sun bears witness to Him who lighted 
 up its fires. " There is no speech nor language where their voice 
 is not heard. Their linfe is gone out through aH the earth, and 
 their words to the end of the world." 
 
 Secondly, we seek to confine this inquiry within its legitimate 
 boundaries, because the grounds which justify the exclusion of 
 metaphysical proofs show also the irrelevancy of metaphysical 
 objections. It needs but little study; of the evidences of natural 
 religion to convince one, that the arguments which have been 
 brought against the doctrine of the being of a God are, almost 
 without exception, abstract or metaphysical in character. They 
 
 , are founded on alleged imperfections in our knowledge of cause 
 and effect ; on a supposed inconsistency of the attribute of in- 
 
36 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 finity with the moral qualities of God ; on the assumed invio- 
 lability of abstract but personified laws ; on the difficulty of 
 conceiving of eternal duration, or of any person who is increate ; 
 on the fallacy of reasoning from what is finite to what is infinite ; 
 and last and chiefly, on the absence of demonstration itself, 
 which, it is taken for granted, is quite as essential in this case as 
 for establishing a proposition in geometry. To take away the 
 whole basis of these objections, by showing that they are no 
 more pertinent to the subject in hand than to the doctrines of 
 physical science, is to contribute most effectually to the argu- 
 ment of the theist. If it be proved that reasoning from such 
 premises is nugatory and inapplicable, the very groundwork of 
 the systems of Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Fichte, and other modern 
 infidels, is removed, and the superstructure falls. The philoso- 
 phy which attempts to define and demonstrate all things necessa- 
 rily leads to fatalism. In the posthumous work of Spinoza may 
 be found the perfect .type of these demonstration-seeking sys- 
 tems, systems which can never really transcend the sphere of 
 the abstractions on which they are founded, and therefore never 
 can consistently admit a Deity, except in that pantheistic sense 
 which regards God as a pure idea that is necessarily involved in 
 all existence, and ends in an avowed identification of the Divinity 
 with the material universe. The title of his book, u Ethics re- 
 duced to a Geometrical System, and proved by the Geometrical 
 Method," answers to its contents ; as he begins with a list of axi- 
 oms and definitions, and proceeds by a series of theorems and 
 proofs to that doctrine of atheistic fatalism which has been the 
 seminal principle of the infidel philosophy of Germany down to 
 the present day. 
 
 I have no fears for the security of the theist's faith, when it 
 rests on the same basis with all the doctrines of natural science, 
 and with all the conclusions which govern the daily conduct of 
 men. To distrust such evidence, or to be incapable of acting 
 upon ft, is the common test of the folly that borders upon idiocy ; 
 and to such an unbeliever, therefore, may be literally applied the 
 words of Scripture, " The fool hath said in his heart, There is 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 37 
 
 no God." The infidel systems of modern philosophy agree 
 very nearly with the mythology of the ancients, which admitted 
 "Fate, Chance, Nature, Time, Space, to be real beings, nay, 
 even gods." "Mankind in all ages," says Mr. Mill, "have 
 had a strong propensity to conclude that wherever there is a 
 name, there must be a distinguishable separate entity corre- 
 sponding, and every complex idea which the mind has formed for 
 itself by operating upon its conceptions of individual things was 
 considered to have an outward objective reality answering to it." 
 " This misapprehension," he goes on to say, " of the import of 
 general language constitutes Mysticism, a word so much oftener 
 written and spoken than understood. Whether in the Vedas, 
 the Platonists, or the Hegelians, mysticism is neither more nor 
 less than ascribing objective existence to the subjective creations 
 of the mind's own faculties, to mere ideas of the intellect ; and 
 believing that by watching and contemplating these ideas of its 
 own making, it can read in them what takes place in the world 
 without."* In religion, it may be added, this mysticism leads 
 to the most subtile of all forms of idolatry, the only one, in- 
 deed, that is now practicable among a civilized people, the 
 deification of an idea, the apotheosis of an abstraction. 
 
 The proposition, that all the fundamental truths of religion re- 
 late to matters of fact, and must be established, if at all, by moral 
 reasoning, leads us to look beyond the belief in the being of a 
 God, and to inquire if it holds true, also, of the doctrine of im- 
 mortality. I pass over the evidences of the moral government 
 of the Deity, as unnecessary to be considered here ; since it is 
 obvious that they must consist in a copious induction of exam- 
 ples, to prove that the reward of virtue and the punishment of 
 vice are the great objects of all the general laws by which the 
 world is governed. The only argument brought against this 
 doctrine, being an enumeration of cases of a seemingly -promis- 
 cuous distribution of happiness and misery in this life, is an appli- 
 cation of the rules of physical inquiry, so that abstract reasoning 
 
 * J. S. Mill's Logic, Am. ed., p. 464. 
 
38 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 is admitted to be out of place on either side. These apparent 
 exceptions, this allotment of good and evil in a measure which 
 often does not correspond with our sense of merit and demerit, 
 create a presumption, it is said, that the scheme of moral gov- 
 ernment, which has only its beginning here, will be completed in 
 a future state. 
 
 If the immortality of the soul did not open so attractive a field 
 for general disquisition, it would be difficult to conceive of it as 
 supported by abstract arguments, or as clouded by metaphysical 
 doubts and difficulties. " If a man dies, shall he live again ? " 
 The question here relates to a fact of the second order, to an 
 event which is to take place, a future occurrence ; if the present 
 or actual existence of the mind or person is a fact, so also is its 
 future existence. Our means of answering the question, too, are 
 more limited and imperfect in this case than would suffice for the 
 establishment of any fact in physical science. As it relates to 
 the future, we can have no sensible evidence of it ; and as the 
 grave confessedly does not give up its dead to our bodily appre- 
 hension, the testimony of others, except so far as they speak of 
 a revelation, is also set aside. The axiom respecting the uni- 
 formity of nature, which is the usual foundation of our reasonings 
 from the past to the future, cannot aid us here, because we are 
 not asking now whether it is probable that an observed law of 
 nature will continue in force ; the question is, whether there has 
 ever been such a law, whether a messenger has ever come back 
 to us from that invisible bourne. Accordingly, it is distinctly 
 admitted by the most judicious writers on natural theology, that 
 the argument, after all, is but a series of presumptions, which we 
 indulge the more readily because the conclusion to which they 
 point is one in which all persons willingly acquiesce ; it agrees 
 with the involuntary shrinking of the rational mind from the idea 
 of utter extinction. Most of these presumptions were as well 
 stated by the ancient philosophers, by Socrates, and Plato, 
 and Cicero, as by the moderns. The use of such speculations 
 is not to establish the truth of the point in question, but to refute 
 the objections which have been urged against the possibility of 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 39 
 
 the event. It can be shown that the dissolution of the body 
 does not necessarily lead us to infer the extinction of the soul, 
 but that the presumption lies the other way. It is in this mod- 
 erate form that the argument from the light of nature is stated by 
 Butler, and it would have been well if Clarke had imitated his 
 reserve. Immortality is no part of the positive teachings of na- 
 ture ; to revelation alone can we look for light and life beyond 
 the grave. 
 
 I take no account of those extraordinary speculations which 
 suppose the soul of man to be a ray or emanation from the 
 Deity, which, at the dissolution of the body, will again be ab- 
 sorbed into its source. " This seems," says Mr. Stewart, u to 
 have been the opinion of many of the ancient Stoics ; and a simi- 
 lar idea has been adopted by some philosophers in modern times, 
 who have compared the soul, when joined to the body, to a small 
 portion of the sea inclosed in a vial ; and when separated from 
 it, to the same water, confounded and intermixed, by the break- 
 ing of the vial which contained it, with the ocean from which it 
 was first taken." This is but one of the applications of the doc- 
 trine of pantheism, and those who can give up the belief in a 
 personal God may be satisfied with this conception of the soul's 
 futurity. But to others, the loss of distinct consciousness and 
 personal identity or individuality, which is implied in this theory, 
 will cause the doctrine to appear little more consoling than a be- 
 lief in the termination of all things at the grave. The admitted 
 physical fact, that of all the material particles which constitute 
 the body at the instant of death not one is lost, but all enter 
 into new combinations, and pass through a ceaseless round of 
 growth and decay, gives us an idea of the perpetuity of our cor- 
 poreal frames which answers exactly to this pantheistic notion of 
 the immortality of the soul. To speak of different minds being 
 blended together and lost in one general mass of being is to em- 
 ploy a form of words which is only not injurious to sound doc- 
 trine because it is unintelligible and absurd. Existence is an 
 abstract idea ; there is no such thing as existence in general, 
 apart from individual beings, any more than there is such a thing 
 
40 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 as this audience existing separately from the men and women 
 who compose it. To speak of the annihilation of these persons 
 in their individual capacity, leaving their presence as a general 
 assembly, is nonsense. To such an absurdity are we reduced 
 by confounding abstractions with realities, or employing terms 
 without attaching definite and distinct meaning to them. 
 
 Yet we have been told, that it is "written legibly in Nature 
 that man is an undying being," and every thing justifies us in 
 saying, that, "if man were made to live for ever, the impress of 
 that intention must be distinctly visible in his very structure." 
 Science, it is accordingly said, must decipher the marks which 
 indicate this intention, and spell out the natural language in which 
 every rational creature is labelled with the promise of immortality, 
 just as it infers from a mere fragment of a fossil bone " the whole 
 fashion of the animal to which it belonged, its food, its mode and 
 sphere of existence." But the history which is deciphered by 
 the geologist and the comparative anatomist is that of the past,j 
 and not even in their boldest speculations do they attempt to pry 
 into the secrets of the future, far less, to speak confidently of 
 an endless duration to come. Science can read the annals of 
 former ages, but it cannot " look into the seeds of time, and see 
 what grain will grow and what will not." The astronomer hesi- 
 tates about pronouncing upon the future stability of the system of 
 which our earth is but a part, even on the supposition that the 
 laws which now seem to control its action shall continue for ever 
 in force, without restraint, limit, or interference from the omnipo- 
 tent hand which first established them. But who shall say when 
 His purpose shall be accomplished ? or who shall scan the de- 
 signs of the Almighty ? The naturalist may declare, if he can, 
 that the flower shall droop and die at the end of a single season ; 
 but he finds no evidence that the secret principle which now vivi- 
 fies it, after it has ceased to hold these material particles together, 
 shall yet continue to be, either animating other forms, or existing 
 apart till time shall be no more. And mental science is equally 
 barren of any distinct promise of the future ; the sharpest scru- 
 tiny of the phenomena of mind, unguided by special revelation, 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 41 
 
 leaves this doctrine of immortality precisely where it was in the 
 speculations of antiquity, a dim though glorious foreboding, a 
 splendid doubt. 
 
 We are not surprised, then, to find the author of the assertion 
 just quoted rebuking those who conceive " of the eternal world 
 as situated on the other side of the tomb," and telling them that 
 eternity " is here and now, that they are in it, and that it is in 
 them." It is all a juggle of words, then, which substitutes a 
 flight of rhetoric for the severe expression of a scientific or a re- 
 ligious truth, and reduces the immortality of the soul to a figure 
 of speech. Unquestionably, it is a tolerable metaphor to say, 
 that in good deeds there is length of years ; but it is paltering 
 with words to hold up this trope as an enunciation or a proof of 
 the- doctrine that the soul shall never die. 
 
 v OMiave time to give but one other illustration of the truth, that 
 religion is founded entirely upon matters of fact, and- must be 
 supported, therefore, by moral evidence. -Religion inculcates 
 Certain duties ; it enjoins some motives and modes of conduct, 
 and forbids others, and this, too, by the highest of all sanc- 
 tions, the command of God. These injunctions are in great 
 part coincident with the moral precepts of our own hearts ; the 
 Divine law and the law of conscience, whenever they meet, har- 
 monize with each other, and so far as they regard only the out- 
 ward act, are reduced to one. Still, to the religious man there 
 is an additional sanction, a new source of obligation ; the act, 
 once deemed obligatory only from an instinctive perception of its 
 rightfulness, now becomes a manifestation of obedience, a relig- 
 ious duty, an act of worship. Virtuous actions as such, or in 
 themselves considered, are not religious deeds ; mere virtue must 
 be consecrated by reference to the Divine will before it can as- 
 sume even a resemblance to holiness. I do not say, that the 
 moral sense is of imperfect obligation, so that it must be buoyed 
 up and enforced by the will of God before its dictates are bind- 
 ing upon man. Right is of necessary and inherent obligation, 
 anterior to all command. But the precept added gives another 
 aspect to the duty, and creates a new joy in the fulfilment of it. 
 
 6 
 
42 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 A life which is irreproachable before the world, which is warmed 
 by all the kindly affections and elevated by a steadfast adherence 
 to noble principles, is still an irreligious and godless one, if its 
 acts are not sanctified by this reference to the Supreme Will. 
 This is but a definition of religion, the meaning of which, as 
 shown by its etymology and its universal acceptance, is to reli- 
 gate, or to bind anew, to the performance of duty, by offering 
 an additional motive and guide ; and this meaning constitutes the 
 only possible distinction between religion and mere morality. In 
 the family, a rule obligatory in itself acquires a new claim to ob- 
 servance from the command or wish of a parent, the motive of 
 obedience and love being thus added to our almost involuntary 
 homage to conscience. So, in the great human family, the primal 
 duties of life truthfulness, temperance, justice, and charity 
 become alike more awful and engaging, I do not say more bind- 
 ing, because the performance of them is the declared will of 
 our Heavenly Father. 
 
 Observe, then, that the whole practice of religion- depends 
 upon our knowledge of this fact, that God has commanded us 
 to do, or to abstain from doing, " certain acts. It matters not 
 how this knowledge is "obtained, -whether oy direct revelation, or 
 by inferring the will of the Creator from the character \nd ten- 
 dency of , his works. In either case, the light of nature, or a 
 Divinely appointed messenger, or a miracle, announces to us a 
 solemn, an awful reality, that the moral law is His law, and 
 transgression of it is violation of His command. I may even 
 infer the fact only from my instinctive perception of the -duty ; 
 still, the inference is one that leads to a fact, and not to an ab- 
 stract principle. I argue, not from one general law to another, 
 but from a given effect to a particular cause ; not from one rule 
 enforced by conscience to another rule enjoined by the Almighty, 
 but from the fact that conscience speaks at all to another fact 
 that God also speaks, and that the voice of conscience is also 
 the voice of 1&od. - 
 
 These views, I~ am well aware, are directly opposed to a 
 theory now very popular with a certain class of minds, which 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 43 
 
 tends, first, to identify revealed with natural religion, and next, 
 to merge both in the practice of a sublime but rather indefinite 
 morality. A pure life is held up as the only true criterion of a 
 religious character, and then as the only desirable object of at- 
 tainment. Especially has this disposition been manifested when 
 treating of the nature and functions of conscience ; so that many 
 earnest but injudicious persons have now become quite as fanati- 
 cal, quite as bigoted, irrational, and intolerant, in regard to moral 
 principle, as were formerly the wildest sect of the Puritans in 
 respect to their religious faith. Reverence of their own nature 
 seems to them quite as just and proper as reverence of the Deity, 
 and a glowing though vague conception of virtue takes the place 
 of religion as a guide of life. Nay, a sort of ecstatic contempla- 
 tion of the mere ideas of duty and right has, with some, usurped 
 the place of a practical manifestation of these ideas in outward 
 conduct ; and thus a species of Antinomianism has been estab- 
 lished on ethical grounds, quite as absurd and dangerous as the 
 same theory is when nominally resting on Scripture. If these 
 vagaries must exist, let them, at any rate, appear in their true 
 character, and not borrow the name and garb of the faith which 
 they dishonor. Religion is indeed an affair of the heart and the 
 life f tut a belief in religion is an-affair of the intellect. Im- 
 pulses cannot take the place of convictions, nor can morality 
 itself find anywhere a sure and permanent support except in a 
 recognition of its dictates as the commands of God. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 THE object of my last Lecture was to draw a dividing line 
 between the provinces of Philosophy and Religion ; to show that 
 the one was occupied with abstractions, and the other with reali- 
 ties ; and, accordingly, that they rested upon different species of 
 evidence, and any confusion of the two was likely to be injurious 
 to both. During the reign of Scholasticism, says Mr. Whewell, 
 "it was held, without any regulating principle, that the Philosophy 
 which had been bequeathed to the world by the great geniuses of 
 heathen antiquity, and the Philosophy which was deduced from 
 and implied by the revelations made by God to man, must be 
 identical ; and therefore that Theology is the only true Philoso- 
 phy." We do but invert this error in our own day, when the 
 opinion of many seems to tend towards the conclusion, if indeed 
 it be not openly avowed, that Philosophy is the only true The- 
 ology. Against this conclusion, I endeavoured to show, by a 
 very brief review of the questions that are chiefly considered by 
 metaphysicians and by religious inquirers, that they differed as 
 widely from each other as logic from history, so that^reasoning 
 from one to the other was not merely feeble and unsatisfactory, 
 but irrational and absurd. The great truths of Religion are the 
 being of a God, the moral government of the world, the im- 
 mortality of \the soul, and the promulgation of certain duties as 
 dirtectly enjoined iy the authority of God. These truths, I 
 reminded you, "'for no proof of a self-evident proposition is 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 45 
 
 needed or possible, are matters of fact, quite as much so as 
 the existence, at some antecedent time, of a certain political 
 community upon this earth, the authority of its first magistrate, 
 and the enactment of laws by its legislature ; that is, we rely 
 upon sensible evidence, the testimony of others, and upon rea- 
 soning from effects to causes, the usual media of physical and 
 historical inquiry, for establishing our belief in their reality. 
 
 This division is not made because of the superior sacredness 
 of religion, but simply to avoid confusion of terms and illogical 
 conclusions. We are not entitled to claim any thing for theology 
 beyond what is proved ; and to repudiate any kind of reasoning 
 simply on the ground of the irreverence of its application to such 
 a theme, or even of the pernicious results to which it leads, would 
 be an assumption alike unreasonable and unfair. I take nothing 
 for granted. The inquiry, hitherto, has related solely to the logic 
 or method of the investigation ; not to the validity of particular 
 arguments used for a special purpose, but to the proper classifica- 
 tion of all arguments, and to the explanation of the terms which 
 must be used in the reasoning. Thus, I have not yet sought to 
 prove the being of a God, but to show what is the meaning of 
 the question, whether God exists. The idea of religion, also, 
 not its verity^ has been assumed according to the common under- 
 standing of men, in order that we may know the nature of the 
 problem before us, and not pursue an aimless discussion, or end 
 in conclusions of no practical importance. 
 
 Considering these preliminaries as established, we approach 
 now the body of the subject, and attempt to prove the particular 
 facts in the case, and to free them from the metaphysical specu- 
 lations and difficulties by which they have been encumbered. In 
 seeking to know the relation of God to man, we must begin by 
 an investigation, to some extent, of human nature itself, as our 
 conclusions upon this point cannot fail to affect every part of the 
 inquiry. What are we, considered as subjects of the Divine law, 
 and what light is thrown by our physical constitution upon the 
 purpose or end for which we began to exist ? or is it < likely that 
 there was no purpose in the case, but that our creation was as 
 
46 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 objectless as the gambols of an infant, a mere freak in the dis- 
 position of matter ? The common belief, that man is a complex 
 being, made up of body and soul, has been disturbed by strange 
 doubts respecting the possibility of any immaterial existence, and 
 by arguments which go to destroy our confidence even in our 
 personal identity, and consequently in our continuous responsi- 
 bility to any authority. I do not say, that a solution of all these 
 doubts is absolutely necessary before the great truths of religion 
 can be established. Dr. Priestley was a materialist, yet he be- 
 lieved in the immortality of man ; he was a necessarian, but he 
 held to human accountability ; and few who are familiar with his 
 theological writings will deny that he was even a profoundly re- 
 ligious person, whatever may have been his errors in scientific, 
 political, or theological speculation. Still, it was for him to vin- 
 dicate his own consistency ; in ordinary minds, if such opinions 
 are not immediately destructive of all religious belief, they cer- 
 tainly tend to darken and perplex it, so that a consideration of 
 them cannot properly be omitted here. The principles already 
 laid down do not permit us to waive the discussion as metaphysi- 
 cal, and therefore out of place ; for the point of inquiry is a 
 fact , the continued, identical, conscious existence of a human 
 being, his personality, the reality of a man to himself. Meta- 
 physical skepticism has gone so far, that, before undertaking to 
 establish the existence of a God, we are called upon to prove 
 our own existence. In considering the argument upon this head, 
 lest I should be accused of breaking my own rules, let me remind 
 you that the testimony of consciousness has been admitted to be 
 as legitimate a source of knowledge in physical inquiry as the 
 evidence of the senses themselves. 
 
 In the attempt to disprove the doctrine of materialism, it has 
 been usual to adopt the argument to which I briefly alluded in a 
 former Lecture ; to say that mind is the seat or subject of cer- 
 tain phenomena which are entirely distinct from another class of 
 attributes or qualities which inhere in matter. "What that sub- 
 stance is, in either case, we cannot determine, for our knowledge 
 both of mind and matter is merely relative. As " we know the 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 47 
 
 one," argues Mr. Stewart, " only by such sensible qualities as 
 extension, figure, and solidity ; and the other by such operations 
 as sensation, thought, and volition ; we are certainly entitled to 
 say, that matter and mind, considered as objects of human study, 
 are essentially different ; the science of the former resting ulti- 
 mately on the phenomena exhibited to our senses ; that of the 
 latter, on the phenomena of which we are conscious. Instead, 
 therefore, of objecting to the scheme of materialism, that its con- 
 clusions are false, it would be more accurate to say, that its aim 
 is unphilosophical." * Accordingly, it is maintained to be " no 
 more proper to say of mind that it is material, than to say of 
 body that it is spiritual." 
 
 This argument may be very well as far as it goes ; but it seems 
 to me to be insufficient, and to be very like an attempt to console 
 us for our imperfect knowledge of one thing by reminding us of 
 our total ignorance of another. Besides, as mind and matter are 
 confessedly the only constituents or parts that make up the hu- 
 man being, it is rather humiliating to be told that we have only a 
 relative knowledge of ourselves. When informed that matter is 
 only the unknown substratum of certain qualities, we may acqui- 
 esce ; for it has been shown that this idea of matter in general is 
 a mere abstraction, and if it were lost altogether, it would be no 
 serious privation, our knowledge of particular substances remain- 
 ing precisely what it was before . But when a person is told that 
 he is only an unknown something which feels, thinks, and wills, 
 he is very likely to reluct at the conclusion, inasmuch as he con- 
 siders his own existence, not as an abstraction, but a reality. 
 The argument puts our knowledge of the material and the intel- 
 lectual world exactly on a par, so that the idea of personality is 
 left unprovided for, or it is doubtful whether the body or the 
 mind is the person. 
 
 Let us look farther, then, for an argument against materialism 
 founded on the absolute incongruity of mental phenomena with 
 material organization or change. He who denies the existence 
 
 * Philosophy of the Human Mind, Am. (Cambridge) ed., I. 4. 
 
48 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 of spirit must maintain that ideas and emotions are evolved, in 
 some unintelligible manner, by the action of some part of the 
 body, probably of the nerves or the brain. Now we cannot 
 conceive of any changes in these organs corresponding to the in- 
 finite variety of mental phenomena, except by the motions of 
 their parts. But motion is not thought ; the vibrations of the 
 nerves, the agitation of the brain, the reciprocal action of infini- 
 tesimal particles on each other, is still bodily action, and not 
 mental action. Granting, for a moment, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, that they produce, or evolve, thought, they are not thought, 
 any more than the striking of a hammer on a bell is sound, or, 
 than the opening of the eyes is vision. A cause can never be 
 confounded with its effect, even though it be the real or efficient 
 cause, and not a mere invariable antecedent or concomitant 
 event. 
 
 Let me illustrate this point a little further. Chemists and math- 
 ematicians have long been occupied with researches and specula- 
 tions concerning the nature of heat, or caloric ; at present, they 
 can only say of it, that it is an invisible and imponderable agent or 
 principle, which produces certain effects, the words " agent " 
 and " principle," be it observed, being used only for convenience 
 of speech, and really betraying the ignorance of the speaker, who 
 does not know whether heat is some subtile fluid, existing by itself, 
 and tending constantly to an equilibrium by emission in straight 
 lines, or whether it proceeds from undulations, or certain changes 
 resembling undulations, in a fluid which exists also for other 
 purposes ; the heat in this case not being material, and never 
 existing by itself, so that we should speak of a hot body or a 
 cold one, just as we speak of a smooth surface or a rough sur- 
 face, never supposing that smoothness is a substance, but an at- 
 tribute. Now, suppose that some uninformed person, observing 
 that heat was always evolved when one body was rubbed against 
 another, or when it was burned, or when it was condensed from 
 a gaseous to a liquid, or from a liquid to a solid state, should say 
 that the problem was solved, and that heat was unquestionably 
 nothing but friction, or combustion, or condensation. A chemist 
 
THE IDEA OP SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 49 
 
 would certainly say, that this person did not even understand the 
 question ; for to know that friction produced heat was quite a dif- 
 ferent thing from saying that friction constituted heat. 
 
 So the agitation of the brain may produce, or rather precede, 
 or accompany thought ; but it does not constitute thought. Nay, 
 it is not even so probable that the motion produces the thought, 
 as it is that the thought produces the motion. Fear blanches the 
 cheek ; but the paleness does not produce the fear, and, for a 
 still stronger reason, does not constitute it.* 
 
 * Since the passage in the text was written, I have found the following 
 very clear and satisfactory statement of the same doctrine in Mr. Mill's ex- 
 cellent System of Logic. 
 
 " When we say that the force which holds the planets in their orbits is 
 resolved into gravity, or that the force which makes substances combine 
 chemically is resolved into electricity, we assert in the one case what is, and 
 in the other case what might, and probably will, ultimately be, a legitimate 
 result of induction. In both these cases, motion is resolved into motion. 
 The assertion is, that a case of motion, which was supposed to be special, 
 and to follow a distinct law of its own, conforms to and is included in the 
 general law which regulates another class of motions. But from these and 
 similar generalizations, countenance and currency have been given to attempts 
 to resolve, not motion into motion, but heat into motion, light into motion, 
 sensation itself into motion (as in Hartley's doctrine of vibrations) ; states 
 of consciousness into states of the nervous system, as in the ruder forms of 
 the materialist philosophy ; vital phenomena into mechanical or chemical pro- 
 cesses, as in some schools of physiology. 
 
 " Now I am far from pretending that it may not be capable of proof, or 
 that it would not be a very important addition to our knowledge, if proved, 
 that certain motions in the particles of bodies are among the conditions of 
 the production of heat or light ; that certain assignable physical modifica- 
 tions of the nerves may be among the conditions, not only of our sensations 
 or emotions, but even of our thoughts ; that certain mechanical and chemical 
 conditions may, in the order of nature, be sufficient to determine to action 
 the physiological laws of life. All I insist upon, in common with every 
 sober thinker since modern science has been definitely constituted, is, that it 
 shall not be supposed that by proving these things one step would be made 
 towards a real explanation of heat, light, or sensation ; or that the generic 
 peculiarity of those phenomena can be in the least degree evaded by any 
 such discoveries, however well established. Let it be shown, for instance, 
 that the most complex series of physical causes and effects succeed one 
 
 7 
 
50 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 Here, again, the argument appears to be sound as far as it 
 goes ; and it establishes a radical difference between the phe- 
 nomena of mind and those of matter. Still, it does not supply 
 the means of tying those phenomena, as it were, together, or of 
 building up that idea of personality, or self, which is the basis 
 of the theological argument, and against which the sophistry of 
 Hume was chiefly directed. This subtile skeptic, more acute by 
 far than most of the reasoners who have undertaken to answer 
 him, and whose purpose was not merely to deny, but to cast be- 
 lief and disbelief into the same state of uncertainty and confusion, 
 who aimed to uproot our confidence in any principles whatever, 
 whether of faith or infidelity, and hence to cause a general dis- 
 trust of the human faculties, directed his argument against our 
 idea of individuality, or our consciousness of separate, personal 
 existence. He reasons thus : 
 
 u When I turn my reflection on myself, I never can perceive 
 this self without some one or more perceptions ; nor can I ever 
 perceive any thing but the perceptions. 'Tis the composition of 
 
 another in the eye and in the brain to produce a sensation of color ; rays 
 falling upon the eye, refracted, converging, crossing one another, making an 
 inverted image on the retina, and after this a motion, let it be a vibration 
 or a rush of nervous fluid, or whatever else you are pleased to suppose, 
 along the optic nerve, a propagation of this motion to the brain itself, and 
 as many more different motions as you choose ; still, at the end of these mo- 
 tions, there is something which is not a motion, there is a feeling or sensa- 
 tion of color. Whatever number of motions we may be able to interpolate, 
 and whether they be real or imaginary, we shall still find, at the end of the 
 series, a motion antecedent and a color consequent. The mode in which any 
 one of the motions produces the next might possibly be susceptible of ex- 
 planation by some general law of motion previously known ; but the mode 
 in which the last motion produces the sensation of color cannot be explained 
 by any law of motion ; it is the law of color ; which is, and must always 
 remain, a peculiar thing. Where our consciousness recognizes between two 
 phenomena an inherent distinction ; where we are sensible of a difference 
 which is not merely of degree, and feel that no adding one of the phenomena 
 to itself would produce the other ; any theory which attempts to bring either 
 under the other must be false ; though a theory which merely treats one as 
 a cause or condition of the other may possibly be true." Logic, pp. 480, 
 487. 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 51 
 
 these, therefore, which forms the self. Suppose the 
 
 mind to be reduced even below the life of an oyster ; suppose it 
 to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it 
 in that situation. Do you conceive any thing but merely that per- 
 ception ? Have you any notion of self, or substance ? If not, 
 the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion. 
 The annihilation, which some people suppose to follow upon 
 death, and which entirely destroys this self, is nothing but an ex- 
 tinction of all particular perceptions, love and hatred, pain and 
 
 pleasure, thought and sensation Philosophers begin to 
 
 be reconciled to the principle, that we have no idea of external 
 substance distinct from the ideas of particular qualities. This 
 must pave the way for a like principle with regard to the mind, 
 that we have no notion of it, distinct from the particular percep- 
 tions In short, there are two principles which I can- 
 not render consistent, nor is it in my power to renounce either of 
 them ; namely, that all our distinct perceptions are distinct ex- 
 istences, and that the mind never perceives any real connection 
 among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in 
 something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some 
 real connection among them, there would be no difficulty in the 
 case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a skeptic, and 
 confess that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding." 
 
 So far the Scotch skeptic. What some call the mind, and 
 others the person, is to him simply a succession of perpetually 
 fleeting ideas or emotions, in no wise connected with each other, 
 acknowledging no common ownership, and admitting no reality 
 or actual being, except as each, during the moment of its con- 
 tinuance, affirms its own existence. The mind is like a string 
 of beads with the string taken away, each bead being seen or 
 known to exist only by itself and for its particular moment, as 
 the direct knowledge of one must pass away before we can pos- 
 sibly gain a knowledge of another. For observe, that, on this 
 theory, mind is really worse off than matter ; our idea of each 
 is but a congeries of certain qualities ; but in the latter case, the 
 qualities or attributes exist and are perceived together, or in a 
 
52 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 lump ; while in the former, they exist successively, only one 
 being known at any one time. In fine, I have a certain sensa- 
 tion or thought, of the reality of which, for the moment, there 
 can be no doubt ; but it is a fallacy, says Hume, to suppose that 
 this thought, which is a distinct existence, belongs to ME, another 
 distinct being, having a continuous existence. I am conscious of 
 the thought, but not of the person thinking. 
 
 I am anxious not to overstate Hume's theory, nor to under- 
 state his argument, and hope that I have done justice to both. 
 Perhaps it is wrong to call it his theory ; Hume had no theory ; 
 his only object was to disprove the theories and doctrines of 
 other people. He says only that no other doctrine than this can 
 be proved, that is, demonstrated; he acknowledges that the 
 difficulty is too hard for his understanding. Now it is. certainly 
 an insufficient answer to his sophistry to maintain, as Dr. Brown 
 and most of the other Scotch philosophers have done, that " our 
 knowledge of mind is only relative," that u we know it only as 
 susceptible of feelings that have already existed," and to throw 
 the whole burden of solving the problem upon memory, by which 
 one faculty, they say, " our mind, simple and indivisible as it 
 truly is, is, as it were, multiplied and extended, expanding itself 
 over that long series of sensations and emotions, in which it 
 seems to live again, and to live with many lives." Memory is 
 more easy to be discredited than any other faculty, on account 
 of the mistakes with which it is often chargeable, the frequent 
 difficulty of distinguishing between recollections and imaginations. 
 A remembered thought differs from an original one in the single 
 respect of its being accompanied by a belief that it was in the 
 mind before, and that it is now present for the second time. 
 This belief cannot be substantiated, or proved ; it may be, it 
 sometimes is, unfounded, a vivid conception having taken the 
 place of a reality. Memory, then, cannot alone establish be- 
 yond a doubt the separate, continuous existence of self, can- 
 not fully support the idea of personality ; and I have already 
 given reasons for saying that the vague and abstract notion of 
 substance, being assumed as the common substratum of material 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 53 
 
 and intellectual phenomena, leaves it doubtful whether the body 
 or the mind is the person. 
 
 But we need not despair of the attempt to confirm our own 
 personality against all metaphysical cavils, if we consider each 
 particular personal existence as a fact, and then endeavour to 
 prove it by the usual methods of physical inquiry ; though the 
 argument must depend, of course, on the facts of consciousness, 
 and not on those furnished by the senses. Let me ask you, 
 then, for a time, to discard the word wind, as the fruitful source 
 of vague speculation and error, and to look at that of which it is 
 a mere synonyme, at the man himself. The sentient, thinking 
 being, which I call self, is an absolute unit. Duality or com- 
 plexity cannot be predicated of it in any intelligible sense. Per- 
 sonality is indivisible ; / am one. Conceive of yourself, if you 
 can, as divided into two persons, or as separated from yourself, 
 or as multiplied in any manner whatever ; the supposition is an 
 absurdity, and the language in which it is conveyed is immedi- 
 ately felt to be ludicrous. You can conceive of an arm, or a 
 leg, or any part of the body, being separated from you ; there is 
 no difficulty in that. But the idea of personality remains one 
 and indivisible, sometimes to torture us with remorse for crime 
 committed long before, sometimes to sustain and cheer the 
 drooping spirit, when all else is lost, with the assured hope, that 
 this unity of being is indestructible, and shall survive the dis- 
 solution of the body and the grave. For the idea of personal 
 identity and oneness alone supports the consciousness of re- 
 sponsibility ; the guilty man cannot escape from himself, though 
 human law be a feeble and tardy avenger of wrong. 
 
 This individual being, or self, is capable of acting in different 
 ways ; and for convenience of speech and classification, these 
 modes of action have been arranged as the results of different 
 faculties ; though, in truth, it is no more proper to attribute to 
 the person distinct powers and organs for comparison, memory, 
 and judgment, than to give to the body separately a walking fac- 
 ulty, a lifting faculty, a jumping faculty, and so on. In the one 
 case, these faculties are but different aspects of the same mental 
 
54 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 power ; in the other, but different applications of the same mus- 
 cular strength. To attribute to me the organ of memory is no 
 more than to say that I am able to remember, the person who 
 remembers being one and the same with him who judges and 
 feels. Yet this classification of mental phenomena seems to 
 imply a complexity of being, and, for this reason alone, it has 
 always furnished the chief support for the several theories of 
 materialism. The groundwork of these systems entirely falls 
 away, when we consider that this division of organs is only 
 verbal, as the real division is of a plurality of functions exercised 
 by the same being. Seeing differs from hearing, because two 
 distinct organs of the body are exercised for different ends ; but 
 when the two acts become entirely mental, as in the case of 
 memory, the distinction between them is done away ; I recall 
 the features of a landscape with which I was once familiar by 
 the same kind of effort which brings to mind the successive notes 
 of a strain of music heard long ago. More facility may be gained 
 by practice with one class of recollections than with another ; 
 this does not affect the nature of the process, but only its 
 rapidity. 
 
 How we come to a knowledge of se//, or to this consciousness 
 of personality, whether mediately, by an act of judgment, know- 
 ing that each sensation or thought must have a substratum or sub- 
 stance in which it inheres, and hence inferring what we are not 
 directly conscious of ; or whether we gain it immediately, being 
 equally and at the same moment conscious of the sensation and 
 of the sentient being ; is a question that need not detain us 
 long. A thought is but the phase, or aspect, for the moment, 
 of the thinking being ; it is but the abstract expression of the 
 fact expressed in the words, " I think." If we speak of it as 
 " a state of mind," the convenience of language compels us to 
 regard it abstractly ; but looking upon it as an act, we consider 
 the real occurrence in its entireness. Take one of the appetites, 
 for instance; to have "the sensation of hunger" is an abstract 
 and general expression, applicable to any number of cases ; but 
 in any particular case, it signifies nothing unless interpreted to 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 55 
 
 mean " /am hungry." Subject and object are thus inseparably 
 blended together in every act of thinking, and can no more be 
 separated from each other in reality than two polar forces. When 
 we reflect upon a sensation that has passed away, we may con- 
 sider it by abstraction, first, in regard to the object, and then 
 it is called a sensation of color, hardness, or something else ; or, 
 secondly, in regard to the subject, and then I have a conception 
 of self as performing some act, or experiencing some affection. 
 This apperception, as Leibnitz calls it, or direct consciousness 
 of self, seems to me an invariable concomitant of mental action. 
 The attention, indeed, may be concentrated on the object of 
 thought, and then the personal consciousness is not remembered. 
 Just so, a person may be absorbed in a reverie while loud music 
 is sounding near him, and pay no attention to it ; it is usually 
 said, that he does not hear it ; but this cannot be, as his faculty 
 of hearing remains unimpaired, the vibrations must reach his ears, 
 and, in fact, if the music suddenly stops, he is roused from his 
 abstraction by the absence of the accustomed sound, just as one 
 dozing in church is waked when the preacher has ended his ser- 
 mon. In truth, he hears every note, but instantly forgets it, from 
 the lack of attention ; and at the close, of course, he has forgot- 
 ten the whole. Just so, a person thinking is never conscious of 
 a thought without being conscious of himself at the same instant ; 
 his attention may be directed either to the object or the subject, 
 according to the wish or exigency of the moment. If laboring 
 under acute pain, the phrase which expresses the state of his 
 mind at any instant is, "I suffer " ; for the abstract sensation of 
 pain would have no interest for him, except as self enters into or 
 endures it. 
 
 If this be the correct view, and I can see no valid objection 
 to it, the idea of personality is fixed on an immovable basis. 
 Self is an indivisible unit, a monad, in technical phrase, 
 endowed with intelligence and activity ; and we are directly con- 
 scious of it in itself, and in its passing into thought and act, without 
 being compelled to infer its existence from these manifestations. 
 If we only inferred the substance from the attributes, we could 
 
56 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 not conceive of it unless in the exercise of those attributes, any 
 more than we can conceive of matter without its qualities, with- 
 out extension, form, solidity, or color. But we can conceive of 
 our personal existence in the intervals both of thought and ac- 
 tion. A consciousness of existence underlies the exercise of 
 every function of mental life. The celebrated argument of Des- 
 cartes, " I think, therefore I am," has been objected to, and with 
 reason, on the ground that the conclusion merely repeats what 
 is, not merely implied in the premise, but formally stated in it. 
 Thought is but a mode of action, and cannot be conceived as a 
 reality without the agent, though it may be considered separately 
 by abstraction. 
 
 But it is said that we cannot describe self, or give any defi- 
 nition of personality, except by enumerating its attributes, or the 
 acts of which it is capable. Hence it is inferred, that we know 
 nothing more of it than of matter, which can be described only 
 as the unknown substratum of certain qualities that are evident to 
 sense. But all simple ideas are incapable of definition, and the 
 only mode of describing them is to enumerate the occasions on 
 which they rise, or are suggested to the mind. Wherever there 
 is complexity, the several parts can be distinguished, and a com- 
 plete list of these will constitute a description of the object which 
 will be intelligible to one who has had no sensible evidence of its 
 existence. But if the idea be simple, no account of it can be 
 understood except by those who know it, or have had experience 
 of it already. Colors are simple sensations, and the impossibility 
 of defining or describing them is proved by the familiar fact, that 
 no form of words can convey the slightest notion of them to a 
 person blind from his birth. The word " green " may be ex- 
 plained by saying that it is the color of the foliage, or " blue " 
 as the color of the sky ; and this is enough for one who has seen 
 the aspect of external nature ; but it is no definition, and conveys 
 no knowledge to him who has never had the faculty of vision. 
 
 The idea of self belongs to the same category with all our 
 simple sensations, and with the more abstruse ideas of time, 
 space, motion, and the like. All are indefinable because indi- 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 57 
 
 visible ; they cannflt be described because they have no complex- 
 ity of parts. But who doubts our knowledge, or questions the 
 reality, of motion, or light, or time, because they cannot be ex- 
 plained by any form of words, or, what is the same thing, cannot 
 be resolved into simpler ideas ? The unity of personality, then, 
 which is the important point for present consideration, is estab- 
 lished by the very argument which is brought to do away with 
 the reality of the idea of person altogether. 
 
 The ancient philosophers and the schoolmen were guilty of 
 much solemn trifling, in their vain attempts to define these simple 
 ideas. Thus, " motion " was explained to be " the act of a being 
 in power so far forth as in power " ; and "light " to be " the 
 act of perspicuity so far forth as it is perspicuous." The inanity 
 and uselessness of such definitions are now generally admitted, 
 though Lord Monboddo attempted to defend them. It is justly 
 observed by Locke, that " the modern philosophers, who have 
 endeavoured to throw off the jargon of the schools, and speak 
 intelligibly, have not much better succeeded in defining simple 
 ideas, whether by explaining their causes, or otherwise. The 
 atomists, who define motion to be a passage from one place to 
 another, what do they more than put one synonymous word for 
 another ? For is it not at least as proper and significant to say, 
 c passage is a motion from one place to another,' as to say, ' mo- 
 tion is a passage ' ? this is to translate, and not to define." 
 Again, " Those who tell us that light is a great number of little 
 globules striking briskly on the bottom of the eye speak more 
 intelligibly than the schools ; but these words, ever so well under- 
 stood, would no more make the idea the word light stands for 
 intelligible to a man who understood it not before, [to one born 
 without eyes, for instance,] than if one should tell him that light 
 was nothing but a company of little tennis-balls, which fairies 
 all day long struck with rackets against some men's foreheads, 
 while they passed by others. For granting this explanation of 
 the thing to be true, yet the idea of the cause of light, if we had 
 it ever so exact, would no more give us the idea of light itself, 
 as it is such a particular perception in us, than the idea of the 
 
58 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 figure and motion of a sharp piece of steel would give us the 
 idea of that pain which it is able to cause in us. For the cause 
 of any sensation, and the sensation itself, are two ideas." The 
 impossibility of defining or describing an idea, therefore, is no 
 argument against the existence, either of the idea, or of the 
 thing to which it corresponds, or against our having a distinct 
 knowledge of it as a reality. Personality, or self, is as fully 
 known, and as distinctly conceived, as motion or light. 
 
 There is another reason for denying this parallel between mind 
 and matter, in which it is assumed that our knowledge of each is 
 merely relative. Material substance, it is true, is known to me 
 only as something which is extended, figured, colored, hard, &c., 
 these qualities being all conceived to exist together, or at the same 
 moment ; and the conception of these qualities being taken away, 
 nothing remains, at any rate, nothing which is distinct and con- 
 ceivable. Now mind or person may be described in a parallel 
 manner, as something which thinks, feels, wills, judges, &c. ; 
 but these are not qualities, not attributes, but acts ; and they are 
 not conceived to exist together, or to be performed all at the 
 same moment ; they are done successively, and what is really at- 
 tributed to the person at any one moment is, not the acts them- 
 selves, but the capacity of performing those acts. Of course, I 
 can conceive of the person when this capacity is latent, or not 
 exerted, that is, of mind in the intervals both of thought and 
 action. But I cannot conceive of any particular body except as 
 the seat of all its attributes, and as continually manifesting these 
 attributes. Imagine, if you can, a lump of matter, which has 
 no extension, no figure, no solidity, no color, none of its usual 
 qualities. It is impossible. But you can conceive of yourself 
 both as thinking, or as resting from thought ; as sentient, or 
 with all the senses closed ; as exerting a volition, or as entirely 
 passive. Stating the same argument in other terms, I say that 
 reasoning from attributes or qualities to the substance which sup- 
 ports them is a proper inference, that being inferred which is not 
 directly known or perceived ; but from actions to an agent it is 
 no inference at all, but a mere descent from an abstraction to a re- 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 59 
 
 ality, the object of immediate knowledge or perception being, 
 not the act, but the person acting. It is no inference from my 
 perception of a triangle to say that it has three angles ; this is a 
 part of the perception, a part of the meaning or definition of the 
 word. But the existence of a luminous body somewhere, though 
 it be not directly seen, is an inference from the light which it dif- 
 fuses, and which is seen. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on this point, at the risk of seem- 
 ing tedious and abstruse, because it is one of cardinal importance, 
 and this doctrine respecting it has not been clearly set forth and 
 defended, so far as I know, by any English writer on the philos- 
 ophy of mind. It is the only view which seems to me to afford 
 positive proof of the immateriality of the soul, or the person. 
 Matter is essentially complex and divisible ; the smallest particle 
 of it has still an upper and an under side, and we can conceive 
 of these two being separated from each other. Mind, or person, 
 as already remarked, is essentially indivisible. The being which I 
 call self, or, to use the modern jargon, the me, is an absolute unit. 
 For a person to speak of himself in the plural number, except as 
 a figure of speech, is instantly perceived to be an absurdity, 
 as much so, as to speak of a round square. The doctrine of 
 atoms, or ultimate particles in matter, however convenient it may 
 be as an hypothesis, for representing the supposed groundwork 
 of certain facts in chemistry, must always remain an hypothesis, 
 alike incapable of proof, and even of distinct conception. " If 
 the atomic theory be put forwards," says Mr. Whewell, " as 
 asserting that chemical elements are really composed of atoms, 
 that is, of such particles not further divisible, we cannot avoid 
 remarking, that for such a conclusion chemical research has not 
 afforded, nor can afford, any satisfactory evidence whatever." 
 Again he says, " The assumption of indivisible particles, small- 
 er than the smallest observable, which combine, particle with par- 
 ticle, will explain the phenomena ; but the assumption of particles 
 bearing this proportion, but not possessing the property of indivis- 
 ibility, will explain the phenomena at least equally well." The 
 decisive argument against the atomic doctrine as a representation 
 
60 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 of fact, though not against its use as a convenient hypothetical 
 basis for mathematical calculation, is this : Space, or exten- 
 sion, is divisible without limit, as may be proved by geometry ; 
 and as matter occupies space, or is extended, no portion of it is 
 indivisible, or an atom. This is a metaphysical argument, it is 
 true ; but it is applied to refute a metaphysical conception, and 
 is therefore legitimate. As a matter of fact, no one will assert 
 that we can arrive at ultimate particles in matter, or have sensible 
 evidence that they exist. 
 
 Matter, then, is necessarily divisible, or complex, in all cases ; 
 mind, or person, is necessarily indivisible ; for a denial of the prop- 
 osition " /am one " is not merely false, but absurd, this being a 
 truth of intuition. An inevitable corollary from this doctrine is, 
 that the complex material frame, with its numberless adaptations 
 and arrangements, in which this being is lodged, is truly foreign 
 from the man himself, having a kind of connection with him in 
 reality but one degree more intimate than that of his clothes. 
 The body is the curiously contrived machine through which the 
 man communicates with the material world. It needs but little 
 reflection to convince one, that his corporeal limbs and organs 
 are but mechanical means and tools constantly within his reach, 
 controlled by his single intelligence, and executing the behests of 
 his undivided will, which is sovereign in its own domain. The 
 eye is but his instrument to see with, the ear is his trumpet for 
 communicating sound to him, the leg is his steed, and the arm 
 his soldier. These outward organs and implements may tire in 
 their uses, like willing servants that are yet overtasked ; they may 
 be worn out, become palsied, and decay ; many of them may 
 even be severed from the conscious agent whose property they 
 are, yet the loss does not impair the sovereignty of his reason or 
 the unity of his intelligence. The windows through which we 
 look out upon the material world may be darkened, but the mem- 
 ory and the imagination are busy within, and the scenes which 
 delighted our youth still pass before us in rapid and perpetual 
 succession. Sleep relaxes the strained muscles, gives repose to 
 the tired limbs, and shuts the wearied sense, the actual and ma- 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 61 
 
 terial world to our apprehension ceasing to exist ; but the mind, 
 the man y claims no rest from his appropriate toil, but pursues his 
 task in the world of dreams. All the proper and exclusive func- 
 tions of the soul are discharged as readily and continuously as in 
 our waking hours. Reason and recollection, judgment, fancy, 
 the desires and the affections, still exercise their office ; and the 
 will, though it has lost control for a time of its actual servants 
 through their fatigue, still governs an ideal kingdom, and spurs 
 its fancied ministers. There is no good reason to believe, that 
 sleep ever extends beyond the body, or suspends the exercise of 
 a single function of purely intellectual life. 
 
 This view of the body as something extraneous to the man, 
 as alike his covering and his instrument, the house which he lives 
 in, and the nicely fashioned apparatus that executes his will and 
 gratifies his passions, appears to me so natural and obvious, that it 
 seems difficult to account for the practical materialism of common 
 opinion on the subject. Even the respect which is paid to the 
 remains of the dead, so far as it goes beyond the pleasing asso- 
 ciation which invests with a kind of sacredness every article or 
 ornament once used by the loved and lost, and in ordinary 
 cases it goes much farther, seems alike irrational and unchris- 
 tian. Many portions of the body may be removed, many of the 
 organs become unfit for use, without impairing in the slightest de- 
 gree the sufferer's conscious personality and intelligence. The 
 particles of the whole are in a state of constant flux and renova- 
 tion, so that man changes his body only a little less frequently 
 than he does his coat. 
 
 And viewed at any one moment, however close and intimate 
 the union may appear, the body still seems to show its ministerial 
 character, and to acknowledge in every part the sovereignty of 
 one undivided and separate will. Sensation extends to every 
 part of it, every fibre is instinct with life, and the dominion of 
 the will is absolute and immediate over every muscle and joint, 
 as if the whole fabric and its tenant were one homogeneous sys- 
 tem. The mind tires not of its supremacy, and is not wearied 
 with the number of volitions required to ke.ep every joint in ac- 
 
62 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 tion, and every organ performing its proper function. It would 
 not delegate the control of the fingers to an inferior power, nor 
 contrive mechanical or automatic means for moving the extremi- 
 ties. Within its sphere, it is sole sovereign, and is not perplexed 
 with the variety and constant succession of its duties, extending 
 to every part of the complex structure of which it is the ani- 
 mating and directing spirit. Sensation is not cumbered with the 
 multitude of impressions it receives, nor is the fineness of per- 
 ception dulled by repeated exercise. The sharpness of its edge 
 rather improves by use, and we become more heedful of its light- 
 est intimations. This improvement, however, is wholly of the 
 inner sense, the man's capacity being enlarged, while the exter- 
 nal organ which is his instrument the eye, for instance is 
 often injured and sometimes destroyed by excessive or unguarded 
 use. " It does not appear," says Bishop Butler, "that the re- 
 lation of this gross body to the reflecting being is in any degree 
 necessary to thinking ; to our intellectual enjoyments or suffer- 
 ings ; nor, consequently, that the dissolution or alienation of the 
 former by death will be the destruction of those present powers 
 which render us capable of this state of reflection." This con- 
 sideration, indeed, affords no proof, properly so called, that the 
 mind is immortal ; but it rebuts the presumption, otherwise inevi- 
 table, that the death of the body is also the death of the soul. 
 These rags of mortality, in which we are clothed, may fall off 
 from us, and be mingled with their kindred dust ; but this proves 
 only that we have no further use for them, and it leaves unim- 
 paired the probability, that death, like sleep, may be only the 
 portal to a spirit land. 
 
 I have heard of a recent case in a town not far off, in which 
 a young man, when just entering upon active life and the full duties 
 of manhood, was attacked by the terrible disease which physicians 
 call anchylosis, or stiffening of the joints. First one knee re- 
 fused its office, and as this was accompanied with great pain, and 
 perhaps the nature of the complaint was mistaken, the leg was 
 amputated, in the hope that the evil would stop there. But the 
 disease soon passed into the other limb, stiffened the remaining 
 
THE IDEA OP SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 63 
 
 knee, and then crept on slowly from joint to joint, making each 
 inflexible as it passed, till the whole lower portion of the body 
 was nearly as rigid as iron, and the muscles had no longer any 
 office to perform. Gradually, then, it moved upward, leaving 
 the vertebral column inflexible ; the arms and hands, which, in 
 anticipation of its approach, had been bent into a position most 
 convenient for the sufferer, stiffened there ; the neck refused to 
 turn or bend, and the body became almost as immovable as if it 
 had been carved out of the rock. Years passed between the 
 first appearance of the disease and this awful completion of its 
 work ; years elapsed after the hapless patient was thus hardened 
 into stone, and still he lived. Nor was this all ; his eyes were 
 attacked ; the sight of one was wholly lost, and the other became 
 so exquisitely sensitive, that it could seldom be exposed to the 
 light, and never but for a few moments at a time. And thus he 
 remained for years, blind, immovable, prisoned in this house of 
 stone, and echoing, we might suppose, the affecting exclamation 
 of the Apostle, " Who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death ? " But no word of impatience escaped him ; the mind 
 was clear and vigorous, the temper was not soured, the affec- 
 tions were as strong and clinging as ever. His good sense, his 
 wit, his knowledge of books, his interest in the passing topics of 
 the day, made his chamber a favorite resort even of those who 
 might not have been drawn thither merely by sympathy for his 
 sufferings ; for not infrequently he was still exposed to agonizing 
 pain. But in the intervals of this distress, his active mind sought 
 and found employment, and numerous contributions which this 
 living statue dictated for a periodical work are now in print. 
 The secret of his wonderful composure and gentleness may be 
 told in two words, religious resignation. * 
 
 * It cannot be indelicate now to state, that the individual here referred to 
 was the late James Kennard, Jr., of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Since 
 this Lecture was delivered, a volume of Selections from his Writings, with 
 a Sketch of his Life and Character, prepared by his friend the Rev. Andrew 
 P. Peabody, has been " printed for private circulation." It is much to be 
 hoped that the family and friends of the deceased will allow this deeply in- 
 
64 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 What says the materialist to a case like this ? Was that 
 powerless body, maimed, stiffened, blind, hardly animate, was 
 that the person, the wan, still active, inquisitive, industrious, 
 generous, and affectionate ? or was it only a prison-house, in 
 which the fettered soul was compelled to await its time of re- 
 lease ? I envy not the feelings or the intellect of him who could 
 stand by the bedside of that patient sufferer, and still disbelieve 
 that "there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty 
 giveth them understanding." 
 
 We may gather instruction on this point even from the wise 
 men of ancient times, upon whose eyes the light of direct reve- 
 lation never dawned. The philosophical Athenian, in describing 
 
 teresting and instructive volume to be published, so that it may attain a wide 
 circulation. Mr. Kennard died July 28th, 1847, when he had nearly com- 
 pleted his thirty-second year. For nine years before his death he was un- 
 able to walk ; but " he was occasionally brought down stairs till the summer 
 of 1841, when he found that he could no longer bear removal, except that, with 
 the most careful preparation, and with the utmost delicacy of touch, he was 
 taken daily from his bed, and placed for an hour or two in his easy-chair." 
 In November, 1844, his eyes were attacked, and " the residue of his life was 
 spent with a deep shade over his face, and in a darkened room." During 
 the paroxysms of pain which accompanied this inflammation of the eyes, and 
 which were generally about a week in duration, " he was able to speak only 
 in the faintest whisper, and could hardly bear the sound of another voice." 
 But his sisters and numerous friends were eager to serve as his readers and 
 amanuenses, and his literary pursuits were soon resumed with as much men- 
 tal activity and cheerfulness as ever. His contributions, both in verse and 
 prose, to the Knickerbocker, a magazine published at New York, may be 
 traced by his signature of " J. K., Jr. " ; they were frequent, up to the very 
 month in which he died. 
 
 The severest affliction of his life, the death of his mother, happened just 
 at the time when the disease attacked his eyes. The mother's love had in- 
 creased, as is usual, in proportion to the helplessness of its object ; and when 
 this bond of affection was broken, it seemed as if no tie remained which could 
 still bind her much-suffering son to earth. But though greatly agitated dur- 
 ing her illness, his mind at once resumed its former serenity after her death, 
 and the other members of the sorrowing family derived consolation and peace 
 from his words and example. 
 
 I cannot deny myself the pleasure of making the following extract from 
 Mr. Peabody's affecting account of this remarkable case. 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 65 
 
 the death-bed of the elder Cyrus, makes the dying monarch thus 
 address the children who were gathered round him : " For I 
 was never able, my children, to persuade myself that the soul, as 
 long as it was in a mortal body, lived, but when it was removed 
 from this, that it died ; neither could I believe that the soul 
 ceased to think when separated from the unthinking and sense- 
 less body ; but it seemed to me most probable, that when pure 
 and free from any union with the body, then it became most 
 wise."* Or take the equivalent remark, equivalent in respect 
 to the essential difference between mind and matter, in which 
 Plato anticipates the common argument for the immateriality of 
 the thinking principle, which is founded on the constant flux 
 and change of the material particles that make up our bodily or- 
 
 " One other friend he had, in humble life, but of a noble heart, whose ex- 
 traordinary bodily strength had long rendered her services absolutely indis- 
 pensable. We refer to Nancy Sherburne, an elderly woman, who, on his 
 return from the hospital, was officiating as cook in his father's family. From 
 the first, she took great pleasure in rendering him whatever assistance he 
 demanded. When he was disabled from walking, she drew him from his 
 carriage, and bore him in her arms over the staircase. As he grew more 
 helpless, she gradually suspended her other duties, and devoted herself 
 wholly to the care of him, remaining perpetually within call by day and 
 night, and so strongly attached to her charge, that other friends could hardly 
 win permission of her to perform for him any service that lay within her 
 power. She lifted him as if he had been an infant, and with a grasp as 
 gentle as it was firm. There were frequently times when even the adjust- 
 ment of his pillows by a less skilful hand than hers would have given him 
 excruciating torture ; and the hour-long process by which alone he could be 
 conveyed from his bed to his chair, a process as delicate as if his frame had 
 been strung with threads of glass, demanded more than a common man's 
 strength, and all of a woman's love. Had he been her own child, she could 
 not have loved him better ; and though a person of the scantiest education, 
 and bearing no outward marks of refinement, she gradually grew into a 
 sympathy of spirit and character with him, and evidently derived the richest 
 recompense for her self-denying toil in the improvement and elevation of her 
 whole moral nature. His attachment to her was only less than filial ; and 
 one of his last requests was, that room for Nancy should be left at his side 
 in the family inclosure at the cemetery." 
 
 * Cyropadia, L. VIII. c. vn. 19, 20. 
 9 
 
66 THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 
 
 gans : " One would rather say that each soul wears out many 
 bodies, especially if it should live for many years ; for if the 
 body wastes away and is destroyed, the man yet living, while 
 the soul always weaves anew that which is worn out, then it cer- 
 tainly follows, that the soul must have its last covering when it 
 perishes, and that it dies only just before that final vesture."* 
 
 I do not accumulate these arguments and illustrations to estab- 
 lish the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, the proof of 
 which, from the light of nature, has been already admitted to be 
 insufficient. The essential unity of the person is contrasted with 
 the essential complexity of matter only to show that the body is 
 but the house we live in, or the garment which covers us for a 
 season. But an indivisible atom is not necessarily indestructible, 
 any more than it is ingenerable. If it cannot cease to exist, it 
 must be that it exists necessarily, and therefore it never began to 
 exist. Hence, the argument proves the preexistence, quite as 
 strongly as it does the immortality, of the soul ; and it was so 
 understood by Plato and his followers, who argue from the ante- 
 cedent life of man to the subsequent, or that which follows the 
 night of the grave. 
 
 The continuity and identity of our personal existence amidst 
 the ceaseless changes and renovations, the growth, progress, and 
 decay, of the material structure which we inhabit, form the basis 
 of the relations in which we stand to all other beings. The 
 affections and the duties of life are equally founded upon this 
 unity of personality ; this alone makes us responsible both to 
 human and Divine law. " Person," says Locke, " is a forensic 
 term, appropriating actions and their merit, and so belongs only 
 to intelligent agents, capable of a law, and of happiness and mis- 
 ery. This personality extends itself beyond present existence 
 to what is past by consciousness, whereby it becomes concerned 
 and accountable, and owns and imputes to itself past actions upon 
 the same ground, and for the same reason, that it does the pres- 
 ent. And therefore whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or 
 
 * Phasdon, 83. 
 
THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 67 
 
 appropriate to itself, it can no more be concerned in than if they 
 had never been done." 
 
 Our social feelings, also, regard this sameness of person, or 
 self, behind the numerous and important changes which our out- 
 ward frames exhibit. The body wastes, the skin shrivels, the 
 joints and muscles languidly perform their office, and the hair 
 becomes thin and gray. Not a line is preserved, in that bent and 
 decrepit form, of the fresh and elastic vigor of youth, the quick 
 eye, ready hand, and ruddy lineaments of childhood and maturer 
 years. The features and general aspect of the subject have 
 wholly changed, and the artist must begin the portrait anew. 
 Time has left no indistinct traces of his work, also, on the 
 character and intellect. Enthusiasm is checked, impulse has 
 given way to reflection, appetite is cooled, and the enjoyments 
 of boisterous youth and strenuous manhood pah 1 upon the dulled 
 and satiated sense. But the eye of affection still discerns the 
 same person beneath the altered aspect, and the father, brother, 
 son, or friend is loved and cherished still. Instinctively, in the 
 growth of that affection, has the real being, the man, been sepa- 
 rated from his accidents, from his whole environment of outward 
 circumstances, including those of form and feature, no less than 
 of social position and the world's contumely or respect. If the 
 feeling be true, the object of it is one and indivisible, and knows 
 no change. Thus in our friends as well as in ourselves, in our 
 observation and judgment of others as much as in the depths of 
 our own consciousness, do we involuntarily separate the transient 
 from the permanent, acknowledge inherent and essential oneness 
 in the midst of complexity and transmutation, and under the 
 fading vesture of time, a garment laid in shifting colors, discern 
 the inflexible features of eternity. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE IDEA OP CAUSE, AND THE NATURE OP CAUSATION. 
 
 IN the last Lecture, I endeavoured to show the origin and 
 nature of our idea of personality, or rather of our knowledge of 
 self, and to vindicate that knowledge from the metaphysical ob- 
 jections and cavils that have been brought against it by abstract 
 reasoning. The object was, to establish a distinction, not merely 
 between material and intellectual phenomena, which no one can 
 affect to question, but between the substance of mind or person 
 and material substance, and thus to show that the difference be- 
 tween them is essential instead of phenomenal ; or, in other 
 words, that this difference does not depend merely on the dis- 
 similarity of their outward manifestations. I wished to prove, 
 that we have no idea whatever of material substance except by 
 abstraction, and no proof of its existence except by inference 
 from its qualities or attributes, of which alone we have any im- 
 mediate knowledge. But personality manifests itself externally, 
 not by qualities, but by actions ; and these occur, not simultane- 
 ously, but in succession ; while self, and the perception of self, 
 or consciousness, being continuous, we know it in the intervals 
 of thought or action, and consequently our knowledge of it is 
 direct, and not merely an inference. We know, also, that per- 
 son is absolutely simple and indivisible, and is thus distinguishable 
 from its present house of flesh, or bodily covering, which, like 
 all other matter, is essentially complex and infinitely divisible, 
 and which, in fact, is going through a constant process of waste 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 69 
 
 and restoration, the man alone remaining unchanged. This con- 
 clusion, far from being metaphysical in character, is a fact of 
 universal and continuous observation, and as such is inwoven 
 with our principles of conduct ; it supports the idea of responsi- 
 bility, and forms the basis of the social affections. 
 
 The fact which we have thus attempted to establish is one of 
 the first class, as it relates to things which exist ; a consideration 
 of the second class, or of events which take place, brings us to 
 the idea of cause, or the beginning of existence. The inquiry 
 into the origin and nature of this idea is a fundamental one, as in 
 the former case ; for on its issue depends every reasonable an- 
 ticipation of future events, and all real knowledge of those which 
 have passed. The exact sciences relate exclusively to present 
 existences ; the mathematician studies the laws of number and of 
 space, both of which are applicable to simultaneous phenomena. 
 Events are successive phenomena, and the study of them carries 
 us both into the past and the future, and depends in almost every 
 case upon our notion of cause. 
 
 The law of causation may be stated thus : Every event which 
 takes place has a cause. This law is not applicable to things 
 which exist, and much confusion and unsound reasoning have 
 arisen from the attempt to extend it to them. I cannot infer 
 merely from the present existence of a stone, a plant, or an ani- 
 mal, that it must have had a cause ; for all I know, it may have 
 existed for ever. But if already aware of the fact, that at some 
 definite epoch it began to exist, that time was when it was not, 
 then I say with absolute certainty that that beginning of its ex- 
 istence must have been caused by something foreign to itself; or, 
 more loosely speaking, that the thing itself must have had a cause. 
 If all things in the universe were motionless and unchangeable, if 
 no event whatever broke the dread uniformity and monotony of 
 time, though all objects should remain precisely as they are at 
 this moment, there would be no foundation for reasoning from 
 effect to cause. The presence of a world would not enable us 
 to prove the existence of its Creator. But the instant a change 
 occurs, as soon as a sound is heard, or a leaf falls, or only quiv- 
 
70 THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 
 
 ers on its bough, we declare without hesitation, that some power 
 or agency is at work, that the event must have had a cause. It 
 may be a recondite one ; the ingenuity of man may have been 
 engaged ever since the foundation of the world in a vain attempt 
 to discover it ; still we say with perfect confidence, that it must 
 have existed ; there must have been a cause somewhere. 
 
 I speak now of causation in its absolute and literal sense, 
 not merely of an antecedent event, but of an efficient antece- 
 dent, of a cause in respect to which, if it were completely 
 known, we could tell beforehand, or prior to all experience, what 
 would be its effect. Those who are familiar with the specula- 
 tions of philosophers upon this subject will tell me that I am here 
 adopting the metaphysical notion of cause ; I admit it, but I say 
 that it is also the popular notion, the ordinary significance of a 
 very common word, that people generally never think of at- 
 taching any other idea to it, and never find any difficulty in dis- 
 tinguishing the succession of cause and effect, properly so called, 
 from an ordinary sequence, or from the accidental simultaneous- 
 ness of two otherwise unconnected events. The falling of the 
 spark, they say, is the cause of the explosion, meaning thereby 
 the efficient cause ; and they distinguish this case very clearly 
 from that of two clocks striking the hour in immediate succes- 
 sion, never supposing, in this latter instance, that the one oper- 
 ates on the other, and obliges it to strike, though they may have 
 kept exact time with each other for many years. This fact, that 
 the popular acceptation of the word cause is also its strict and 
 scientific meaning, it is important to remember, as will be seen 
 hereafter. 
 
 Now, in ordinary physical inquiry, in the world of matter, are 
 we able to perceive and recognize such causes ? Admitting, as 
 every rational being must do, that every event, change, or be- 
 ginning of existence must have an efficient cause, can we dis- 
 cover this cause, and show beforehand that it must produce this 
 particular event, and no other, and why it produces it ? The 
 answer may appear startling to some, but there is no doubt of its 
 correctness. If there is any one conclusion at which both phys- 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 71 
 
 ical and metaphysical inquirers, after a long dispute, have at last 
 arrived with almost complete accord, it is this : that we are 
 not able to discern the real cause of any event or change in the 
 outward universe, and that the search after such causes is hope- 
 less ; in the outward universe, or world of matter, I say, be- 
 cause the case of mind must be considered afterwards. We do 
 not know that the falling of the spark was the cause of the ex- 
 plosion of the powder ; most probably, it was not. We do not 
 know that the man's taking poison was the cause of his death ; 
 most likely, it was not. This statement is not meant to be para- 
 doxical, but simply explicit and clear ; I hope to prove satisfac- 
 torily that it is well founded. 
 
 Observe, then, that all which we discern in any case is the 
 events themselves, and not the connection between those events. 
 I see the falling of the spark, I see and hear the explosion which 
 immediately follows. I have sensible evidence only of this, 
 that two events happened simultaneously and in rapid succession. 
 Recollecting other instances, or learning them from the testimony 
 of others, I may have reason to believe that these two events 
 have always taken place together, or that the one has never oc- 
 curred without being immediately followed by the other. Be- 
 lieving, also, that the course of nature is uniform, it seems very 
 probable that this succession will always take place in future. I 
 perceive nothing but the events ; I know that they are simulta- 
 neous, or nearly so ; and this is all that I know. I do not see 
 any necessary connection between them, and if I hastily infer 
 that there must be such a connection, because the two always 
 happen in close succession, the case of the two clocks reminds 
 me that invariable antecedence and consequence do not prove 
 any connection whatever. Cause implies power or /orce, which 
 is never directly perceived ; but we infer that it exists, because 
 the event happens, or the effect is produced. It is often loosely 
 said, that one event is the cause of another, when the two are in 
 fact separated by quite a long succession of intermediate causes. 
 Thus, it is said that the stroke of the hammer on the bell is 
 the cause of the sound which we hear ; strictly speaking, how- 
 
72 THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 
 
 ever, this stroke produces only an agitation of the particles of 
 which the bell is composed ; this agitation, again, causes a vibra- 
 tion in the elastic medium, the air, which extends to our ears ; 
 this vibration has an effect, or produces a change, in the auditory 
 nerve ; which is followed, probably, by some affection of a part 
 or of the whole mass of the brain ; and then comes at last our 
 sensation of sound. In this final sequence, which involves the 
 conection between mind and matter, we are ready to admit that 
 we know only the fact, that the affection of the brain is followed 
 by a sensation, and do not know the cause of this fact, or the 
 reason why it is thus followed. We are led to make this admis- 
 sion, because our power of detecting intermediate sequences stops 
 here ; we cannot point out any links of connection between the 
 effect on the brain and the sensation, as we did between the 
 stroke of the hammer and the agitation of the nerve. The for- 
 mer sequence, then, is admitted to be an ultimate fact, or, what 
 is the same thing, we say that the cause of it is inexplicable. 
 Yet it is certain that we ought to make the same admission as to 
 the preceding sequences, each one of which, taken by itself, is 
 an ultimate fact, and equally inexplicable. Why should a blow 
 from a hammer be diffused over a considerable surface, so as to 
 throw all the particles of a large bell, made of solid metal, into 
 agitation ? We do not know. But this is one instance out of a 
 large class of similar ones ; we are accustomed to perceive con- 
 cussion followed by agitation 6*f the parts of the two bodies which 
 strike together, and this familiarity of the fact makes it seem less 
 inexplicable ; it is not wonderful or strange, because we know a 
 vast number of similar cases, and therefore we suppose it is not 
 difficult to be understood. In truth, we know nothing about it, 
 except that one event is invariably followed by the other ; and 
 this knowledge of constant succession, as we have seen, is very 
 different indeed from a perception of the efficient cause. 
 
 What is meant, then, when we speak of the success of the 
 physical inquirer the chemist, the meteorologist, or the mech- 
 anist, for instance in pointing out the causes of material phe- 
 nomena ? We mean, that he has succeeded in detecting some of 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 78 
 
 these intermediate sequences, and in showing that they are of the 
 same character with a class of other well-known facts, all of which 
 are supposed to have a common cause, though we have never 
 thought of asking what that cause is. A phenomenon which for- 
 merly appeared to be anomalous, or the only specimen of its 
 class, is in this manner reduced to the same rank or class with a 
 great number of familiar events. The discovery, then, consists 
 in finding out the proper classification of the fact, not in ascer- 
 taining its cause. And further, when we have a great number 
 of phenomena so similar in character that it is reasonable to be- 
 lieve they are all produced by one cause, though we know not 
 what that cause is, yet we give a name to it. And afterwards, 
 should any fact apparently anomalous, or of a different order, be 
 reduced to this class, then the name becomes applicable to this 
 fact also, and we say, in ordinary parlance, that the cause of it 
 is discovered. Let me illustrate this a little further. 
 
 When Newton discovered that the planets circle round the 
 sun in the same manner in which a stone thrown by the hand 
 describes a curve before reaching the earth, he may be said to 
 have explained the former phenomenon by bringing it into the 
 same class with certain results which have long been familiar to 
 us. But the explanation was only relative, not absolute. The 
 latter phenomenon is, in reality, no more explicable than the for- 
 mer ; he did not pretend to know the cause of the stone's falling 
 to the ground, any more than of the revolution of the planets. 
 It was something to be able to arrange these apparently hetero- 
 geneous results in the same class, and gravity was a convenient 
 name to apply to the whole. But the supposition that gravity 
 was an occult cause, inherent in matter, Newton earnestly re- 
 pelled, declaring that it was inconceivable, and that the motions 
 t; must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to cer- 
 tain laws." So Franklin showed that a thunder-cloud and the 
 charged conductor of an electrical machine manifested the same 
 phenomena, and might therefore be classed together ; sparks were 
 obtained from both ; Ley den jars were charged from them ; light 
 bodies were attracted and repelled in the same way by both ; 
 
 10 
 
74 THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 
 
 so that it was reasonable to believe that the same agency, what- 
 ever it might be, was acting in both cases. What this agency was, 
 he did not even guess. The cause of electric action, whether in 
 the excited cloud or in the excited tube, was just as obscure as 
 ever. Once more, chemists observed that different substances, 
 when brought into close contact, sometimes remained distinct, 
 and sometimes united with each other in various, but regular, pro- 
 portions ; and these capacities, of coalescing with one class of 
 bodies, and of remaining unaffected by another, are called chem- 
 ical " affinities." This is a convenient generalization, and has 
 properly received a specific name ; though the common appella- 
 tion throws no light on the cause of the phenomenon, which re- 
 mains an impenetrable secret. To say that a certain action is 
 caused by the operation of chemical affinities is only to arrange 
 it with a large class of other observed appearances, equally ob- 
 scure as to their origin and essential character, but agreeing so 
 far as to render it probable that one cause, could it ever be dis- 
 covered, would be found common to them all. - 
 
 Now let us go a step farther, and suppose that the progress of 
 discovery has made known certain facts lying behind the phe- 
 nomena in question, to which they 'may all be referred. Let us 
 suppose, that all bodies which gravitate towards each other are 
 found to be embosomed in a subtile, ambient fluid, which con- 
 nects them, as it were, into one system ; that the positive and 
 negative states of electricity are resolvable into the presence of 
 two fluids standing in certain relations to each other ; and that 
 substances show chemical affinity for each other only when they 
 are in opposite electrical conditions. Still, we have only ad- 
 vanced a step in the generalization, and the real, efficient cause 
 of the appearances is still hidden from us by an impenetrable 
 veil. Gravitation is now referred to the communication of mo- 
 tion by impulse ; electricity, to the combination and separation 
 of different fluids ; affinity, to the attraction or repulsion of these 
 fluids. The latter classes of phenomena are more general, but 
 not a whit more explicable, than the former. We have now 
 fewer causes to seek for, but not one of these few has been dis- 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 75 
 
 covered. When we have resolved electricity or gravitation into 
 the presence of an elastic medium, it is a mere figure of speech 
 to say that we have discovered the cause of the electric phenom- 
 ena, or of gravity. That is just as far off as ever. 
 
 One is often amused with the tendency of the special students 
 of a particular science to exaggerate the importance and precision 
 of the lessons which it teaches, or of improvements which have 
 recently been made in its theory. The geologist, for instance, 
 informs us that the date of certain great changes which have 
 taken place in the earth's crust is fully and clearly ascertained ; 
 though he knows only that the acts of disruption and upheaving 
 were subsequent to the deposition of the rocks in strata, or that 
 the Silurian formation is older than the chalk. But if asked how 
 old the chalk is, he can only say that it is younger than the Silu- 
 rian ; and to the question, when the rocks were deposited, his 
 answer is, Before they were upheaved. We know not the dates 
 of either of these events, or how long the intervals were that 
 separated them, even by approximation, or within millions of 
 years. Obviously, then, our knowledge of them is not absolute, 
 but relative. 
 
 The case is precisely similar with the discoveries of science 
 respecting the causes of material phenomena. The astronomer 
 tells us, that the cause of the planets revolving in elliptical orbits 
 is probably the same as that which brings a stone to the ground ; 
 but if asked why the stone falls, his answer must be, Probably 
 from the same force which carries our earth round the sun. Ob- 
 serve, now, the errors that arise from the use of language, and 
 the facility with which words are often imposed upon us in the 
 place of knowledge. To this unknown cause, which is only con- 
 jectured to be the same in the two cases, the name of gravity 
 is applied ; and then, to either of the questions that I have pro- 
 pounded, the man of science wisely answers, that gravity is the 
 cause of the phenomenon ; and by most persons this answer is 
 held to be sufficient, as it seems to offer a known and adequate 
 cause. But it is not so ; gravity is only the mode in which the 
 machine works, not the cause of that motion. If asked by a 
 
76 THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 
 
 child why the hands of a clock move so steadily and uniformly 
 round its face, it would not be very satisfactory to reply, that 
 regularity is the cause of the motion ; to give the little inquirer 
 any real light upon the subject, we must open the case, show 
 the internal machinery, and trace back the complicated action to 
 the descent of a weight. Just so we can observe the regularity 
 with which the hands move over the great dial-plate of nature, 
 which marks out time for us in the heavens ; and we may call 
 that regularity gravitation, if we please ; but human beings are 
 like children who are not permitted to open the clock-case. 
 
 I have said that the unknown cause is only conjectured to be 
 the same in the two cases ; this is an important further limitation 
 of our knowledge of the subject, and naturally leads us to ask, 
 how trustworthy are the grounds of this conjecture. If an ob- 
 server from another planet, utterly ignorant of the actions, and 
 reasons of action, of men like ourselves, were to survey from a 
 distance the evolutions of large bodies of troops on a parade- 
 ground or a battle-field, he could not fail to be struck by the 
 precision and uniformity of their movements, the preservation of 
 the ranks and files in right lines, and the simultaneous changes in 
 the position and direction of their arms. If he were to inquire, 
 upon the principles of human science, into the cause of these 
 regular and parallel motions, he would probably attribute it to 
 the action of some one force, inexplicable to him, situated at the 
 centre of the field, and operating uniformly on every rank, and 
 on every individual in the ranks ; and he would proceed to lay 
 down the laws of its operation, that is, to note the order of 
 the marches and countermarches, and to make out the whole 
 theory of these complicated evolutions. So long as discipline 
 continued, his theory, doubtless, would be a very satisfactory 
 one. But if he waited till the order of review or battle was 
 broken up for the night, he would see, to his astonishment, the 
 soldiers scattering in all directions, and a universal hubbub fol- 
 lowing that scene of order and method. He would perceive 
 that there was nothing mechanical in the whole matter, but that 
 each soldier had a distinct principle of action, a separate will and 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 77 
 
 a separate power of motion ; and although, for some unknown 
 reason, all had determined to act in concert for a time, preserv- 
 ing their ranks and mechanically imitating each other, still, for 
 each movement of each individual there was an independent vo- 
 lition and a distinct personal cause. It is not necessary for me 
 to apply the illustration ; substitute weighty bodies, or masses of 
 matter, for soldiers and companies of soldiers, and you have in 
 this theory the exact counterpart of the scientific man's theory 
 of the universe, as it is commonly understood. I do not yet say 
 that the theory is false, especially if it be rightly interpreted ; I 
 am only showing what is the nature of the evidence which entitles 
 us to attribute all similar phenomena to the operation of a single 
 cause, when we know not, and never can know, the nature of 
 that cause. 
 
 But I have gone far enough, perhaps, to vindicate the asser- 
 tion with which I began, that we are not able to discern the 
 real or efficient cause of any event or change in the outward 
 universe. This inability is now admitted, so far as I know, by 
 every scientific writer of any reputation, either in physics or 
 metaphysics, excepting Mr. Whewell, whose anticipations of the 
 future triumphs of science he confesses that no such cause has 
 yet been discovered are rather more glowing than profound. 
 I borrow a clear statement of the truth on this subject from Mr. 
 Mill, as a single authority will be enough. 
 
 " What is called explaining one law of nature by another," he 
 observes, " is but substituting one mystery for another, and does 
 nothing to render the general course of nature other than myste- 
 rious ; we can no more assign a why for the more extensive laws 
 than for the partial ones. The explanation may substitute a mys- 
 tery which has become familiar, and has grown to seem not mys- 
 terious, for one which is still strange. And this is the meaning 
 of explanation in common parlance. But the process with which 
 we are here concerned often does the very contrary ; it resolves 
 a phenomenon with which we are familiar into one of which we 
 previously knew little or nothing ; as when the common fact of 
 the fall of heavy bodies is resolved into a tendency of all parti- 
 
78 THE IDEA OP CAUSE. 
 
 cles of matter towards one another. It must be kept constantly 
 in view, therefore, that when philosophers speak of explaining 
 any of the phenomena of nature, they always mean, pointing out 
 some not more familiar, but merely some more general, phenom- 
 enon of which it is a partial exemplification, or some laws of 
 causation which produce it by their joint or successive action, 
 and from which, therefore, its conditions may be determined de- 
 ductively. Every such operation brings us a step nearer towards 
 answering the question which comprehends the whole problem of 
 the investigation of nature, namely, What are the fewest as- 
 sumptions which being granted, the order of nature as it exists 
 would be the result ? What are the fewest general proposi- 
 tions from which all the uniformities existing in nature could 
 be deduced ? 
 
 " The laws thus explained or resolved are sometimes said to 
 be accounted for ; but the expression is incorrect, if taken to 
 mean any thing more than what has been already stated. In 
 minds not habituated to accurate thinking, there is often a con- 
 fused notion that the general laws are the causes of the partial 
 ones ; that the law of general gravitation, for example, causes 
 the phenomenon of the fall of bodies to the earth. But to assert 
 this would be a misuse of the word cause : terrestrial gravity 
 is not an effect of general gravitation, but a case of it ; that is, 
 one kind of the particular instances in which that general law 
 obtains."* 
 
 Lest some should think that this doctrine tends to discredit 
 physical science, by pointing out the narrowness of its scope, 
 and the hopelessness of all attempts to go beyond it, let me ob- 
 serve, that the field of research is not at all diminished, but the 
 objects in it are called by their right names, and made to appear 
 in their true character. These sequences of phenomena, or in- 
 variable conjunctions of events, which were improperly supposed 
 to be related to each other as cause and effect, are still, when 
 stripped of this supposititious relation, important objects of study, 
 
 * System of Logic, pp. 276, 277. 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 79 
 
 and the discovery of new ones will affect the calculations and 
 conduct of men just as much as ever. To return to the ex- 
 amples first given, we do not know that the spark was the cause 
 of the explosion, or that taking poison produced death ; but we 
 do know that the two events are always united, that one is the 
 invariable consequent of the other, and this is enough to direct 
 us in action. Experience loses none of its value as a trustworthy 
 guide of life, though it is deprived of some of its factitious im- 
 portance as a source of knowledge. The discovery of invari- 
 able sequences, of regularity in the succession of events, is the 
 true aim of physical science. To distinguish accidental, and 
 therefore infrequent, conjunctions from such as are constant, to 
 separate the casual proximity in time of two events from their 
 permanent relation to each other as antecedent and consequent, 
 is the only object of the inquirer. An eclipse of the sun may 
 be followed by a pestilence ; a troubled dream may very soon be 
 succeeded by some great domestic misfortune. But a brief 
 experience of eclipses and of dreams will satisfy us, that there 
 is no permanent relation between these two events, nothing but 
 a fortuitous conjunction of them. On the other hand, the appli- 
 cation of heat is always followed by the boiling of the water, and 
 the sensation of coldness never fails to result, if the warm hand 
 be placed upon ice. Permanent sequences are thus distinguished 
 from casual ones ; but of the true relations of the two events to 
 each other, of the reason or cause of their proximity, we are just 
 as ignorant in the latter case as in the former. Previously to all 
 experience, we have no more reason for supposing that powdered 
 sugar will dissolve in water, and powdered marble will not, than 
 for believing that an eclipse of the sun will be followed by an 
 earthquake. 
 
 To distinguish invariable sequences from necessary connec- 
 tions, Dugald Stewart and others have proposed to call the 
 former physical causes, and the latter efficient causes. This 
 nomenclature is good enough in one respect, as the former are 
 the only objects of physical inquiry ; but it is faulty in so far as 
 it connects the idea of cause in any manner whatever with such 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 
 
 relations. Physical causes, as they are termed, are only the 
 constant forerunners and signs of certain natural events ; the 
 word cause is almost universally understood to mean nothing but 
 efficient cause. 
 
 To show both the importance and the difficulty of distinguish- 
 ing invariable sequences from accidental and unessential con- 
 junctions, I borrow an illustration from Mr. Stewart. " Let 
 us suppose that a savage, who, in a particular instance, had 
 found himself relieved of some bodily indisposition by a draught 
 of cold water, is a second time afflicted with a similar disorder, 
 and is desirous to repeat the same remedy. With the limited 
 degree of experience which we have supposed him to possess, it 
 would be impossible for the acutest philosopher in his situation 
 to determine whether the cure was owing to the water which 
 was drunk, to the cup in which it was contained, to the fountain 
 from which it was taken, to the particular day of the month, or 
 to the particular age of the moon. In order, therefore, to in- 
 sure the success of the remedy, he will very naturally, and very 
 wisely, copy, as far as he can recollect, every circumstance 
 which accompanied the first application of it. He will make use 
 of the same cup, draw the water from the same fountain, hold 
 his body in the same posture, and turn his face in the same di- 
 rection ; and thus all the accidental circumstances in which the 
 first experiment was made will come to be associated equally in 
 his mind with the effect produced."* 
 
 The man of science, Mr. Stewart might have added, will re- 
 peat the experiment a number of times, leaving out at each trial 
 one of the attendant circumstances, till he falls upon one, after 
 the omission of which the desired result no longer follows. He 
 is then popularly said to have found out the cause of the cure ; 
 but his reason for believing in the efficacy of this one antecedent, 
 in its necessary connection with the result, is precisely the same 
 that the savage had for believing in the necessity of all the at- 
 tendant circumstances ; namely, that the application was made, 
 
 * Philosophy of the Human Mind, I. 262. 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 81 
 
 and the cure followed. And were he to repeat the experiment a 
 thousand times, he could learn no more than this, the invariable 
 attendance of one event upon the other. Why the cure takes 
 place, he knows not. Lest I should be accused of taking an 
 extreme case from so imperfect a science as medicine, let me 
 say that the power of water to slake one's thirst is ascertained 
 in precisely the same manner. After the draught, we feel no 
 longer thirsty ; and this succession of the one event to the other 
 is all that we know about it. 
 
 I pass now to a consideration of an error in the theory of 
 causation of precisely the opposite character to that which has 
 thus far occupied our attention. So evident does it appear to 
 some philosophers that we never discern any efficient causes in 
 nature, that they deny our having any knowledge of them, or 
 any conception of their existence. The word cause, they say, 
 whether it be called efficient or not, means nothing but invariable 
 antecedence. The idea of efficiency, of power, of energy, is a 
 mere figment of the brain ; it denotes nothing but constancy of 
 succession. Dr. Brown's words are, "We give the name 
 [cause'] to that which has always been followed by a certain 
 event, is followed by a certain event, and, according to our 
 belief, will continue to be followed by that event, as its imme- 
 diate consequent ; and causation, power, or any other synony- 
 mous words which we may use, express nothing more than this 
 permanent relation of that which has preceded to that which has 
 followed." So well satisfied was he of the truth of this doc- 
 trine, that he said his elaborate argument in favor of it appeared 
 to him very much like an attempt to prove the correctness of the 
 multiplication-table. Hume and Brown are followed in this re- 
 spect by Mr. Mill, who denies that we have any notion whatever 
 of power or force apart from the substances or events in which 
 they are supposed to inhere ; he says that "there is nothing in 
 causation but invariable, certain, and unconditional sequence," 
 and that "reason repudiates," though the imagination may retain, 
 the idea "of some more intimate connection, of some peculiar 
 tie, or mysterious constraint exercised by the antecedent over 
 
82 THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 
 
 the consequent." He even denies the universality and necessity 
 of the law of causation, or, as he understands it, the law of 
 invariable antecedence, saying, that although, in this world of 
 ours, every event is preceded by some other event, the two form- 
 ing a constant sequence, yet, for aught we know, " in some one, 
 for instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal astron- 
 omy now divides the universe, events may succeed one another 
 at random, without any fixed law." 
 
 Against skepticism so extravagant as this, it is only necessary 
 to adduce the fact of which I reminded you at the beginning of 
 this Lecture, that the popular significance of the word cause is 
 the scientific and metaphysical meaning of it, the idea being that 
 of efficient cause, and not merely of a constant forerunner or sign 
 of any event. I appeal to the consciousness of every one who 
 hears me, if, by the relation of cause and effect, he does not un- 
 derstand a fixed and essential relation, one perfectly distinct 
 from that of mere succession, the former event being neces- 
 sarily followed by the latter, and the existence of the latter being 
 inconceivable except as both preceded and produced by its ante- 
 cedent. When you say that the falling of a spark caused the 
 explosion, you mean something very different from the mere 
 proximity of two successive strokes upon a bell. The idea of 
 power, or force, is perfectly clear and distinct in your mind ; 
 I ask not now how it came there, whether it be legitimately 
 acquired, or a mere figment of the imagination ; but IT is 
 THERE, as distinguishable from all your other notions as the 
 idea of unity, or of self. " What convinces me," says Dr. 
 Reid, "that I have an idea of power is, that I am conscious 
 that I know what I mean by that word, and, while I have this 
 consciousness, I disdain equally to hear arguments for or against 
 my having such an idea." As the idea is not complex, it can- 
 not be analyzed, and is therefore indefinable ; but in this respect 
 it is only on the same footing with all other simple conceptions. 
 
 Observe, now, to what point the discussion has brought us ; 
 to the acknowledgment that the idea of power, or efficient cause, 
 is one of the simplest and most familiar conceptions of the hu- 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 83 
 
 man mind, yet that we can find no reality corresponding to it in 
 the outward universe. Every change, every phenomenon, which 
 begins to exist, must have an efficient cause ; we can no more 
 question this proposition than we can deny the axioms of the ge- 
 ometer. But the closest observation, the most refined analysis, 
 nowhere discovers such a cause in the external world ; it de- 
 tects nothing, it never can detect any thing, but invariable ante- 
 cedence, a relation which differs from that of cause as widely 
 as the idea of person, or self, differs from that of material sub- 
 stance. Whence came the idea, then ? Why do we suppose 
 the existence of such a cause, or attribute to it every outward 
 phenomenon, when it is nowhere dicoverable ? This is the 
 problem which we must now undertake to solve. 
 
 Two answers are possible to this inquiry. One is, that the idea 
 of cause is a conception of pure reason ; an original and sponta- 
 neous intuition of the soul ; not furnished by experience, though 
 first developed on occasion of its exercise ; a part of the primi- 
 tive constitution of the human mind ; in short, an innate idea. 
 Those to whom this answer is satisfactory, of course, need go 
 no farther. The existence of such primitive ideas is a mere 
 dogmatic assertion, admitted to be incapable of proof, and af- 
 firmed to be in no need of it, but to occupy a position above 
 all argument. No inquiry into their origin, or genesis, is pos- 
 sible, for they had no origin, except with the birth of the mind 
 itself ; no process of legitimating them, or establishing their ob- 
 jective validity, is required, as they constitute the grounds of 
 reasoning about other things, and so cannot themselves be rea- 
 soned about. If you deny the existence of them, you are a skep- 
 tic, or.a materialist, and there 's an end of the matter. Now, for 
 the purposes of this inquiry, I do not feel concerned either to 
 affirm or deny them. Those who believe in them, as I have 
 said, need go no farther ; the conclusion to which they have 
 come is perfectly satisfactory, though they have jumped to it ; 
 and I freely concede this point, that the idea of cause has a 
 better claim to be considered original and spontaneous than any 
 other. If there are any innate ideas, this surely is one. Those 
 
84 THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 
 
 who are not satisfied with this compendious and dogmatic method 
 of solving the problem may accompany me in a consideration of 
 the second possible answer to the question proposed ; namely, 
 that the idea of cause has its origin in internal experience, in the 
 consciousness of volition and action. 
 
 Our theorem is, that we have the direct evidence of conscious- 
 ness, arising from every volition or voluntary act, that the human 
 will is a cause, an efficient cause, not a mere antecedent, a 
 limited cause, indeed, but supreme within its proper domain, 
 not always sw/-ficient for the end proposed, but always efficient, 
 or expending force or power, which is real, though often inade- 
 quate. Thus, if I will to move a limb which has been para- 
 lyzed, though the limb does not move, I am conscious of making 
 an effort to move it, and this consciousness of effort is a con- 
 sciousness of force exerted, of power in action, which is neces- 
 sarily causal or causative, though in this instance too weak, or 
 too little, for the end proposed. By this " effort," I do not 
 mean the mere straining of the muscles, or muscular effort. I 
 mean the strong purpose, the vigorous exertion of will, a purely 
 mental effort, which will be best illustrated, perhaps, by an 
 action confined entirely to mind. 
 
 Consider, then, the strong effort of the will to fix the attention 
 upon a particular subject of thought, when a variety of distracting 
 circumstances calls off the mind to other topics, when grief, 
 terror, anxiety, or anger darkens and disturbs the soul. The 
 success of the attempt in such a case, the issue of the struggle, 
 may be doubtful ; but we are conscious that it is a struggle, that 
 power is put forth towards the end in view, and this power is a 
 true cause. A man of great energy, of indomitable resolution, 
 is said truly to possess great force of character, however puny 
 may be his bodily constitution, however meagre and insufficient 
 may be the outward means at his disposal for the accomplishment 
 of his object. In a successful contest with the passions, in re- 
 sistance to temptation, there is a consciousness of power exerted, 
 which no mere material exertion, no stiffening of the sinews and 
 summoning up the blood, can ever equal. Our real activity re- 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 85 
 
 sides solely in the will. An effort to lift the arm is, so to speak, 
 an outward effort, like the attempt to rend an oak ; it may or 
 may not succeed ; that depends on the material constitution of 
 the nerves and muscles. But the act was really completed in 
 the volition, or in putting forth conscious energy towards the end 
 proposed ; and this always succeeds. The limbs may be pal- 
 sied, the muscles may refuse to bend, and this tenement of clay 
 in which we live may no longer obey our wishes, or minister to 
 our necessities. But the kingly will still governs and acts with- 
 in, and is still responsible for its acts at that dread tribunal where 
 not the outward movements, but the purposes of the heart, come 
 into judgment. 
 
 I contend that in the action of will we have all the marks or 
 tests by which efficient causation is distinguished from mere 
 antecedence. In the case of material phenomena, as we have 
 seen, the result can be ascertained only by experience ; we learn 
 only by trial that one substance is soluble, and another not, that 
 iron expands, and clay contracts, in the fire. But in the case of 
 mental exertion, the result to be accomplished is preconsidered, 
 or meditated, and is therefore known a priori, or before experi- 
 ence ; the volition succeeds, which is a true effort, or a power 
 in action ; and this, if the power be sufficient, is necessarily fol- 
 lowed by the effect. It was from overlooking this distinction, 
 that Hume, Kant, and Brown, and such metaphysicians of the 
 present day as Bailey and Mill, have been led to deny all knowl- 
 edge of causation even in the action of mind. They confounded 
 sufficiency with efficiency, and supposed, because the power or 
 volition did not always accomplish the object, that it did not tend 
 towards it, or exert any effect upon it. But I quote Mr. Mill's 
 language against himself ; for when he is looking only to physi- 
 cal causes and material results, he lays down this distinction with 
 admirable clearness. 
 
 Alluding to the direction and velocity with which a body 
 moves when acted upon by a certain force, he says, " The body 
 does not only move in that manner, unless counteracted ; it tends 
 to move in that manner, even when counteracted ; it still exerts 
 
86 THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 
 
 in the original direction the same energy of movement as if its 
 first impulse had been undisturbed, and produces, by that ener- 
 gy, an exactly equivalent quantity of effect. This is true, even 
 when the force leaves the body, as it found it, in a state of abso- 
 lute rest ; as when we attempt to raise a body of three tons' 
 weight with a force equal to one ton. For if, while we are 
 applying this force, the wind, or water, or any other agent, sup- 
 plies an additional force just exceeding two tons, the body will 
 be raised ; thus proving that the force we applied exerted its full 
 effect, by neutralizing an equivalent portion of the weight which 
 it was insufficient altogether to overcome. And if, while we are 
 exerting this force of one ton upon the object in a direction con- 
 trary to that of gravity, it be put into a scale and weighed, it will 
 be found to have lost a ton of its weight, or, in other words, to 
 press downwards with a force only equal to the difference of the 
 two forces. 
 
 c These facts are correctly indicated by the expression ten- 
 dency. All laws of causation, in consequence of their liability 
 to be counteracted, require to be stated in words affirmative of 
 tendencies only, and not of actual results. In those sciences of 
 causation which have an accurate nomenclature, there are special 
 words which signify a tendency to the particular effect with 
 which the science is conversant ; thus, pressure, in mechanics, 
 is synonymous with tendency to motion, and forces are not rea- 
 soned upon as causing actual motion, but as exerting pressure." * 
 
 How language so precise as this is to be reconciled with the 
 writer's denial of the fact, that we have even any idea of efficient 
 cause, is a question for Mr. Mill to answer. I have no con- 
 cern with it, except to remark, that the energy, or power ex- 
 erted, which is not followed by any actual effect, but only tends 
 to produce one, cannot with any propriety be considered as 
 a mere antecedent event, for it has no consequent. It is no 
 fact of observation, inasmuch as no result is perceived ; and 
 therefore it does not conflict with our doctrine, that we nowhere 
 
 * System of Logic, p. 258. 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 87 
 
 discern efficient causes in the material world. But tendency 
 cannot even be conceived of, much less so clearly explained as 
 it is by Mr. Mill, except as the effect of power in action, and 
 therefore as implying a real cause. 
 
 However this may be, the illustration amply vindicates our 
 knowledge of efficient causation in the phenomena of mind, 
 against which no objection can be brought, except the alleged ne- 
 cessity of waiting till experience informs us whether the volition 
 is effective or not, so that we cannot say a priori, as we should 
 do of a true cause, that it will be, it must be, effective. We 
 can say this beforehand of mental activity, or will ; the volition 
 is always effective, if not to the full extent of actually producing 
 the whole result in view, at least as tending to produce it, so that 
 it is an efficient cause. 
 
 The difference between voluntary and involuntary states of 
 mind, between attention and sensation, for example, is soon 
 recognized. We know that power is exerted in the former case, 
 that every act is preceded by a volition, and that this volition- is 
 the sole and efficient cause of the act. Nay, within the proper 
 domain of the ioi//, it is even inconceivable to us that any event 
 or change should take place without the agency of the will ; and 
 hence, as I am inclined to believe, by a natural association of 
 ideas, we are led to the doctrine of universal causation, to the 
 belief that no event whatever, whether in the mind or in the 
 outer universe, can take place without an efficient cause. In 
 most cases, we are ignorant what that cause is, for undoubtedly 
 the majority even of our mental states is involuntary ; we must 
 believe and perceive, when evidence or objects are presented to 
 us. These cases we are not completely acquainted with ; 
 strictly speaking, the efficient cause of them comes not within 
 the range of our knowledge. But voluntary acts we do know 
 thoroughly ; the efficient cause of them namely, our own will 
 does lie entirely within the sphere of our consciousness, and 
 is known to be in immediate contact, as it were, with the effect. 
 Hence, association leads us to believe that every other event 
 must have a cause, and that if we had the thorough knowledge of 
 
00 THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 
 
 it which we have of a voluntary act, it would be seen to proceed 
 from a cause ; and this cause is naturally sought for in the imme- 
 diately antecedent event. Every action of our lives, every vo- 
 lition, appears in this character ; so that it is by no narrow and 
 insufficient induction, but by one that is coextensive with our 
 whole conscious existence, the acts which form its basis recur- 
 ring at every instant, that we are led to the general law, that 
 no phenomenon occurs without a cause. 
 
 This doctrine derives confirmation from the fact, that all the 
 phraseology employed in speaking of the successive generaliza- 
 tions of science is borrowed from the action of mind. The 
 word action itself has no real significance except when applied 
 to the doings of an intelligent agent ; we cannot speak of the 
 doings of matter, as we could if the word action were applicable 
 to it in any other than a figurative sense. Let any one con- 
 ceive, if he can, of any power, energy, or force inherent in 
 a lump of matter, a stone, for instance, except this merely 
 negative one, that it always and necessarily remains in its pres- 
 ent state, whether this be of rest or motion. Again, in speak- 
 ing of the similarity of facts and the regularity of sequences, 
 we refer them to a law of nature, just as if they were sentient 
 beings acting under the will of a sovereign. Chemical affin- 
 ities, also, are spoken of, as if material elements were united 
 by family ties, and manifested choice, or affection and aversion. 
 We attribute force, or power, to the particles of matter, and 
 speak of their natural agencies. Just so, we talk of tone in 
 coloring, and of a heavy or light sound ; though, of course, in 
 their proper significance, tone belongs only to sound, and heavi- 
 ness to gravitating bodies. These modes of speech are proper 
 enough, if their figurative character be kept in view ; but we 
 ought always to remember, that agency is the employment of one 
 intelligent being to act for another ; force and power are appli- 
 cable only to will ; they are characteristic of volition. Of course, 
 it is a violent trope to apply either of them to senseless matter. 
 
 An obvious corollary from these remarks is, that all causation 
 is an exertion of mind, and is applied only by metaphor to the 
 
THE IDEA OF CAUSE. 89 
 
 material universe. It necessarily implies power, will, and action. 
 It is a universally admitted truth, that an efficient cause is no- 
 where discoverable in the world without us ; we know what it is 
 only from consciousness, and all our language respecting it is 
 borrowed from mental phenomena. This doctrine places the 
 material universe before us in a new light. The whole frame- 
 work of what are called " secondary causes " falls to pieces. 
 The laws of nature are only a figure of speech ; the powers and 
 active inherent properties of material atoms are mere fictions. 
 Mind alone is active ; matter is wholly passive and inert. Mind 
 alone moves ; matter is moved. There is no such thing as what 
 we usually call the " course of nature "; it is nothing but the 
 will of God producing certain effects in a constant and uni- 
 form manner ; which mode of action, however, being arbitrary, 
 or dependent upon will, is as easy to be altered as to be pre- 
 served. All events, all changes, in the external world, from 
 the least even unto the greatest, are attributable directly to his 
 will and power, which, being infinite, are always and necessarily 
 adequate to the end proposed. The laws of motion, gravitation, 
 affinity, and the like, are only expressions of the regularity and 
 continuity of one infinite cause. The order of nature is the 
 effect of Divine wisdom ; its stability is the result of Divine 
 beneficence. 
 
 12 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 THE question respecting the origin and validity of our idea of 
 cause, which formed the topic of my last Lecture, has been 
 greatly obscured and perplexed, because it involves several dis- 
 tinct inquiries, which are too frequently confounded with each 
 other. I endeavoured to separate them, and to consider each 
 one by itself in the natural order. First, the popular acceptation 
 of the word cause was observed to be also its strict and meta- 
 physical meaning ; as efficiency is universally attributed to causa- 
 tion, and a necessary connection is believed to exist between 
 cause and effect. But in opposition to the common belief, it 
 was proved that we can nowhere detect such causes in the ma- 
 terial universe ; the observation of external nature never has led, 
 and never can lead, to the discovery of any thing beyond the in- 
 variable succession of events, or the fixed relation of antecedence 
 and consequence, a relation which differs as widely from that 
 of cause and effect as any two distinct conceptions, which the 
 mind is capable of forming, do from each other. But our inabil- 
 ity to discover such causes in the world of matter is no proof 
 that they are not to be found anywhere ; for there is clear and 
 indisputable evidence that they exist in the world of conscious- 
 ness, every act, every volition, of a conscious agent being a true 
 cause ; this inability does not even prove that there are no such 
 causes operating in external nature, as the limits of our faculty of 
 investigation and discovery are not, surely, the limits of the possi- 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 91 
 
 bility of things, and the general proposition, that every change 
 or event must have a cause, is one that we can no more doubt 
 than we can disbelieve that two and two make four ; and, for a 
 still stronger reason, this inability does not prove that we have no 
 idea of efficient cause, and therefore no knowledge of what the 
 word power means, for the very existence of the problem, this 
 very search after real causes, shows that we have a clear idea of 
 some connection between two events which is fundamentally dif- 
 ferent from mere succession, or contiguity in time. The argu- 
 ments and illustrations which I adduced went to disprove these 
 three forms of skepticism, these three unfounded conclusions, or 
 false inferences from the admitted fact, that our feeble powers of 
 observation and analysis cannot discover any efficient cause what- 
 ever in the physical universe. 
 
 In arguing against these skeptical views, we were led inciden- 
 tally to state and defend what I believe to be the true doctrine of 
 causation ; namely, that one particle of matter never acts on 
 another particle ; for nearly all philosophers admit that we have 
 no proof of such action, and when we come to look closely into 
 the subject, it appears even inconceivable that inert matter should 
 thus act , or have any real power. In truth, action is never even 
 attributed to matter except by a metaphor, or figure of speech, 
 as is clearly shown by an examination of the language usually em- 
 ployed. The only real action of which we have any knowledge 
 or distinct conception is that of mind or person ; and the field of 
 this activity is not only the mind itself, but the material structure, 
 the congeries of bones, muscles, and nerves, which we inhabit, 
 all the voluntary motions of which are produced and governed by 
 the indwelling spirit, the kingly and indivisible will. Thus we 
 came to the conclusion, that spirit alone moves, while matter is 
 moved, and that this union, for a time, of a body with our person- 
 ality shadows forth the connection between the material universe 
 and the Infinite One. How else, indeed, can we attach any 
 meaning to the attributes of omnipresence and omnipotence ? 
 The unity of action, the regularity of antecedence and conse- 
 quence in outward events, which we commonly designate by the 
 
92 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 lame metaphor of law, then become the fitting expression of 
 the consistent doings of an all-wise Being, in whom there is 
 no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Our bodies, then, 
 are kindred to organic nature, or the external universe, in a 
 double sense ; both are fashioned from the same materials, from 
 particles of brute matter, and both are informed, actuated, and 
 controlled by an indwelling person ; every atom in this tenement 
 of clay being really subject to his sovereign will, though, in the 
 one case, that will or power (for the two expressions are synony- 
 mous) is infinite, and in the other it is finite, or limited, so that 
 the whole result which was contemplated does not always follow. 
 The Creator, then, is no longer banished from his creation, nor 
 is the latter an orphan, or a deserted child. It is not a great 
 machine, that was wound up at the beginning, and has continued 
 to run on ever since, without aid or direction from its artificer. 
 As well might we conceive of the body of a man moving about, 
 and performing all its appropriate functions, without the principle 
 of life, or the indwelling of an immortal soul. The universe is 
 not lifeless or soulless. It is informed by God's spirit, pervaded 
 by his power, moved by his wisdom, directed by his beneficence, 
 controlled by his justice. The harmony of physical and moral 
 laws is not a mere fancy, nor a forced analogy ; they are both 
 expressions of the same will, manifestations of the same spirit. 
 The sublime language of the poet, then, becomes the simple ex- 
 pression of a philosophical and Religious truth : 
 
 " I have felt 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 
 And the blue sky ; 
 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 
 all objects of all thought, 
 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
 A lover of the meadows, and the woods, 
 And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
 From this green earth ; 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 93 
 
 well pleased to recognize 
 
 In nature and the language of the sense 
 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
 Of all my moral being." 
 
 The admirer of Wordsworth will perceive that I have omitted 
 portions of lines, which deform this sublime conception with the 
 dark and mystical doctrine of pantheism, a doctrine which no 
 one will confound with the system here developed, who remem- 
 bers that the complex structure, which is our outward integument 
 for a season, is really foreign to the person, and distinct from the 
 will, or power, by which it is moved and governed. Pantheism 
 is to the Deity what materialism is to man, a mere denial of any 
 spiritual existence, and the extinction of all idea of personality. 
 
 The objection to this theory of causation, that it is beneath 
 the dignity of the Almighty to put his hand to every thing, is 
 founded on a false analogy, as is seen by the form in which Aris- 
 totle states it. "If it befit not the state and majesty of Xerxes, 
 the great king of Persia, that he should stoop to do all the mean- 
 est offices himself, much less can this be thought suitable for 
 God." The two cases do not correspond in the very feature 
 essential to the argument. An earthly potentate, unable to exe- 
 cute with his own hand all the affairs of which he has control, is 
 obliged to delegate the larger portion of them to his servants ; 
 selecting the lightest part for himself, he gratifies his pride by 
 calling it also the noblest ; though the distinction is factitious, 
 there being no real difference, in point of honor or dignity, be- 
 tween them. But Omnipotence needs no minister, and is not 
 exhausted or wearied by the care of a universe. Power in ac- 
 tion is more truly sublime than power in repose ; and surely it is 
 not derogatory to Divine energy to sustain and continue that 
 which it was certainly not beneath Divine wisdom to create and 
 appoint. Rightly considered, to guide the falling of a leaf from 
 a tree is an office as worthy of Omnipotence as the creation of a 
 world. " Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and one of 
 them shall not fall on the ground without your Father." 
 
94 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 Equally lame is the oft-repeated comparison of the universe 
 to a machine of man's device, which is considered the more per- 
 fect the less mending or interposition it requires. A machine is 
 a labor-saving contrivance, fitted to supply the weakness and de- 
 ficiencies of him who uses it. Where the want does not exist, 
 it is absurd to suppose the creation of a remedy. Human con- 
 ceptions of the Deity are for ever at fault in imputing to him the 
 errors and deficiencies which belong to our own limited faculties 
 and dependent condition. Hence the idea of the Epicureans, 
 that sublime indifference and unbroken repose are the only states 
 of being worthy of the gods. Viewed in the light of true philos- 
 ophy, no less than of Christianity, how base and grovelling does 
 this conception appear ! Substitute for it the Christian idea of 
 the unceasing watchfulness of a Parent, and the active and con- 
 stant beneficence of an Almighty Father and Friend, and it 
 sinks into its true character, as a degrading doctrine of heathen 
 mythology. 
 
 In truth, we have only to decide whether it is more likely 
 that the complex system of things in the midst of which we live, 
 the beautiful harmonies between the organic and the inorganic 
 world, the nice arrangements and curious adaptations that obtain 
 in each, the simplicity and uniformity of the general plan to 
 which the vast multitude of details may be reduced, whether 
 this system, I say, is NOW sustained, and prevented from falling 
 into nothingness and ruin, by one all-wise and all-powerful Being, 
 or by particles of brute matter, acting of themselves, without any 
 immediate direction, oversight, or control. Remember we have 
 no proof that such particles can exert any causal agency what- 
 ever ; that science never has discovered, and never can discover, 
 a single efficient cause, properly belonging to matter, in the 
 whole material universe ; that the only power in action with 
 which we are acquainted is that of mind upon matter, and upon 
 itself, as evinced in our own consciousness, and in the voluntary 
 movements of our bodies dependent on the will or person within ; 
 and that the almost unceasing movement and change of all the 
 material particles around us, that are not dependent upon our 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 95 
 
 own wills, is a fact to be accounted for by some efficient and 
 adequate cause. The moral government of God is admitted to 
 be direct, incessant, and continuous, by all theists who admit his 
 moral attributes, and who thereby furnish a basis for religious 
 faith and practice. This is evident from all the ordinances of 
 religion ; prayer being a mockery, unless we believe it is heard, 
 and worship not really obligatory, unless it is specially enjoined. 
 Then why is not his physical government, so to speak, his 
 causation and control of movement and change in the material 
 universe, equally immediate and unceasing ? I believe that it is, 
 and when rightly viewed, the fluttering of a leaf to the ground, 
 after it has been disengaged from its parent bough, furnishes evi- 
 dence of Divine agency as direct as if the grave should give 
 up its dead. Birth is surely as wonderful as miraculous, if 
 that term be preferred as resuscitation ; and birth is constantly 
 going on all around us. The greater frequency of the act cer- 
 tainly does not lessen its marvellousness, or render it easier of 
 accomplishment ; though the repetition exhausts and deadens our 
 emotion of wonder, and we then conceal under the lame meta- 
 phor of Zato, and the blank hypothesis, of machinery, the direct 
 and perpetually recurring action of Deity. 
 
 The argument for the Divine existence, then, is ever freshly 
 presented to us by the continuance, no less than by the beginning, 
 of all things. It proceeds not only from the creation of the race, 
 but from the birth of the individual. In the seed which swelled 
 under the last night's rain, in the shoot which appeared under 
 this morning's sun, we find proof of ever-present and ever-acting 
 power. To the reflecting theist, 
 
 " The world's unwithered countenance 
 Is bright as at creation's day," 
 
 and reflects its Maker's image just as clearly. 
 
 The doctrine of causation which I have thus endeavoured to 
 develop stands in striking contrast with the only other theory of 
 it which I find occasion here to notice, a theory, indeed, which 
 does not rest upon any new fundamental principle, but, beginning 
 with the general law of causation as applied to the physical uni- 
 
96 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 verse, carries it out in all its universality, with an affectation of 
 great logical rigor, to its inevitable conclusion in a sweeping sys- 
 tem of fatalism. It would be difficult to find a more impressive 
 illustration than is afforded by this theory, of the danger of com- 
 mencing with a single abstract proposition, asserted to be original 
 and spontaneous, a necessary and universal law of human belief, 
 and pushing it in all its strictness to its remotest consequences, 
 unchecked by facts, and unappalled either by the irrational or 
 the revolting character of the principles to which it leads. It 
 furnishes the most striking example of the mischief of applying 
 metaphysical reasoning to practical subjects. 
 
 The theory begins with the general law of causality, that 
 every event must have a cause, this being understood either 
 absolutely, or, as in its application to physical causes, to signify 
 only invariable antecedence and consequence. The whole doc- 
 trine depends on this word invariable, taken absolutely, and on 
 the assumed universality and necessary character of the law itself, 
 in virtue of its primitive and categorical nature. Every event, of 
 course, is surrounded by other events, and must be considered 
 as being at the same time both antecedent and consequent, as 
 necessarily resulting from those which preceded, and necessarily 
 followed by those which come after it, and thus as forming 
 one link in an adamantine chain which extends from eternity to 
 eternity. All occurrences whatever have their environment of 
 circumstances, with which they stand in necessary and fixed re- 
 lations by an absolute law ; and the state of the universe at any 
 one moment, in all its parts, from the creation of a world to 
 the stirring of an aspen-leaf, could not possibly have been dif- 
 ferent from what it is. Still further, the system is not content, 
 after thus "binding Nature fast in fate," to " leave free the hu- 
 man will." Every volition, every act, of a conscious agent is 
 preceded by certain states of mind, certain sensations, beliefs, 
 and emotions, all involuntary, upon which it is necessarily conse- 
 quent ; and it could no more have been unlike what it is, than our 
 earth could suddenly and causelessly cease turning upon its axis, 
 and revolving round the sun. Nay, more; with a Titan-like 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 97 
 
 audacity of speculation, we must scale the throne of Omnipotence 
 itself, and say if the utterance of such a doctrine be not blas- 
 phemy that every thought and act even of the Almighty is but 
 the inevitable consequence of all that has gone before, the neces- 
 sary cause or forerunner of all that comes after it. 
 
 I have endeavoured to present this astounding theory in its 
 simplest and most abstract form, in order to show clearly the 
 grounds on which it rests, and the nature of the reasoning by 
 which it is supported. It is the consistent and thorough applica- 
 tion of a single abstract principle, assumed to be a primitive and 
 necessary law of the human understanding, to the whole order of 
 actual, possible, and conceivable events. Unlike the skepticism 
 of Hume, which aims merely to shake all convictions, and to re- 
 duce all principles to uncertainty and doubt, this system appears 
 as the dogmatism of infidelity, the demonstration of fatalism. If 
 we are entitled to reason a priori about matters of fact, these are 
 the conclusions in which we must rest. Belief in a miracle, of 
 course, is an absurdity ; a revelation from God to man is an im- 
 possible idea. All evidence, all testimony, adduced in proof of 
 such events, must be rejected at once, and without examination ; 
 it can be nothing but moral evidence, made up of contingent 
 truths, which, in the presence of necessary convictions, or truths 
 known a priori , vanish like mist before the sun. This theory is 
 the pivot on which the whole system of Spinoza rests and turns, 
 and it is the avowed essence of German Transcendentalism. As 
 such, it is taken up and expounded with singular clearness and 
 method by Fichte, who is far the ablest reasoner in that school, 
 not even excepting Kant. In Fichte's work on the Destination 
 of Man, which contains a summary of his philosophical opinions, 
 it is so fully developed, that I shall give you the application of it 
 mostly in his own words.* 
 
 "Why, then, has Nature," asks Fichte, "amidst the mani- 
 fold, infinite, possible varieties of being, assumed precisely these, 
 and no others ? For this reason, that certain others had pre- 
 
 * I follow the translation of Mrs. Percy Sinnett, (London, 1846,) which 
 is very elegant and faithful. 
 
 13 
 
98 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 ceded them, and these in the same manner will determine those 
 which shall follow ; and these again others, to infinity. Were 
 the smallest thing at the present moment different from what it 
 is, then necessarily in the following moment would something 
 else be different, and again in the succeeding one, and so on for 
 
 ever 
 
 u In every moment of her duration, Nature is one connected 
 whole ; in every moment must every individual part be what it 
 is, because all others are what they are, and a single grain of 
 sand could not be moved from its place, without, however imper- 
 ceptibly to us, changing something throughout all parts of the im- 
 measurable whole. Every moment of duration is determined by 
 all past moments, and will determine all future moments ; and 
 even the position of a grain of sand cannot be conceived other 
 than it is, without supposing other changes, to an indefinite ex- 
 tent. Let us imagine, for instance, this grain of sand lying some 
 few feet farther inland than it actually does ; then must the storm- 
 wind that drove it in from the sea-shore have been stronger than 
 it actually was ; then must the preceding state of the atmosphere, 
 by which this wind was occasioned, and its degree of strength 
 determined, have been different from what it actually was, and 
 the previous changes which gave rise to this particular weather, 
 and so on. We must suppose a different temperature from that 
 which really existed, a different constitution of the bodies 
 which influenced this temperature : the fertility or barrenness of 
 countries, the duration of the life of man, depend, unques- 
 tionably, in a great degree on temperature. How can we know, 
 since it is not given us to penetrate the arcana of nature, and it 
 is therefore allowable to speak of possibilities, how can we 
 know, that in such a state of the weather as we have been sup- 
 posing, in order to carry this grain of sand a few yards farther, 
 some ancestor of yours might not have perished from hunger, or 
 cold, or heat, long before the birth of that son from whom you 
 are descended, and thus you might never have been at all ; and 
 all that you have ever done, and all that you ever hope to do in 
 this world, must have been hindered, in order that a grain of sand 
 might lie in a different place ? 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 99 
 
 " I myself, with all that I call mine, am but a link in this chain 
 of rigid natural necessity. There was a time, so others tell 
 me, and although I am not immediately conscious of it, I am 
 compelled by reason to admit it as a truth, there was a time 
 in which I was not, and a moment in which I began to be. I 
 then only existed for others, not yet for myself. Since then, 
 myself, my conscious being, has gradually developed itself, and 
 I have discovered in myself certain faculties and capacities, 
 wants and natural desires. I am a definite creature, which came 
 into existence at a certain time. I have not come into existence 
 by my own power. It would be the highest absurdity to suppose 
 that before I was at all, I could bring myself into existence ; I 
 have, then, been called into being by a power out of myself. And 
 what should this be but the universal power of Nature, of which 
 I form a part ? The time at which my existence commenced, 
 and the attributes belonging to me, were determined by this uni- 
 versal power of Nature ; and all the forms under which these 
 my inborn attributes have since manifested themselves have 
 been determined by the selfsame power. It was impossible 
 that, instead of me, another should have arisen ; it is impos- 
 sible that, at any moment of my existence, I should be other than 
 what I am. 
 
 " That my successive states of being have been accompanied 
 by consciousness, that some of them, such as thoughts, resolu- 
 tions, and the like, appear to be nothing but various modifica- 
 tions of consciousness, need not perplex my reasonings. It is 
 the nature of the plant regularly to develop itself, of the animal 
 to move towards the attainment of certain ends, of the man to 
 think. Why should I hesitate to acknowledge the latter as an 
 original power of Nature, as well as the first and second ? 
 Thought is assuredly a far higher and more subtile operation of 
 Nature than the formation of a plant, or the motion of an animal ; 
 I cannot explain how the power of Nature can produce thought ; 
 but can I better explain its operation in the production of a plant, 
 
 in the motion of an animal ? Thought exists in Nature, 
 
 as well as the creative power which gives birth to the plant. 
 
100 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 The thinking being arises and develops himself by natural laws, 
 and exists through Nature. There is, therefore, in Nature an 
 original thinking power, as well as an original plant-creating 
 power 
 
 " Figure, motion, thought, in me, are not consequent on one 
 another, but are the simultaneous and harmonious developments 
 of what might be called the man-forming power, necessarily 
 manifesting itself in a creature of my species. I am not what I 
 am because I think so, or will so, nor do I think and will be- 
 cause I am, but I am, and I think, both absolutely and necessa- 
 rily I am that which I am, because, in the connection 
 
 of the great whole, only such a one, and absolutely no other, was 
 possible ; and a spirit who could look through all Nature would, 
 from the knowledge of a single man, be able to determine what 
 men had been before, and what they would be at any moment. 
 
 In one person, he would obtain the knowledge of all 
 
 All that I am and shall be I am and shall be of necessity, 
 
 and it is impossible that I should be otherwise Give 
 
 to Nature a^ single definition of a person, let it be ever so ap- 
 parently trivial, the course of a muscle, the turn of a hair, 
 she would be able, had she a universal consciousness, to declare 
 what would be his whole course of thought during his whole 
 
 course of being Most certainly I cannot, by all my 
 
 repentance, by all my resolutions, produce the smallest alteration 
 in the appointed course of things. I stand under the inexorable 
 power of rigid Necessity ; should she have destined me to be- 
 come a fool and a profligate, a fool and a profligate without 
 doubt I shall become. Should she have destined me to be wise 
 and good, wise and good I shall doubtless be. There is 
 neither merit nor blame to be ascribed to her or to me. She 
 stands under her own laws, I under hers. It would therefore 
 contribute to my tranquillity to subject even my wishes to that 
 power to which my existence is entirely subject. O these re- 
 bellious wishes ! " 
 
 There is no ambiguity in this language, no reserve in the state- 
 ment of the doctrine. Fichte was a daring speculatist, and did 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 101 
 
 not shrink from the enunciation of the theory of philosophical ne- 
 cessity in all its rigor and completeness. The practical lesson, 
 the rule for the conduct of life, which is deducible from this the- 
 ory, may be very briefly stated ; it is the practical fatalism of the 
 East : Make no vain efforts to alter that course of things which 
 proceeds by its own irresistible laws ; do not contend with your 
 destiny. Submit to be carried along, like a leaf floating on the 
 waters, whithersoever the stream may lead. Embosomed in 
 nature, and borne along with it, let your passive intellect reflect 
 like a mirror whatever images may stray over its surface. Utter 
 the word that is in you, perform the act to which you are 
 prompted, and spend no thought about the consequences of 
 either ; these will inevitably come as they are determined, be 
 your strivings and exclamations what they may. Strictly speak- 
 ing, you do not act, but are acted upon ; contemplation, and not 
 action, is your fate. 
 
 I have said that Spinoza's system is but the development and 
 completion of this theory. As nature is one connected whole, 
 and I am but a part of it, and every individual part of it must be 
 what it is because all others are what they are, there is truly but 
 one substance, and that exists by necessity. Thought and ex- 
 tension are its attributes, and both are infinite, like the substance 
 in which they inhere. The essence of a thing, or its formal 
 cause, is its internal constitution, or that which makes it what it 
 is. In this sense we may speak of a cause of all things, or of 
 nature ; but it is an indwelling, or immanent, cause, and not 
 one which is really distinct from the thing itself, and operates 
 upon it from without. We may contemplate Nature as a cause, 
 that is, as operating on itself, and causing all things in itself by 
 its own inherent necessity, every event being the necessary re- 
 sult of all other events, and every part being determined, or 
 made what it is, by all the other parts; this is the first con- 
 ception, and in this sense Nature is a cause, but a cause only 
 of itself ; it is, in technical phrase, natura naturans, or Nature 
 working out itself ; and thus understood, Nature is God. But 
 we may also contemplate nature as an effect, as something pro- 
 
102 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 duced, natura naturata, nature worked out, or made what it is ; 
 yet, as before, it is so made, or worked out, only by itself, and 
 by virtue of its own inherent and necessary laws ; in this sense, 
 there is nothing but nature, and there is no God. 
 
 The doctrine is abstruse ; but as it is only the logical develop- 
 ment of a single principle, a train of consequences drawn from 
 one axiom, we cannot complain that it is unintelligible. We 
 hear so much about Spinozism at the present day, its spirit per- 
 vades so large a portion of the reputed philosophy of our times, 
 and so many of its doctrines, or corollaries from those doctrines, 
 are pressed home upon us, without any distinct indication of their 
 source, that it is worth while to give some effort and attention 
 to the attempt to understand it. 
 
 In illustration of what I have stated, then, let me ask you to 
 contemplate a particular substance, a piece of iron, for in- 
 stance ; it has certain qualities, or attributes, such as hardness, 
 weight, malleability, &c. ; and these qualities may be considered 
 as the results, or effects, of the internal constitution of the iron, 
 or the relation of its primary particles or atoms to each other. 
 This internal constitution being altered or affected in any way, 
 the qualities which result from it, or are caused by it, are altered 
 also ; it becomes more or less hard, weighty, malleable, &c. ; 
 perhaps it loses some quality entirely, as when it ceases to be 
 malleable. This internal constitution of the body the old phi- 
 losophers called its essence, or that which makes it what it is ; 
 and they wasted a great deal of labor in searching after the es- 
 sences of things ; for as all the qualities are derived from the es- 
 sence, and depend upon it, if we knew the essence, we could 
 tell beforehand what all its qualities must be, they being de- 
 ducible from it, just as the geometric properties of a triangle 
 are deducible from the geometric definition of a triangle. Now, 
 as the qualities of a substance form our whole distinct concep- 
 tion of that substance, and as the essence produces, or causes, 
 these qualities, it is quite intelligible, in one sense of the word 
 cause , to say that the substance causes or determines itself ; and 
 this is what Spinoza means when he speaks of natura naturans. 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 103 
 
 Nature causing itself, or being a cause ; in which sense, Na- 
 ture is God, or, in other words, God is the indwelling, or im- 
 manent, cause of nature ; not a foreign cause, acting upon it, 
 or creating it, from without, but its essence, or internal cause ; 
 that is, its internal constitution, on which all its qualities 
 depend. 
 
 Again, we may contemplate the piece of iron without refer- 
 ence to the internal origin, or source, of its qualities, but simply 
 as a particular substance manifesting certain attributes. This is 
 the idea of natura naturata, or nature worked out, and existing 
 as a whole ; in this sense, there is nothing but nature, and there 
 is no God. Observe further, that these two ideas of nature dif- 
 fer only formally, and not objectively, from each other ; they 
 are but two aspects of, or two modes of considering, one and 
 the same Nature. So the iron is one and the same body, 
 whether we regard its qualities as constantly produced or mani- 
 fested that is, caused by its internal constitution, or essence, 
 or look at it merely as an aggregate of those qualities, inher- 
 ing in one substratum. The criticism of Dr. Reid, then, is 
 well founded, when he says, that in Spinoza's system u there 
 neither is, nor can be, a cause at all ; nothing acts, but every 
 thing is acted upon ; nothing moves, but every thing is moved ; 
 all is passion, without action, all instrument, without an agent ; 
 and every thing that is, or was, or shall be, has that necessary 
 existence in its season, which we commonly consider as the pre- 
 rogative of the First Cause." The cause that is spoken of in 
 this system is not an efficient , but a formal^ cause ; that is, the 
 inherent necessity of the thing to exist, and to be what it is. 
 The universe, or the totality of things, is presented by Spinoza 
 as one connected whole, but under a double aspect : first, as 
 necessarily existing, its existence at any one moment being abso- 
 lutely determined, or caused, by its existence at the preceding 
 moment ; and in this view, God is identified with nature, and 
 we have a system of pantheism ; secondly, as the only sub- 
 stance or necessary being, without regard to the manner in which 
 its successive states of being are manifested or developed ; and 
 
104 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 in this view, there is nothing but nature, and the scheme is one 
 of atheistic fatalism. The germ of this latter doctrine may be 
 found in the ancient speculation of Democritus and Leucippus, 
 amounting to an atheistic fatality founded on the mechanical or 
 corpuscular philosophy. Dr. Reid justly says of it, that it is 
 " the genuine and most tenable system of necessity "; and if It 
 be true, all reasoning to prove the existence of a First Cause 
 " must be given up as fallacious." 
 
 It would not be difficult to show, in respect even to the modi- 
 fied scheme of necessity that is presented by so cautious and 
 temperate a speculatist as Mr. Mill, either that it is wholly un- 
 founded, a baseless dream, or that it must be carried out, by the 
 legitimate and consistent extension of the argument on which it 
 rests, to the gigantic system, the absolute and universal Fate, 
 of Spinoza. No compromise is possible with this doctrine ; we 
 must deny secondary causes altogether, or we must go on to 
 Asiatic and atheistic fatalism. It is the boast of the followers of 
 Spinoza, that their reasoning is mathematical and demonstrative 
 from beginning to end ; all the forms and requisitions of mathe- 
 matical logic are complied with in the work of their master ; the 
 reasoning is perfectly abstract, the technicalities of the geometer 
 and algebraist are preserved, and no flaw can be found in the 
 demonstration. I fully admit the justice of this boast ; if you 
 grant Spinoza's premises, there is no stopping short of Spinoza's 
 conclusions. Once admit that efficient causation belongs to mat- 
 ter, that one particle really acts on another particle by its in- 
 herent power or principle, and necessitates a change of its state, 
 and it follows that the displacement of a grain of sand must alter 
 the history of the universe. Each event is bound by iron neces- 
 sity to all preceding and all subsequent events, the chain of Fate 
 extending from the fall of an atom up to the throne of God. 
 Admit further, that the volitions and acts of a conscious agent 
 are events of the same order with occurrences in the material 
 universe, having their antecedents and consequents, with which 
 they equally stand in invariable relations, and man himself is like 
 a grain of sand, controlled and blown about by the winds of des- 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 105 
 
 tiny. Thought and extension, then, are attributes of one infinite 
 substance, both being manifested by the same inherent necessity, 
 both being what they are because other things are what they are. 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body Nature is, and God the soul "; 
 
 the word soul being here understood in the same sense as inter- 
 nal constitution, or essence, as if we should say, that it is the 
 nature, or soul, of iron to be hard, weighty, and malleable. The 
 parts of the great whole being thus bound together, each being 
 the result of all, and all of each, it follows, to repeat Fichte's 
 illustration, that, the slightest particular being given, the course 
 of a muscle, or the turn of a hair, in a certain individual, and if 
 Nature could answer, she would be able to foretell all his good 
 and evil deeds, from the beginning to the end of his life. An 
 inwrought necessity extends through the whole web of events 
 physical and mental, reaching from infinitude to infinitude ; and 
 this necessity is God. Nothing acts, every thing is acted upon ; 
 nothing moves, every thing is moved ; this necessity itself, 
 being the inherent nature of things, and not an external force 
 operating from without, is said only formally to compel, or to acf, 
 since it is passive, not efficient. Thus the system of Spi- 
 noza is but the consistent and universal application of the law 
 of causality, (wrongly interpreted, as I believe,) but taken abso- 
 lutely, to all conceivable events ; it is but the extension of this 
 principle, that every event must have a cause. 
 
 It cannot be denied that there is a kind of awful sublimity 
 in this appalling doctrine, in its simplicity, consistency, and uni- 
 versality, which renders it very impressive to the imagination, 
 and accounts, in a great degree, for the favor with which it is 
 received by many persons of a poetical temperament. An 
 Oriental fable, says Mr. Stewart, " places the import of the 
 doctrine in a more striking light than I could do by any philo- 
 sophical comment. The Arabians tell us, that as Solomon 
 (whom they supposed a magician, from his superior wisdom) 
 was one day walking with a person in Palestine, his companion 
 
106 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 said to him, with horror, ' What hideous spectre is that which 
 approaches us ? I do not like his visage. Send me, I pray 
 thee, to the remotest mountain of India.' Solomon complied, 
 and the very moment he was sent off, the spectre arrived. 
 ' Solomon,' said he, ' how came that fellow here ? I was to 
 have fetched him from the remotest mountain of India.' Sol- 
 omon answered, ' ANGEL OF DEATH, thou wilt find him there.' ' 
 I have chosen to present this terrible dogma of universal fatal- 
 ism, for the first time fully and scientifically developed by Spi- 
 noza, in immediate juxtaposition and contrast with that view of 
 causation to which we were led by the principles adopted in 
 these Lectures ; with the doctrine, that is, which denies that 
 there is any power or efficient agency whatever in brute matter, 
 even by transmission, or as derived from a higher source, and 
 which ascribes all causation to spirit, or person, whether finite, 
 and therefore often inadequate, and always limited in its sphere 
 of action, or infinite, and so necessarily adequate to all occa- 
 sions, both controlling and sustaining the universe of things, from 
 the fall of a leaf up to the creation of a world. The two doc- 
 trines are the opposite extremes of this question ; they are the 
 antipodes of each other. But I believe they are also the only 
 logical and consistent creeds which we can entertain upon this 
 subject, all intermediate views being imperfect and inconsequent. 
 Begin with any event you please in the material universe, not 
 immediately connected with the agency, real or supposed, of 
 man, and but two suppositions respecting its cause are possible. 
 Take, for instance, the melting of wax in the flame ; if you 
 believe that the flame really acts on the wax, that there is an 
 inherent and underived power in the former to melt, and a ne- 
 cessity in the very constitution of the latter to be melted, when 
 the two are brought together, then you cannot consistently stop 
 short of Spinozism ; you must also believe that the fall of a leaf 
 from a tree is at once a cause and a consequence directly con- 
 nected with the destruction of empires, and with the movement 
 of the planets round the sun. But if you believe that the flame has 
 no power or causality of its own, and all agree that none can 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 107 
 
 be detected in it, if you admit that the two events (namely, the 
 bringing of the two substances together, and the melting of one 
 of them) are related to each other only as antecedent and conse- 
 quent in time, though invariably thus related as far as our expe- 
 rience extends, then all action is personal, or begins from mind, 
 and what we call the course of nature is but the infinite activity, 
 the constant government, of God. 
 
 For a refutation of Spinoza's system, therefore, we have only 
 to recapitulate the principles that have already been advanced. 
 The first argument against it is, that it is, throughout, an appli- 
 cation of abstract, metaphysical reasoning to matters of fact. 
 The idea of cause is metaphysical, or rather hyperphysical, as it 
 is nowhere furnished by external nature, which gives us an idea 
 only of the sequences of events ; and as Spinoza rejects the 
 doctrine of the independent personality of the will, he could not 
 derive it even from internal experience. To him, cause is a 
 mere abstraction, denoting invariability in the succession of 
 events ; and to consider it, therefore, as accounting for the ori- 
 gin of these events is a mere assumption. The reasoning be- 
 gins with an abstraction and an hypothesis ; given the idea of 
 cause, or abstract invariableness of succession, and supposing 
 that all events are of the same order, that is, that the active 
 states of mind do not differ from the passive capacities or sus- 
 ceptibilities of matter, and certain results follow. Logically, 
 then, the reasoning must end where it began, that is, in an 
 ideal or hypothetical universe, in which we may suppose that 
 this abstraction is a reality, and this assumption a fact. In its 
 application to real occurrences, or the actual universe, it must 
 be fallacious. Spinoza uses demonstrative reasoning exclusively, 
 and it has been proved that this can lead only to abstract conclu- 
 sions. 
 
 The second objection to the system is, that it requires thought 
 and extension to be considered as attributes of one and the same 
 substance ; the phenomena of mind must be placed in the same 
 order with material events, and thus equally subjected to the iron 
 rule of necessity. But it has been proved that person, or self, 
 
108 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 is essentially distinct from matter, as it is indivisible, and has the 
 consciousness of activity, or of power in action ; while matter is 
 infinitely divisible, and can only be acted upon ; its inertness, or 
 passive submission to any forces that are applied to it, having no 
 internal force wherewith to resist them, is in truth the only rea- 
 son for believing that all its changes of state are necessary. We 
 say that the movements and changes of matter are inevitable or 
 necessary, because we perceive that matter has no power to act 
 of itself, so that it must be operated upon from without ; and we 
 derive this belief of power of some sort as essential to action 
 from the phenomena of consciousness. If it were not from ob- 
 serving, that within the proper domain of the will no act takes 
 place unless preceded by a volition, that is, by a consciousness 
 of effort, we never could have arrived at a knowledge of the 
 law of causality, namely, that every event must have somewhere 
 an efficient cause. Now it is the vice of Spinoza's system, that 
 it ignores the idea of power altogether ; every thing is caused, 
 nothing causes ; every thing is moved, nothing moves ; power is 
 transmitted, as it were, from one event to another, each one 
 being compelled or necessitated by that which preceded it, and 
 in its turn compelling its consequent, and yet this power, thus 
 transmitted, and thus enforcing the law of necessity, has its 
 origin nowhere. We pursue its fleeting shadow through a series 
 of events, but can never overtake it, for the series is infinite. 
 The powder exploded because the spark fell upon it ; the spark 
 fell, because the flint excuded it from the steel ; the flint and 
 steel were struck together by the action of a man, this action 
 being the result of a volition, and this volition being necessarily 
 determined by certain antecedent emotions and beliefs, these 
 states of mind being inevitably consequent on certain sensations, 
 and these, again, on some preceding physical events ; and so 
 we proceed, tracing the chain once more through the world of 
 matter, then perhaps again to a conscious mind, and so on to 
 infinitude. Nature, then, according to Spinoza's system, is not 
 only infinite in extent, but eternal ; strictly speaking, nothing ever 
 began to be, and creation is but a dream. The power, or neces- 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 109 
 
 sity, which now is, has existed from eternity, and has travelled 
 down to us through an infinite series of events, never relaxing its 
 iron grasp, never varying in intensity or diminishing in strength, 
 a blind and unconscious God. 
 
 Against this terrific and incredible conception, the 'Avdy/crj of 
 the Greek tragedians, place the theory of power, or causation, 
 which I have endeavoured here to develop. Consider power 
 really as such, that is, as exerted with freedom, not as caused, 
 but as causing, not as merely transmitted, but originating afresh 
 in every act. Replace mind as a distinct existence by the side 
 of matter ; restore personality, or self, as the most fundamental 
 and the most frequently repeated of all our conceptions ; and 
 thus dethrone this blind spectre of Fate, and replace a conscious 
 Deity on the throne of the universe. Volition is necessarily fol- 
 lowed by the act, and thus we gain the idea of the necessary 
 connection between cause and effect ; but that this act propa- 
 gates itself, or produces, by its own inherent energy, another 
 event in the external universe, is what we have no evidence of 
 whatever, either by sensible observation, or in the world of con- 
 sciousness. Matter is essentially inert- and passive, and for this 
 reason, among others, we say that every change in its state must 
 have a cause ; or that mind, the only true energy or source of 
 power with which we are acquainted, must be operating on it 
 from without or within. We do not find that agency in an ante- 
 cedent physical event ; and it is not true that one event is at the 
 same time, or in two consecutive instants, both effect and cause, 
 or produced by one phenomenon, and producing another. Power, 
 or efficient agency, is needed at each step ; and to find whence it 
 comes, we must look to mind or person, that is, to an agency 
 not caused, or necessary, but voluntary. That favorite meta- 
 phor, of a chain of causes and effects, when literally construed, 
 has no meaning ; it is contradictory, for it affirms and denies the 
 existence of active power at each link. 
 
 That mental phenomena take place in succession, and there- 
 fore that each volition is invariably preceded by motives, desires, 
 and beliefs, is a circumstance that need not perplex our argu- 
 
110 FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 merit. The relation between the motives and the act is that of 
 mere sequence in time, not accompanied by any consciousness 
 of power exerted ; while the relation between the volition and 
 the act, as in the case of forced attention, is truly causative, the 
 consciousness of effort or exertion being perfectly distinct. To 
 say that the motive causes the action is to make the will inop- 
 erative altogether, or non-existent. Whatever may be the op- 
 eration of motives, they operate on the man, or on self; whatever 
 may be the nature of the action, it is not the motives which act, 
 but the man acts. We must not lose sight of the absolute indi- 
 visibility of person, and the consequent fact, that what are called 
 the separate faculties of mind are but different and successive 
 states, or conditions of being, of the same individual. There is 
 no will, but only the man willing, no motive, only the man 
 contemplating various objects of desire. Now two successive 
 states of the same substance do not cause each other ; we might 
 as well say, that the heat of a bar of iron, when just withdrawn 
 from the fire, causes its subsequent coldness after it is exposed 
 to the air. One state precedes the other, but does not cause, or 
 necessitate, the other. 
 
 If a lump of matter changes its state, if from a solid it be- 
 comes a liquid, or assumes a new color or a new shape, we 
 look for the cause of this change to something existing out of 
 the substance itself, and operating upon it from without. We 
 do so, from our intuitive perception of the fact, that it is inca- 
 pable of acting on itself, or, in other words, of changing it- 
 self. But if incapable of acting on itself, how can we suppose 
 that it is capable of acting on something else ? If it cannot 
 change itself but through the intervention of a foreign cause, 
 how can it change the state of another substance ? We deny, 
 then, that one physical event ever depends on another of a simi- 
 lar character ; and Fichte's long chain of causes, from the dis- 
 placement of a grain of sand up to the creation of a world, drops 
 asunder at every link. In the world of consciousness, moreover, 
 since there is often no external event to which a particular change 
 or determination of the will can be attributed, the necessarian, in 
 
FATALISM AND FREE-WILL. Ill 
 
 seeking for a cause of the phenomenon, is obliged to look to an 
 antecedent state of the man himself, that is, to a motive, a 
 preexistent or concomitant longing or desire. He thinks to 
 make out his theory, then, by saying, that the strongest motive 
 causes the change, or, in other words, determines the will. But 
 as the mind or person is absolutely single, and only exhibits itself 
 under different phases, or as variously employed, the motive 
 means nothing but the man himself wishing for some object ; 
 and the determination of the will means nothing but the same 
 person acting. The assertion, that the motive determines the 
 will, therefore, is only an abstract statement of the fact, that the 
 man wishing determines the man acting, or that the will deter- 
 mines itself, which is precisely the theory of the advocate for 
 human freedom. The necessarian theory is absurd, for it assigns 
 an abstraction as the cause of a reality. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT FOR FREE AGENCY CONTINUED: REASONING 
 FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 
 
 THE two theories of causation, which I endeavoured to de- 
 velop in the last Lecture, terminate respectively in the system 
 of Spinoza, which is atheistic fatalism, and in that of free-will, 
 which ascribes all action to mind or person, and therefore attrib- 
 utes all changes that take place in the universe, except those 
 which are caused by man, to the immediate agency of the Deity. 
 I attempted to prove that these two theories are the only ones 
 with which we need concern ourselves, for they alone are logi- 
 cal, consistent, and complete. No compromise is possible be- 
 tween them. Take the doctrine of necessity in its mildest and 
 most liberal form, as expounded by those who shrank from the 
 awful consequences that Spinoza deduced from it, and it will not 
 be difficult to show that it is partial and inconsequent ; the prem- 
 ises on which it rests, as we might expect from the demonstra- 
 tive character of the reasoning employed, leading either to uni- 
 versal conclusions, or to no conclusions at all. Either matter 
 is capable of efficient causation, or it is not ; either one physical 
 event causes or necessitates another, by its own inherent power or 
 energy, in which case every thing is necessary, and the chain 
 of Fate extends from the fall of an atom up to the throne of 
 God, or else one event merely precedes another in the order 
 of time, and has no causal connection with it whatever, both the 
 antecedent and the consequent being independently produced by 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR FREE AGENCY. 113 
 
 a power operating on them from without, that is, by the agency 
 of mind. Thus Spinozism actually affords a proof of the doc- 
 trine that is diametrically opposed to it, for it is the reduction of 
 the opposite of that doctrine to an absurdity. Spinozism in itself 
 is utterly incredible and absurd, no sane man ever having actu- 
 ally believed it, or entertained it in any way except as a mere 
 exercise of the intellect, the fanciful scheme of a hypothetical 
 universe, in which abstractions are taken for realities and assump- 
 tions for facts. 
 
 I endeavoured to show further, that the argument in support 
 of this monstrous system, being a mathematical one, needs to be 
 complete and certain in all its parts, so that if a breach be any- 
 where made in it, the whole fabric must fall. To prove the 
 falsity of any one doctrine that is really involved in it is to dis- 
 prove the whole system. Observe, then, at how many points it 
 is refuted by the principles which we have already established by 
 independent evidence. First, it begins with the assumption, that 
 every physical event is caused, or necessitated, by the antece- 
 dent physical event ; while it is now admitted on all hands, that 
 we never have discovered, and never can discover, between two 
 physical events any necessary union whatever. Secondly, the 
 system requires us to believe that there is no distinction between 
 mind and matter, but that thought and extension are attributes of 
 the same substance ; while it has been proved that personality is 
 essentially distinct from materiality, and that the acts of the will 
 do not belong to the same class with changes in matter, so 
 that reasoning from the latter to the former is wholly fallacious ; 
 they have not even any qualities in common. Thirdly, Spinoza 
 denies that there is any such thing as active power, and teaches 
 that every event is necessarily produced by the inherent passivity, 
 so to speak, of all objects, there being nowhere an agent, a 
 mover, or a primal source of power ; while it has been shown 
 that in the phenomena of will there is a consciousness of effort or 
 exertion, which is a direct perception of original, and not of 
 merely transmitted power. Fourthly, a cardinal point in the 
 system is a denial of the freedom of the will, and the consequent 
 
 15 
 
114 THE ARGUMENT FOR FREE AGENCY. 
 
 doing away with all sense of moral obligation, all consciousness 
 of merit or remorse for crime ; while the voice of conscience 
 imperatively declares, what we can no more disbelieve than we 
 can distrust the multiplication-table or the axioms of the geome- 
 ter, that man is accountable for his actions, and incurs merit or 
 blame for deeds which he was free to commit. 
 
 In regard to the freedom of the will, I argued further, what 
 all experience teaches, that, of two successive states of the 
 same substance, the former is not the cause of the latter, but 
 only its antecedent. Daylight is not the cause of darkness ; a 
 headache does not produce the freedom from pain which follows 
 it. The consideration of motives and the subsequent volition are 
 two successive states of the same person ; if there were a causal 
 or necessary union between them, the latter would immediately 
 succeed the former, for when the cause is present, the effect can- 
 not be delayed. But we often and involuntarily pause and dwell 
 upon various motives, holding them up in various lights, and bal- 
 ancing them against each other, the will remaining quiescent 
 during this process, the understanding and reason alone being 
 active. Now, if the strongest motive is necessarily followed 
 by the volition, why is it not immediately so followed, the mo- 
 tives being certainly before the mind ? If you assert that there 
 is an immediate determination of the will in such a case, namely, 
 a determination to remain quiet, or to postpone the particular 
 action in view till the motives have been fully weighed, I deny 
 the fact. The will certainly may remain dormant for a time 
 without a particular volition to that end. Take the case of a 
 man absorbed in some operation of pure intellect, consider- 
 ing, for instance, the various steps of a mathematical problem ; 
 there is no action of the will here, not even a volition to suspend 
 volition. But the balancing of motives is as much an intellectual 
 operation as mathematical research ; why, then, I repeat, if mo- 
 tives necessarily act on the will, do they not determine it imme- 
 diately ? I see not how it is possible for the necessarian to 
 answer this question in conformity with his theory. 
 
 But it is argued against the doctrine of the freedom of the will, 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR FREE AGENCY. 115 
 
 that it requires us to believe in an uncaused event, and thus de- 
 nies the universal application of the law of causality. How can 
 a volition, it is asked, take place without a cause, if it be true 
 that every change, every thing which begins to exist, must have 
 a cause ? I reply, that the law of causation is founded on the 
 acknowledged inertness of matter ; because matter cannot act on 
 itself, we say that every change in matter must have a cause ; 
 but it does not follow that this cause is also in its turn an effect, 
 and must also have been caused by some antecedent event, and 
 that again by another cause, and so on to infinity. This notion 
 of a chain, or infinite series, of causes has already been refuted, 
 because it really banishes all idea of efficient agency from the 
 universe ; we chase the phantom of a cause along the line for 
 ever, without the possibility of overtaking it. The true maxim 
 is, that every physical event, every material phenomenon, must 
 have a cause, because it cannot act of itself ; but it does not fol- 
 low that this cause must also have a cause, for it is itself a source 
 of power ; it is mind, or person, which, unlike matter, can act of 
 itself, and therefore does not need a cause. It is an unauthor- 
 ized extension of the law of causality, to say that every action 
 of a conscious agent must have a cause, just as much as a mate- 
 rial phenomenon. This would be begging the question in the 
 present case, and it is refuted by the direct evidence of con- 
 sciousness, which teaches us that the will is a true source of 
 power in itself. We must get rid of this notion of transmitted 
 power, or a chain of causes and effects, which is a mere fiction, 
 founded on the interminable succession of material phenomena ; 
 this succession, as we have shown again and again, is not causa- 
 tion, but mere sequence in time. Each event in that succession 
 must have a cause ; but this cause is not found, and never can be 
 found, in the antecedent physical event, but only in some power, 
 or being, acting out of the line ; and to ask for the cause of this 
 being, that is, for the cause of this power, or cause of a cause, 
 is absurd. 
 
 Thus the doctrine of the freedom of the will brings us back 
 again to the grand dogma of the immediate agency of the Deity 
 
116 THE ARGUMENT FOR FREE AGENCY. 
 
 throughout creation, that is, to the omnipresence and omnipo- 
 tence of God. In some recently published letters, from the 
 private correspondence of Dr. Reid, I find a part of this theory 
 of causation so clearly stated and illustrated, that a few passages 
 from them may well be cited here. " In the strict and proper 
 sense," says this philosopher, " I take an efficient cause to be a 
 being who had power to produce the effect, and exerted that 
 
 power for that purpose Power to produce an effect 
 
 supposes power not to produce it ; otherwise it is not power, but 
 necessity, which is incompatible with power taken in a strict 
 
 sense I am not able to form a conception how power, 
 
 in the strict sense, can be exerted without will ; nor can there be 
 will without some degree of understanding. Therefore nothing 
 can be an efficient cause, in the proper sense, but an intelligent 
 being. I believe we get the first conception of power, in the 
 proper sense, from the consciousness of our own exertions ; and 
 as all our power is exerted by will, we cannot form a conception 
 
 how power can be exerted without will Matter cannot 
 
 be the cause of any thing ; it can only be an instrument in the 
 hands of a real cause." 
 
 " Suppose, now, that you take the word cause in this strict 
 sense ; its relation to its effect is so self-evidently different from 
 the relation of a motive to an action, that I am jealous of a 
 mathematical demonstration of a truth so self-evident. Nothing 
 is more difficult than to demonstrate what is self-evident. A 
 cause is a being which has a real existence ; a motive has no real 
 existence, and therefore can have no active power. It is a thing 
 conceived, and not a thing that exists ; and therefore can neither 
 be active, nor even passive. To say that a motive really acts 
 is as absurd as to say that a motive drinks my health, or that a 
 motive gives me a box on the ear." 
 
 u We are early conscious of some power in ourselves to pro- 
 duce some events ; and our nature leads us to think that every 
 event is produced by a power similar to that which we find 
 in ourselves, that is, by will and exertion ; when a weight falls 
 and hurts a child, he is angry with it; he attributes power and 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR FREE AGENCY. 117 
 
 will to every thing that seems to act. Language is formed upon 
 these early sentiments, and attributes action and power to things 
 that are afterwards discovered to have neither will nor power. 
 By this means, the notion of action and causation is gradually 
 changed ; what was essential to it at first [namely, will] is left 
 out, while the name remains ; and the term cause is applied 
 to things which we believe to be inanimate and passive." 
 
 Again, " It is a curious problem in human nature, how, in 
 the progress of life, we come by the lax notion of power, agency, 
 cause and effect, and to ascribe them to things that have no will 
 nor intelligence. I am apt to think, with the Abbe Raynal, 
 ' that savages,' (I add children, as in the same predicament,) 
 ' wherever they see motion that they cannot account for, there 
 they suppose a soul.' Hence, they ascribe active power and 
 causation to sun, moon, and stars, rivers, fountains, sea, air, and 
 earth; these are conceived to be causes in the strict sense. In 
 this period of society, language is formed, and its fundamental 
 rules and forms established. Active verbs are applied only to 
 things that are believed to have power and activity in the proper 
 sense. Every part of nature which moves, without our seeing 
 any external cause of its motion, is conceived to be a cause in 
 the strict sense, and therefore is called so. At length, the more 
 acute and speculative few discover that some of those things 
 which the vulgar believe to be animated like themselves are 
 inanimate, and have neither will nor understanding"; but they 
 must still " speak the common language, and suit it to their new 
 notions as well as they can ; just as philosophers say with the 
 vulgar, that the sun rises and sets, and the moon changes." * 
 
 With these quotations from Dr. Reid, I conclude the more 
 abstract portion of the discussion in which we are engaged. To 
 some it may appear, that we have been wandering a long time in 
 a mere wilderness of logic and metaphysics, u whence issuing, 
 we again behold the stars." I certainly do not believe that it is 
 necessary to pass through all the abstruse reasoning which has 
 
 * Sir W. Hamilton's edition of the Works of Dr. Reid, pp. 65, 75, 78. 
 
118 THE ARGUMENT FOR FREE AGENCY. 
 
 thus far occupied our attention, before we can obtain any firm 
 and well-grounded faith in the great doctrines of religion. It 
 would be an impeachment of the goodness of the Deity to sup- 
 pose, that he has given to his creatures only such intimations or 
 proofs of his own existence and his will as the most cultivated 
 and ingenious minds can follow slowly and with great effort. 
 On the contrary, the conclusions in this great argument are so 
 obvious and direct, lying but a step from the premises, which 
 are numberless, and so nearly akin to the mental processes which 
 we are compelled to use for the daily purposes of life, that the 
 child or the savage cannot avoid resting in them with sufficient 
 confidence. It is no doubtful inference, no long and tedious 
 process of reasoning, which connects all events in the history of 
 the universe with the being and attributes of a God. The con- 
 clusion is so obvious, the connection so close and striking, that 
 it is difficult to believe that any mind not wilfully obtuse, or not 
 perverted by logical subtilties and metaphysical abstractions, ever 
 failed to receive it with perfect trust at the first view. 
 
 But the importance of these preliminary considerations appears 
 from the fact, that they afford a complete answer to the objec- 
 tions urged by skeptics so formidable as Spinoza, Hume, Kant, 
 and the later school of German infidels. Those who are not 
 conversant with the objections may safely pass over the answers 
 to them ; but to many others they may be of use from their 
 tendency to do away with an impression, now, it is to be 
 feared, quite too common, that the common proofs of the 
 being of a God, however satisfactory to the vulgar, will not bear 
 the test of a sound philosophy or of strict logical analysis. They 
 tend, at any rate, to clear the ground, to establish certain data, or 
 sound premises for the argument, and to furnish logical rules for 
 the conduct of the inquiry. Let us hold fast, then, to the 
 ground which we have acquired, and having established certain 
 principles, let us use them without doubt or hesitation for the 
 remainder of the discussion. Let no one imagine, for instance, 
 that reasoning from the effect to the cause, as we shall have 
 occasion to do, is illogical, because Hume and others have 
 
REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 119 
 
 demonstrated that physical causes, so called, are mere antece- 
 dents, and no power, or efficient energy, can be detected in 
 them. All this is admitted ; but the only consequence of it is, 
 not to banish the notion of cause altogether, but to substitute for 
 material causes and transmitted power the idea of direct personal 
 agency, accompanied by intelligence and will. Neither let the 
 grim dogma of necessity, or absolute fate, any longer shadow 
 the faith of the believer with the fear lest the commands of the 
 Almighty should be nugatory from his own moral inability to 
 comply with them. The doctrine of free-will rests upon foun- 
 dations which are not to be shaken by the utmost force of philo- 
 sophical skepticism. 
 
 Above all, let us know what we are to expect as the result of 
 the inquiry, and what weight is to be given to the disparaging re- 
 mark, that truths supported only by moral evidence are at best 
 but contingent, and that demonstration of a fact is impossible. 
 The evidence which supports the fundamental truths of religion 
 is precisely the same with that which directs all our conduct in 
 life, and, in ordinary cases, no one thinks of complaining that it 
 is insufficient. To say that it is moral, instead of being demon- 
 strative, is only to admit, that the truths themselves are practical, 
 and not speculative. I repeat it, then, there can be no fears for 
 the strength of our religious faith, if it stands upon the same plat- 
 form with the whole round of the physical sciences, so that no 
 assault can reach even its outworks, till the entire fabric of these 
 sciences shall be demolished, and it be made to appear that all 
 the boasted attainments of the last three centuries in the study of 
 nature have been unprofitable and vain. 
 
 The common argument a posteriori for the being of a God is 
 divided into two branches, according as we seek to establish the 
 reality of some cause, no matter what, simply from the presence 
 of an effect, or as we endeavour to determine the nature of that 
 cause from the peculiarities of the effect ; the one is reasoning 
 from efficient, the other from final, causation. The one pro- 
 ceeds simply from nature up to nature's God, as from a fact 
 otherwise inexplicable to that which is at once the origin and the 
 
120 REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 
 
 explanation of that fact ; the other infers from the peculiar char- 
 acter of the works of creation that a purpose or design is accom- 
 plished in them, and consequently assumes that this design must 
 have been previously entertained by an intelligent being, having 
 power adequate to the work. Thus, the geologist infers, from 
 the dislocated and upheaved position of certain strata of rock, 
 that there must have been some cause of the disturbance and 
 elevation ; this is his first conclusion, and it is quite distinct from 
 his subsequent inquiry as to the time, nature, and extent of the 
 convulsion which produced the phenomena that he now seeks to 
 explain. This later inquiry must proceed from careful observa- 
 tion of the particular facts in the case, of the minor circum- 
 stances which go to prove that the grand change was produced 
 by one cause rather than another. It is the former and more 
 comprehensive conclusion the validity of which we are now to 
 examine. 
 
 The argument is stated in its simplest, but not, as it seems to 
 me, in its most logical or conclusive form, by Dr. Clarke. He 
 reasons thus : " Something must have existed from all eter- 
 nity, otherwise the things that now are must have been pro- 
 duced out of nothing, absolutely and without cause, which is a 
 plain contradiction in terms. For to say a thing is produced, 
 and yet that there is no cause at all of that production, is to 
 say that something is effected by nothing , that is, it is not 
 effected at a/Z." I pause here to remark, that Dr. Clarke, in his 
 anxiety to make his reasoning exclusively metaphysical, and con- 
 sequently to avoid all reference to matters of fact, makes two 
 unfounded assumptions : first, that we have a metaphysical 
 knowledge of "the things that now are," a loose and inde- 
 terminate expression, which means, if it means any thing, the 
 universe of animate and inanimate being, though the existence 
 of this universe is certainly made known to us only by phys- 
 ical evidence, that is, by experience, whether by observation 
 through the senses, or by consciousness; and secondly, his 
 assertion, that " otherwise the things that now are must have 
 been produced out of nothing," must be understood to mean, 
 
REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 121 
 
 that the things which now are must have begun to be without 
 an antecedent cause ; inasmuch as to say that they were pro- 
 duced is begging the question as to their producer. The reason- 
 ing is worth nothing, unless it is supported by the general law of 
 causality, the law, that is, that every thing which begins to be 
 must have a cause ; and this law, for reasons already alleged, 
 must be considered as the dictate of experience. Of course, 
 Clarke's argument is of a metaphysical or a priori character 
 only in name ; it is just as much founded on physical testimony 
 as the argument from design. It proceeds from the existence 
 of realities, made known to us by the senses and by conscious- 
 ness, to the cause of these realities, the ground of the inference 
 being a general maxim the truth of which is collected from ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Still, the argument thus far, whatever may be its technical 
 designation, is a valid one, and is in truth unanswerable. From 
 the universe of things that are, we infer, either that these things 
 have existed for ever, or that they began to be ; and if the latter, 
 then there must have been a cause of their beginning of existence ; 
 and this cause must either have existed from eternity, or else it 
 also had a cause, and so on. Hence we are reduced to the 
 alternative of admitting the existence either of one eternal being, 
 or of an infinite series of dependent beings, each one having been 
 produced by its predecessor. So far, the argument is sound ; 
 but Clarke proceeds to urge several metaphysical reasons, which 
 seem to me quite unsatisfactory from the very fact that they are 
 metaphysical, for rejecting the hypothesis of an infinite series of 
 created beings, and hence for resting in the conclusion that there 
 is but one eternal being, who is God. The truth is, Clarke quite 
 confounds two perfectly distinct meanings of the term necessity ; 
 and on this fallacy, this confusion of terms, the whole of his 
 subsequent reasoning depends. In a syllogism, the conclusion 
 necessarily follows from the premises ; and this we call a logical 
 necessity. For an instance of the other kind, take the necessary 
 and unlimited existence of space. Space is indestructible ; we 
 can conceive of the annihilation of matter, but not of the space 
 
 16 
 
122 REASONING FKOM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 
 
 which matter now occupies. Imagine, if you can, the destruc- 
 tion of the room or space which this building now occupies. 
 You can conceive easily enough of the annihilation of all objects 
 within it, that this space should be made empty or void ; but 
 you cannot conceive of the space itself as annihilated, or as no 
 longer affording room for other objects. Now this necessary 
 existence of space we may call, for want of a better term, a 
 physical necessity. Clarke quite confounds these two significa- 
 tions of the word ; having shown by argument which he holds to 
 be demonstrative, that God must exist, that is, that there is a 
 logical necessity for our believing in his existence, he goes on to 
 reason as if he had established a physical necessity of the being 
 of a God ; that is, he thought to prove that we can no more con- 
 ceive of his non-existence than we can of the non-existence of 
 space or time. If this were so, atheism were impossible, and 
 then it would be difficult to tell why any argument was needed, 
 or why Clarke thought it necessary to write his book, if there 
 was nobody to be convinced by it. As to the possibility of 
 atheism, if a man can be so far blinded by metaphysical subtilties 
 as to doubt his own existence, I do not see why he cannot go on 
 to deny the being of a God. 
 
 But it was not my object to show that the reasoning of Clarke 
 is fallacious, but only to select that portion of it which is open 
 to no cavil or objection, and from this, if possible, to proceed to 
 a satisfactory conclusion. Let us go back, then, to the propo- 
 sition, sufficiently established by him, that we must believe either 
 in one eternal being, or in an infinite series of created beings. 
 Are there sufficient reasons for rejecting the latter branch of this 
 alternative ? Metaphysical reasons for rejecting it I cannot find ; 
 I frankly admit that the bare conception of such an infinite series 
 is no more impossible in this argument than it is, for instance, 
 in mathematics, where the mere tyro will present to you the law 
 and the sum of such a series without difficulty or hesitation. 
 The presence of it is no more perplexing to him in the calcula- 
 tion than is that of the expression for the root of a number which 
 is not a perfect square or other power. But in mathematics, as 
 
REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 123 
 
 in natural theology, the infinite series is possible as an abstrac- 
 tion, but not as a reality. There are physical considerations, so 
 to speak, which are conclusive against the hypothesis that this 
 vast machine of the universe, even on the supposition that it is 
 continually propagating and renewing itself by the laws now in 
 force considered as real causes, had no beginning, but has ex- 
 isted from all eternity in an infinite series of changes, decay, and 
 restoration. I speak now of the universe not as a mere aggrega- 
 tion of brute matter, which it is not, but as a vast and complex 
 organism, all the parts of which are in constant and harmonious 
 activity, and tenanted by various orders of life, each of which is 
 continued in one direct line, and, so far as human observation has 
 extended, under a permanent type. It would not be difficult, I 
 believe, to establish this proposition in reference to the whole 
 system of worlds, the solar and starry kingdoms, of which our 
 earth is but so small a part. But we know so little of these, be- 
 yond the general facts that they exist, and move, or are moved, 
 in accordance with the law of gravitation, that an argument either 
 for or against their eternal existence in their present form, and 
 under their present laws, would have too much the aspect of an 
 appeal to human ignorance. We could only say, either on the 
 affirmative or the negative side, that it might be so for aught that 
 we knew to the contrary ; a conclusion unsatisfactory in itself, 
 likely to be overthrown by the progress of discovery, and almost 
 sure to be disproved by that knowledge which we may conceive 
 a superior spirit to possess, both of their external and internal 
 economy. 
 
 For a similar, but still stronger reason, I put aside here the 
 question as to the eternal existence of inorganic matter, which is 
 at best but the brute material out of which worlds are fashioned. 
 Whether this exists at all, according to the ordinary conception 
 of it, is doubtful ; and it is certain that we have no knowledge of 
 it, that we cannot perceive it, that we cannot distinguish between 
 the qualities properly belonging to it in itself, and those imposed 
 upon it either by our own faculties of observation, or by an ex- 
 ternal power. 
 
124 REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 
 
 I confine the inquiry, then, to the past duration of the only 
 world with which we have any immediate concern, to the ante- 
 cedent history of this earth, to the assumed continuance, through 
 the endless ages that are past, of those lines and races of animate 
 and organic being, upheld only by the inherent energy of the 
 laws, so called, which support or direct their present existence. 
 Have we proof or disproof of infinite series here ? I contend 
 that we have testimony, clear, unquestioned, scientific, admitted 
 by all physical inquirers who have any acquaintance with the sub- 
 ject, even by those most prejudiced against the conclusions 
 which I wish to establish, that organization and life on this earth, 
 through all their myriad forms, throughout the vegetable and ani- 
 mal ay, even the mineral kingdoms, did begin to be, and 
 that within definite periods of time. We even pronounce with 
 certainty on their relative ages, and map out chronologically the 
 history of the world, from chaos down to the time when man, the 
 last comer, was introduced upon a scene which was, by com- 
 parison with those which had preceded it, one of perfect sym- 
 metry and order. Geology declares without hesitation, and with 
 as much distinctness as Holy Writ, that time was when the earth 
 was without form and void, and before the dry land appeared. 
 Thence it traces down the annals of things : first, the succes- 
 sive induction of those circumstances which rendered even the 
 lowest forms of life possible ; then the creation of those low 
 forms ; their subsequent utter extinction, so that they have no 
 representatives among us at the present day ; the filling of their 
 place by higher orders of being ; and so on, through successive 
 transformations of life, down to the appearance of man. 
 
 I am not dwelling now on any of the more obscure and dis- 
 puted doctrines of geological science. I am not resting this 
 great argument on any of the theories, often contradictory or 
 very questionable, respecting the particular circumstances under 
 which certain strata of rocks were raised from the bottom of an 
 ocean, or certain mountains upheaved from the plain. All that 
 is needed for the purposes of the present discussion may be 
 found in those first principles and elementary facts of geology, 
 
REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 125 
 
 which are now universally admitted, and which, indeed, cannot 
 be denied without impeaching the trustworthy character of the 
 evidence on which all physical science depends. Your own 
 eyes have seen, as exhibited from this place by men of science 
 whose high reputation needs not my feeble tribute, the fossil 
 forms of those extinct races which once peopled the earth that is 
 now our home. You have heard from these teachers the history 
 of these lost tribes, and their speculations about the catastrophes 
 or gradual changes which swept them away, and the new forms 
 of life which succeeded them. You have seen the marks of 
 igneous formation or alluvial deposit in the very stones on which 
 you daily tread, and have had your thoughts thus carried back 
 by necessary inference to periods when the first continents were 
 raised from the bosom of the deep, when mountains of ice floated 
 over what are now fertile tracts peopled by myriad forms of ter- 
 restrial life, or when the incandescent surface of the earth still 
 glowed with the heat which even now rages but a few miles 
 below its outer rind. Then occurs to us, with a more impressive 
 significance, the awful question which the Hebrew poet seemed 
 to hear, as coming out of the whirlwind, u Where wast thou, 
 when I laid the foundations of the earth ? Declare, if thou hast 
 understanding." 
 
 I say, then, that the past continuance, through an infinite 
 series of years, of that order of things which we now behold, 
 under laws similar to those which now direct or express that 
 order, is disproved by an amount of physical testimony that is 
 absolutely conclusive. Ignorance may deny this proposition, 
 but the instructed skeptic must admit it. Remember that the 
 point we are now seeking to establish is a fact, and that I am 
 arguing it by an appeal to facts. You can judge whether the 
 conviction produced by the mass of evidence, to which I have 
 merely alluded, would be to any appreciable extent either con- 
 firmed or shaken by a metaphysical discussion of the abstract 
 possibility of an infinite series of dependent beings. 
 
 We have, then, the starting-point for the application of the 
 argument from the effect to the cause. Certain things began to 
 
126 REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 
 
 be. At a certain period, which is not even a very remote one, 
 when considered in that gigantic chronology which geological 
 science obliges us to contemplate, all the present races of living 
 things, all organized forms that we now behold, were not. There 
 was no firm-set earth on which they could tread, there were no 
 articles for their aliment and sustenance, there was no atmosphere 
 which they could breathe. They have subsequently come into 
 existence. Whence came they ? I choose to put the question 
 in this, its simplest, form, in order not to perplex you with any 
 further discussion, here unnecessary, of the law of causality. It 
 is not enough to say, that you cannot believe, you cannot even 
 imagine, that this earth, once without one germ of organic life in 
 its vast bosom, suddenly became tenanted with countless forms 
 of living beings, without some foreign and adequate cause. Give 
 the largest significance you may to what are called the laws of 
 nature ; confound, if you will, physical with efficient causes ; say 
 that the birth of an individual in the race is but the mechanical 
 effect of the powers inherent in the organism of the parent ; 
 still the beginning of that race, the beginning of all races, goes 
 utterly beyond the laws of nature, and obliges you to look up to 
 nature's God. 
 
 The skeptic's first principle is, that we must not admit any 
 laws of nature or modes of action but those which we now actu- 
 ally perceive going on around us ; we must not invent causes to 
 account for certain phenomena, until we are fully satisfied that 
 the known and familiar agencies of nature are insufficient to that 
 end. I take him at his word. The physical laws which are 
 now exposed to the observation of mankind will not explain the 
 introduction of a new species, a new race, among those formerly 
 in being, and certainly not the beginning of life itself in a world 
 till then inanimate. If you say that the lower forms of life may 
 be spontaneously generated from the dust, or that higher types 
 of being may be evolved from those next below them in the 
 scale, without the exertion of any new power, you assert what 
 the most careful observation, the minute and long continued re- 
 searches of science, have failed to verify. Permanence of type 
 
REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 127 
 
 is one of the most firmly established of those very laws of na- 
 ture to which you ascribe inherent power, and which you claim 
 to be immutable. It is the grossest inconsistency on your part 
 to attempt to set aside, in this single case, those very principles, 
 on the assumed unchangeableness, the inherent power, and in- 
 finite duration of which your whole theory depends. In that 
 ordinary course of nature to which you would fain reduce all 
 phenomena, so that all may seem to be mere continuance, and 
 nowhere may appear a beginning of existence, so as to avoid 
 any necessity for the interposition of any new cause or foreign 
 power, in this ordinary course of nature, I say, quadrupeds 
 are not born from birds, nor birds from reptiles, nor reptiles 
 from fishes, nor fishes from invertebrate animals ; but each of 
 these races continues itself by producing young after its own 
 kind. It is not pretended that there is any known instance of 
 the transmutation of species, or of the evolution, in the ordinary 
 way, of any being specifically different from its parents. The 
 same animal, indeed, may pass through different grades of devel- 
 opment ; but these changes affect only the individual, not the 
 race. The progeny of this animal must begin at the same point 
 where its parent did, and run precisely the same cycle. The 
 tadpole becomes a frog, but the young of that frog are tadpoles ; 
 the worm becomes a winged insect, but the eggs of that insect 
 are hatched into nothing but worms. These changes in the life 
 of the individual, like the successive periods of the embryotic 
 state, of infancy, and of manhood in the human being, are per- 
 fectly consistent with persistence of type in the race, and do not 
 indicate even the possibility that a new species may be developed 
 out of an old one. On the contrary, the germ must be consid- 
 ered as potentially equivalent to the whole future being, for it is 
 invariably developed into that being. If there be any one fact 
 unquestionably established by observation, it is, that each species 
 invariably produces its like. " All the phenomena," says Miiller, 
 .one of the first physiologists of the day, " all the phenomena at 
 present observed in the animal kingdom seem to prove that the 
 species were originally created distinct, and independent of each 
 
128 REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 
 
 other. There is no remote possibility of one species being pro- 
 duced from another." 
 
 Here, then, we rest the first and lowest branch of the argu- 
 ment a posteriori^ considering it as an established fact in physical 
 science, that organization and life on this earth did begin to be 
 within a definite period of time, and that none of the physical 
 causes now in operation is adequate to account for that beginning. 
 We are led, then, irresistibly up to the agency of a First Cause, 
 a power not inherent in nature, but in one sense external to it 
 and acting upon it, and which, for the reason already stated, 
 must have existed from everlasting. 
 
 I have called this the lowest branch of the argument, because, 
 though the conclusion seems to me to be legitimate, and even un- 
 avoidable, it does not fully answer our desires, nor satisfy the as- 
 pirations of the religious sentiment in man. To prove the being 
 of a Creator only from an act of creation assumed to have been 
 completed long ago, if a useful, is still a frigid, result of the in- 
 quiry. It seems too much like establishing some remote fact in 
 history, which ceased long since to have any immediate interest, 
 as its direct consequences are no longer traceable. We seek to 
 bring the argument and the doctrine home by proofs of the re- 
 peated, if not the continuous, agency of Omnipotence, so that 
 what is almost the abstract conception of a First Cause may be 
 changed into a well-grounded faith in the existence of an infinite 
 and ever- watchful Father. 
 
 One step, and an important one, towards this conclusion, we 
 are able immediately to take. The work of creation was not a 
 single act, begun and ended by a solitary exertion of power ; it 
 was often renewed, and it extended over a lapse of ages which 
 the imagination vainly strives to comprehend. Science has dis- 
 covered an ineffaceable and undoubted record of a multitude of 
 cases, in which preceding laws of nature, that had been unbroken 
 for ages, were interrupted by special exertions of a foreign power. 
 Mighty revolutions have often swept the face of this planet, hur- 
 rying nearly all former orders of life into ruin ; and each time the 
 desert was peopled anew with animated tribes wholly unlike their 
 
REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 129 
 
 predecessors. Geology is but the history chronicled in stone 
 of many miracles performed before man was, and extending far 
 back into a past eternity. There is not an animal or a plant on 
 this earth, which, as a race, is not older than man. Science does 
 not contradict, it rather confirms, that voice of revelation or tra- 
 dition which assigns about six thousand years as the period of 
 man's residence upon the earth. One of the latest events in the 
 geological history of the world, we are told, was a great sub- 
 mersion of the land, by which "terrestrial animal life was ex- 
 tensively, if not universally, destroyed" ; so that the creation of 
 the species now in being at least, all the higher species 
 was " a comparatively recent event, and one posterior, generally 
 speaking, to all the great natural transactions chronicled by ge- 
 ology." From this "recent event, " back certainly as far as the 
 time when those races began to be, the remains of which are now 
 found entombed in the lowest Silurian rocks, the period of crea- 
 tion extends, a drama of many acts and countless shifting 
 scenes, each one of which leads us up to a knowledge of its 
 Infinite Author. 
 
 In truth, the assumed invariableness of the laws of nature, con- 
 sidering these only as the necessary manifestations of powers in- 
 herent in the substances themselves, is a doctrine which loses all 
 meaning, as well as probability, when we look to the annals 
 of the universe for guidance, and not merely to the story of one 
 life, or even of one order of being. The history of God's prov- 
 idence is not the story of a day, nor can it be interpreted by the 
 experience of an hour. We must decipher even the record, in- 
 scribed on the rocks, of the mutations which this solid globe has 
 undergone in the vast series of ages that elapsed before it was 
 peopled with beings like ourselves. If we would climb to the 
 heights of this great argument, our view must be expanded in 
 feeble imitation of His vision with whom a thousand years are 
 but as one day. Perhaps it will be found, that these supposed 
 breaks in the continuity of the inferior laws of nature are but the 
 intercalations of a higher law, working for a nobler end ; that what 
 appear as special exertions of Divine agency are but the ordinary 
 
 17 
 
130 REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 
 
 mode in which infinite wisdom works and governs ; that the phys- 
 ical is subordinate throughout to the moral universe ; and that 
 what man calls interruptions of the usual course of nature are 
 precisely what he might most reasonably and naturally expect 
 from omnipotence and infinite benevolence combined. 
 
 The action of a human being, though generally inconstant and 
 wavering, from his unsettled will, so that the future cannot be 
 predicted from the past, is also often directed through long pe- 
 riods by a fixed purpose, and rendered uniform through the facil- 
 ity acquired by habit ; so that, if it were watched by a being of a 
 different race, ignorant of the human constitution, and very lim- 
 ited in his period of observation, it would appear mechanical, 
 and, like the regular working of a machine, to be attributable 
 only to an impulse given to it at the commencement, and not 
 afterwards renewed. If, however, the observation were con- 
 tinued for a longer time, or if a record could be found of the 
 man's whole history, the changes of action induced by altered 
 circumstances, or a fluctuating purpose, would be manifest. Ge- 
 ology is such a record of the history of the universe, showing 
 those breaks in the succession of events, which prove the fre- 
 quent interposition of directing will and sustaining power ; each of 
 them being an insoluble problem, unless we admit that such a 
 will exists. If it be objected to the probability of such interrup- 
 tions, that it is inconsistent with the attribute of Divine wisdom 
 to suppose that the Deity ever changes his plan, or alters his 
 purpose, I answer, first, he who declares that infinite wisdom 
 necessarily dictates invariability of action also assumes that he 
 possesses infinite wisdom himself ; and secondly, a change in the 
 mode of action does not necessarily imply a change of purpose. 
 The emergency may have been foreseen, the extraordinary ac- 
 tion by which it was to be met may have been predetermined, 
 from the foundation of the world. At any rate, this considera- 
 tion is one with which, for our present object, the proof only of 
 the being of a God, we have nothing to do. The facts are un- 
 questionable ; that such interruptions have taken place, whether 
 they argue a change of the Divine purpose or not, cannot be de- 
 
REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 131 
 
 nied. Huge strata of earth-bound rock, the solid framework of 
 the globe itself, in characters which the schoolboy now may 
 read, testify to the unceasing guardianship, the frequent interven-' 
 tion to repair, renew, and improve, of Him who created the 
 heavens and the earth, and laid the corner-stone thereof. The 
 world was never an orphan, never left to the dominion of chance, 
 or what is little better to the blind and unbroken operation 
 of what are called natural laws. A Father's care watched over 
 it, a Father's hand peopled it again and again with tribes of living 
 things, not by inflexible ordinances, nor by vicarious govern- 
 ment through secondary means, but even as an earthly parent 
 careth for his children. 
 
 But we may go much farther, and find sufficient proof of far 
 more frequent intervention of Divine power in the affairs of the 
 universe than that which is confirmed by geological evidence. 
 Admitting, for a moment, the general principle, which I regard 
 as wholly indefensible and unphilosophical, that in the material 
 universe the argument from the effect to the cause finds place 
 only at the beginning of a succession of beings, and not at any 
 one link in that succession, in the world of mind we have irre- 
 fragable evidence, at every step, which leads us up from the 
 created directly to the Creator. This evidence appears in the 
 essential unity of personality, in that recognition of the indivisible 
 self'm consciousness, on which so much stress has already been 
 laid. Each person can say of himself, u / have a separate and 
 indivisible existence." We may borrow again the language of 
 Fichte, as it is the unwilling concession of an opponent : "I 
 have not come into existence by my own power. It would be 
 the highest absurdity to suppose, that before I was at all, I could 
 bring myself into existence : I have, then, been called into being 
 by a power out of myself." 
 
 Starting from this admission, we say that the theory which 
 Fichte adopts, and which we are here taking for granted in 
 respect to the world of matter, which refers the beginning of 
 an individual's existence to the first creation of the race to which 
 he belongs, which considers intelligent life as continuous through 
 
132 REASONING FROM EFFECT TO CAUSE. 
 
 a succession of beings, one springing out of another, and then 
 giving birth to a third, by virtue of principles infused or machin- 
 ery contrived in the race, when the original progenitor of it was 
 formed, this theory, we say, will not hold in the present case. 
 It may account for the origin of the material framework, the hab- 
 itation of clay, in which I live ; but it will not account for the 
 origin of me. It is contradicted by the great fact of my exist- 
 ence as an indivisible unit. Complexity of parts, according to 
 the materialist's hypothesis, is essential to the propagation of ex- 
 istence. The seed exists in the fruit ; the germ exists in the 
 seed. It is afterwards taken from the fruit and the seed, and 
 begins to exist as a distinct plant. But this is the commence- 
 ment of its separate, not of its total being. It existed before ; it 
 was in the parent plant, as a part of it ; and its birth was not 
 a creation, but a division of existence. The beginning of any 
 material life, a tree, a flower, an animal, is not the creation of 
 any thing new, says the materialist, but the development of a 
 germ which existed ages before, which has lived ever since the 
 world was. But the beginning of intellectual life, the essential 
 unity of which is attested by consciousness, cannot be explained 
 by mere separation. It cannot give birth to another by di- 
 vision of itself. In fine, the materialist affirms, that birth is but 
 a separation, and growth but an accretion and assimilation, of 
 parts that previously existed, though in an inorganic state ; for it 
 is a necessary part of this hypothesis, that the number of primary 
 particles in the universe is neither more nor less than it was at 
 the creation. Meeting him on his own ground, we reply, that 
 his own personal existence is certain proof that at least one unit 
 has been added to the mass of being since the formation of the 
 universe. Of course, we have every reason from analogy to 
 believe, that the beginning of life in all cases, even animal and 
 vegetable, is the addition of a unit to the sum of being, and 
 therefore a direct act of creation, as much so as the building 
 of a world or a system. But only in intellectual life have we 
 positive evidence of this fact from consciousness. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 ALL EVENTS IN THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE A PROOF OF THE 
 PRESENCE AND THE AGENCY OF GOD. 
 
 AFTER completing, in the last Lecture, a very brief exposi- 
 tion of the freedom of the will, the subject of the common argu- 
 ment a posteriori to prove the being of a God was taken up with 
 a view, not so much to restate it, or to enter into its details, as 
 to determine its logical character, and to consider its claims as a 
 just and philosophical specimen of reasoning. Natural theology 
 has been kept too much apart, as a distinct and peculiar branch 
 of inquiry, with a tacit admission that it involved principles and 
 modes of reasoning which were not used in the other physical 
 sciences ; but that it had a logic of its own, the validity of which 
 must be established before we come to the direct application of 
 the argument. Having shown, on a former occasion, that the 
 doctrines of theology related to matters of fact, I endeavoured 
 to prove that the evidence in their favor was such as might be 
 expected in physical science, that it was to be gathered from 
 observation and experience. The other sciences are to be laid 
 under contribution for this end ; geology, in particular, consid- 
 ered as a record of the antecedent history of this earth, might be 
 expected to furnish proofs of the agency of that Being by whom 
 this earth, with all that it inhabit, was created and is sustained. 
 
 Taking the first, and certainly the more abstract, branch of the 
 argument, that which infers the .reality of a cause simply from 
 the presence of the effect, without regard to the peculiarities of 
 
134 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 that effect, I attempted to show, even from the most recently 
 and best established facts in geology and zoology, that events had 
 taken place, or things had begun to exist, which the ordinary 
 laws of nature, as they are called, cannot account for, and which, 
 consequently, must be referred to the agency of the great First 
 Cause. If you reject this inference, you must deny, either that 
 organization and life on this earth did begin to be, that is, you 
 must reject many of the best accredited conclusions of modern 
 science, on which, indeed, some entire sciences exclusively de- 
 pend ; or you must assert, that an event can take place without a 
 cause, and thus contradict what is either an intuitive axiom, or a 
 principle founded on the largest induction of which the human 
 mind is capable. The metaphysical reasoning of Clarke on this 
 subject was shown to be unsatisfactory chiefly on the ground that 
 it is metaphysical, and therefore the conclusion, which is a fact, 
 cannot be inferred from the premises, so far as these are mere 
 abstractions, without really begging the question. It was further 
 proved, that creation was not a solitary act, begun and completed 
 long ago, but rather that it consisted of numberless acts, extend- 
 ing over vast periods of time ; and thus that it afforded not merely 
 increased proofs of the Divine existence, but satisfactory evi- 
 dence, also, of the renewed and repeated, if not the continuous, 
 exertion of Divine power. This last conclusion was strength- 
 ened and brought still nearer home through the testimony of 
 consciousness, that person, or self, is indivisible, and therefore 
 immaterial ; and thus that the creation of every human soul can- 
 not be accounted for, except as the direct act of Omnipotence. 
 
 It is but a short step, then, to take in the extension of this ar- 
 gument, to say, that all events whatever in the material universe, 
 except those which are caused directly by human will and power, 
 are in truth the doings of the Infinite One. Hitherto, this doc- 
 trine of immediate Divine agency has been considered only in 
 its place with other theories of causation as the most plausible, 
 if not the only possible, explanation of the phenomena of nature. 
 We are now to consider whether the evidence on which it rests 
 is not so strong, that it may well be classed with other proofs of 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 185 
 
 the being of a God, and in one respect, indeed, be viewed as 
 more satisfactory than any other, as it is the only one from which 
 we infer directly his present existence. The argument both from 
 creation and design proves immediately that he was ; here we 
 find direct evidence that he is. The phenomena of nature, so 
 far as they show action or change, from the breaking of a bubble 
 on the stream up to the swift flight of the celestial orbs in their 
 appointed paths, do not merely prove, but directly manifest, his 
 existence and his glory. Let me not be understood as depre- 
 ciating the value of the other proofs in order to rest the whole 
 weight of the argument here. I mention the distinction only to 
 characterize more definitely the nature of this mode of reasoning, 
 and not to lessen the cogency of the other forms of proof. 
 
 We recognize the presence of God in nature in precisely the 
 same manner in which we come to know that any intelligent, 
 though finite, being exists besides ourselves. The outward form 
 surely is nothing ; a statue or an automaton may be moulded into 
 a perfect external likeness of a man. But the actions of the living 
 man show that he is animated by a spirit kindred to our own, by 
 something distinct from the mere framework of bones and muscles 
 which he inhabits, and which we distinguish as clearly from the 
 person within as we do our own bodies from ourselves. / am 
 conscious of power dependent on my will, and I perceive the 
 effects produced on matter by the exertion of that will ; I per- 
 ceive, also, perfectly similar effects, which I can attribute only 
 to my brother man, and I infer, therefore, that he exists, and 
 that his will is equally active in producing those effects. I do 
 not imagine that his limbs move themselves, but that he moves 
 them ; I do not think that his eye turns towards me of its own 
 accord with a glance of affection, or that his hand comes to meet 
 mine in a friendly grasp from an energy that is inherent in that 
 hand alone. In like manner, then, I say, if His sun rolls over 
 my head and warms me, if His wind cools and refreshes me, if 
 His voice speaks to me, whether in the thunder at midnight, or 
 in the whispers of the forest, or but in the rustling of a leaf, if 
 His seasons still come round to me in their grateful vicissitude, 
 
136 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 and wherever I look in outward nature, I behold constant action, 
 change, and joy, I do not suppose that brute and senseless 
 matter causes all this by its inherent power, whether original or 
 derived, but that the spirit, the Person within, controls, vivifies, 
 and produces all. 
 
 " These, as they change, Almighty Father, these, 
 Are but the varied God. The rolling year 
 
 Is full of thee 
 
 But wandering oft, with brute, unconscious gaze, 
 Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand 
 That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ; 
 Works in the secret deep ; shoots, steaming, thence 
 The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring ; 
 Flings from the sun direct the flaming day ; 
 Feeds every creature ; hurls the tempest forth ; 
 And, as on earth this grateful change revolves, 
 With transport touches all the springs of life." 
 
 Do not say, that this is mere poetical enthusiasm, or devotion, 
 but not truth ; it is the highest form of poetry precisely because 
 it is the literal truth. It is a conclusion founded on the most 
 accurate researches of science, no less than on the instinctive 
 promptings of our human nature, and on the aspirations of the 
 religious sentiment within us ; it is alike the doctrine of the 
 intelligent mind and the dictate of the upright heart. We 
 know not of any direct agency, we find no proof of any active 
 power, but that which is the attribute of personality, which is 
 directed by will, and witnessed by consciousness. External na- 
 ture, when questioned as to the reality of power originating in 
 itself, or inherited in its own right, hears not and answers not ; 
 no efficient cause, that is, no cause at all in the proper signifi- 
 cation of the word, has ever been discovered in it. Whence 
 come, then, its countless changes, its incessant activity and life ? 
 It is no answer to this question to say, that events constantly 
 succeed each other in regular sequence, or even to give a name 
 to that order, and call it law, or physical cause. You cannot 
 believe, you cannot even imagine, that any one of these events 
 takes place without a real cause, an efficient energy, without 
 which it were not. If matter be considered entirely apart from 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 137 
 
 mind, it is dead, formless, and motionless ; no winds agitate the 
 surface of a chaotic ocean, no tides heave its waters, no waves 
 break upon its silent shores. No eye can penetrate 
 
 " The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark 
 Illimitable ocean, without bound, 
 
 Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height, 
 And time and place, are lost ; where eldest Night 
 And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 
 
 Eternal empire In this wild abyss, 
 
 The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave, 
 Is neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, 
 But all these in their pregnant causes mixed 
 Confus'dly." 
 
 Milton's conception of inorganic matter left to itself, without 
 an indwelling soul, is not merely more poetical, but more philo- 
 sophical and just, than the scientific romance, now generally 
 repudiated by all rational inquirers, which represents it as neces- 
 sarily imbued with the seminal principles of organization and life, 
 and waking up by its own force from eternal quietude to eternal 
 motion. 
 
 But I need not here renew the argument, already considered 
 at sufficient length for our purposes, in favor of attributing all the 
 active phenomena of nature directly to the omnipresence and 
 omnipotence of God. A few considerations, which tend rather 
 to illustrate than to prove the doctrine, and to account for the 
 general reception of the popular fallacy which ascribes efficient 
 causation to matter, will close the review of this branch of the 
 subject. 
 
 Of all the classes into which the motions and changes of mate- 
 rial objects are divided, with reference to their general similarity, 
 and hence to a supposed unity of cause, the most comprehensive 
 and important are those of gravitation and of life, the latter 
 term being understood, as in the vegetable kingdom, to signify 
 merely the law of formation and growth, without supposing that 
 any inherent principle exists in the plant distinct from its organic 
 arrangement. As to the former class, the fact that all particles 
 of matter constantly tend towards each other is the great conser- 
 
138 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 vative or sustaining principle of the material universe. Though 
 often suspended or overbalanced by a stronger agency, as in all 
 cases of life, the instances of it falling under our immediate ob- 
 servation are still so numerous, that we suppose there is no mys- 
 tery in it. A weight that is no longer supported falls to the 
 ground ; and this phenomenon, from the frequency of its occur- 
 rence, excites no wonder. If it ever occurs to us to ask after 
 its cause, we are contented with the answer, that it is probably 
 the same cause which makes other weights fall under similar cir- 
 cumstances, though this certainly is no answer at all to the main 
 question. That this gravity, or tendency to fall, is no primary 
 quality of the substance itself, necessarily entering into our con- 
 ception of it, as its extension does, is evident enough from the 
 fact, that before any observation or experience of motion from 
 gravitation, we should no more expect the body to fall down- 
 wards than upwards, like a balloon, or side wise, like a bird. 
 The vicinity of the body to the earth is now known not to be the 
 characteristic feature of the phenomenon, as gravity is found to 
 be the law of the material universe. 
 
 Consider, then, one of the great orbs which hang suspended 
 in void space, isolated by millions of miles in every direction 
 from other objects, and in reference to the motion of which, there- 
 fore, the words upwards and downwards hardly seem to have 
 any meaning. Why should this body fall towards another orb 
 which is more than ninety millions of miles off, in preference to 
 moving in any other direction ? You will doubtless say, that it 
 is the attraction of the sun, which draws it. But examine care- 
 fully, I pray you, whether this answer be in truth the assignment 
 of a cause, or merely another expression, an expression in differ- 
 ent words, of the fact that the body does tend to move towards 
 the sun, which is the phenomenon itself that we seek to account 
 for. No axiom seems more self-evident than the old adage, that 
 nothing can act but where it is ; or if you hesitate to accept this 
 maxim in all its generality, you will surely admit that brute mat- 
 ter a collection of extended, impenetrable, and insensate par- 
 ticles cannot act where it is not. It is a sufficiently violent 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 139 
 
 hypothesis, to imagine that it can really act at all, or have any 
 real force even within its own limits. But that it can exert any 
 influence beyond these limits is demonstrably absurd ; for action 
 is a state of being, and that a body should act where it is not is 
 therefore equivalent to saying that it is possible for the same 
 thing to be and not to be at the same moment, which is a con- 
 tradiction. Hew, then, can the sun act upon a body which is 
 eighteen hundred millions of miles off, which is the distance of 
 Uranus, to say nothing of the newly discovered planet, which is 
 nearly twice as far, this immense intervening space being entirely 
 void ? I say, then, the supposition, that the sun, or any other 
 material substance, really acts on another body, at a distance 
 from it, is not merely extravagant, it is inconceivable ; and as 
 the point of greater or less distance is really of no importance, 
 except to aid us in conceiving the question distinctly, the falling 
 of a stone to the ground, either by its own inherent power, or by 
 that of the earth, is equally inconceivable. 
 
 But along with gravity, another property is attributed to brute 
 matter, namely, that when once set in motion, it tends to move 
 onwards in a straight line, with a uniform velocity, for ever. 
 The hypothesis here is of the same character, and quite as ex- 
 travagant, as in the former case ; but no matter ; let us, for the 
 present, take it for granted. The planets, and all the other 
 heavenly bodies, do not move in straight lines, but in curves ; 
 and the mathematician will therefore tell you that at every instant 
 they are deflected, or turned aside from their proper course, by 
 some agency foreign to themselves, which operates on them uni- 
 formly, with a constant force, tending towards a fixed point, thus 
 keeping them within their appointed bounds. What is this 
 agency ? Or rather, whose is it but His " who spake the word, 
 and they were made ; who commanded, and they were created ; 
 who hath made them fast for ever and for ever, and hath given 
 them a law which shall not be broken "? 
 
 This view does not conflict with a just conception of the man- 
 ner in which mathematical reasoning is applied to matters of fact, 
 but tends rather to elucidate and confirm it. The real object of 
 
140 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OP THE DEITY. 
 
 the astronomer's calculations is to express the law, that is, the 
 uniformity, of the motions of the heavenly bodies, with little re- 
 gard to any theory as to the origin or cause of those motions. 
 The motion alone is mensurable, depending on the relations of 
 space and time ; and therefore it alone is calculable ; the cause 
 of it cannot be measured, for it cannot even be perceived. The 
 mathematician, indeed, for the sake of clearness, begins with 
 certain arbitrary hypotheses as to the origin and nature of the 
 phenomena ; but his calculations do not rest upon the truth in 
 fact of those hypotheses, but only on the phenomena themselves, 
 which he supposes to result from them. These hypotheses are 
 not the actual structure, the foundations and walls, of his build- 
 ing, but the temporary scaffolding by the aid of which he erects 
 those walls. They form the theory which enables him to ex- 
 press in mathematical language the facts, or actual phenomena, 
 to recur to the preceding metaphor, the separate stones of 
 which the walls are composed ; and there may be several the- 
 ories, directly conflicting with each other, which will answer this 
 purpose equally well. 
 
 Thus, nearly all the phenomena of light are equally explicable 
 on the theory either of emission or of undulation ; from which- 
 ever of these two hypotheses the mathematician starts, the results 
 of his calculations agree equally well with the observed phenom- 
 ena ; and yet, be it observed, the two hypotheses differ funda- 
 mentally, radically, from each other ; they are contradictory. 
 But as they are used only for a temporary purpose, just like the 
 abstractions and postulates which constitute the first principles of 
 pure mathematical science itself, the correctness of the result in 
 no wise depends on their reality, their truth or falsity. They 
 are mere scaffolding. Hence it was, that, until some crucial ex- 
 periments were recently devised, which really determined that 
 the undulatory theory was more satisfactory, or came nearer to 
 the truth, than that of emissions, it was actually proposed as one 
 reason for preferring this hypothesis to its rival, that it was more 
 convenient for calculation ; it was a handier tool to work with. 
 
 We now see the reason why there is so much talk about vari- 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 141 
 
 \ 
 
 ous forces in physical science, especially in mechanics, when the 
 mathematician seeks to express the facts in his own language. 
 An objector to my argument might ask, How is it that you say 
 there is no real power or force discoverable in the material uni- 
 verse as such, when a Laplace or a Bowditch, who deals with 
 the most rigorous and accurate of all sciences, is constantly 
 speaking of a great number of forces, and clearly distinguishes 
 them from each other, and measures with the nicety of a hair's 
 breadth their respective results ? I answer, what the physical 
 inquirer calls force is merely a mathematical expression for the 
 law, or order, with which certain observed results of a supposed 
 force succeed each other. The calculation actually represents 
 those phenomena, their time, character, and sequence, and 
 nothing else ; as is seen at the close of the process, when the 
 calculated results are tested by comparison with the last ob- 
 served phenomena. The calculator, in the midst of the process, 
 often supposes several forces, recognized by him at the time to 
 be fictitious or imaginary, for the mere purpose of facilitating his 
 labor. A body moving along the diagonal of a parallelogram is 
 really propelled by a single force, as when moving over any 
 other straight line ; but it is often convenient to suppose it im- 
 pelled at the same instant by two forces, corresponding in direc- 
 tion and intensity to two adjacent sides of the figure. 
 
 My next illustration, being taken from astronomy, comes more 
 nearly home to our leading subject. It is hardly possible to 
 conceive of two theories of the motions of the heavenly bodies, 
 which should differ from each other more widely than do those 
 of Hipparchus and Copernicus. The complex and intricate 
 system of the former has become, though unjustly, the derision 
 of modern science ; Milton ridiculed it long ago, in the counsel 
 which he makes Raphael give to Adam, not to seek too eagerly 
 to pry into those secrets of the heavens which u the great Archi- 
 tect did wisely to conceal ": 
 
 " He his fabric of the heavens 
 Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move 
 His laughter at their quaint opinions wide 
 
142 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 Hereafter, when they come to model heaven, 
 And calculate the stars ; how they will wield 
 The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive, 
 To save appearances ; how gird the sphere 
 With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er, 
 Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb." 
 
 The same complex system, when explained to Alphonso, king 
 of Castile, gave rise to his noted remark, u that if God had con- 
 sulted him at the creation, the universe should have been on a 
 better and simpler plan." Now the truth is, that this compli- 
 cated and fantastic theory of the heavens, with its operose con- 
 trivances of eccentric wheels, and circles riding upon circles, and 
 which, in point of fact, is false from beginning to end, is just as 
 correct a basis for astronomical calculations as the simpler, more 
 beautiful, and more truthful system of Copernicus. The lan- 
 guage of Mr. Whewell, whose authority on a point like this no 
 one will dispute, is, " As a system of calculation, [it] is not 
 only good, but in many cases no better has yet been discov- 
 ered." The Hipparchian or Ptolemaic theory represents the 
 apparent motions of the heavenly bodies as actual motions ; the 
 Copernican deduces these apparent motions from a totally differ- 
 ent system of revolutions, which it considers as the real one. 
 Both systems are true or correct in this, that they represent 
 those apparent motions rightly ; and this is all that is needed for 
 the mathematician's purposes, all that the calculator wants in 
 order to predict what will be the aspect of the heavens, or the 
 exact position of a particular body, at some future time. 
 
 The office of theory, then, in physical science, is not to ex- 
 plain the cause or the origin of phenomena, but simply to repre- 
 sent with precision the phenomena themselves, and the order in 
 which they succeed each other. In order to do this with clear- 
 ness and simplicity, the theorist feigns certain causes, operating 
 in an imaginary way, and thus gives unity to the phenomena by 
 "making believe" that they all proceed from one source, the 
 internal constitution of which is such that it can produce just 
 these phenomena as they have been observed, and no other. 
 Ptolemy had a correct notion of the Hipparchian theory in this 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OP THE DEITY. 143 
 
 respect ; for although his predecessors and many of his disciples 
 taught that the celestial spheres were real solid bodies, " they 
 are spoken of by him as imaginary ; and it is clear," says Mr. 
 Whewell, "from his proof of the identity of the results of the 
 hypothesis of an eccentric and an epicycle, that they are in- 
 tended to pass for no more than geometrical conceptions, in 
 which view they are true representations of the apparent mo- 
 tions." Now the several forces^ by which, in the language of 
 modern mathematicians, the heavenly bodies are represented as 
 moved and directed, are just such "geometrical conceptions" 
 as those of an eccentric and epicycle ; rightly speaking, they are 
 not even conceived to be realities, but only convenient fictions, 
 just like the great circles, the equator, the ecliptic, the merid- 
 ians, &c., which not even the schoolboy supposes to be real 
 and material arches over and around our universe. Newton 
 found that the elliptical motions of the planets could not be 
 mathematically represented by the hypothesis of one mechanical 
 force, operating on them constantly and uniformly ; and so he 
 imagined two forces, one being that of gravitation, which tends 
 constantly towards the sun, and another by which they tend to 
 fly off at a tangent from their orbits ; or the latter may be con- 
 sidered rather as the result of the primitive projectile force, with 
 which the planets were originally launched in space. From these 
 convenient fictions he found he could deduce mathematically 
 their true motions. It is possible, though certainly not probable, 
 that some mathematical theory will hereafter be invented, which 
 will account for the motions of the system on the hypothesis of 
 a single force ; if so, it will immediately take the place of the 
 present theory, on account, not of its superior truth, but of its 
 greater simplicity. 
 
 What shall we say, then, of a hypothetical history of the uni- 
 verse which pretends to explain both the genesis and the prog- 
 ress of all material worlds by the aid only of this imaginary 
 force, this mathematical fiction ? What but this, that it affords 
 a striking proof of the manner in which language reacts on the 
 ideas or opinions that it is intended to express, and thus leads 
 
144 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 men to talk nonsense without knowing it ? To say that gravita- 
 tion not only accounts for the present motions of the heavenly 
 bodies, but that, on an easily conceivable theory, it may be made 
 to explain the origin of these motions, and their several stages of 
 progress, so to speak, to their present state or law, is the same 
 thing as to say that I can frame a hypothetical history of an im- 
 aginary universe, all the phenomena of which, and all the sup- 
 posed changes in the law, or mode of succession, of those phe- 
 nomena, can be calculated on the same mathematical principles ; 
 that is, by the aid of the same postulates, abstractions, and fic- 
 tions, through which the mathematician deduces by exact com- 
 putation the future positions of the real heavenly bodies from 
 their past states and revolutions ; or in other words, that math- 
 ematical science is a very general organon of calculation, which 
 enables us to compute, not only the actual motions and changes 
 of the actual universe, but the imaginary states and changes of a 
 great number of fictitious, but easily conceivable worlds. This 
 I conceive to be the exact meaning of Herschel's nebular hy- 
 pothesis, and. Laplace's theory of the genesis of our system by 
 planets peeled off from the sun. Very different, and far more 
 philosophical, was the view of gravitation which was taken by that 
 great mind which first conceived the theory, and verified it by 
 application. u That gravity," says Sir Isaac Newton, u should 
 be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may 
 act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the 
 mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action 
 and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so 
 great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophi- 
 cal matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. 
 Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according 
 to certain laws." 
 
 I have detained you too long, perhaps, with speculations re- 
 specting the true nature of the chief element in mechanical and 
 astronomical calculations. But the popular conception of gravity 
 seems to me so wholly unlike the just and philosophical view of 
 it, and the part assigned to it in atheistic schemes of cosmogony 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 145 
 
 is so prominent, and at the same time, when rightly considered, 
 so unintelligible, that it was worth while making some attempt to 
 rise to a clear comprehension of the subject. If I have at all 
 succeeded in this explanation, it is evident that, in regard to ef- 
 ficient causation, or the great motive power of the universe, the 
 theory of gravitation, with all the calculations and hypotheses 
 that are founded on it, leaves us precisely where it found us ; it 
 accounts for nothing, it explains the origin of nothing ; it is a 
 simple statement, in a form convenient for scientific purposes, of 
 the order and manner in which certain phenomena recur, leaving 
 us to find a cause for those phenomena where we may. The 
 conclusion remains as before, that this cause can be nothing but 
 personal agency, which is to us the only known source of power, 
 the only (Edipus that can explain the riddle of that great Sphinx, 
 the universe. Yet the phenomena ranged under this class are so 
 clearly distinguishable from all others, they, are so simple and so 
 frequent in their recurrence, that they suggest very forcibly the 
 action of a machine of man's device ; and for this reason they 
 have always been the chief support of all mechanical theories of 
 causation. Yet a moment's reflection might satisfy us, that as 
 in a machine, though human ingenuity devised it, it is not human 
 power which keeps it in action, but rather (to use the common 
 metaphor) the powers of nature, such as the weight of falling 
 water, the elasticity of steel, or the expansive action of steam, 
 powers which we economize, direct, and apply to use, but do 
 not create, so these powers of nature themselves are not the 
 source of the energy or true cause, but only the mode in which 
 it is applied. 
 
 But as these phenomena suggest so strongly the action of 
 a machine, they have been the chief support of the doctrine, that 
 active power is in some way inherent in matter ; the theory of 
 gravitation has been the starting-point and the stronghold for all 
 mechanical theories of the universe. If the often quoted re- 
 mark, that "the undevout astronomer is mad," be understood to 
 mean only that astronomy is better calculated than any other 
 branch of physical science to lead to correct views of the provi- 
 
 19 
 
146 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 dence of God, I may be permitted to doubt its correctness. 
 The vastness of the objects contemplated, and the sublimity of 
 the phenomena, tend forcibly, it is true, to lead the partially in- 
 structed mind from the finite up to the infinite ; but one who is 
 conversant with the details of the science is apt to be blinded by 
 their simplicity and uniformity, to be elated by his seemingly 
 entire knowledge of them, and his power of predicting their re- 
 currence, till he comes to imagine, that vast and magnificent as 
 creation is, it is but a simple affair after all, that the theory of 
 gravitation unlocks the whole mystery of it, and places the se- 
 cret, not only of the continuance of the system, but of its origin 
 and growth, completely within the grasp of the human intellect. 
 Newton was a believer, as minds of the highest order always will 
 be ; but Laplace, a man of great talent rather than original genius, 
 immersed all his life in mathematical calculations, and inordi- 
 nately vain of his success with them, doubted or denied ; and 
 the very title of his great work, the Mecanique Celeste, suggests 
 the cause of his doubts. He thought he had reduced nature to 
 a vast piece of mechanism, and that he could calculate to a 
 fraction the strength of all its parts, and the intensity and mode 
 of action of all its motive forces. His accurate knowledge of 
 the details of astronomical science, in which the universe is con- 
 sidered only as a great system of revolving orbs acting on each 
 other, prevented him from taking comprehensive and philosophi- 
 cal views of it as a whole. 
 
 One reflection alone might have convinced him of the hollow- 
 ness and vanity of his pretensions. Astronomy is a very finished 
 science only because it is very limited in its objects. It con- 
 templates nothing but motions and positions. Of the physical 
 constitution even of the other bodies in our own solar system we 
 are profoundly ignorant ; we form a few faint guesses about the 
 irregularities on the surface of the moon, which is the nearest of 
 them, and here we stop. The stellar universe is to us only a 
 grouping of points of light, seen from an immeasurable distance, 
 in which a few slight changes of relative position have but re- 
 cently been discovered. Of the external and internal economy of 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 147 
 
 these orbs, of the forms which organized matter there assumes, 
 the modes in which active energy develops itself, and the living 
 races, if any, which tenant them, we are so far from knowing 
 any thing, that we do not pretend even to study them. To ex- 
 plain the action of the planets and stars themselves, merely as it is 
 investigated by the astronomer and the mathematician, that is, 
 to expound a theory of their relative motions and positions, is 
 to lay open but an infinitesimal part of the secrets of the celestial 
 universe, and this the simplest and most conceivable part. Our 
 idea of the mechanism of the heavens comes almost immeasur- 
 ably short of the truth of things ; and hence our notion of efficient 
 cause, or active power, so far as it is derived only from this 
 mechanism, or applied only to an explanation of it, is imperfect 
 and vain. Notwithstanding the boasted triumphs of science in 
 this department, the philosophical observer, seeing how vastly 
 the subject still transcends the human intellect, instead of indulg- 
 ing the vanity of Laplace, will say rather, with the Psalmist of 
 old : " When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fin- 
 gers, and the moon and stars which Thou hast ordained, what 
 is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that 
 Thou visitest him ? " 
 
 We gain a clearer idea of the limitation of our knowledge in 
 this respect, when we consider the second class of phenomena 
 to which I proposed to direct your attention, those, namely, 
 which are ascribed to life. Here, our observation is at once 
 restricted to this earth ; and the lessons which it teaches us, if 
 deeply pondered, seem even more profound and impressive than 
 those offered by the vast scale on which material attraction acts. 
 Gravitation is the simplest and most regular of all the modes in 
 which active power develops itself, while life is the most com- 
 plex and varied. The two classes of phenomena ranged under 
 these heads are thus taken from opposite ends of the scale ; which 
 is the reason why I have chosen them to illustrate the true doc- 
 trine of causation, instead of the intermediate classes, such as 
 chemical affinity, and the imponderable agents, electricity, heat, 
 and magnetism. Whatever is established as to the nature of the 
 
148 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 power exerted in these two classes will very readily be admitted 
 of all the ranks and divisions which lie between them. My pres- 
 ent point is this, that if the simple, regular, and frequently 
 recurrent phenomena of gravitation cannot be explained on the 
 hypothesis, that the universe is a machine, a clock that was wound 
 up at creation, and which never runs down, then, for a still 
 stronger reason, the myriad forms of life, the infinitely diversified 
 modes in which creative and sustaining energy here shows itself, 
 are not mechanical, but personal and Divine. If the hypothesis, 
 that brute matter is necessarily endowed with a native and in- 
 herent activity, is utterly insufficient to explain even the simple 
 fact, that all particles of that matter tend to move towards each 
 other, and that aggregations of those particles into vast orbs uni- 
 formly circle round each other at immense distances with cease- 
 less motion, then surely the same hypothesis will not account for 
 the mystery of life as shown by the infinitely diversified motions 
 of the motes which people a sunbeam, or of the animalcules which 
 find an ocean in a drop of water, or of the vegetative forms, 
 which cover the earth's surface with beauty, and minister to the 
 wants of man, from the tiniest flower up to the grandeur and 
 endurance of the firm-set oak. 
 
 The phenomena of life are not mechanical ; the incessant mo- 
 tion, the countless changes, the perpetual succession of birth, 
 growth, decay, and dissolution, which it exhibits, are events to 
 be accounted for ; they are effects, and the only sufficient or 
 even conceivable cause to which they can be assigned is the im- 
 mediate action of an ever-present and omnipotent God. This is 
 the argument, and you will observe that it is entirely distinct 
 from the reasoning from design, or final cause. This second 
 form of proof will come up afterwards ; but for the present I put 
 it entirely aside. I do not now argue from the peculiarities of 
 certain effects, that they must have been intended or purposed ; 
 but from the fact that there are effects, which must have a cause. 
 I do not invite you to examine the artistic, the admirable internal 
 structure of some form of vegetable or animal life, as a proof 
 that intelligence, foresight, and benevolence were exerted in pro- 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 149 
 
 ducing it, but merely to remember that this individual structure 
 did begin to be ; that its existence dates perhaps only from yes- 
 terday, or from the last hour ; that there is a constant motion 
 and change among its constituent parts ; and these various begin- 
 nings and movements must be attributed to some efficient cause, 
 which cannot be found in the mere insensate atoms of which the 
 plant or animal is made up, but must be sought for in spirit, or 
 person, the only known source of power. That the plant began 
 to exist, and that it grows, are phenomena to be accounted for in 
 some way, just as much as the curious internal arrangement or 
 organization of that plant. 
 
 Among the forms of mere organic life, the birth, develop- 
 ment, and subsequent changes of which are to be accounted for by 
 a cause out of themselves, I rank the material framework of my 
 own body, and those merely vital movements in it which are not 
 dependent on my own will, and which, consequently, as has been 
 already proved, are truly foreign to myself. Here, then, we 
 bring the only two kinds of efficient or personal power with 
 which we are acquainted, namely, the human and the Divine, as 
 it were, into close juxtaposition and virtual cooperation, and thus 
 the point of the argument appears more clearly. The voluntary 
 movement of my arm and hand I know to be dependent on my- 
 self ; I am conscious of willing the movement, and am conscious 
 of making an effort, or exerting my own power, to that end. It 
 is even inconceivable to me, that within the ordinary sphere of 
 my action they should move without my agency, or, in other 
 words, should move themselves. Then I say that the other mo- 
 tions in that arm and hand, which are not voluntary, not mine, 
 such as the circulation of the blood, the excretions of the skin, 
 the constant flux and change of all the material particles in them, 
 must also be attributed to a cause out of themselves, to a per- 
 sonal agency not inherent in the arm and hand. Even the skep- 
 tic will allow me to say, that the hand does not. move itself, but 
 that I move it ; then it seems to me the conclusion is inevitable, 
 that the blood does not move itself, and that no physical cause, 
 or mere organization, has any thing to do with its motion, except 
 
150 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 that it is so constituted as not to interfere with it ; but in this 
 case, no less than in that of the planets circling round the sun, 
 the mover is Divine. 
 
 Of all the mysteries with which we are surrounded, life is 
 thought to be the most inscrutable. The reason of this is, that 
 it cannot even be conceived of as mere mechanism ; it refuses 
 to be subject to the ordinary chemical affinities, to computation 
 and law. There is order and uniformity in its manifestations, 
 but it is an order of its own, and one which appears in the midst 
 of infinite variety. The motions of fluids under its influence 
 refuse to submit to the dynamic principles which govern the 
 movements of inorganic substances ; the processes which are 
 carried on within its sphere cannot be imitated by the subtlest 
 refinements of chemistry. Endeavour to measure and calculate 
 its action by the aid of what are considered as known laws, and a 
 residuum is always left, which must be attributed to a vital force, 
 a wholly peculiar physical cause, of which we know nothing. In 
 the functions of the living body, it may be that the ordinary laws 
 of chemistry are preserved, and that the elements of carbon, 
 oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen combine and separate accord- 
 ing to their ordinary affinities, and in no unusual proportions ; 
 though this point does not seem to be fully proved. But after 
 death, at any rate, quite a different set of chemical laws come 
 into play, and produce a result which is the very opposite of that 
 before effected. There is no longer any unanimity or coopera- 
 tion ; instead of sustaining or building up the animal tissues, the 
 affinities now in operation tear down, destroy, and resolve them 
 into their ultimate elements, each part following out its own 
 law of destruction or resolution, irrespectively of the others. 
 
 The definitions of life which have been given by the most em- 
 inent physiologists show very clearly their conviction that the 
 vital processes are neither chemical nor mechanical, but that the 
 principle on which they depend is a mystery inscrutable by the 
 human intellect. Thus, life has been defined by Stahl to be 
 u the condition by which a body resists a natural tendency to 
 chemical changes, such as putrefaction." Humboldt says, that 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 151 
 
 living bodies are " those which, notwithstanding the constant 
 operation of causes tending to change their form, are hindered 
 by a certain inward power from undergoing such change." The 
 definition of Kant, who looked at the subject more as a meta- 
 physician than a physiologist, is in truth no definition at all ; he 
 says, that " life is an internal faculty, producing change, motion, 
 and action." Bichat's definition, that " life is the sum of the 
 functions by which death is resisted," only introduces a correla- 
 tive mystery into the subject ; and as the latter is a negative idea, 
 it would be more correct, as Mr. Whewell suggests, to define 
 death with reference to life, as its cessation, or natural limit. 
 Schmid defines life to be " the activity of matter, according to 
 laws of organization "; and an organized body is said to be one 
 in which u all the parts are mutually ends and means." Organ- 
 ization, then, is properly the condition or prerequisite of activity ; 
 it is the machine without the moving power. Life is something 
 
 we know not what which keeps the machine in action, and 
 at the same time preserves it from decay, to which it would 
 otherwise be subject at every moment. 
 
 Life, then, is not mere organization, though most materialists 
 willingly confound the two things ; to hear them reason, one 
 would almost suppose that there was no difference between a 
 dead animal and a living one. Organization is subservient to 
 life, ministers to it, manifests it, supports it, if you please, 
 but does not constitute it. Life is something added to the or- 
 ganic structure, a new power in action, or rather, on the true 
 theory, a new and wholly peculiar application of the same power, 
 
 not inherent in the parts, the material atoms, nor yet in the 
 complex organism which is made up of those atoms ; not com- 
 pounded of or resulting from the laws of action, or affinities, of 
 the elements of the body, but controlling, overruling, and super- 
 seding those affinities, which come into play again only when 
 life departs. 
 
 In whatever manner we contemplate the phenomena of life, 
 the argument seems to me conclusive in favor of the doctrine of 
 immediate Divine agency. If chemical action is mechanical or 
 
152 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 absolute, if chemical affinities are inherent powers, necessarily 
 belonging to the atoms in which they usually manifest them- 
 selves, how are they thus suspended for a season, or during the 
 life of the animal, and then made again to operate after its 
 death ? Such intermittent action is not characteristic, is not 
 even conceivable, of a primary and necessary quality, an in- 
 herent power ; we cannot, for instance, conceive of a material 
 substance as extended at one moment, and not extended the 
 next, or of an atom as impenetrable now, and not impenetrable 
 an instant afterwards ; (I refer now, of course, to absolute im- 
 penetrability, that quality which matter is conceived to possess 
 of occupying space, and of excluding all other matter from the 
 space so occupied.) And this suspension of the affinities of 
 matter cannot be accounted for by the altered circumstances of 
 the case. An animal, for example, is instantly killed by a blow 
 on the head ; but this event does not alter the mutual position 
 and relations to each other of the material particles which form 
 one of its limbs ; these remain undisturbed. Yet their action on 
 each other instantly changes from one that contributed to sustain 
 and build up the organism, to another which carries it by a swift 
 process to dissolution. It is no answer to this argument to re- 
 mind me, as the chemist will do, of the allotropic states even of 
 inorganic substances, in which the same bodies manifest different 
 qualities at successive instants. This is but another instance of 
 the same phenomenon, not an explanation of the phenomenon, or 
 an assignment of its cause, which is admitted to be inscrutable. 
 My point is, that necessary attributes, inherent powers, cannot 
 be allotropic ; if what you call the action of the particle changes, 
 this is a proof that the particle is not acting, but is acted upon. 
 Spinoza's doctrine teaches us, that invariability and uniformity 
 are the characteristics of material and necessary action ; for 
 change, choice, difference, we must go up to the free action of 
 person, or mind. The conclusion is inevitable, then, that these 
 chemical affinities, so called, are the results of will and personal 
 power. 
 
 Again, these affinities, I say, cannot be necessary and mechan- 
 
THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 153 
 
 ical in their operation, because the phenomena of life do not con- 
 stantly recur upon the same uniform pattern ; they are not only 
 intermittent, they are immeasurably diversified. The life of the 
 organized mass is a free and independent power, as appears from 
 the infinite variety of forms that it assumes. The affinities, or 
 whatever other powers we suppose to inhere in the particles by 
 themselves, do not by their complication and mutual action make 
 up the life, or give rise to the various motions of the organism, 
 or create its numberless outward aspects. For the results of 
 necessary and mechanical action are all alike ; either they are 
 perfectly similar to each other, or they change by a fixed law 
 either of deterioration or improvement ; while the effects of power 
 controlled by free-will and witnessed by consciousness are mul- 
 tiform, variety being the rule, and perfect resemblance the ex- 
 ception. This is easily illustrated by a comparison of human 
 labor with that of a machine. Of any number of nails made by 
 hand, no two are just alike, while the nail-machine strikes them 
 out in perfect conformity to one pattern ; or to take another in- 
 stance, no handwriting even approaches the uniformity of the 
 engraved or printed letters in many successive copies of the 
 same words. The only difference perceivable in the former 
 case is a regular and gradual one, as the machine or the types 
 slowly wear out. Even these illustrations do not give an ade- 
 quate idea of the uniformity here in question, as the machine is 
 always controlled or guided to a certain extent by human power, 
 and is in itself but an application and direction of the powers of 
 nature, so called, which are really personal and Divine. Active 
 attributes, necessarily resulting from the essence or internal con^ 
 stitution of the thing, are as unchangeable and constant in their 
 operation as the geometrical attributes of space, the immutable 
 and everlasting relations which are studied by the mathemati- 
 cian ; and this is precisely the view of the universe, of natural 
 events, which is taken by the logical necessarian, by Fichte and 
 Spinoza. 
 
 Consider, then, the infinite variety of forms and aspects which 
 living nature assumes, and explain these, if you can, on the hy- 
 
154 THE IMMEDIATE AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 
 
 pothesis that the universe is a machine. Of the millions of 
 leaves which make up the glorious mass of foliage on a large oak- 
 tree, it is said, I believe with truth, that no two can be found 
 exactly alike in outward configuration. Of all the faces in a 
 large assemblage, or, it may be said, even in the population of a 
 city or a country, not one is the exact counterpart of another. 
 I need not multiply these instances of the unbounded diversity 
 of nature's operations in life ; every one's memory will supply 
 a sufficient number of them for the purposes of this argument. 
 The differences alluded to are not those merely which distin- 
 guish races, but those which mark out individuals, separating one 
 generation from another, and giving a peculiar character to each 
 of the offspring of common parents. If we should grant, then, 
 that the simple and uniform effects that are ascribed to gravita- 
 tion, or even to a more complex cause, chemical affinity, are 
 mechanical, the theory of secondary and automatic causation 
 wholly fails to account for the multifarious phenomena of life. 
 Unity of principle pervading unmeasured and immeasurable va- 
 riety is the character of the physical universe ; the necessarian 
 may dream that he can account for that unity by reducing the 
 All to one unchangeable substance; but the variety is to him an 
 inexplicable mystery. 
 
 Wherever we look in outward nature, then, we behold proofs 
 of an ever-present and ever-active Deity. Diversity, change, 
 motion, activity, all ceaseless and endless, show that power is 
 in action ; and this power, commensurate with the extent and 
 coeval with the duration of the universe, is that of the Infinite 
 One. The sentiment which these phenomena inspire harmonizes 
 with the lesson which they teach to the intellect, and with the 
 logical deductions of the understanding. As surely as our earth 
 with its sister orbs and companion systems still rolls in its ap- 
 pointed path, as surely as seed-time and harvest, night and day, 
 return, and life, in countless forms and untiring action, peoples 
 every clod of earth and every drop of water, so surely God 
 liveth. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 INFERENCES FROM THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE PHENOM- 
 ENA OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 
 
 IN the last Lecture, the phenomena of the physical universe, 
 so far as they show change, diversity, and activity, which are not 
 attributable to human power and will, were held to prove the im- 
 mediate and omnipresent action of the Deity. The argument 
 was, that these phenomena afford incontestable evidence of 
 power exerted, or efficient causation, and there is no source of 
 such power within our knowledge, and none, in fact, that is con- 
 ceivable, except in personal agency ; and in this case, the power 
 being commensurate with the extent and duration of all things, it 
 must be ascribed to the Infinite Creator. This reasoning was 
 carried out in reference to two of the most comprehensive 
 classes of such events, those, namely, which are ascribed to 
 gravitation and to life ; the phenomena under the former head 
 being the most simple, uniform, and frequent in their occur- 
 rence, while those coming under the latter are most complex, 
 varied, and multiform ; so that any conclusion established re- 
 specting both these classes must hold true of ah 1 intermediate 
 ones. 
 
 In regard to the former, it was shown that what are called 
 forces in mechanical science are only metaphorical expressions 
 for the mode or order in which certain events succeed each 
 other, or are mere fictions for the convenience of the mathema- 
 tician, like the abstractions and hypotheses with which the ge- 
 
156 THE GENERAL CHAEACTER 
 
 ometer begins his work ; both attraction and the tangential force 
 being, in fact, as imaginary as the eccentrics and epicycles of 
 Hipparchus and Ptolemy. In regard to the latter, the phenom- 
 ena of life, they were shown to be inexplicable and inconceiv- 
 able as effects of mechanism, such effects being necessarily 
 uniform and perfectly similar to each other, or changing only 
 by a regular law of deterioration or improvement ; while the 
 numberless aspects, and infinite variations of the activity, of liv- 
 ing things point for their cause to the free volitions of a conscious 
 agent. 
 
 This form of argument for the being of a God, it was ob- 
 served, though not so familiar to common minds as the proof 
 from design, for indeed it is not fully stated in any work on 
 Natural Theology with which I am acquainted, is still legiti- 
 mate and conclusive ; and it has this great advantage, that from 
 it we infer immediately his present existence, instead of estab- 
 lishing this point by a subsequent process of reasoning. The 
 conclusion to which it leads harmonizes with the natural turn of 
 religious sentiment, or devotion, by referring all events to Divine 
 agency ; and thus we avoid the common objection to the doctrine 
 of an overruling and ever-watchful Providence. 
 
 A further advantage of this reasoning is, that it is not exposed 
 to the objection urged by Hume, on the ground that the universe 
 is a singular effect. The way is paved for this sophism by put- 
 ting into the mouth of Cleanthes, the character in the Dialogues 
 concerning Natural Religion who plays the part of a rational and 
 consistent theist, a distinct avowal of the mechanical theory of 
 nature. u Look round the world," says Cleanthes ; " contem- 
 plate the whole and every part of it. You will find it to be 
 nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite num- 
 ber of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a 
 degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and ex- 
 plain." These words, though uttered by an imaginary speaker, 
 convey, I have no doubt, Hume's own opinion ; and they cer- 
 tainly leave the door open for the objection that is instantly made 
 by Philo, who supports the character and cause of the atheist. 
 
OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 157 
 
 "When two species of objects," says Philo, "have always 
 been observed to be conjoined together, I can infer, by custom, 
 the existence of one wherever I see the existence of the other ; 
 and this I call an argument from experience. But how this ar- 
 gument can have place, where the objects, as in the present case, 
 are single, individual, without parallel or specific resemblance, 
 may be difficult to explain. And will any man tell me with a 
 serious countenance, that an orderly universe must arise from 
 some thought and art like the human, because we have experi- 
 ence of it ? To ascertain this reasoning, it were requisite that 
 we had experience of the origin of worlds ; and it is not suffi- 
 cient, surely, that we have seen ships and cities arise from human 
 art and contrivance Can you pretend to show any simi- 
 larity between the fabric of a house and the generation of a uni- 
 verse ? Have you ever seen nature in any such situation as 
 resembles the first arrangement of the elements ? Have worlds 
 ever been formed under your eye ? and have you had leisure to 
 observe the whole progress of the phenomenon, from the first 
 appearance of order to its final consummation ? If you have, 
 then cite your experience, and deliver your theory." 
 
 Now I might answer this sophistry at once, by saying, that al- 
 though I have not witnessed the fabrication of a universe, I have 
 watched the growth of a plant, from the first germination of the 
 seed to the perfection of the blossom ; and though I have had 
 no personal experience of the origin of worlds, I yet know, 
 whether from reason or the testimony of others, a fact that Philo 
 himself will not deny, that this my body, the material apparatus 
 of limbs and organs in which I live and move, did begin to be ; 
 and of all its subsequent changes, its growth up to its present 
 state, I have had the most intimate experience. But the admis- 
 sion or assertion of Cleanthes, that the universe is one great ma- 
 chine, seemingly bars out this reply by leading us to infer, that 
 the preexisting machinery in the parent plant or blossom pro- 
 duced the seed, the future development and growth of which are 
 but the subsequent action of the same machinery ; so that all 
 which I have actually witnessed or experienced is not the origin 
 or beginning, but the continuance, of things. 
 
158 THE GENERAL CHARACTER 
 
 How obvious is the rejoinder, that this phrase, the universe, is 
 a mere general expression for the totality of things, having only 
 an ideal and fictitious unity, and being in truth nothing but an 
 abstract conception ! To recur to a former illustration, there is 
 no such thing as this audience apart from the individual men and 
 women who compose it. Let us not be blinded by mere words. 
 Individual things are the only objects which really exist ; as we 
 profess here to argue only from facts, let us not confuse these 
 with mere abstractions and generalities. To talk about explain- 
 ing the origin of a universe, except this be understood to mean 
 the accounting in succession for each of the real existences which 
 make up a universe, is to deal in nonsense ; it is as if, after ex- 
 plaining in due order the motives which brought each one of you 
 hither, I should still be required to account for the general fact 
 that there was an audience here assembled. And this remark 
 applies, be it observed, not only to the different individuals who 
 at any one moment make up a sum total, or class, but to the 
 other individuals who occupied the same spot before these began 
 to be, and to others still, who shall fill their places after these 
 cease to exist. The unity which is attributed by the mind, for 
 the mere convenience of conception and speech, both to suc- 
 cessive and contemporaneous individuals, is alike ideal and fic- 
 titious. 
 
 Let us see, then, whether this hypothesis of machinery, as the 
 secret of the creation, not of a universe, but of individual things 
 or real existences, is any thing more than a blank assumption. 
 Suppose that two grains of sand, looking just alike, were placed 
 on the floor before us, and while we were watching them, they 
 began to expand, shoot up, alter their forms, take on all the as- 
 pects and qualities of life, and finally become distinct and recog- 
 nizable, the one as a giant oak-tree, and the other as a living and 
 moving creature. On witnessing so strange a phenomenon, we 
 could not help concluding that some personal agency had pro- 
 duced it, some power transcending that of man ; after satisfying 
 ourselves that there was no deception or mystification in the mat- 
 ter, we should at once refer it to a supernatural or miraculous 
 
OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 159 
 
 cause. Nor would this conclusion be at all less logical, if the 
 phenomenon were a frequent one, if there were a mountain of 
 such sand, from which particular grains being taken at the proper 
 season and carried to the proper place, both time and place being 
 determined by experience, these results invariably followed. 
 
 Now this is a statement but very little disguised, and varying 
 in no essential particular, from the description of what is actually 
 and constantly taking place all around us, in living nature. The 
 beginning of all life, and of all tissues, whether animal or vege- 
 table, is in certain primitive cells, or germinal vesicles, perfectly 
 resembling each other in external appearance, and so minute, that 
 they can be discerned only under high powers of the microscope. 
 The germs are alike to the eye ; but according to the place which 
 each is taken from, whether from one side or another of the sand- 
 heap, it is developed by a regular process into a plant or an ani- 
 mal. If you say that there are specific differences between these 
 microscopic grains, each one veiling some curious and elaborate 
 machinery, peculiar to itself, by which this astonishing result is 
 brought about, I answer, that your assertion is both gratuitous 
 and incredible. It is gratuitous ; for certainly we see no such 
 machinery, and have no indication whatever of its existence ; we 
 see nothing but a little rectangular or circular cell, with a dot in 
 it. It is incredible ; for we can no more conceive of the possi- 
 bility of a machine under such circumstances producing such 
 results, than we can believe that the automaton really plays an 
 admirable game of chess solely by the means of wheels, springs, 
 and cylinders. In both cases, we declare with positive convic- 
 tion, that intelligence, will, and conscious activity are somewhere 
 at work in this matter, that some unseen person is actually caus- 
 ing the phenomenon. Look at the animal when fully grown, 
 moving about and performing all the functions of life, and then 
 believe, if you can, that this creature, in all its parts and powers, 
 is the necessary result of machinery and active energy that are 
 underived and naturally inherent in that microscopic cell, that 
 mere grain of sand. Look, further, into your own conscious- 
 ness, for you, too, upon this hypothesis, were born from the 
 
160 THE GENERAL CHARACTER 
 
 dust, and conceive of all your powers of mind and heart, your 
 reasoning, imaginative, and moral faculties, as the mere product 
 of machinery in an infinitesimal germ. The part of the infidel 
 here is really that of outrageous credulity. 
 
 I say further, that the theological conclusion here is so obvious 
 and reasonable, that all mankind would instantly adopt it without 
 hesitation, just as they do an intuitive truth, if it were not for 
 our familiarity with such results, arising from their countless 
 number and constant repetition. One such birth, interrupting 
 the uniformity of living nature, otherwise made up, so far as our 
 knowledge extended, of beings without beginning or end, would 
 instantly convert all men to a recognition of invisible power that 
 is personal and Divine. But the frequency of the phenomenon 
 wears out our wonder ; what is not strange we refuse to consider 
 as miraculous ; we look upon it mechanically, and so come to 
 regard it as a mechanical effect. But can any thing be more 
 illogical or unreasonable than to alter our conclusion solely be- 
 cause the evidence is multiplied on which it rests ? Shall one, 
 birth, one beginning of living existence, prove the being of a 
 Creator, and not a thousand ? Yet this is the whole of the athe- 
 istic argument : the phenomena of nature are constantly re- 
 peated, therefore the universe is a machine ; and not only so, 
 but a machine that made itself, or has existed from eternity. 
 
 I have departed here in some degree, you will perceive, from 
 the strict argument from the effect up to the cause, by entering 
 into some details respecting the peculiar character of certain 
 effects as distinguished from others, so that the reasoning does 
 not depend, as before, exclusively on the mere manifestation of 
 power. This is taking a step towards the argument from design, 
 a mode of proof which seems more conclusive to most persons 
 than any other, on account of its plainness, the numberless illus- 
 trations or confirmations of it, and the very direct evidence 
 which it offers of the personality of the Deity. 
 
 It is a step farther in the same direction to remark, that the 
 different modes in which Divine power is here manifested, on 
 the theory of immediate creative and sustaining energy, are just 
 
OP vTHE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 161 
 
 such as we might expect from infinite power, wisdom, and be- 
 neficence combined in one person, and exerted with entire free- 
 dom of will, exerted also, 1 may now say, with reference to 
 the moral government of intelligent finite beings, like ourselves. 
 We should expect constancy in the regular attainment of certain 
 great ends, and perfect uniformity in the modes of obtaining 
 them, together with infinite variety in what may be called the de- 
 tails of creation. The former, the general laws, we find in the 
 great recurrent phenomena of the universe, in the laws of gravita- 
 tion, heat, light, magnetism, chemical affinity, and the like ; the 
 latter, the variety, we find in the countless differences which dis- 
 tinguish all living forms from each other, and diversify to an 
 immeasurable extent all the relations of life. With the general 
 laws we are sufficiently acquainted, as it is the peculiar office of 
 science to study them, since they alone serve to guide the con- 
 duct of free and intelligent beings, and give all its value to expe- 
 rience. Because the physical inquirer is so exclusively occu- 
 pied with these, he comes gradually to overlook the endless 
 diversity of form and aspect under which they are manifested ; 
 he sees everywhere the action of law, and the phenomena of 
 nature appear to him regularly recurrent and mechanical. The 
 botanist, for instance, studies only the specific differences of 
 plants, disregarding the minute varieties of shape and hue which 
 distinguish any two flowers of the same species from each other, 
 and even the occasional freaks of nature, the metamorphosis of 
 organs, the production of a leafy branch from the centre of a 
 flower, or of one flower out of another ; or if he considers these 
 anormal growths at all, it is in a vain attempt to reduce them to 
 the dominion of law by virtue of a theory which represents the 
 universe as incomplete, as an idea not yet realized, a plan not 
 fully carried out. My point here is simply, that these countless 
 diversities of nature, which are not studied solely because they 
 are countless, are as much a part of creation, a part, so to speak, 
 of the Divine plan, as the general laws themselves. The fila- 
 ments of order run in every direction through the web of the uni- 
 verse ; but they can be discerned only under the surface-pattern, 
 21 
 
162 THE GENERAL CHARACTER 
 
 which combines all possible modifications of outline and coloring 
 in measureless profusion. 
 
 I say, this regularity in the midst of diversity is precisely what 
 we should expect from the action of a free and intelligent agent ; 
 the order manifests intelligence, the variety bears witness to free- 
 dom. For consider the actions of a finite conscious being, who 
 is a feeble representative, it is true, but the only representative 
 that we have, of Deity, in so far as he unites power with intellect 
 and free-will. So far as the great aims and purposes of life are 
 concerned, according as these are determined by appetite, self- 
 love, habit, or the moral sense, the conduct of man is consistent 
 and uniform, and you may safely predict the future from the past. 
 We may even foresee the results of the combined free activity 
 of great masses of men, from the known motives and the com- 
 parative strength of different motives which are present to the 
 minds of each one of them. Political Economy is a science 
 wholly made up of such generalizations of the conduct of men as 
 may be made by observing the uniformity of their proceedings in 
 respect to the acquisition of wealth. That competition lowers 
 prices, which are finally adjusted by the ratio of the supply to the 
 demand, is in truth a general law of human nature, founded not 
 at all on the nature of the different articles which constitute 
 wealth, but on the dispositions of men. It may be obtained 
 either empirically, by observing the course of trade, or deduc- 
 tively, from the higher laws or generalizations, that all men 
 desire wealth, will buy as cheaply and sell as dearly as pos- 
 sible, and that their intelligence will direct them to the use of 
 similar means for attaining these ends. 
 
 Mr. Mill even goes so far as to propose a new science resting 
 on the same general basis, which he would* call Political Eth- 
 ology, or " the science of the causes which determine the type 
 of character belonging to a people or an age." Here the bias 
 of the necessarian appears, striving to reduce all the complexity 
 and variety of human action under the dominion of law, and to 
 calculate it as he would the effects of an ordinary machine. Hu- 
 man conduct, viewed in the gross, appears nearly as uniform as 
 
OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 163 
 
 A 
 
 the phenomena ascribed to gravitation ; but when viewed in de- 
 tail, it is a mass of waverings, inconsistencies, motiveless altera- 
 tions, and oddities attributed to idiosyncrasies of character, which 
 baffle all computation and foresight. A man seldom walks across 
 a room, greets a visitor, or eats his dinner twice in precisely the 
 same manner ; the life, the character, of not one individual is the 
 perfect counterpart of that of another. Look at great masses of 
 men only from a distance, at which minute peculiarities are lost 
 in the general effects, (just as the sounds from a distant city are 
 blended into one hollow murmur,) and they appear like machines, 
 or rather the multitude itself seems one great machine. But ex- 
 amine microscopically the conduct of an individual for two suc- 
 cessive hours, and the hypothesis of machinery is the very last 
 that you would adopt. How hard it is to reduce one's muscular 
 motions to exact law and method, though each depends on a dis- 
 tinct volition, appears from the difficulty which all find in learning 
 to play on a musical instrument, where the necessities of time and 
 tune require the utmost precision of fingering. Even Mr. Mill 
 is obliged to confess the obstacles to the establishment of his fa- 
 vorite social science, arising from "the idiosyncrasies of organiza- 
 tion on the peculiar history of individuals." 
 
 I am aware that this parallel between the providence of God 
 as shown in the physical history of the universe, and the conduct 
 of man considered as depending on intelligence and free-will, 
 may seem to many too bold, and that the doctrine which brings 
 the two together is open to the reproach of anthropomorphism. 
 But we are not to be driven from any well-grounded conclusions, 
 resting on the testimony of facts or on logical speculation, by 
 any overstrained fastidiousness or a blind horror of an ugly word. 
 This charge of anthropomorphism, or of degrading our concep- 
 tions of the Deity by ascribing to him the forms, qualities, and 
 imperfections of finite and dependent creatures, is the favorite 
 resource of the skeptics of the day, directed especially against 
 the argument from design, which represents him as using means 
 for the attainment of specific and limited ends ; as if the use of 
 any means whatever were a supposition derogatory to Omnipo- 
 
164 THE GENERAL CHARACTER 
 
 * 
 
 tence. That our knowledge of the Divine character is imper- 
 fect at best, and that we are in danger, in seeking to increase it, 
 of passing over to mean and idolatrous conceptions of his attri- 
 butes, we may frankly confess, as it is a truth attested by the 
 history of all the degrading forms of superstition which have pre- 
 vailed among ignorant and sinful men. "Canst thou by searching 
 find out God ? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection ? 
 It is high as heaven ; what canst thou do ? deeper than hell ; 
 what canst thou know ? " But he has not left us wholly without 
 light ; and the indications of his being and attributes that are ac- 
 cessible, whether in the volume of his word or in that of his 
 works, are to be diligently and reverently studied, without fear 
 lest they should lead our imperfect apprehensions wholly astray. 
 It was the remark of a pagan poet, adopted by a Christian apostle, 
 that u we also are his offspring." And if so, even the weak and 
 bounded faculties of his children, made in his image, when purged 
 of earthly stains and freed from all limitations, may still find their 
 likeness in the attributes of the Infinite One. The charge of 
 anthropomorphism, in the strict meaning of that word, is of 
 course a senseless and groundless one, when brought against the 
 doctrine that ascribes eternal duration, omnipotence, and omni- 
 presence to the Deity. And in the higher moral attributes of 
 our own being, if we have no reflection faint, it is true, but 
 still a reflection of the Divine nature, if the highest and purest 
 conception which we can form of holiness does not merely come 
 short of, but differs essentially, or in kind, from the Divine ex- 
 emplar, then indeed are we most miserable, and our knowledge 
 on this subject is worse than utter ignorance. But all intelligence 
 is necessarily of the same order, though differing infinitely in de- 
 gree ; and in this respect, we cannot doubt that it is the inspira- 
 tion of the Almighty that giveth us understanding. To say that 
 the use of means to any end is not consonant with the perfections 
 of an infinite being is to arrogate to ourselves his absolute wis- 
 dom, and to make the creature a judge of the Creator. Besides, 
 the anthropomorphic tendency of our finite conceptions is met by 
 a danger of the opposite character, by the risk of so far sub- 
 
OP THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 165 
 
 limating our notion of Divinity, that nothing shall be left but the 
 undefined shadow of an awful idea, dimly inferred from tran- 
 scendental musings. Better to sensualize our conceptions, so 
 that the affection due to a Father may enter into them, than to 
 refine them into limitless abstractions. 
 
 The order that reigns in the works of creation, the uniformity 
 of constantly recurrent phenomena, may be viewed either in them- 
 selves, as direct indications of intelligence, or as the fruit of de- 
 sign, and thus indirectly showing the wisdom of the contriver. 
 Order is not necessarily purposed for its own sake ; it is the con- 
 sequence of wisdom in action, constantly tending towards the same 
 ends, and pursuing them without variableness or shadow of turn- 
 ing. But it may also be designed as a part of the scheme for 
 governing those who are left in the main to .the guidance of their 
 own wills and understandings, and so need the uniformity of na- 
 ture's laws for the regulation of their conduct. In the latter re- 
 spect, then, the consideration of it comes in as one branch of the 
 argument from design ; in the former, the point of the reasoning 
 is so well illustrated by an anecdote borrowed by Dugald Stewart 
 from the French, that I translate it from the Notes to his Disser- 
 tation on the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political 
 Philosophy. 
 
 " Among the associates of the Baron d'Holbach [who were 
 all atheists] , Diderot one day proposed that they should select an 
 advocate to plead the cause of the Deity, and the Abbe Galiani 
 was chosen. He took his seat, and commenced as follows : 
 
 u ' One day at Naples, a certain person in our presence put six 
 dice into a dice-box, and offered a wager that he would throw 
 sizes with the whole set. I said, that the chance was possible. 
 He threw the dice in this way twice in succession ; and I still 
 observed, that possibly he had succeeded by chance. He put 
 back the dice into the box for the third, fourth, and fifth time, 
 and invariably threw sizes with the whole set. " By the blood 
 of Bacchus," I exclaimed, " the dice are loaded" ; and so they 
 were. 
 
 " ' Philosophers, when I look at the order of nature that is 
 
166 THE GENERAL CHARACTER 
 
 constantly reproduced, its fixed laws, its successive changes, 
 invariably producing the same effect, when I consider that 
 there is but one chance which can preserve the universe in the 
 state in which we now see it, and that this always happens, in 
 spite of a hundred million of other possible chances of perturba- 
 tion and destruction, I cry out, Surely , JVaZwre's dice are also 
 loaded.'" 
 
 The argument here is so plain and forcible, and affords so 
 little room for sophistry and cavilling, that we cannot conceive 
 of a person failing to be convinced by it, though he may wish to 
 show his ingenuity in commenting upon it as a piece of reasoning. 
 It is true, that this mode of proof is not, strictly speaking, a 
 demonstration. " The conclusion is not apodictical," says Kant ; 
 and this is the only defect which he has to urge against the argu- 
 ment a posteriori. But what does such an objection amount to ? 
 Suppose that after Franklin had proved the presence of elec- 
 tricity in a thunder-cloud, by drawing the fluid to the earth, 
 charging a Ley den jar with it, and causing it to manifest all the 
 common electric phenomena, a bystander should still object in 
 this wise to his doctrine and proof: " You are judging of the 
 presence of a thing only from its effects ; the truth of the theory 
 opposed to yours is still conceivable ; your facts and arguments 
 do not constitute a chain of reasoning like that which supports a 
 proposition in Euclid." The plain answer would be, that the 
 affirmation is supported by the only evidence of which, in the 
 nature of things, it is susceptible. A fact can be proved only 
 by other facts ; that which is not perceptible to the senses can 
 be made known only through its effects. And though the proof 
 be not a demonstration, to reject it would be quite as plain an 
 indication of folly or insanity as to deny the truth of any theorem 
 in geometry. 
 
 Besides, it is evident, that if we admit the sufficiency of such 
 objections, the whole fabric of physical science, which is founded 
 upon such deductions from facts, must come to the ground. We 
 must reject all that the labors of the last three centuries have 
 accumulated by questioning nature, and sit down contented in 
 
OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 167 
 
 hopeless ignorance ; for the same considerations which show the 
 unsatisfactory character of what has been done prove also that 
 nothing more or better can ever be accomplished. As no one 
 can seriously entertain such sweeping disbelief, universal skepti- 
 cism in fact cures itself, if "its universality is steadily kept in 
 view, and constantly borne in mind. But in practice, it is an 
 armory from which weapons are taken to be employed against 
 some opinions, while it is hidden from notice, that the same 
 weapon would equally cut down every other conviction." I 
 repeat it, then, all the common metaphysical objections to the 
 argument from design, and to the other modes of proving the 
 Divine existence which proceed from the peculiarities of the 
 effect to the cause, are equally destructive of our reliance on all 
 history, all physical science, and even on all the ordinary maxims 
 of experience which govern our daily conduct. " Fortunately," 
 says the great skeptic himself, u since reason is incapable of 
 dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices for that purpose, 
 and cures me of this philosophical delirium." 
 
 " Whatever," says Sir James Mackintosh, " whatever attacks 
 every principle of belief can destroy none. As long as the 
 foundations of knowledge are allowed to remain on the same 
 level (be it called of certainty or uncertainty) with the maxims 
 of life, the whole system of human conviction must continue 
 undisturbed. When the skeptic boasts of having involved the 
 results of experience and the elements of geometry in the same 
 ruin with the doctrines of religion and the principles of philoso- 
 phy, he may be answered, That no dogmatist ever claimed more 
 than the same degree of certainty for these various convictions 
 and opinions ; and that his skepticism, therefore, leaves them in 
 the relative condition in which it found them. No man knew 
 better, or owned more frankly, than Mr. Hume, that to this 
 answer there is no serious reply. Universal skepticism involves 
 a contradiction in terms ; it is a belief that there can be no 
 belief. It is an attempt of the mind to act without its structure, 
 and by other laws than those to which its nature has subjected its 
 operations. To reason without assenting to the principles on 
 
168 THE GENERAL CHARACTER 
 
 which reasoning is founded, is not unlike an effort to feel with- 
 out nerves, or to move without muscles." * 
 
 The idea of chance occurs so frequently in the discussion of 
 the argument from design, that it is of the utmost importance 
 that we should form a distinct conception of what is meant by it, 
 and how the phenomena which common language ascribes to that 
 abstraction are really produced. Now this conception will de- 
 pend on the peculiar view which we may take of the theory of 
 causation, or of the nature of phenomena in the physical uni- 
 verse. I have said, that there are but two such views or the- 
 ories which are logical, complete, and consistent ; the one, 
 which ascribes all change, all events that take place, to powers 
 necessarily inherent in matter, and which therefore makes out all 
 activity to be necessary and mechanical, and the universe to be 
 one vast machine ; the other, which attributes all motion, activ- 
 ity, and change to personal agency, which considers matter as 
 necessarily passive and inert, and hence all phenomena which 
 begin to be as direct results of power directed by intelligence, 
 and accompanied by free-will. Now the word chance assumes 
 different meanings according as we adopt one or the other of 
 these theories. Under the former, there is no such thing as 
 chance ; the word has absolutely no significance or applicability 
 whatever. We cannot stop short of Spinozism ; there is noth- 
 ing fortuitous ; every phenomenon is the invariable and necessary 
 result of its antecedents, the invariable and necessary cause of 
 those which come after it. This truth is so clearly explained 
 and illustrated by Mr. Mill, though certainly without a percep- 
 tion of its logical consequences, that I shall borrow his language. 
 
 u Chance is usually spoken of," he says, " in direct antithesis 
 to law ; whatever (it is supposed) cannot be ascribed to any 
 law is attributed to chance. It is, however, certain, that what- 
 ever happens is the result of some law, is an effect of causes, 
 and could have been predicted from a knowledge of the exist- 
 ence of those causes, and from their laws. If I turn up a par- 
 ticular card, that is a consequence of its place in the pack. Its 
 
 * Progress of Ethical Philosophy, p. 138. 
 
OP THE 'PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 169 
 
 place in the pack was a consequence of the manner in which the 
 cards were shuffled, or of the order in which they were played 
 in the last game ; which, again, were the effects of prior causes. 
 At every stage, if we had possessed an accurate knowledge of 
 the causes in existence, it would have been abstractedly possible 
 to foretell the effect. 
 
 " An event occurring by chance may be described as a co- 
 incidence from which we have no ground to infer a uniformity : 
 the occurrence of a phenomenon in certain circumstances, with- 
 out our having reason on that account to infer that it will happen 
 again in those circumstances. This, however, when looked 
 closely into, implies that the enumeration of the circumstances is 
 not complete. Whatever the fact be, since it has occurred once, 
 we may be sure that if all the same circumstances were repeat- 
 ed, it would occur again ; and not only if all, but there is some 
 particular portion of those circumstances, upon which the phe- 
 nomenon is invariably consequent. With most of them, how- 
 ever, it is not connected in any permanent manner ; its conjunc- 
 tion with those is said to be the effect of chance, to be merely 
 casual. Facts casually conjoined are separately the effects of 
 causes, and therefore of laws ; but of different causes, and causes 
 not connected by any law. 
 
 "It is incorrect, then, to say that any. phenomenon is pro- 
 duced by chance ; but we may say that two or more phenomena 
 are conjoined by chance, that they coexist or succeed one an- 
 other only by chance ; meaning that they are in no way related 
 through causation ; that they are neither cause and effect, nor 
 effects of the same cause, nor effects of causes between which 
 there subsists any law of coexistence, nor even effects of the 
 same original collocation of primeval causes."* 
 
 Obviously, then, on this theory, we ascribe the origin of a 
 thing to chance only to denote our ignorance of its true cause, 
 not meaning to affirm that it was not caused at all. Its ante- 
 cedents are so numerous and obscure, that we cannot discern the 
 
 * System of Logic, pp. 313, 314. 
 
170 THE GENERAL CHARACTER 
 
 order of their succession, or pick out from among them its latest 
 and invariable forerunner. 
 
 " All nature is but art unknown to thee ; 
 All chance, direction which thou canst not see." 
 
 Not knowing the number of times that the dice knock against each 
 other and against the sides of the dice-box, or the exact position 
 in which each one was before it received each blow, we cannot 
 tell which side will fall uppermost ; though, if we had this knowl- 
 edge, from the combined effect of the law of gravitation and of 
 these several impulses we could foretell the exact position in 
 which they would finally be left. There may be casual conjunc- 
 tions of events, but no casual origin of them. Accordingly, on 
 this mechanical theory of the universe, to put chance in the place 
 of a First Cause is to deal in nonsense ; it is not simply an 
 unfounded, but an unmeaning hypothesis. On this theory, the 
 world had no beginning ; nothing ever absolutely began to be. 
 
 On the other theory, which ascribes all events to immediate per- 
 sonal agency, chance has a meaning as the opposite or absence of 
 design. Whatever is done by a finite being, not for its own sake, 
 but from its subserviency to some other object, is done without 
 regard, if I may so speak, to the whole event, but only with re- 
 gard to some, perhaps one, of its relations or effects. If I wish 
 to walk in a certain direction, I may push a stone out of my path, 
 intending only to remove an obstacle, and not caring where the 
 stone may lie, so that it be not in my way ; that is, I purpose or 
 design only the removal of an obstruction ; I do not purpose its 
 removal to a given spot. Its falling on a certain spot, then, is said 
 to be, not causeless, for it had a cause, just as much as any 
 other event, but accidental, that is, not designed. On either 
 theory, therefore, to make chance a cause is simply to talk non- 
 sense. Again, a sculptor removes chips from the marble on 
 which he is at work, intending only to bring out the statue, and 
 not purposing the juxtaposition of these chips and dust as they 
 fall. The form which the heap of refuse matter assumes on the 
 ground is said to be accidental, because it was not designed. 
 Chance, then, is, so to speak, the residuum of design ; a por- 
 
OP THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 171 
 
 tion of the event namely, the form of the chip in part, and its 
 removal from the main block was effected by design ; the 
 remainder of its form, and its position when falling, were not 
 intended, but were casual. Consequently, chance implies de- 
 sign ; we can attribute only a portion of an effect to it, and in 
 so doing we admit that the remaining portion was foreseen and 
 desired. 
 
 This illustration brings us to the knowledge of a criterion by 
 which we may distinguish what is casual from what is intend- 
 ed. If we visited the studio of the artist during his absence, 
 and saw the statue and the heap of chips lying side by side, 
 why do we say that the form of the one was designed, and that 
 of the other was not ? Obviously, on account of the regularity 
 of shape and outline of the statue, and from its resemblance to 
 the form of some human being or other creature ; for an induc- 
 tion coextensive with our whole experience assures us, that 
 aggregations which were casual, or not purposed, are quite 
 irregular in shape, and bear no likeness to any thing except other 
 aggregations, believed to be as casual as themselves. A skeptic 
 might tell me, it is true, that I could not demonstrate the truth of 
 my conclusion ; it is certainly conceivable, that the sculptor 
 should have hewed off bits from a block of marble, intending 
 only to make a fantastic or irregular pile of them ; and that he 
 happened so to choose the points from which these pieces were 
 taken, that a regular statue was left in the remainder of the 
 block, though he never thought of that remainder. Well, I 
 admit it ; this hypothesis is conceivable ; but is it credible $ 
 Would you believe, under such circumstances, that the sculptor 
 had thus acted, and the statue had thus been produced accident- 
 ally, or without being intended ? 
 
 I am not seeking now to illustrate the main purport of the 
 argument from design ; the instance taken would be poorly 
 chosen for that end. I seek only to expose the true nature of 
 the chief metaphysical objection to that argument, in order that 
 you may see clearly what that objection is worth. My point is, 
 that, in declaring some, if not all, of the phenomena of the physi- 
 
172 THE GENERAL CHARACTER 
 
 cal universe to have been produced by design, we are not mak- 
 ing any unfounded assumption, or resting on any intuitive prin- 
 ciple of the human intellect ; but we are judging from experience, 
 from the largest possible induction of fucts, the conclusion being 
 of the same general character with all the ordinary results of 
 physical science ; that is, it is supported by evidence of the 
 same kind, though vastly superior in amount. From the experi- 
 ence of our own actions, we know what is the general character 
 of those results which are intended or purposed, and those 
 which are accidental. We know what sort of effects intelligent 
 action produces, and what is the general aspect of casual coinci- 
 dences and aggregations. Judging from this experience, we can 
 tell where our fellow-man has been at work, and, in the same 
 manner, where God is at work. Finite intelligence differs from 
 infinite, not in the general character, but in the extent and excel- 
 lence, of its operations. 
 
 Strictly speaking, the argument from design does not establish 
 the existence of a cause, but only the character of that cause, 
 that it is intelligent, personal, coextensive at least with the uni- 
 verse of existing things, and so Divine. From the reasoning 
 pursued in the two former Lectures, we were driven to the 
 necessity of admitting some cause, whether personal or not, to 
 account for the events which have taken place, and for those 
 which are constantly going on under our observation ; and as the 
 only power, or true cause, with which we are acquainted, is per- 
 sonal, being that of man himself, it was argued that the cause of 
 all things not produced by human agency was also personal. 
 To this it was certainly possible to answer, though the reply is 
 surely a very indefinite and unmeaning one, that, discarding alike 
 the hypothesis of active powers inherent in matter, and of per- 
 sonal agency such as is exerted by man, the phenomena of 
 nature might be attributed to a cause in general, of which we 
 can only say that we know nothing, and therefore cannot ascribe 
 to it either intelligence or free-will. This is an appeal to human 
 ignorance, it is true ; and it violates that sound rule of inductive 
 logic which bids us attribute certain effects to any known and 
 
OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 173 
 
 sufficient cause, even though no direct connection is traceable 
 between them, provided there is no proved incompatibility of 
 such a cause with these effects, in preference to attributing them 
 simply to some unknown cause. But the consideration of the 
 peculiar character of the effect affords a more direct answer to 
 this vague objection, by proving incontestably that the First 
 Cause must unite intelligence, will, activity, and foresight ; for 
 these are all implied in design. The God thus revealed is an 
 individual, self-conscious, and creative being, whose care extends 
 to the minutest part of creation ; since his wisdom, activity, and 
 benevolence can be as plainly seen in the structure of a blade of 
 grass as in a system of revolving satellites and suns. 
 
 The argument from design is a simple, obvious, and natural 
 one, which can be assailed only by far-fetched, fine-spun, and 
 metaphysical reasonings ; and this, it seems to me, is a strong 
 consideration in favor of its soundness. Common men do not 
 often reason wrongly about simple subjects and matters of fact ; 
 they are often, indeed, mistaken in their premises ; but granting 
 these, they advance from them through a few steps of proof with 
 unerring accuracy to a just conclusion. An uneducated man, of 
 good common sense, is always a better inductive philosopher than 
 a subtile logician, trained in the schools, who often winds himself 
 up in a web of ingenious sophistry, so that he cannot move a step 
 in any direction. The argument has been propounded in nearly 
 all ages of the world, of which we have any distinct record, 
 and even among rude and illiterate tribes of men, to justify that 
 faith which in the mind of every person depends upon it to a 
 greater or less degree, though he may not be able to state it in 
 precise language. It was as ably set forth and illustrated by 
 Socrates, twenty -five hundred years ago, as it has been in any 
 recent treatise on natural theology. Paley's celebrated illustra- 
 tion of it by a watch is almost equalled in beauty and appositeness 
 by Cicero's instance of an ingenious instrument, made by one 
 Posidonius in his day, which accurately represented the motions 
 of the heavenly bodies, as they were then known : the Roman 
 philosopher asks, if it were carried into Scythia or Britain, 
 
174 THE GENERAL CHARACTER 
 
 whether even the barbarous inhabitants of those countries would 
 believe that more intelligence and ingenuity were required to 
 construct this feeble imitation of the planetary sphere than to 
 make and keep in motion the stupendous sphere itself ; or that 
 the origin of the poor copy must be ascribed to wise design, 
 while the original was the product of mere chance.* Even 
 the unlettered Greenlander told the Danish missionary, who came 
 to instruct him, that as he knew his kajak, or boat, with its tackle 
 and implements, could not be built without much labor and skill, 
 and as the meanest bird required more ingenuity to make it than 
 the best kajak, so he had always believed that some being must 
 exist, wiser than the wisest man, who had made all these things. 
 Considering that the existence and eternal duration of a First 
 Cause have been fully proved, both from the beginning and the 
 continuance of the universe of things, the argument from design, 
 in the form least open to cavil, to show that this cause must be 
 intelligent, provident, and benevolent, can be very briefly stated. 
 It is, that a great number of agents being found to work together 
 by a complex and intricate, yet orderly process, towards the at- 
 tainment of some end, there must exist an intelligent and active 
 being, who had this end in view, and who made this disposition 
 of the agents as means for its accomplishment. Orderly coop- 
 eration implies intelligent and directing power. And the order 
 may be so perfect, and the number of cooperating agents so 
 great, that this implication becomes what is called in common 
 discourse, not in logic, absolute certainty. When the material 
 frame of a living thing is so organized and put together, that a 
 great number of motions and effects can be produced with ease 
 and within a small compass, all of them being subservient to the 
 preservation of the animal's existence, and closely adapted to its 
 modes of life, the inference that this animal was fashioned by an 
 intelligent Creator is irresistible. When such instances of joint 
 agency and adaptation are found to be, not few in number, and 
 scattered, as it were, by chance amidst an infinite number of 
 
 * De Naturd Deorum, II. 34. 
 
OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 175 
 
 conflicting powers, disorderly arrangements, and nugatory re- 
 sults, but manifestations of a great law that pervades all nature, 
 uniformity being the general rule, and the varieties being strictly 
 suited to the different circumstances, and all the parts, by a vis- 
 ible connection, tending towards and effecting one general re- 
 sult^ namely, the happiness of animal and intelligent life, 
 then the conclusion, that the whole framework of the universe 
 was designed and executed by one Being of surpassing wisdom 
 and goodness, comes home to the mind with a force and clear- 
 ness which no prejudice can reject, and no sophistry evade. 
 
 The point on which the whole stress of this argument depends 
 is the proposition, that adaptation proves design, or that the con- 
 currence of means to an end, under certain circumstances, must 
 have been intentional ; that is, the end was foreseen and desired. 
 All the other points are admitted. It is admitted, for instance, 
 that design proves a designer, that there cannot be contrivance 
 unless there was some being who contrived ; this is little more 
 than an identical proposition, or an explanation of the meaning 
 of words. So, also, it is admitted that there are wonderful 
 adaptations in the physical universe, countless in number, 
 grand, complex, and intricate beyond the most elaborate ma- 
 chine of man's device, delicate, precise, and artistic to a de- 
 gree exceeding what the finest perception of the senses, aided by 
 the most finished instruments, can discover. I have already 
 spoken of their number and variety, as they are found in the 
 bodily structure of the animalcules which people with their mul- 
 titude a drop of water, in the fabric and tissues of all vegetable 
 and animal things, and in the disposition and arrangement of inor- 
 ganic matter, from a clod of earth up to the wonderful framework 
 and garniture of the heavens ; a system of revolving worlds, 
 whose motions and inequalities are so wonderfully balanced and 
 adjusted, all subject to one law,- exerting mutual influence, but 
 never interfering with the appendage of minor orbs, all working 
 harmoniously with the great scheme. As to their complexity, 
 and the subserviency of numerous parts, dissimilar to each other, 
 to one great end, take the most intricate engine that man ever 
 
176 CHARACTER OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. 
 
 contrived, a carpet-loom, for instance, or a printing-press 
 moved by steam, which it requires a day's study to take apart 
 and understand, and yet the anatomist and physiologist will tell 
 you, that this machine is not to be compared, in point of com- 
 plexity and elaborateness, with your own body, in which the ar- 
 rangement of means that continue, preserve, and repair it is so 
 curious and intricate, that all the resources of modern science 
 have not yet sufficed to thread the whole labyrinth and show the 
 meaning of the entire structure. As to nicety of arrangement 
 and perfection of finish, go into an observatory and examine a 
 chronometer, or a sidereal clock, or a repeating telescope, with 
 its limbs graduated and marked off to the hundredth part of a 
 hair's breadth, and you will have but a faint idea of the delicacy 
 and fine adjustment of the parts in the human eye and ear, 
 through which these organs perform their office, and are pre- 
 served from injury or decay. 
 
 The whole question is, whether these numerous, complex, and 
 nice adaptations prove design. 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 IT was observed in the last Lecture, in reference to Hume's 
 objection that creation is a singular effect, not coming within 
 the range of our experience, and so not to be accounted for by 
 inferences drawn from present phenomena, that the universe is a 
 mere general conception, having but a fictitious unity, and what 
 we are bound to explain is the origin, not of the whole, but of all 
 the parts taken in succession. Adverting, then, to particular 
 phenomena, of which we have experience, I showed that the 
 development of particular plants and animals from microscopic 
 germs, perfectly alike so far as we can see, is a fact which, 
 when contemplated singly, or by itself, we cannot help ascrib- 
 ing to some personal agency, some supernatural or miraculous 
 power ; for the hypothesis, that it is caused by some invisible 
 machinery in those germs, is both gratuitous and incredible ; 
 gratuitous, because we have no evidence that such machinery 
 exists ; incredible, because we cannot conceive of its possibility. 
 I showed, further, that the phenomena of the universe, in so far 
 as tthey combine unity with diversity, order with boundless vari- 
 ety, general laws with distinctive and peculiar effects not resem- 
 bling each other, were precisely what we should expect from 
 individual and personal exertion, for these also are the character- 
 istics of human action. The works of intelligence show order 
 in their aggregate, and immeasurable diversity in their details. 
 
 An examination of the idea of chance proved that it was appli- 
 
 23 
 
178 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 cable, not to the origin, but to the conjunctions of phenomena ; 
 so that to ascribe creation to chance was not merely an unfound- 
 ed, but an unmeaning hypothesis. On the theory of mechanical 
 action and of powers inherent in matter, no event is fortuitous, 
 but every fact, even the turning up of a card in a pack, or the 
 throwing of dice, is the necessary result of immutable law ; we 
 call it accidental merely to mark our ignorance of its cause, and 
 not to deny its causation. On the other theory, that of personal 
 agency, chance is simply the opposite, or the residuum, of de- 
 sign ; it by no means implies absence of causation, but simply 
 that a portion of the effect was not intended or cared for by its 
 author. 
 
 Hence we come, by experience, to the knowledge of a crite- 
 rion by which we distinguish designed effects from those which 
 are fortuitous, or not designed. Order, uniformity, resemblance 
 to some object, subserviency to some end, is this criterion. We 
 have ample experience of both classes of effects ; our induction 
 is coextensive with all our observation of our own acts, those of 
 our fellow-beings, and their results ; and the difference between 
 the two classes is so striking and obvious, that a child can see it, 
 and read its meaning. We contrast, for instance, the pile of 
 rubbish that a machinist casts out of his workshop with the elab- 
 orate, complex, and highly finished engine that he is fabricating 
 within ; and if a skeptic should tell us, that possibly as much 
 intellect and intention, as much deliberate purpose, went to the 
 formation of that refuse heap as of that engine, or that we had 
 only a contingent, and so an unsatisfactory, assurance that there 
 was any purpose in either, and thus attempt to undermine our 
 belief that there had been any artisan at work there, we should 
 deem either that he was disordered in his wits, or that he was 
 practising upon our credulity. 
 
 If, with this criterion in hand, we come to examine the phe- 
 nomena of the universe so far as they do not depend on the 
 agency of man, in order to see if there is any evidence of design 
 in them, the answer which we obtain is decisive beyond all cav- 
 illing. We ask not now, whether the several arrangements and 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 179 
 
 results ever began to be, and so ever had a cause, or required 
 power for their production ; that point has been considered and 
 determined already ; it has been proved that such a cause was, 
 and is, as otherwise the events themselves are inexplicable. 
 The present question is, whether we can find proof that this pro- 
 ductive energy was guided by intelligence, was exerted with ref- 
 erence to an end which it proposed and desired to accomplish. 
 The answer is, that the adaptations which we discover in the 
 world are so curious, far-reaching, and important, and moreover 
 so numerous among all the arrangements of matter, they cor- 
 respond so perfectly in their general character to the contrivances 
 of man for attaining his objects, though they far transcend such 
 human designs in wisdom, that we are irresistibly led to consider 
 them as intentional. We can conceive that one or two slight 
 adaptations should exist, which were not designed. Among the 
 multitude of stones upon a sea-beach, for instance, we may by 
 long search find one or two that are not only regular in form, but 
 bear some rude resemblance to utensils or implements fashioned 
 by man, so that with some difficulty they may be turned to useful 
 purposes. A rude substitute for a hammer or chisel may thus 
 be discovered. But these are lost among a countless number of 
 shapeless pebbles which can be applied to no use. 
 
 Such is not the character of those physical arrangements by 
 or through which animal and vegetable life is sheltered, devel- 
 oped, and continued in being. Here, every thing is artistic ; 
 every part, even the minutest, has its use ; the whole forms one 
 system, every portion of which is essential to its perfection, as, 
 by the curious disposition of the interior, all the parts act and 
 react upon each other. According to a definition already quot- 
 ed, an organism is that of which all the parts are mutually ends 
 and means. So perfect is this correspondence of the parts with 
 each other and with the whole, that the eye practised in the 
 study of them can, from a minute portion, supply what is lost, 
 and build again the entire system. Give to the comparative 
 anatomist a section of a single tooth, and he will tell you to what 
 animal it belongs ; give him one scale of a fish that no longer 
 
180 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 exists except as imbedded in red sandstone, and he will recon- 
 struct that fish, though he has never seen its entire fossil remains. 
 Which is the worthier of admiration here, the intellect which 
 infers the shape and organization of the whole structure from so 
 small a remnant of it, or that which so fashioned and ordered all 
 the parts with minute correspondences and relations, that any 
 one of them is a key to all the others ? Sagacity and skill, in 
 their highest degrees, were required to find the key to the fabric ; 
 and is there no proof of intelligence in the fabric itself, and in the 
 creation of the means by which the discovery was rendered pos- 
 sible ? As well might we say that the ability to read a book was 
 indeed a proof of intellect, but not the ability to write it. 
 
 Design is necessarily prospective ; it is the adoption of means 
 to secure an end not yet realized, or which exists only in idea. 
 It implies knowledge and skill, therefore, for the selection of the 
 proper means, and foresight of their mode of operation, and of 
 the nature of the end to be obtained. Now there are certain 
 arrangements in the animal and even in the vegetable kingdom, 
 which, as they at first exist, seem to answer no useful end what- 
 ever ; but at a subsequent stage in the history of the organism, 
 when new occasions or necessities have sprung up, they are found 
 to be admirably adapted to some essential purposes. These, 
 from their prospective character, seem to afford the required link 
 of proof, that the adaptation was intentional or designed. Thus, 
 the human teeth do not grow till they are needed by a change of 
 food consequent on advance in life ; and even the first set of 
 teeth, with the alveolar process, or sockets, which contain them, 
 which are suited for the child's use, are displaced or absorbed 
 when the enlargement of the jaws renders them no longer fully 
 competent for their office, and are replaced by a new set, which 
 had long been forming beneath. Can you believe that this 
 arrangement was not intended to answer the purpose which it 
 actually does answer ? 
 
 Still more strongly indicative of design are the arrangements 
 to meet certain wants which are not only prospective, but con- 
 tingent on the intelligence and free-will of another being, so that 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 181 
 
 it is doubtful whether they will ever exist. The casualties to 
 which the human frame is subject are to a great extent avoid- 
 able by human care and forethought ; still, they often happen, 
 and there are numerous and beautiful arrangements in the system, 
 or the animal economy, by which their consequences are met 
 and repaired. The broken bone is again united by the matter 
 which exudes from the two extremities, and knits them together 
 even with greater solidity than the limb possessed in that part 
 before, as if to guard against a repetition of the accident. The 
 bruised or diseased flesh is separated by a thickened coating 
 from the sound portion, and then thrown off by suppuration, its 
 place being gradually taken by new and sound tissue. The 
 main artery, which furnishes a limb with its chief supply of 
 blood, being tied up and thus obliterated by the surgeon, to 
 avoid the consequences of an accidental enlargement, collateral 
 channels are made or enlarged by the Divine Helper, even the 
 direction of the current in some of them being changed, so that 
 the limb again receives its full supply. Shall we say, here, that 
 the surgeon, indeed, designed to stop up the main cana], but that 
 there was no purpose or intention in the altered disposition of 
 the other parts, by which the injurious effects of this stoppage 
 were obviated ? It is needless to enumerate other instances ; 
 the physician or the surgeon will tell you, that the body abounds 
 with such adaptations or contrivances, so that his art is little 
 more than waiting for their operation, and preventing the unwise 
 interference of the patient or his friends. The vis medicatrix, 
 the recuperative and repairing force of nature, is that which lends 
 nearly all its efficiency to medical skill. 
 
 One other class of illustrations of intentional effects in the 
 physical universe may be aptly introduced by a quotation from a 
 medical writer of approved authority. " The intention of na- 
 ture," he observes, "can nowhere be so well learned as from 
 comparative anatomy ; that is, if we would understand physiol- 
 ogy, and reason on the functions in the animal economy, we must 
 see how the same end is brought about in other species. We 
 must contemplate the part or organ in different animals, its shape, 
 
182 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 position, connection with the other parts, &c., and observe what 
 thence arises. If we find one common effect constantly pro- 
 duced, though in a very different way, then we may safely con- 
 clude that this is the use or function of the part. This reasoning 
 can never betray us, if we are but sure of the facts." 
 
 Now, to apply this remark, compare together the eyes of an 
 eagle, a man, a fish, a mole, and lastly consider the case of that 
 singular species of fish which inhabits only the dark waters of a 
 vast cave, and so has no eyes at all ; compare them, I say, with 
 reference to the different circumstances in which these several 
 animals are placed, and to the adaptations of the organ to these 
 different circumstances, and see if it be possible to avoid the in- 
 ference that the eye was intended to see with. Here we have 
 numerous instances of a concurrence of means to one end ; the 
 means being varied just so far as to preserve a constant relation 
 to the several media through which vision takes place, and to the 
 purposes of the animal for which sight is required. The crys- 
 talline humor of the eyes of animals living in water, to suit the 
 greater refractive power of the surrounding medium, is made, 
 not plano-convex, as in land animals, but round. If the animal 
 is confined to the surface of the ground, and so needs a large 
 field of horizontal vision, the pupil of the eye is made elliptical, 
 the transverse diameter being at right angles to the nose, vary- 
 ing in this respect from the pupil in the eyes of birds, who need 
 frequently to see above or below them. 
 
 Means are required, also, to wipe and keep clean the eye, so 
 delicate is its structure for the office it has to perform ; and these 
 means should be more abundant and efficacious for birds than for 
 most other animals, as they sweep with great velocity through 
 great spaces of air, and for some quadrupeds whose eyes fre- 
 quently come in contact with dust and other floating matter. On 
 this account, their eyes are provided with a peculiar membrane, 
 attached by a slender thread to a muscle placed in the back part 
 of the eye, so as not to obstruct the vision. When this muscle 
 contracts, the membrane is suddenly drawn over the fore part of 
 the eye, sweeping it clean of every particle of dust, and then, 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 183 
 
 by its own elasticity, falling back to its original position. To 
 obtain greater length in a less compass, the cord of this muscle 
 makes an angle, passing through a loop formed by another mus- 
 cle, and is there inflected, as if bent round a pulley ; the second 
 muscle, of course, when it contracts, twitches the first muscle at 
 the point of inflection, and so assists the action designed by both. 
 " Every one," says Sir Charles Bell, "who has ridden a horse 
 on a dusty road, must have been struck with the superior pro- 
 vision in the horse's eye ; he never suffers from the dust, be- 
 cause this cartilage, being bedewed with the secretion of a 
 peculiar gland, not tears, but a matter more glutinous, 
 sweeps across the eye, and collects and removes every particle 
 of dust." 
 
 Is it credible that this beautiful apparatus, a delicate brush 
 moving by the reciprocal action of a spring and of force applied 
 to a slender cord passing over a pulley, was not contrived for the 
 very purpose of removing injurious foreign matter from the eye, 
 the liability to such intrusion being foreseen, and the machinery 
 being invented with special reference to this contingency ? Sup- 
 pose a laborer, obliged to work amid the thick dust of a coal- 
 mine, were found, on our visit to the pit, though we had never 
 heard of such a contrivance before, to be provided with a com- 
 pact self-adjusting machine, exactly resembling this membrana 
 nictitans, except that it was not permanently attached to his eyes, 
 but was put on and off like a pair of glasses. Suppose the wearer 
 of it should tell us, that it was indeed a very convenient thing 
 for keeping the dust out of his eyes, but that it was not made for 
 this purpose, nor indeed for any purpose whatever, but was the 
 mere freak of an ingenious artisan who was accustomed to make 
 curious little machines for no object at all, except to amuse him- 
 self ; and that the laborer, visiting his museum one day, happened 
 to see this apparatus, and perceiving that it would be useful for 
 the protection of his eyes, had purchased it for this end. Should 
 we believe this extravagant story ? I am not caricaturing the 
 matter at all, but supplying what is, on the whole, a favorable 
 illustration of the wisdom and justice of that doctrine which de- 
 
184 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 nies that any adaptations whatever, however complex, delicate, 
 and exactly suited to the end, afford any proof of foresight and 
 design. According. to the philosophers who entertain this doc- 
 trine, all that we are entitled to affirm is the existence of the 
 apparatus with all its parts, and the accomplishment of a certain 
 end by it, that is, the mode in which it works ; for this is all 
 that we see, all that is visible on the very face of the matter. 
 To maintain that this end was contemplated beforehand, arid de- 
 sired by some other being, who devised these peculiar means for 
 obtaining it, is to assert a fact of which we have no sensible evi- 
 dence, and to attribute motives to a cause of whose essence we 
 are wholly ignorant. 
 
 Is it, then, a received maxim in physical inquiry, that our in- 
 vestigations must be strictly limited to the outside of the phenom- 
 ena, to a mere description of their external characteristics, and 
 to the law of their succession, so that we are never entitled to 
 infer the existence of any fact which is not directly visible ? If 
 so, this criticism is just, and the argument from design is either 
 wholly unfounded and deceptive, or it cannot be classed with the 
 ordinary processes of inductive science whose correctness no one 
 affects to question, and with which it has been my purpose to 
 show that it is entirely coincident. To determine whether this 
 maxim is admitted, I will cite a passage from the latest, and 
 probably the most judicious and profound, writer on inductive 
 logic, who is certainly not biased in favor of any theological ar- 
 gument, and is not thinking of any such argument in the passage 
 in question. 
 
 " There is a great difference," says Mr. Mill, "between invent- 
 ing laws of nature to account for classes of phenomena, and mere- 
 ly endeavouring, in conformity with known laws, to conjecture 
 what collocations, now gone by, may have given birth to individ- 
 ual facts still in existence. The latter is the strictly legitimate op- 
 eration of inferring, from an observed effect, the existence, in time 
 past, of a cause similar to that by which we know it to be produced 
 in all cases in which we have had actual experience of its origin." 
 Is it possible to give, in abstract language, a more precise de- 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 185 
 
 scription of the case in hand ? We have had actual experi- 
 ence, both in our own works, and by observing those of our 
 fellow-men, of complex contrivances, or designed adaptations 
 to an end ; and we have compared or contrasted these with the 
 unintentional collocations of matter which are also attributable to 
 human agency. With the light gained from this comparison, 
 when we come to observe physical effects and arrangements, 
 perfectly similar to these designed adaptations, and strongly 
 contrasted with the unintentional groupings, we infer the exist- 
 ence, in time past, of a cause similar to that which produced the 
 effects of which we have full knowledge, that is, an intelligent 
 and designing cause. 
 
 I go on now with the extract from Mr. Mill, to show what 
 class of cases he had in view in making this remark, and because 
 these cases are apt illustrations, perfect parallels, of the argument 
 from design. "This, for example," he says, u is the scope 
 of the inquiries of geology ; and they are no more illogical or 
 visionary than judicial inquiries, which also aim at discovering a 
 past event by inference from those of its effects which still sub- 
 sist. As we can ascertain whether a man was murdered or died 
 a natural death from the indications exhibited by the corpse, the 
 presence or absence of the signs of struggling on the ground or 
 on the adjacent objects, the marks of blood, the footsteps of the 
 supposed murderers, and so on, proceeding throughout upon 
 uniformities ascertained by a perfect induction without any mix- 
 ture of hypothesis ; so, if we find, on or beneath the surface of 
 our planet, masses exactly similar to deposits from water, or to 
 results of the cooling of matter melted by fire, we may justly 
 conclude that such has been their origin ; and if the effects, 
 though similar in kind, are on a far larger scale than any 
 which are produced now, we may rationally, and without hypoth- 
 esis, conclude that the causes existed formerly with greater inten- 
 sity." * And so, I add, if we find, on the surface of our planet, 
 adaptations exactly similar to arrangements known to be designed 
 
 * System of Logic, p. 298. 
 
186 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 by man, we may justly conclude that intelligence was concerned 
 in the formation of both ; and if these, though similar in kind, 
 are on a far larger scale than any which are produced by man, 
 we may rationally, and without hypothesis, conclude that the 
 intelligence which produced them was of a higher order than the 
 human understanding. 
 
 Mr. Mill further observes, that " in the speculation respect- 
 ing the igneous origin of trap or granite, the fact does not admit 
 of direct proof, that those substances have been actually sub- 
 jected to intense heat. But the same thing might be said of all 
 judicial inquiries which proceed upon circumstantial evidence. 
 We can conclude that a man was murdered, although it is not 
 proved by the testimony of eyewitnesses that a man who had 
 the intention of murdering him was present on the spot. It is 
 enough if no other known cause could have generated the effects 
 shown to have been produced." Here, again, the parallel is com- 
 plete. Certainly we have no direct proof, no testimony of eye- 
 witnesses, that the Deity was present in person before these 
 effects followed, and that he intended to produce them. It is 
 enough for us to know from our own experience, and from that 
 of the whole human family, that these effects could not have 
 followed except from intelligent action, from a personal cause ; 
 there is no other known cause adequate to their production. 
 
 It forms no part of my plan, you will perceive, to enter into a 
 full exposition of the proofs from design, detailing their number 
 and variety, and thus aiming to produce conviction by their 
 cumulative effect. The examples that I have adduced are in- 
 tended to show only the nature of the argument, its logical effi- 
 ciency, and therefore they have been designedly taken from the 
 most familiar treatises on Natural Theology. Strictly speaking, 
 an accumulation of them is not needed ; for if one undoubted 
 instance of the designed adaptation of means to ends can be pro- 
 duced, then an intelligent creative Deity must exist. If one fact 
 alone, among all the circumstances enumerated by Mr. Mill, 
 proves incontestably that the man was murdered, the considera- 
 tion of the other traces of violence may be entirely omitted. 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 187 
 
 Those who wish to enter into the argument in detail may find all 
 that they need in Paley's excellent and unsurpassed exposition 
 of it, two chapters of which, for this purpose, are worth all the 
 Bridgewater Treatises put together. But an undefined impres- 
 sion, a lurking doubt, exists in many minds, fostered, if not cre- 
 ated, by some popular metaphysical speculations, that there is 
 a fundamental defect in this reasoning, an illogical assumption, 
 which is carefully suppressed, or winked out of view, by those 
 who are conscious that there is no other mode of getting rid of 
 it. This is skepticism, the more dangerous because it is waver- 
 ing and indefinite ; for the doubt is entertained by many who do 
 not even know what the alleged defect is. It is this vague im- 
 pression which I have labored to confute, and for this purpose 
 I have entered into a minute and probably tedious examination of 
 the logical structure of the argument, comparing it with the evi- 
 dence on which all physical science depends. The result is, 
 that it is perfectly coincident with such evidence ; it is of the 
 same kind, though vastly superior in degree. 
 
 As to the alleged defect, the supposed assumption which is 
 made, not only in the argument from design, but in all the truths 
 of physical science, and in the regulation of our daily conduct, a 
 very few words will suffice to explain its character. In all these 
 cases, we take it for granted that the human faculties are ade- 
 quate to their work, that memory is not always confounded with 
 imagination, that from similar effects we may infer the presence 
 of similar causes ; and when we have no direct sensible evidence 
 that a certain object exists, or a certain event has taken place, 
 we may still learn the fact from some unquestionable indications 
 of its reality. 'These are assumptions ; and though the skeptic 
 in words may deny them, in action he admits them without hesi- 
 tation. If the evidence on which the theist relies were multi- 
 plied a thousand-fold, it would still be chargeable with the defect 
 which we are now considering, and consistency would require 
 the unbeliever still to reject it. I find this fact so clearly ad- 
 mitted and set forth by the chief of English skeptics, by Hume 
 himself, that it is worth while to quote the passage. In the 
 
188 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 Dialogues to which I have already referred, after Philo has been 
 arguing for some time, with great subtilty and ingenuity, against 
 these assumptions, Cleanthes breaks out, with some impatience : 
 
 "Your objections, I must freely tell you, are no better than 
 the abstruse cavils of those philosophers who denied motion ; 
 and ought to be refuted in the same manner, by illustrations, 
 examples, and instances, rather than by serious argument and 
 philosophy. Suppose, therefore, that an articulate voice were 
 heard in the clouds, much louder and more melodious than any 
 which human art could ever reach: Suppose that this voice 
 were extended in the same instant over all nations, and spoke 
 to each nation in its own language and dialect : Suppose that 
 the words delivered not only contain a just sense and meaning, 
 but convey some instruction altogether worthy of a benevolent 
 being superior to mankind : Could you possibly hesitate a mo- 
 ment concerning the cause of this voice, and must you not in- 
 stantly ascribe it to some design or purpose ? Yet I cannot see 
 but all the same objections (if they merit that appellation) which 
 lie against the system of Theism may also be produced against 
 this inference. 
 
 " Might you not say, that all conclusions concerning fact were 
 founded on experience ; and that when we hear an articulate voice 
 in the dark, and thence infer a man, it is only the resemblance of 
 the effects which leads us to conclude that there is a like resem- 
 blance in the causes ; but that this extraordinary voice, by its 
 loudness, extent, and flexibility to all languages, bears so little 
 analogy to any human voice, that we have no reason to suppose 
 any analogy in their causes ; and consequently, that a rational, 
 wise, coherent speech proceeded, you know not whence, from 
 some accidental whistling of the winds, not from any Divine rea- 
 son or intelligence ? You see clearly your own objections in 
 these cavils, and I hope, too, you see clearly, that they cannot 
 possibly have more force in the one case than in the other." 
 
 The idea that there was a lurking difficulty in the argument, 
 which theologians willingly avoided, seems to have proceeded 
 from the fact, that it appeals to common sense and the plain in- 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 189 
 
 stincts of our nature, while the objections to it are abstruse, far- 
 fetched, and refined. It needs some study to perceive that they 
 are, at least to an equal extent, shallow and sophistical, as they 
 rest solely on the mistaken notion, that metaphysical reasoning is 
 applicable to matters of fact. What would be thought of the 
 wisdom, or even the sanity, of the mathematician who, having 
 found from the calculus what must be the form of a body which 
 is to move through a fluid with the least possible resistance, and 
 having ascertained also, (what happens to be true,) that his ab- 
 stract conclusions are rebutted by simple and decisive experi- 
 ments, should yet adhere to his results as available for practical 
 purposes, on the ground that they were supported by demonstra- 
 tion, while they were not contradicted except by the evidence of 
 the senses, which is a source only of contingent assurance ? The 
 child or the savage knows that facts are a test of reasoning, and 
 not reasoning of facts. " Is it not fitting," said a savage of 
 Sumatra to his companion, showing him a watch that had been 
 made in Europe, " that a people such as we should be the slaves 
 of a nation capable of forming such a machine ? The sun," he 
 added, " is a machine of the same nature." " And who winds 
 him up?" asked his companion. "Who," replied he, u but 
 Allah." Thus it is, as Paley remarks, that these proofs "are 
 sufficiently open to the views and capacities of the unlearned, at 
 the same time that they acquire new strength and lustre from the 
 discoveries of the learned. If they had been altogether abstruse 
 and recondite, they would not have found their way to the un- 
 derstandings of the mass of mankind ; if they had been merely 
 popular, they might have wanted solidity." 
 
 But it is said, that the use of means to an end implies the ex- 
 istence of difficulties and obstacles, and so leads to a supposition 
 of defect of power ; contrivances are human conceptions to get 
 rid indirectly of obstacles which we are not able immediately to 
 remove by a simple act of the will ; therefore they cannot rightly 
 be attributed to Omnipotence, which is always adequate to the 
 direct accomplishment of its ends. Thus, a child must use a 
 lever to raise a weight which the adult lifts at once without ef- 
 
190 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 fort ; the boy must stand in a chair to arrive at an object that is 
 within reach of his parent's arm. It is hardly enough to say, 
 simply, that it has pleased the Almighty to work by means and 
 agencies, instead of directly accomplishing his purposes, unless 
 we can supply some reason for this preference which shall be 
 consistent with infinite wisdom. I answer, then, that we imme- 
 diately discover such a reason, if we bring in the idea of the 
 moral government of man, a creature endowed with intellect and 
 conscience, and left to complete his earthly education and pro- 
 bation by his own free-will. The ultimate purpose of all these 
 contrivances, then, is, that the study of them may lead us up to 
 a knowledge of the existence and attributes of their Infinite Au- 
 thor. And further, for the regulation of our daily conduct, in 
 order that we may infer the future from the past, it is necessary 
 that the course of nature, or the action of Deity, should be uni- 
 form, or, in other words, that it should be governed by general 
 laws. u It has been said, that the problem of creation was, ' At- 
 traction and matter being given, to make a world out of them.' " 
 How could we act at all, self-guided, unless from reliance on the 
 constantly recurring and uniform phenomena of gravitation, light, 
 heat, chemical affinity, and the like ? " These," to quote again 
 from Paley, ' c are general laws ; and when a particular purpose is 
 to be effected, it is not by making a new law, nor by the suspen- 
 sion of the old ones, nor by making them wind, and bend, and 
 yield to the occasion ; but it is by the interposition of an ap- 
 paratus corresponding with these laws, and suited to the exi- 
 gency which results from them, that the purpose is at length 
 attained." 
 
 That final causes, or the purposes for which numberless ar- 
 rangements and adaptations were made, can be discerned in na- 
 ture, is not only a principle in Natural Theology, but a received 
 doctrine, and a fruitful one, in physical science, especially in the 
 departments of physiology and zoology, in which it has been a 
 guide to the most important discoveries. Thus, Harvey, in 1616, 
 having learned that there were valves in the veins, which opened 
 towards the heart, and thus permitted the blood to pass in this 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 191 
 
 direction, while they would prevent its passage towards the ex- 
 tremities, and that the valves at the exit of the arteries from the 
 heart opened in the opposite direction, assumed that these valves 
 must have been intended to allow and direct the movement of 
 the blood, and was thus led to the capital discovery of the circu- 
 lation.. To prove the fact, he tied the veins, and found that they 
 swelled on the side nearer the extremities ; he tied the arteries, 
 and found that they swelled on the side nearer the heart. It 
 would be easy to show, that nearly all the great discoveries 
 which have been made in physiology since Harvey's time have 
 proceeded from this same doctrine, from the assumption, that 
 is, that no part of the body exists without some use, or function, 
 which it was designed to fulfil. Observe, that here it is not a 
 knowledge of the adaptation which suggests the purpose, but an 
 assumption of the purpose which leads to a knowledge of the 
 adaptation, or use. 
 
 To show the fruitful application of the same principle in zoo- 
 logical researches, I have only to borrow the language of the 
 illustrious Cuvier, at the commencement of his great work on 
 the Animal Kingdom. " Zoology," he says, " has a principle of 
 reasoning which is peculiar to it, and which it employs with ad- 
 vantage on many occasions : this is the principle of the conditions 
 of existence, vulgarly called the principle of final causes. As 
 nothing can exist, if it do not combine all the conditions which 
 render its existence possible, the different parts of each being 
 must be arranged in such a manner as to render the total being 
 possible, not only in itself, but in its relations to those which sur- 
 round it ; and the analysis of these conditions often leads to gen- 
 eral laws, as clearly demonstrated as those which result from 
 calculation or experience." Thus, "If the viscera of an ani- 
 mal are so organized as only to be fitted for the digestion of recent 
 flesh, it is also requisite that the jaws should be so constructed as 
 to fit them for devouring prey ; the claws must be constructed 
 for seizing and tearing it in pieces ; the teeth, for cutting and di- 
 viding its flesh ; the entire system of the limbs or organs of mo- 
 tion, for pursuing and overtaking it ; and the organs of sense, for 
 
192 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 discovering it at a distance. Nature must also have endowed the 
 brain of the animal with instincts sufficient for concealing itself, 
 and for laying plans to catch its necessary victims." " By such 
 considerations," adds Mr. Whewell, Cuvier " has been able to 
 reconstruct the whole of many animals of which parts only were 
 given; a positive result, which shows both the reality and the 
 value of the truth on which he wrought." 
 
 Thus it appears that the theological argument from design is 
 not merely coincident in character, and of the same logical force, 
 with the principles of physical science, but it is identical with 
 many of those principles. It is one and the same maxim, or 
 law of inquiry, which guides the anatomist to a knowledge of 
 many parts of an animal structure that he has never seen, and 
 leads the seeker after religious truth to a recognition of the 
 being, the wisdom, and the beneficence of a God. It furnishes 
 him, also, with an explanation of the mysteries of that universe 
 which he inhabits, with a key to the true purpose and character 
 of those marvellous arrangements and adaptations in the midst of 
 which he lives, and on which, indeed, his existence depends. 
 If the phenomena of nature were not arranged by an all-wise 
 Providence, if this earth does not show the footprints of Divin- 
 ity, then those phenomena are inexplicable, and the origin and 
 tendency of all things are surrounded by a veil which no human 
 eye can pierce. Our life itself is but " a confused noise between 
 two silences "; we emerge from the darkness at one end, only to 
 find ourselves surrounded with wonders whose meaning we can- 
 not fathom, and then to pass again into the thick gloom whose 
 portal is the grave. Infidelity offers us no compensation or sub- 
 stitute for the light that it extinguishes, for the faith which it 
 destroys ; it accounts for nothing, it explains nothing ; it is a 
 mere confession of blank, hopeless ignorance. We can find, not 
 a refuge, but a resting-place, either in the appalling system of 
 Spinoza, under the iron rule of fatalism, which deprives us alike 
 of the consciousness of our own personality, and of all motive 
 for action or effort, or in the absolute skepticism of Hume, which 
 is mere negation and darkness, where we have no assurance even 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 193 
 
 of the grounds of disbelief. The doctrine of theism dissipates 
 this gloom ; it supplies a reason for exertion, and objects for 
 study ; it is a vindication of the possibility of human knowledge. 
 It can be overthrown only by a denial of that possibility. 
 
 What we call nature is an assemblage of objects, and a suc- 
 cession of events. These objects are not simple and uniform, 
 but complex, varied, and curiously fashioned, abounding in curi- 
 ous adjustments and nice arrangements of parts. The events 
 do not succeed each other irregularly, or seemingly at random, 
 but in a fixed order, preserving harmonious relations, which 
 enable us to divine the future from the past. In spite of our 
 life-long familiarity with these marvels, and the petrifying influ- 
 ence of such continuous observation upon our feelings of wonder 
 and admiration, we cannot rest contented with the slender knowl- 
 edge which we gain of them merely from the senses, that is, 
 with a record of their occurrence, and a description of their suc- 
 cessive changes and outward aspects. An irresistible impulse 
 leads us to inquire into their origin, meaning, and tendency. 
 Whence are they, and why do they exist ? Human science 
 alone, without any aid from theology, without any light from 
 above, has no answer to these questions, and, when properly 
 understood, does not even attempt to answer them. It describes 
 the phenomena, as they are seen, with greater or less minute- 
 ness, it records the order of their succession, and it assumes the 
 invariability of this order, or its continuance in the future and the 
 past. It describes and classifies facts, and supposes the exist- 
 ence of similar facts ; and this is all. With a kind of dim con- 
 sciousness, indeed, that these results do not exhaust the subject, 
 or satisfy the demands of rational curiosity, it holds up the laws 
 of phenomena as substitutes for their causes, in a vain attempt to 
 explain their origin. But these physical causes, as they are 
 termed, cannot pass for real ones ; for the manner in which an 
 event takes place does not show the reason of its occurrence, or 
 give us any information of the power that produced it. 
 
 The great fact of the existence of an omnipresent and ever- 
 active Deity, the author, supporter, and immediate cause of all 
 
 25 
 
194 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 \ 
 
 things, affords the only possible answer to these inquiries, the 
 only key which will open the secrets and the mysteries of the 
 universe. That this doctrine first gives distinctness to our con- 
 ceptions by explaining the fact of creation, or the origin of things, 
 is an insufficient statement of its importance ; it solves the far 
 more difficult problem respecting the continuance, meaning, and 
 tendency of those objects and events which mere human science 
 only observes and records. It answers the questions why and 
 wherefore for all the phenomena of time and space. Adaptations 
 now reveal a purpose ; nice adjustments show design. We are 
 not limited now to a mere description of the organ, and of the 
 office which it actually performs ; we can point to its Creator, 
 and tell why it exists, and what object it was intended to answer. 
 We can assume beforehand that every thing has a purpose, down 
 to the minutest fibre of the humblest organism, since infinite 
 wisdom does nothing in vain. We can even assume that cre- 
 ation is formed throughout upon one plan, and directed by a 
 single purpose ; and we find that this is an intelligible plan, 
 a discoverable purpose. Here is not only a positive enlarge- 
 ment of our knowledge, but a guide and object for our subse- 
 quent inquiries. Those who reject the doctrine which furnishes 
 this guide may content themselves, if they can, with those limit- 
 ations which so eminent a naturalist as Geoffrey St. Hilaire pro- 
 posed for the bounds of his studies. " I take good care," he 
 says, u not to ascribe any intention to God, for I mistrust the 
 feeble powers of my reason. I observe facts merely, and go no 
 farther. I only pretend to the character of the historian of what 
 is. I cannot make nature an intelligent being who does nothing 
 in vain." This is the frank avowal of the skeptic who is willing 
 to remain in his ignorance, even after the brilliant discoveries 
 of Cuvier had shown the fruitfulness of the opposite mode of 
 inquiry. 
 
 Still more striking and important is the change made in our 
 notions of the succession of events by this doctrine of the con- 
 stant presence and agency of the Supreme Being. The power 
 that operates in nature is no longer unseen and undiscoverable ; 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 195 
 
 physical occurrences do not follow each other by any inscrutable 
 mechanism, or by a blind and unconscious fatality. In the count- 
 less aspects and ceaseless changes of the world without us, we no 
 longer behold the fortuitous concourse of atoms, self-governed, 
 yet bound one to another by inexorable necessity, and forming 
 an adamantine chain, that is nowhere held up or sustained save 
 by a dim abstraction, where 
 
 " Chaos umpire sits, 
 And by decision more embroils the fray 
 By which he reigns : next him, high arbiter, 
 Chance governs all. " 
 
 Mind resumes its dominion over the vast expanse, and drives 
 these spectres back to their native realm of ignorance and eldest 
 Night. Every event, from the blossoming of the tiniest flower 
 up to the swift flight of the stars in their courses, becomes as in- 
 telligible to man as his own voluntary movements. The contest 
 between mind and matter ceases ; spirit animates, moves, and 
 governs all with a beneficent and discoverable purpose, and with 
 infinite wisdom. The observation of the inherent laws of mate- 
 rial atoms now becomes the study of the character, intentions, 
 and will of Him who created the heavens and the earth, and laid 
 the corner-stone thereof. 
 
 The great truths of natural theology, then, not only rest upon 
 the same proofs which support our conclusions in physical sci- 
 ence, but they enter into that science as an integral portion of it, 
 as its necessary complement and extension up to the farthest lim- 
 its which are imposed upon it by the imperfection of our facul- 
 ties. They are among the facts obtained from our observation 
 of nature, or among the legitimate inferences which are drawn 
 from those facts. They are a portion of the results derived 
 from the strict application of the inductive method to the study 
 of nature, and they are therefore properly recorded with the 
 other conclusions of physical science, among its most valuable 
 contributions to the sum of human knowledge. Certain marks 
 and indentations in red sandstone are held to prove, beyond all 
 question, the existence at some very remote period of a species 
 
196 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 of birds, of which not one bone or other fragment has ever been 
 discovered, and which must have been wholly unlike any winged 
 creature that now inhabits the earth or air. In like manner, cer- 
 tain arrangements and adaptations in the body of a living animal 
 afford abundant indications of purpose and contrivance, and so 
 prove the wisdom and goodness of the great Cause that brought 
 the animal into being. There is no difference between the in- 
 ferences drawn in these two cases, except that the latter is the 
 more simple, direct, and unquestionable ; it rests upon a more 
 copious induction, and it is certainly more credible that a fortui- 
 tous conjunction of other circumstances should have caused cer- 
 tain marks or scratches on a rock, than that an unintelligent and 
 undesigning power should have fashioned so delicate and com- 
 plex an instrument as the human eye. It is as much the object 
 and duty of science to note and record these indications of intel- 
 lect and design, as to distinguish fossil remains from the mere in- 
 organic rock in which they are imbedded. The mere description 
 of the object or phenomenon is incomplete without them. 
 
 So, also, if the study of nature, so far as it relates to the course 
 of events, is mainly occupied with distinguishing invariable ante- 
 cedents from those which are casual and temporary, it is con- 
 cerned, also, to point out such antecedents as are really causal 
 and necessary, and so invariable. The operation of efficient 
 causes is even in a higher degree an object of rational inquiry 
 and effort than the succession of physical causes, provided al- 
 ways that the distinction between them be kept clearly in view, 
 and the one class be not confounded with the other. Our own 
 consciousness gives us a knowledge of one true cause, in the mas- 
 tery of the human will over the body with which it is connected. 
 As anthropology, or the science of man, would be incomplete 
 without a discussion of this capital fact, so physical science, or 
 the study of nature, is imperfect, and even baseless, if it stops 
 short of the modes of operation of that single Power which sus- 
 tains, animates, and governs all. The conclusions of the theo- 
 logical inquirer, therefore, in their lower aspect, form a part, a 
 large constituent element, of the great body of scientific truth 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 197 
 
 which man derives from a study of the material and the intel- 
 lectual universe ; in their lower aspect, I say, for this fact would 
 hardly merit notice except from its relation to my present pur- 
 pose, which is to show the nature of the evidence upon which 
 these conclusions rest. 
 
 Our chief interest in these results does not depend merely on 
 their scientific value, as additions to the sum of human knowl- 
 edge, but on their religious bearing and their applicability to the 
 government of our hearts and lives. The truths thus far estab- 
 lished lead us only to the opening of that great subject which 
 stretches out over the whole field of our duties and hopes as in- 
 telligent, moral, and accountable beings. Though the discussion 
 in these Lectures has been strictly confined to the validity of the 
 common argument for the being of a God, so far as this is affected 
 by the metaphysical theories and speculations now most in vogue, 
 and has thus only prepared the way for an inquiry into the whole 
 system of natural religion, it has still conducted us to some re- 
 sults which are profitable for reflection and practice. " Of all 
 habits of thinking, the most important to be cultivated is that of 
 referring all the phenomena of nature up to their infinite Creator, 
 and of regarding all events, whether physical or moral, as caused 
 or governed by an ever-watchful and active Providence. To 
 have made this the ruling, the habitual, sentiment of our minds 
 is to have laid the foundation of everything which is religious. 
 The world thenceforth becomes a temple, and life itself one 
 continued act of adoration." The philosophical doctrine of the 
 immediate agency of the Deity is that which harmonizes most 
 perfectly with the religious sentiment in man, and gives most satis- 
 faction and support to the devotional spirit. It strengthens the be- 
 lief in revelation, as the course of all physical events is seen to be 
 directed with a moral purpose ; and the blind domain of physical 
 laws and material necessity being broken, a direct interposition of 
 God in the affairs of men becomes not only credible, but natural, 
 and what we should most readily expect from infinite goodness 
 and wisdom combined. We pass on, therefore, from the study 
 of his works to that of his word, not by an abrupt or violent tran- 
 
198 THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 sition, but gradually, and with a distinct recognition of the unity 
 of his character, and of the similarity of plan by which he gov- 
 erns the physical and moral universe, and proclaims his existence 
 and his will to the creatures whom he has made. 
 
SECOND COURSE. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SKEPTICISM OF OUR OWN DAY. 
 
 THE Lectures which I had the honor of delivering from this 
 place the last winter ended with a very brief view of the ordi- 
 nary argument for the existence of God. They were intended 
 to show, not only that this great dogma rests upon unimpeach- 
 able evidence, but that it harmonizes with the conclusions of 
 modern physical science, and forms the only satisfactory expla- 
 nation of the phenomena of nature and the mysteries of the 
 universe. Without it, our knowledge of the facts themselves is 
 imperfect, and the most obvious and significant questions which 
 they suggest remain unanswered. The reasoning employed is 
 that most familiar process of inductive logic which leads us, 
 from the indications afforded by known and observed phenomena, 
 to infer the existence of some other reality or fact, which lies 
 beyond the direct observation of the senses. In science, no less 
 than in religion, we sometimes pass from that which is seen and 
 temporal to that which is unseen and eternal. 
 
 But the establishment of this truth alone, though it is the cen- 
 tral doctrine of natural religion, and all the others depend upon 
 it, still leaves us at the threshold of the subject. We have still 
 to ascertain the character or attributes under which the Deity 
 has manifested himself to mankind, and to learn if these are such 
 as to create- an obligation on our part to conform to his will. 
 Obedience may be yielded either from involuntary awe, or blind 
 submission to absolute and infinite power, or from veneration for 
 
202 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 
 
 perfect wisdom and holiness, and a mingled sentiment of duty, 
 gratitude, and love. The prevalence of one or another of these 
 motives will depend on the views which we may form of the 
 Divine nature, and the peculiarity of the dominant motive will 
 modify and shape the whole religious character. 
 
 It is but a part of the same inquiry to ask what the Divine will 
 is, or what we are required to do, or to refrain from doing, from 
 a regard to the relations in which we stand to God and to our 
 fellow-man. Apart from direct revelation, with which at pres- 
 ent we have nothing to do, the will of the Deity can be inferred 
 only from a knowledge of his character, and this can be learned 
 in no other way than by the study of his works. His moral 
 attributes, with which we are now chiefly concerned, are made 
 known to us almost exclusively through the constitution of our 
 own moral nature ; and accordingly, the study of this nature, or 
 of the ethical constitution of man, must be our chief guide in 
 the present inquiry. As the former Lectures related mainly to 
 things physical, or to what is taught us of the being and agency 
 of God by the phenomena of the outward universe, so, in the 
 present course, the nature and functions of conscience, and the 
 analysis of our sense of moral obligation, must enable us to frame 
 our conceptions of religious duty. This will be the principal 
 aim and tendency of the investigation ; incidentally, as before, 
 we must seek for illustrations of the will and character of the 
 Deity from the outward and visible things that he has made. 
 
 It is true that some of the results of this inquiry respecting the 
 attributes of God were obtained by anticipation in the former 
 course. The same objects and occurrences which prove his 
 existence manifest also his wisdom and power, his infinite good- 
 ness and eternal duration. But in a discussion not specially 
 directed to these attributes, the various difficulties and objections 
 which have been raised could not be fully considered ; and a par- 
 ticular and thorough examination of these is needed before the 
 character of the Deity can be made the groundwork of an un- 
 doubting religious faith. The evidences of his power and maj- 
 esty, indeed, are around us on every side, and cannot but arrest 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 203 
 
 the attention and command the awe and reverence even of those 
 who are least accustomed to observe and reflect. The Divine 
 benevolence, also, appears thoughout the works of creation ; but 
 the deep and dark problem of the origin of evil here impedes our 
 progress, and demands careful thought and inquiry, lest it should 
 leave a shadow upon our hopes, or impair that perfect trust 
 which alone can produce a childlike obedience. It is not always 
 easy, even in observing the conduct of our fellow-men, to recon- 
 cile the claims of justice with those of absolute kindness and 
 benignity, with the perfect law of love ; how much more, in 
 considering the moral government of God, may we expect to 
 find this conflict of opposing qualities, and to hesitate between 
 the demands of equity and right on the one hand, and of infinite 
 mercy and benevolence on the other ! There can be no limita- 
 tion here ; the defects and frailties of human nature may assist us 
 in every case to judge charitably of our brethren ; but we cannot 
 admit either imperfect justice or imperfect love as an attribute of 
 the Almighty. It behooves us to settle our own ideas of the 
 comparative strength of these separate, if not conflicting, claims, 
 before we attempt the solution of the problem. 
 
 What was attempted to be proved in the former Lectures will 
 now be taken for granted ; and this includes, you will remember, 
 not only the existence of God, but his incessant and omnipresent 
 action in the universe. Both the creation of things and the direc- 
 tion of events are his ; the fashioning of our bodies, the constitu- 
 tion of our minds, and the endowment of our moral nature are 
 alike the effects of his wisdom and appointment ; and the reason- 
 ing from effect to cause, which was proved to be legitimate in 
 the case already considered, must be applicable in all others. 
 Even the attribute of free-will, in respect to which man alone is 
 created in the likeness of his Maker, is his gift ; and the posses- 
 sion of it is an indication of his will that it should be exercised. 
 We are free to choose between the evil and the good ; and this 
 freedom presupposes opportunities for choice ; it requires that 
 the alternative should be presented to us, or it would be a delu- 
 sion and a mockery. The promptings of conscience are as clear 
 
204 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 
 
 an indication of the moral judgments of God, as the instincts of 
 animals, the processes of vegetable life, and the structure of the 
 heavens are of his being and his power. In both cases, we rea- 
 son from the thing that is created and finite to the self-existent 
 and infinite Cause. 
 
 But before entering upon the main subject, which I have here 
 sketched out, I would ask your attention, for the remainder of 
 this Lecture, to a preliminary inquiry into the nature and ten- 
 dencies of the skepticism of our own day. This will place in a 
 clearer light the reasons for entering into the discussion at all, 
 and for adopting a particular kind of argument or line of reason- 
 ing as most appropriate for the times. Every age has its pecu- 
 liar habits of thought, its favorite studies, and a liking for one 
 class of reasonings and speculations rather than another. It has, 
 consequently, not only its appropriate advantages, but its pecu- 
 liar temptations and dangers. Nowhere is this more evident 
 than in its religious faith and practice. Infidelity has its Protean 
 forms, and religious belief, as it exists in the great majority of 
 minds, its several points of weakness or exposure, and its pro- 
 pensity to lapse either into blind fanaticism or chilling indiffer- 
 ence. Bigotry is the vice of one age, and the careless neutrality 
 which simulates Christian toleration is the fault of another. Now 
 the substance disappears under the form, or is buried under a 
 load of ritual observances, from which the spirit has long since 
 departed ; and then the reaction from this extreme tends to 
 destroy both form and substance together. Skepticism, also, 
 appears at one time as the hardened advocate of recklessness 
 and vice, throwing off at once every cover and veil of licentious 
 speculation and practice, and assumes at another the garb of a 
 refined philosophy, and the sentiments, if not the exercise, of 
 an austere and Stoical morality. Natural religion needs to be 
 guarded at all points ; it is menaced alike by the insidious specu- 
 lations of Hume, the blasphemous dogmatism of D'Holbach, the 
 \ sneers of Voltaire, or the sentimental professions of Rousseau. 
 To what dangers is it now specially exposed, or what opinions 
 are generally prevalent in the community which tend to impair 
 its credibility or to lessen its influence ? 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 205 
 
 The first that I shall mention is the common notion, that as 
 religious faith is natural to man, and is more an affair of the heart 
 than of the intellect, we are drawn towards it by an irresistible 
 attraction, a native impulse, which needs not the aid of argument, 
 but is rather chilled and weakened by any process of reasoning ; 
 so that all study of the evidences of religion is unnecessary, if 
 not injurious. In conformity with this opinion, we are told that 
 religion is an indestructible sentiment of the human soul, which 
 may assume different forms, or clothe itself in various creeds, 
 but is in truth independent of these forms and creeds, for these 
 are constantly changing, while the sentiment itself is immutable 
 and eternal. To seek for its origin, to ask a reason for it, to at- 
 tempt to justify it, is to call upon man to account for his original 
 instincts. No explanation can be given of them, except that they 
 are a part of the primitive constitution of the soul. The clear- 
 est and most eloquent exposition of this doctrine may be found 
 in Benjamin Constant's noted work upon Religion. 
 
 " Society, language, and religion," he says, " are inherent in 
 man ; only their forms change. We may ask for the cause of 
 these modifications ; we may attempt to discover hup it is that 
 in society man submits to this or that government ; or that in re- 
 ligion he should hold one practice or doctrine rather than another ; 
 or why a certain language should have a peculiar affinity to an- 
 other language. But to attempt to mount up higher than this 
 is a chimerical undertaking, and a sure means of failing to arrive 
 at any truth. To assign to religion, to the love of society, or 
 to the faculty of language, any other cause than the nature of 
 man, is to deceive ourselves by our own choice. Man is not 
 religious because he is timid ; he is religious because he is man. 
 He is not sociable because he is weak, but because the love of 
 society is essential to his constitution. To ask why he is relig- 
 ious, or why he seeks society, is to ask a reason for his physical 
 structure, and for that which constitutes his being."* 
 
 To this statement of the strength and indestructibility of the 
 
 * De la Religion, I. 19, 20. 
 
206 CHARACTERISTICS OP MODERN SKEPTICISM. 
 
 religious sentiment I have nothing to object ; but I would call 
 your attention to the relative importance which is here attributed 
 to this sentiment, and to the ideas, opinions, or belief which ex- 
 cite it, or through which it is manifested. An emotion, of what- 
 ever sort, is called forth by some object, either of the senses, the 
 imagination, or the intellect ; feeling is a state of mind conse- 
 quent upon the reception of some idea. Constant himself admits, 
 that the religious sentiment cannot do without such conceptions, 
 cannot exist without them ; but he affirms that these are change- 
 able and transitory, while the feeling is always the same, immuta- 
 ble and eternal. He calls these " the forms," while the emotion 
 is considered as the thing essential, or " the substance." What 
 matters it, then, if the forms change, while the substance re- 
 mains ? Why concern ourselves about the evidences of religion, 
 which relate only to the preference of one form over another, 
 while we are always sure of the substance, which neither preju- 
 dice nor ignorance can root out of the human mind, and which is 
 religion itself ? 
 
 I answer, first, because the interests of truth require it. It is 
 little for me to be conscious of lofty aspirations or devout senti- 
 ment, unless assured of the reality of the objects aspired to, and 
 of the actual existence of the Being towards whom the sentiment 
 is directed. To show that the sentiment is indestructible is only 
 to prove that religion is possible, or perhaps inevitable ; but not 
 that it is real. The lowest idolater, when he throws himself 
 before the wheels to be crushed by the chariot of his god, 
 shows a strength and fervor of religious feeling which the Chris- 
 tian martyrs did no more than equal. Is it a matter of indiffer- 
 ence, then, whether we worship Brahma or Jehovah, so that we 
 worship at all ? Religion is a generic term, which includes the 
 most degrading forms of superstition, as well as the purest and 
 most spiritual conceptions of Him who created the heavens and 
 the earth. The question is, not whether some religion be not 
 necessary to man, but whether the religion which the enlightened 
 theist professes be true or false. I invert the terms, then, which 
 are used by Benjamin Constant to express the comparative im- 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 207 
 
 portance of the two elements of religion. It is the sentiment 
 which is the form, for its strength varies in different individuals 
 according to the degree of natural sensibility with which they are 
 endowed, and of the culture which this has received by medi- 
 tation or exercise ; it is the opinion, or belief, which is the sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Still further, so far from this emotion or feeling being all that 
 is essential in religious faith or belief, or even coextensive with 
 it, properly speaking, it is no belief at all, and it varies by a 
 wholly different standard from that which measures the degree 
 of faith. Sentiment is the atmosphere in which the mind acts, 
 not the product of its activity ; it is the accompaniment, but not 
 the fruit, of meditation. A Hindoo devotee, who fulfils his vow 
 to pass years in ecstatic contemplation of the perfections of his 
 god, and a Newton equally absorbed in the attempt to solve a 
 scientific problem, are instances respectively of the lowest abuse 
 and the loftiest exercise of which the human mind is capable. 
 The excellence of any emotion is measured, not by its intensity, 
 but by its appropriateness to the occasion which calls its forth. 
 A child's delight in gaudy colors or an unmeaning jingle of 
 sounds is as keen as a cultivated person's enjoyment of fine 
 painting or exquisite music. The sentiment itself is blind ; it is 
 the reason or the judgment that furnishes the proper objects on 
 which it is expended, and regulates its force according to their 
 comparative value. If excited by that which is intrinsically low 
 and mean, if directed towards merely fanciful conceptions or an 
 unfounded belief, the finest emotion is wasted, and that which 
 should be the ornament becomes the disgrace of human nature. 
 Persons of lively sensibilities and a poetical temperament may 
 revel in the enjoyment of devotional enthusiasm ; but if this be 
 not founded on clear and well-defined notions respecting the sub- 
 jects of their faith, it is at best but a sort of religious intoxica- 
 tion. And in proportion to the height of the excitement, and 
 the unsubstantial character of its basis, will be the danger of a 
 reaction. A fever heat is soon followed by a chill, the revul- 
 sion being from one extreme to the other ; when the unnatural 
 
208 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 
 
 fervor is exhausted, it is sure to be succeeded by unnatural 
 coldness. 
 
 After all, truth has its paramount claims for consideration in 
 religion as in every thing else ; the intellect has its own work to 
 perform, as well as the heart, and an imperative impulse urges us 
 towards the completion of it. Questions are suggested, doubts 
 begin to creep in ; and if we have assured ourselves beforehand, 
 that reason can lend no aid in this emergency, that inquiry and 
 argument cannot buttress our weakened faith, there is no refuge 
 left from the blank abyss of skepticism. To say, that reasoning, 
 or the logic-power, as it has been contemptuously called in refer- 
 ence to this subject, can give us no aid in the momentous inquiry 
 respecting our origin, duty, and destiny, that here the intellect 
 must be silenced, and the heart alone be listened to, is to main- 
 tain, either that there is no such thing as truth or falsehood in 
 religion, or that the mental faculties in this respect alone are 
 incompetent for their work, and cannot distinguish truth from 
 error. In all the other relations of life, we must act under the 
 guidance of the understanding and to the best of our judgment, 
 after careful inquiry ; here alone, where we have more at stake 
 than in all the others combined, we are told that we must trust 
 exclusively to impulse and sentiment. Unhallowed reason must 
 not be permitted to lay the foundations of a temple to the living 
 God. 
 
 The doctrine here considered, by representing religious belief 
 only as the constantly changing " form " of religious sentiment, 
 and hence as altogether secondary in importance, leads to the 
 theory of progress or development in religion, as it is called, 
 which exhibits the "form" as steadily improving with the ad- 
 vancement of the human race in culture and refinement. Mankind 
 pass on, in the lapse of generations, from one stage of religious 
 improvement to another, constantly building upon, enlarging, and 
 perfecting the edifice of their faith. Each new creed or form of 
 doctrine is most appropriate and best fitted for the age in which 
 it appears ; it is true for the time, but is destined to give way 
 at some future period to a more expanded and spiritual truth. 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 209 
 
 Fetichism yields to polytheism, and this again to the doctrine of 
 the one true God. Monotheism is in turn to be succeeded by 
 some more spiritualized form of belief, probably by that which 
 identifies God with the universe, and represents him, in a per- 
 verted meaning of the phrase, as all in all. 
 
 The consequence of this doctrine is, that we are to regard 
 nothing as established or permanent in religious belief; we are 
 " ever learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth." 
 There are no standards in our faith upon which we can rely with 
 firm assurance, as if resting upon the Rock of Ages. For the pur- 
 est creed the only appropriate motto is that through which the 
 wise man of old instructed his king to moderate his feelings, both 
 in prosperity and adversity : " And this also shall pass away." 
 We are thus taught, not properly to believe, but to tolerate, any 
 form of religious opinion ; at the best, it is true only for the 
 time. Why concern ourselves, then, about the evidences of it, 
 as these are only the deceptive supports of that which must 
 finally crumble and disappear ? Cultivate only the religious sen- 
 timent, purified, as far as possible, from belief in any thing ; and 
 leave theological inquiry alone. Of course, this theory is the 
 very essence of skepticism, for it teaches not merely that a par- 
 ticular doctrine or system is false, but that all systems are neces- 
 sarily erroneous, the human mind being incapable of arriving at 
 absolute truth. 
 
 Certainly, this monstrous theory is held in its entireness, and 
 with a full view of all its consequences, only by a very few of 
 those who retain the semblance of respect for religion. But I 
 am speaking of the causes and tendencies of the peculiar skepti- 
 cism of our own day ; and foremost among these I place the fre- 
 quent expression of opinions leading in this direction, if they do 
 not come up to the whole system which substitutes sentiment fpr^ 
 faith, decries the study of the evidences, depreciates the value' 
 of the reasoning faculty in all religious subjects, and represents 
 theology only as an interminable series of doctrines held by suc- 
 cessive ages, each one of which is perhaps an improvement on 
 its predecessor, but is in no proper sense an adequate statement 
 
 V 
 
210 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 
 
 of the truth. This theory, if it may be called one, is peculiar to 
 our own times ; I do not find it in the writings either of the 
 avowed infidels or the reputed believers of a former age, though 
 the phraseology appropriate to it is now often heard, even from 
 the pulpit. That some modification of it, or approach to it, may 
 coexist in many minds with strong devotional feeling and a be- 
 lieving heart is so obvious a fact, that it is hardly necessary to 
 allude to it ; but that its tendency in all cases is to unsettle the 
 foundations both of natural and revealed religion, and to leave the 
 holder of it exposed, in his changeable states of emotion, to 
 utter skepticism, is a truth which hardly any one can question. 
 
 The next cause of infidelity in our own day, which I shall 
 here notice, is the want of consistency, if not the apparent con- 
 tradiction, between many persons' religious views and their sci- 
 entific opinions, or their ideas of the course of nature and the 
 operation of physical causes. There is a difficulty here in many 
 minds, which is not the less real because it is seldom made the 
 subject of reflection, or even recognized as an inconsistency that 
 proves the existence of error on the one side or the other. I do 
 not now refer to the crude and hastily formed hypotheses and 
 generalizations in modern science, which come directly in con- 
 flict with the great truths of the being of a God and his agency 
 in the physical universe, so far as these depend upon or are 
 proved by material phenomena, and which have been framed, 
 perhaps, with direct reference to such contradiction. These 
 hypotheses have been sufficiently confuted by the progress of 
 science itself ; and the reception of them at any time being con- 
 fined to a small number of persons, mostly those who are 
 engaged in scientific pursuits, they are not to be ranked among 
 the general causes of popular skepticism. I refer rather to the 
 .direct incompatibility between a belief in the moral government 
 -\~of God, and the necessary connection of physical causes with 
 their effects. The doctrine of an immediately superintending 
 Providence cannot be reconciled with the idea of a chain of 
 events, each link of which is determined by an inherent neces- 
 sity, growing out of its relations to those which precede and 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 211 
 
 follow it in the succession. Even if the human will is admitted 
 to be free, while every thing else is guided by a secret and irre- 
 sistible power, depending on the original constitution of things, 
 man cannot be considered as the object of moral control, and all 
 religious belief, properly so called, is mere delusion. 
 
 All men, however, are not professed metaphysicians ; in fact, 
 very few really concern themselves about such abstract specula- 
 tions as these ; and it may be thought, therefore, that they can- 
 not be ranked among the direct causes of either speculative or 
 practical infidelity. It is true that the difficulty in question is 
 rather felt than expressed by most persons. They do not state 
 it to themselves in the rather technical and abstruse form which 
 I have here employed merely for convenience and brevity of 
 speech. Still, the inconsistency alluded to is real, and after 
 very little reflection it becomes sufficiently obvious. Their 
 religious views do not harmonize with the current notions, nor 
 even with their personal belief, as to the course of natural events. 
 Religious ideas and devotional language in this respect have 
 come to be regarded in a great measure as conventional, as not 
 admitting of a literal interpretation, or strict application to this 
 world's events. There is a vague impression that there is a 
 mystery in the matter, something hard to be understood, which 
 yet is to be received as an article of faith, perhaps for the very 
 reason that it is a trial of our faith. Now this is a mere evasion 
 or postponement of the difficulty, and it will be recognized as 
 such in those hours of hesitancy or anxious meditation which 
 must come, more or less frequently, to every reflecting mind. 
 We are concerned to establish the literal verity of every doc- 
 trine of natural religion ; and this problem, consequently, is to be 
 searched to the bottom, whether the result of the inquiry tends 
 to confirm our preconceived opinions or not. 
 
 Religion requires us to consider ourselves as the objects of a 
 Divine Providence, of an infinite superintending care, which or- 
 ders all events for good. This doctrine is a necessary consequence 
 of a belief in the benevolence and justice of the Deity, and in his 
 moral government of the world. A devout mind recognizes it 
 
212 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN .SKEPTICISM . 
 
 almost instinctively as such, and considers all events, especially 
 those which concern one's personal welfare or happiness, as dis- 
 pensations which are required for his instruction or improvement. 
 It discerns a moral purpose in all things, believing that they were 
 specially designed to produce a certain effect on the character 
 and heart. It subordinates the physical to the moral ; regarding 
 the former as means, and the latter as an end. Life is a gift and 
 a trust, to be exercised for certain purposes ; death is a warning, 
 and a token that in a particular case these purposes are accom- 
 plished. Every cause of affliction or rejoicing has an errand and 
 a meaning, and it is our duty to consider it as such, to try to read 
 its lesson, and apply it for the regulation of our hearts and lives. 
 Resignation is always a virtue, for the very reason that repining is 
 inconsistent with a belief in the infinite wisdom and mercy of 
 God, and in his constant providence. Any enjoyment, success 
 in any pursuit, is to be regarded as a cause of thankfulness, be- 
 cause his power placed it within our reach, and it is his will that 
 it should redound to our spiritual benefit as well as to our imme- 
 diate happiness. 
 
 This is the view which the believer takes, in profession at 
 least, of the affairs of this world, and of its moral government by 
 the Almighty ; it is the view which religion requires him to take, 
 if it be not reduced to a mere speculative belief in the existence 
 of a God, who is no further concerned with the lot of mankind 
 than as he originally created them, endowed them with certain 
 faculties, and placed them upon the earth to determine their des- 
 tiny by their own wisdom and their observation of the workings 
 of nature. But in practical life and the management of their 
 daily concerns, most persons act upon a theory which is the very 
 opposite of this religious doctrine. They look upon the course 
 of events as inevitably determined, from the beginning, by the 
 inherent constitution of things and by the relations of objects and 
 circumstances to each other, without reference to the merit or 
 demerit of accountable beings, and without regard to any moral 
 lesson or purpose whatsoever. Every occurrence in the out- 
 ward universe is an efficient cause, which is necessarily followed 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 213 
 
 by an effect exactly proportioned to it ; and this effect, again, 
 being causal in its nature as to the events which follow it, inevi- 
 tably acts upon them all, and has a share in determining their 
 character, so that its consequences might be traced, if we 
 had the power of distinguishing them from the similar operat- 
 ing causes with which they are mingled, in an ever-widening 
 stream, through all time. Life and death, motion and rest, 
 health and disease, growth, progress, decay, and restoration, are 
 all necessarily determined by each other and by attendant cir- 
 cumstances, and follow each other in perpetual succession ; moral 
 good or evil having, at most, a power too small to be appre- 
 ciated in checking the current or altering its direction. Man 
 himself, though his free-will be admitted as one of the causes 
 which affect his lot, is still operated upon by so many other and 
 more powerful ones, that he seems like a leaf floating upon the 
 stream, and hurried away by it, he knows not whither. His 
 birth and death, to recur to a former illustration, were both 
 determined ages before by the altered position of a grain of sand. 
 He is for ever complaining that he is the sport of circumstances, 
 be his efforts and merits what they may. The very necessity of 
 effort, the call which is made upon him for self-denial, courage, 
 fortitude, and exertion, is a proof that there are powers in action 
 against which he must struggle, influences that he must resist, if 
 he is not willing passively to accept the worst lot that fortune 
 may offer him. Even his character, if we may believe his mur- 
 murings, is formed rather for him than by him, through the acci- 
 dent of his birth in one or another country, in a higher or lower 
 position of life, and through the circumstances which surrounded 
 his infancy and childhood, before either body or mind had strength 
 enough to contend against external influences. Who can dis- 
 cern, he asks in moments of despondency, the watchfulness and 
 justice of an ever-ruling Providence, or any moral intention what- 
 soever, amid this chaos of blind and conflicting forces ? When 
 in such a mood, the highest virtue within his reach, or the one 
 most essential to his well-being, seems to be the Stoicism which 
 teaches insensibility to hardship and wrong, and the stifling of all 
 generous aspirations. 
 
214 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 
 
 Do I exaggerate the inconsistency, then, between what may 
 be called the religious and the practical view of life ? Is it 
 possible for the two to coexist in the same mind, without the 
 individual becoming conscious at times that they are wholly ir- 
 reconcilable with each other, so that he is reduced to the sad 
 necessity of choosing between them ? Either God governs the 
 world, or the blind fatality of physical causes, operating through 
 the powers inherent in every atom of brute matter, governs it ; 
 there is no other alternative. In his closet, or while listening to 
 a sermon, or under the affliction caused by a recent bereavement, 
 or in near view of approaching death, man accepts the former 
 doctrine, and thinks that he believes it, though he has made no 
 examination of the grounds on which it rests. But he goes out 
 into the world, his mind, as he supposes, recovers its tone, he 
 watches the course of events, judges of the future by the past, 
 prepares to resist the force of circumstances or to yield to them, 
 and acts altogether on the supposition that these events and cir- 
 cumstances depend on natural causes, which operate irresistibly, 
 and were not designed or directed by a conscious being with any 
 moral or spiritual purpose whatever. This, as it seems to me, 
 is the chief reason why most persons' religious professions differ 
 so widely from their practice, and is the most fruitful source of 
 modern practical skepticism. Men do not believe in the moral 
 government of God's universe, because they mistake the charac- 
 ter and exaggerate the number of the influences that are at work 
 in it. They not only believe in the efficiency of secondary 
 causes, but extend the sphere of their operation till there is no 
 room left for the agency of the First and Infinite Cause. 
 
 It is true, that this difficulty only affects our belief in the prov- 
 idence, not in the being, of a God. We may still believe that 
 he is, and that his power and wisdom are really adequate to all 
 occasions, though they never have been manifested or exerted 
 in the universe now tenanted by man, since it was first rendered 
 fit for his habitation. So we may believe in the existence of any 
 one star in the heavens, though we know that it is at too vast a 
 distance to exert the slightest influence over the revolutions of the 
 
r/ 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 215 
 
 orbs in our own system, and the ray of light from it is so slender 
 and faint, that it might be blotted out for years and ages before 
 it would be missed from the nightly sky. Such knowledge of 
 an isolated fact is of some value, certainly, for the purposes of 
 science ; it affords food for the intellect, but none for the con- 
 science or the active powers, as it has not the slightest bearing 
 on the conduct of men. So the knowledge of the being of a 
 God affords a foundation for theology, but none for religion, un- 
 less it be coupled with a direct recognition of his interference, 
 however mysterious, in the affairs of this world, and of his care 
 for every member of the human family. If not thus strength- 
 ened, it might be profitable for faith, but not for works. If we 
 banish the Creator from the sphere of our own life and action 
 as individuals, it is nearly the same thing for us as if he did not 
 exist. 
 
 Neither can we obtain a ground for religious belief, properly 
 so named, if we qualify the denial of a Divine Providence in 
 this life by the supposition of a future state of being, in which 
 the wrongs and imperfections, the casualties and sorrows, of this 
 earthly existence may be redressed and compensated, and the 
 full ends of justice and mercy be obtained. Apart from revela- 
 tion, as has been shown, we have no satisfactory assurance that 
 there will be any future state ; and if there are no indications of 
 the moral government of this world, there is certainly no reason 
 to expect retribution in the next. If, in this little scene of human 
 life, we are left to take our chance under the operation of general 
 laws, which have regard to the continuance and uniformity of 
 physical arrangements, but not to the moral education of intelli- 
 gent and accountable beings, then we cannot look upon the Au- 
 thor of nature as a righteous judge, and therefore have nothing to 
 hope, either here or hereafter, from his justice or compassion. 
 It will not follow that he is averse to our welfare, but simply that 
 he is indifferent about it ; we play an insignificant part upon 
 theatre of creation, and must not arrogantly infer that another 
 state of being will be instituted with more direct reference to our 
 benefit and instruction. 
 
216 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 
 
 I am not speaking now of some alleged anomalies and imper- 
 fections in the moral government of mankind, but of the apparent 
 want of any moral government whatever, if we admit the contin- 
 ued and inflexible agency of physical laws, and the operation of 
 them without interference or immediate control by the Almighty. 
 The perfection of a moral government would consist in rendering 
 to all intelligent creatures according to their actions, considered 
 as good or evil, and in exact proportion to their personal merits 
 and demerits. But perhaps we have no right to look for such 
 perfection here, certainly not for what would appear to us as 
 perfection, because our intelligence is limited ; we cannot al- 
 ways discern what the consequences of actions are, and even 
 our moral judgments are often erroneous. We should be satis- 
 fied, if on the whole there appeared to be a great predominance 
 of right, if the law of justice were observed to hold throughout 
 this life with only occasional variations and inconsistencies. 
 These exceptional cases might be left to be cleared up by 
 enlarged experience and observation, by more thorough study 
 of the ways of God with man. To suppose that we are inca- 
 pable of seeing even as much as this is to admit that the scheme 
 of God's providence is useless for the moral education of man. 
 But the theory we are now considering makes the distribution 
 of happiness between the wicked and the good entirely fortui- 
 tous, and so denies that there is any government which has 
 reference to the conscience and the heart. The physical con- 
 sequences of actions, not their moral character, determine the 
 happiness or misery which they occasion. As* prudent beings, 
 having a proper regard to our present and future welfare, we 
 ought to study the organic laws of the universe, not the moral 
 law written on the heart. 
 
 You may say, indeed, that although these organic laws, when 
 once instituted, are allowed to operate unchecked by moral con- 
 siderations, yet the Maker of them had a moral purpose in view, 
 and so ordered them from the first, that their future results should 
 always maintain or corroborate the law of justice. What, then, 
 becomes of the free agency of man, and his unrestricted choice 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 217 
 
 between good and evil ? I understand what is meant by physi- 
 cal mechanism, but cannot comprehend a scheme of government 
 through a moral machine. The moral sense, as well as the relig- 
 ious sentiment, instinctively requires an immediate Governor of 
 the universe, one who judges every action of a voluntary agent 
 for and by itself, instead of leaving it to be rewarded or pun- 
 ished by a mechanical contrivance that was set in motion ages 
 before. Grant to these unchangeable laws of the physical uni- 
 verse what indirect moral tendency you may ; if they exclude 
 all immediate action of a righteous Judge, men will study them 
 only in their physical aspect and relations, and they will hide 
 from our view both the character and the existence of Him who 
 made them. It is in this way that a belief in them has contrib- 
 uted so largely to the diffusion of skeptical opinions in our own 
 day. 
 
 And here, I apprehend, is the reason why scientific pursuits 
 have not, of late, always tended to confirm the religious faith 
 of those who were engaged in them. It is the business of the 
 man of science to discover the invariable connections and se- 
 quences of facts and events, and to separate these from the 
 casual, temporary, and irregular combinations which throw no 
 light upon the nature of the phenomena. This attempt has been 
 crowned of late years with the most brilliant success, the domin- 
 ion of law, as it is called, having been everywhere established 
 in the midst of what seemed to be the greatest variety and 
 confusion. The laws of nature, we are told, admit of no ex- 
 ceptions ; seeming anomalies and contradictions, when further 
 studied, are found to exemplify a higher law, or to come from 
 the mingled operation of two or more principles, so that the ap- 
 parent exception confirms the rule. But the moral effect or 
 tendency of a phenomenon is not found to be one of its invari- 
 able characteristics, and so, even when observed, it is considered 
 only as a fortuitous coincidence, which indicates nothing as to 
 the fixed relations of events, and therefore comes not within the 
 field which the student of nature endeavours to survey. The 
 mere separation of the moral from the physical sciences, and 
 
218 CHARACTERISTICS OP MODERN SKEPTICISM. 
 
 the division of labor which assigns one class of men exclusively 
 to the study of the. latter, necessarily draw off their attention from 
 those observations and inquiries which give a meaning and a pur- 
 pose to natural phenomena, and which lead us from the study of 
 this fabric of the universe up to the character and intentions of 
 its Almighty Architect. If this search after the necessary and 
 immutable relations of things, in which the followers of physical 
 science are wholly absorbed, has led many of them to doubt 
 whether man's own nature be not subject to a like inevitable 
 control with that which governs the fall of an atom and the 
 courses of the planets, and so to reduce the human will to a 
 phenomenon of the same class with gravitation, all the effects of 
 which may be predicted beforehand from its known laws, why 
 should we wonder that most of them practically regard external 
 nature as mere mechanism, which has no motive power save two 
 or three inherent and inexplicable forces, and which is strictly 
 limited to the production of mechanical results ? 
 
 One object of these Lectures will be to consider and refute 
 this erroneous mode of looking upon the phenomena of nature, 
 on which so many have made shipwreck of their religious faith. 
 The argument in the former course has paved the way for this 
 discussion ; as we then saw reason to believe that God works 
 immediately in nature, so I shall now endeavour to show that the 
 effects of his agency are not merely physical, but moral. Not 
 only order and uniformity, but justice and benevolence, are the 
 laws of his creation ; the lessons which the universe teaches are 
 addressed to the conscience, no less than to the intellect, of man. 
 I know that the doctrine both of a special and a general Provi- 
 dence has been much abused ; let those who have made theology 
 a particular study instruct us how to limit our expectations from 
 it, how to guard the dogma itself against the exaggerations of 
 fanaticism. But unless this great truth be admitted in some 
 form or other, I see not how any religious belief is possible. 
 It is comparatively little to know that God exists, and that his 
 moving and sustaining power constantly extends through all crea- 
 tion, unless we are also satisfied that he moves and governs all 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 219 
 
 with a moral intent ; that what is physical is everywhere subser- 
 vient to what is moral ; the ultimate object of external nature, 
 as well as of human life, being to vindicate the great truths of 
 morality and religion in the soul of man, and Jo prepare him 
 for communion with his Maker. 
 
 The only other source of modern skepticism to which I shall 
 here advert is the too common opinion, that with a pure and ele- 
 vated system of morals, we can well afford to do without religion 
 altogether. So far as duty is concerned, it is assumed that man 
 is, by virtue of his original constitution, an independent and self- 
 sufficient being ; and therefore any communication with or reli- 
 ance upon Divine power, for the sake of aid and consolation, is 
 unnecessary, improper, and derogatory to his own dignity. If 
 the religious doctrine contains any thing more than the law writ- 
 ten upon our own hearts, it cannot be of Divine origin ; if it be 
 perfectly coincident with that law, it is useless, and can in no 
 proper sense be called a religion. The dictates of conscience, 
 then, must comprise the whole duty of man ; and a proper culti- 
 vation of this faculty supplies a sufficient ground of obedience to 
 them, and does away all necessity for the interference of the 
 Deity, either to give an additional sanction to the law itself, or to 
 supply stronger motives for respecting it as a rule of action. 
 
 These opinions are systematically held and openly avowed 
 only by a small class of Rationalists, who seek first to reduce 
 Christianity to a level with Natural Religion, and then to narrow 
 down the latter to a cold regard for moral principle and an hon- 
 est desire to lead a virtuous and irreproachable life. Practically, 
 however, they influence the conduct of many others, who find in 
 them a sufficient excuse for their neglect of the religion which 
 they profess, and for the want of conformity between their faith 
 and their practice. It is the most specious, and for that reason 
 the most dangerous, form of modern unbelief. In a community 
 like our own, if not all over the civilized world, the avowed 
 advocates of licentiousness and immorality would not be able 
 to obtain a hearing ; a gay and mocking skepticism, like that of 
 the French philosophers of the last century, would not be toler- 
 
220 CHARACTEKISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 
 
 ated ; a coarse and blasphemous one, like that of Paine and 
 Carlile, would be scouted with general indignation. But the 
 tolerant and inquiring spirit of the age, fond of innovations and 
 reputed discoveries in philosophy and science, is ready to listen 
 to any doctrine which is recommended by the purity of life of 
 those who hold it. If religion does not impose any new duties, 
 nor create any additional obligation, many will gladly save them- 
 selves the trouble of looking into its evidences, and of choosing 
 among the various forms under which it is presented to their 
 notice. 
 
 Against this vague notion of the inutility of religious belief, I 
 have only to bring the obvious consideration, that every relation 
 of life has its appropriate and peculiar sphere of duties ; and of 
 all such relations, the nearest and most important is that which 
 connects man with his God. We are not isolated beings ; inti- 
 mate ties bind us to our kindred, our country, and our fellow- 
 men ; and each bond of union is a source of obligation, of affec- 
 tions to be cherished, and offices to be performed. Our moral 
 nature is adapted to these various relations ; specific affections 
 corresponding to them are implanted in the soul, and the sense of 
 duty requires their cultivation and exercise. Strongest and holi- 
 est among these is the religious sentiment, which leads our 
 thoughts up to the great Author of our being, and finds its 
 appropriate gratification in worship and prayer. Supporting 
 rather than supported by conscience, it asserts rightful suprem- 
 acy over all other motives of conduct, and lends a new aspect to 
 every duty in which we may be engaged. Though often per- 
 verted and obscured by ignorance, prejudice, or a false philoso- 
 phy, there are times when the most indifferent are compelled to 
 listen to it, and to heed its dictates. It does not supersede con- 
 science, but enlarges the field of its activity, introducing into it 
 the new duties which grow out of what is perhaps our newly dis- 
 covered relation to the omnipotent Creator and righteous Judge 
 of all the children of men. 
 
 And further, the assumption, that the secret monitor within the 
 breast is all-sufficient for its work, and needs no aid from religion 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 221 
 
 to enable it to maintain a perfect system of morals, is supported 
 neither by reason nor experience. Conscience speaks with right- 
 ful authority, but its voice cannot always be heard ; it is often 
 overpowered by temptation, or drowned in the din of the pas- 
 sions. It enforces the law of justice and right only so far as this 
 law is made known to it through the reason ; and therefore, if 
 not enlightened and instructed, it acts in a very contracted 
 sphere. Religion is its only competent teacher and guide, as 
 well as the chief source of its strength. In fact, the sublime 
 idea of absolute purity and rectitude in thought and act, which is 
 the present end and aim of our moral being, was first proclaimed 
 on earth by the founder of Christianity, and never has been sin- 
 cerely pursued but by his disciples. We cannot now repudiate 
 the authority of the giver, and still hope to possess the gift ; it is 
 placed so far above us, that, without his aid, we cannot attain to 
 it, or even keep it steadily in sight. As well might one who has 
 with difficulty climbed to a giddy height, till his outstretched 
 arms could just reach the desired object, safely thrust away the 
 ladder from beneath him, and hang suspended only by his hands 
 over the awful depth below. Morality has no safeguard but 
 religion, and the two must be accepted or rejected together. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE HUMAN DISTINGUISHED FROM THE BRUTE MIND. 
 
 AMONG the works of creation, the study of which leads us up 
 to a knowledge of the being and attributes of God, the foremost 
 place is occupied by man himself. We are ourselves his off- 
 spring, creatures whom he has endowed with a peculiar physical, 
 intellectual, and moral organization, the properties and tendencies 
 of which reflect the character and purposes of our Maker. The 
 marvellous structure of our bodies, these tenements of clay which 
 we inhabit for a season, shows his wisdom, his constant agency, 
 his designipg care ; so also the constitution of our minds, the 
 laws by which our sensations, ideas, and judgments are formed 
 and made to succeed each other, are so many tokens of the Di- 
 vine will and character. They show what part God intended 
 we should act upon the theatre of the universe. Still further, 
 in our moral nature, or the emotions that are excited in us by 
 the sight of surrounding objects and events, and especially by 
 the contemplation of our own acts, and of those of our fellow- 
 beings, we find our only means of knowing what the moral at- 
 tributes of God are, and what, if any, is his scheme of moral 
 government. Practically speaking, we are concerned to know, 
 not so much what things are in themselves, as the manner in 
 which we are affected by the sight of them, and by living in the 
 midst of them. The fitness of objects to give pleasure to man 
 depends equally on the characteristic qualities of those objects, 
 and on the susceptibility of the human mind to pleasure of one 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 223 
 
 kind rather than another, and indeed on its capacity of being 
 pleased at all. 
 
 We come, therefore, to an examination of the nature and 
 functions of conscience, as the first point of our inquiry. My 
 object will be to show, that man is not merely an intellectual 
 being, placed here on earth to satisfy his curiosity, to improve 
 his rational nature, and to provide for his own well-being. This 
 would be a conceivable end of his creation, but it is notoriously 
 not the real end. If he had the intellectual faculties of an arch- 
 angel, and this earth were a paradise for his habitation, affording 
 every object that could gratify his desires and promote his happi- 
 ness, if enjoyment brought no satiety, and labor no fatigue, if 
 his birth were only an introduction to active pleasure, and death 
 were nothing but painless extinction, then we could easily at- 
 tribute unlimited benevolence to his Creator, and consider that 
 man's only purpose in life was to pass on from one phase of 
 happiness to another. Why is it, that we do not regard this as 
 the actual, or even as a desirable, plan of human existence ? It 
 is only an obscure reference to such a scheme which lends any 
 force, or indeed any meaning, to the oft-repeated complaints 
 about the existence of evil under the government of a God of 
 infinite benevolence. Yet when such a plan of life is presented 
 for us to contemplate at once in its entireness, we almost in- 
 stinctively reject it, as not admitting the existence of those qual- 
 ities which now constitute the true ornament and dignity of human 
 nature, and as making no provision for their cultivation, even if 
 they did exist. A more authoritative principle than self-love 
 declares to us that the practice of virtue is higher than the pur- 
 suit of enjoyment, that holiness is more desirable than happiness, 
 and that the Divine government, in so far as it shows infinite jus- 
 tice and benevolence combined, and affords scope for progress 
 and effort, as well as for the gratification of desires ending in 
 self, is in truth the noblest conceivable expression of the wisdom 
 and goodness of God. 
 
 To prove this point, and to show by contrast the true nature 
 of the moral faculty in man, I propose to go some way back, 
 
224 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 and to examine the only case within the sphere of human ob- 
 servation where intellectual are not combined with moral quali- 
 ties, and where, consequently, enjoyment for the time must be 
 regarded as the sole end of existence. I refer, of course, to the 
 mental constitution of brutes, or of all orders of animated being 
 which are inferior to man. The subject is confessedly an ob- 
 scure one ; but I doubt not that enough of it may be made out 
 with certainty to answer all the purposes of this discussion. If 
 the investigation should lead to the establishment of a broad 
 distinction between man and the brute, so as to show that the 
 mental endowments of the latter differ from those of the former, 
 not in degree only, but in kind, this will be a collateral advan- 
 tage, which will help us to clear up some other difficulties in our 
 subject. 
 
 Let me limit the object and extent of the inquiry in the outset. 
 With respect either to the human or the brute mind, we can only 
 ask what it does ; it would be idle to inquire what it is, for we 
 are ignorant of the inward nature, the essential constitution, of 
 both. In the one case, it is true, we have the aid of conscious- 
 ness, while in the other we are restricted to external observation. 
 But why that unit of being which we call man, or mind, should 
 have one set of powers and susceptibilities rather than another, 
 is a question which mere physical or metaphysical science does 
 not pretend to answer, otherwise than by saying, that such is the 
 will of his Creator ; the moralist or the theologian may here 
 corhe in, and show the reasonableness of that will, but even he 
 cannot tell how it is carried into effect. In the case of the 
 brute, of course, we can only look at its outward acts, and 
 thence dimly infer its peculiarities of mental organization. 
 
 Now there is no action whatever, considered merely as a vis- 
 ible fact, as an exercise of nerves and muscles, which many 
 brutes cannot perform nearly or quite as well as men. They 
 walk, leap, run, and climb ; they eat, drink, and continue their 
 species ; they weep, cry, and even articulate. From their out- 
 ward acts alone, then, it seems impossible to deduce the charac- 
 teristic feature of their mental nature. Luckily, a third question 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 225 
 
 remains to us, the answer to which directly involves the subject 
 of our present inquiry, while it appears to be within the reach of 
 human investigation. In regard either to instinct or intelligence, 
 though we cannot tell what it i*, we may ascertain what it is not. 
 As we affirm confidently that mind is not material, so we may 
 find sure reason to believe that it is radically different from in- 
 stinct. And to establish this point is my first object. 
 
 It is first necessary to determine the meaning of the word 
 instinct, or to ascertain what phenomena are properly considered 
 as instinctive. Some writers speak of "physical instincts," 
 among which they class the beating of the heart, the movements 
 of respiration, the peristaltic motion of the intestines, and the 
 like. But as these motions are regular and involuntary, they are 
 more properly regarded as automatic, or mechanical,* and are 
 classed with the phenomena of organic life rather than with those 
 of instinct, especially as operations corresponding to them, or 
 exactly similar, are carried on in vegetables. The touch of an 
 insect alighting on the common flower called Venus 's Fly-trap 
 causes its sides to spring forcibly together, so as to catch and 
 hold the intruder, whose struggles only increase the pressure of 
 this self-acting trap. Such movements resemble, not the actions 
 of a bird in building its nest, but the motions of wheels which are 
 dependent on the uncoiling of a spring or the falling of a weight. 
 
 Recent discoveries in physiology have established the exist- 
 ence of what is called a reflex action in certain nerves, by which, 
 
 * To avoid misconception, I may here mention, once for all, that I use 
 the common phraseology that is founded on the mechanical theory of nature's 
 operations, or the doctrine of secondary causes, but without admitting- the 
 truth of that theory. In my former Course, I endeavoured to prove that all 
 action or change in the purely material creation must be attributed to the 
 immediate agency of the Creator. Still, for the convenience of speech, to 
 avoid circumlocution and incessant reference to this doctrine, I continue to 
 use the language that is sanctioned by universal custom, though it is derived 
 from what seems to me a wholly unphilosophical and mistaken view of the 
 operations of nature and the sphere of Divine action. It is easy to bear in 
 mind the constant qualification, or protest, under which this phraseology is 
 adopted. 
 
 29 
 
226 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 without any sensation being communicated to the brain, and con- 
 sequently without any effort of the will, an impression made upon 
 the end of a nerve is transmitted to the spinal cord, and is 
 thence sent back again, as it were, along one of the motor nerves 
 to its extremity, producing there a contraction of the muscles, of 
 which the required or appropriate movement of the limb or organ 
 is the consequence. Isolate this pair of nerves entirely, by cut- 
 ting off its communication, not only with the head, but with the 
 upper and lower portions of the spinal column, reserving only a 
 segment of this column to connect the excitor with the motor 
 nerve, and the reflex movement may still be produced. A de- 
 capitated frog remains at rest till it is touched ; and then its leg, 
 or even its whole body, is thrown into sudden but momentary 
 action. Cases have occurred in which the spinal cord of a man 
 was so far injured, by disease or accident, that there was no vol- 
 untary control of the lower limbs, and not even any sensation in 
 them ; but if stimuli were applied to the feet, by tickling or 
 pinching them, or applying a hot plate, the muscles of the leg 
 instantly contracted, and with some violence ; and this without 
 the patient having any sensation, either of the cause of the move- 
 ment, or of the movement itself ; in fact, without his knowing it. 
 Of this nature is the action of swallowing, which is excited by 
 the contact of food or liquid with the back part of the mouth, 
 and then takes place in spite of any effort on our part to prevent 
 it. " Even the respiratory movements," says Dr. Carpenter, 
 " spontaneous as they seem to be, would not continue unless 
 they were excited by the presence of venous blood in the ves- 
 sels, especially in those of the lungs. These movements are 
 all necessarily linked with the stimulus that excites them ; that 
 is, the same stimulus will always produce the same movement, 
 when the condition of the body is the same. Hence it is evi- 
 dent, that the judgment or will is not concerned in producing 
 them ; but they may be rather compared to the movements of an 
 automaton, which are produced by touching certain springs." * 
 
 * As the reflex action of the nerves had not been discovered, I believe, 
 when Dugald Stewart published <(1826) the third volume of his Elements of 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 227 
 
 
 
 The object of all such mechanical and involuntary motions is 
 to supply the imperative wants of the body, and to preserve it 
 from the injuries to which it is most frequently exposed. The 
 watchfulness of the animal is not sufficient for its own preserva- 
 tion ; the want of care, quickness, and decision in the control 
 of the will is thus compensated by a mechanical contrivance, a 
 spontaneous movement, which repels the danger, or satisfies the 
 want, before we are conscious of its existence. A beautiful in- 
 stance of this is the instantaneous and automatic movement of the 
 eyelids, by which so delicate an organ as the eye is preserved 
 from sudden injury. The slightest stimulus causes them to 
 close, even the flash of powder having this effect before the 
 flame can reach the eyeball. It would be an abuse of language 
 to apply the same name to a contrivance like this, and to the 
 marvellous instinct that guides the migrating bird, at the proper 
 season, in its long flight to its winter home. 
 
 the Philosophy of the Human Mind, he has some excuse for maintaining 
 that the operations, not only of suction and swallowing-, but of respiration, 
 must be ascribed to instinct. But his doctrine now appears even less plausi- 
 ble than that of Dr. Darwin, who gravely supposes that the foetus learns to 
 swallow by its experience in utero. Stewart mentions' the fact, that thirty 
 pairs of muscles must be employed in every draught, and seems to believe that 
 a distinct volition is required for the movement of each pair ; though the 
 well-known facts respecting the catenation 'of the muscular actions might 
 have convinced him of the absurdity of such a theory. \ The Scotch school 
 of metaphysicians, which Mr. Stewart adorned with his learning and the 
 graces of his character and style, is noted for its inclination to multiply the 
 number of ultimate and unaccountable facts in human nature. In so doing, 
 they have often made a great mystery out of a very simple thing.\ His naive 
 astonishment, that an infant, as soon as it comes into the world, should 
 know how to " perform with the most perfect success the function of respira- 
 tion, a function which requires the alternate contraction and relaxation of 
 certain muscles in a regular order and succession," is certainly an amus- 
 ing instance of this weakness. He might just as well have been surprised 
 that it should know how to keep up the circulation of the blood in its tender 
 limbs ; for the will of the infant has certainly as much to do in this case as 
 in that of respiration. Instinct is, doubtless, a mysterious faculty, and the 
 Scotch philosophers have therefore eagerly sought for proofs that it is pos- 
 sessed by man ; but they have not been very successful in the undertaking. 
 
228 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 Besides these mechanical operations, or organic functions of 
 life, which are common to the animal and vegetable kingdom, 
 though they are more numerous and more complex in the former, 
 I exclude the simple appetites and passions from the class of 
 instincts properly so called. These appetites have been called 
 instinctive, because they seek their own gratification without the 
 aid of reason, and often in spite of it. They are common to 
 man and the brute ; but they differ, at least in one important 
 respect, from those instincts of the lower animals which are usu- 
 ally contrasted with human reason. The objects towards which 
 they are directed are prized for their own sake ; they are sought 
 as ends, while instinct teaches brutes to do many things which 
 are needed only as means for the attainment of some ulterior 
 purpose. Thus, instinct enables a spider to entrap his prey, 
 while appetite only leads him to devour it while in his possession. 
 Nay, the two impulses often act in opposition to each other, as 
 when the bird restrains its own hunger for the sake of feeding its 
 young. Appetite is blind, and affords a motive, but no guid- 
 ance, for effort ; instinct, on the other hand, often supplies an 
 object for action, though it is more frequently indebted for this 
 to appetite, and always points out the course for its attainment. 
 It is true, that appetite sometimes appears to direct the choice ; 
 yet so far only as the absence or presence of it leads the animal 
 to reject unsuitable food, and to devour that which is adapted to 
 its physical constitution. That a dog will not eat hay, nor a 
 horse swallow raw meat, is no more a proof of instinct than the 
 corresponding fact in man, that sweet things are pleasant to the 
 taste, while bitter are disagreeable, is an indication of reason. 
 
 It is evident that the appetites have been called instinctive 
 only because they are not acquired by experience or instruction ; 
 they are innate. But this is far from being the only character- 
 istic of what are usually termed the instincts of the lower ani- 
 mals, which often lead to complex and prolonged tasks, involving 
 a constant sacrifice of their natural desires and inclinations. In- 
 stinct is marvellous and inscrutable in its operations, as much so 
 as reason itself. But that the appetites have their appropriate 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 objects, and reject all others, is no special cause for wonder, 
 any more than the fact, that glass transmits light, while it is im- 
 pervious to air. Such is its original constitution. 
 
 How may we define instinct, then, as distinguished from appe- 
 tite on the one hand and from reason on the other, as all three 
 are motives or guides to action ? It is an impulse conceived 
 without instruction, and prior to all experience, to perform cer- 
 tain acts which are not needed for the immediate gratification of 
 the agent, which in fact are often opposed to it, and are useful 
 only as means for the attainment of some ulterior object ; and 
 this object is usually one of preeminent utility or necessity, either 
 for the preservation of the animal's own life, or for the continu- 
 ance of its species. The former quality separates it from intelli- 
 gence, properly so called, which proceeds only by experience or 
 instruction ; and the latter is its peculiar trait as distinguished 
 from appetite, which, in strictness, uses no means at all, but 
 looks only to ends. 
 
 In the remainder of what I have to offer, it will be my object 
 to show, first, that instinct is distinguishable from reason by many 
 other peculiarities, which are so obvious and striking, that we 
 must admit the difference between the two attributes to be radi- 
 cal or essential, a difference not in degree, but in kind ; sec- 
 ondly, that all animals inferior to man are guided in a greater or 
 less degree, if not entirely, by instinct, while man is never subject 
 to it, but is governed exclusively by reason, the effects of 
 mechanical contrivances, and of mere appetites, or blind desires 
 and inclinations, which are confessedly common to man and the 
 brute, having been set aside for reasons already mentioned ; and 
 thirdly, that the lower animals, because their highest attribute is 
 instinct, have no moral character whatever, and consequently do 
 not merit praise or blame, so that their actions and the scheme 
 or plan of their existence show us what man would be, if he was 
 deprived of the ethical part of his nature, and thus, in the higher 
 meaning of the phrase, not subject to the moral government of 
 God. The general conclusion will be, that the animal as well as 
 the vegetable creation, like inorganic things, and the course of 
 
230 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 merely physical events, are not ends in the Divine government, 
 but means, the leading purpose of all being the moral education 
 and government of man. 
 
 And first, it will not be necessary to use many words to 
 prove that instinct, unlike reason, acts without instruction or ex- 
 perience. Chickens hatched by steam, which have never seen 
 any older birds of the same species, perform all the duties of in- 
 cubation and feeding their young as perfectly as if they had been 
 the constant objects of Dame Partlet's care in their own callow 
 infancy. Insects born only after the death of their parents still 
 run the little cycle of their appointed tasks, and make provision 
 for their own future progeny, which they are never to see, with 
 as much labor and foresight as were exercised in preparing and 
 storing their own cradles. The moth, with great care, collects 
 food of a kind which it never uses for itself, as a provision for 
 its young when in a transition state. Certain insects, governing 
 for the moment their own appetites, which would lead them to 
 devour their food as soon as found, store up in subterranean cells 
 a provision for the coming winter, though as yet, in their short 
 life, they have experienced only the warmth and abundance of 
 summer and autumn. In all these cases, there is no opportunity 
 for experience, and no source of instruction ; and the end at- 
 tained is one that is essential for the preservation of the species. 
 
 The next peculiarity of instinct, a necessary consequence of 
 the one already noticed, is, that it is not susceptible of improve- 
 ment or education. It is complete from the beginning ; it makes 
 no progress either in the individual or the race. The bee, as 
 soon after its disclosure from the pupa as its body is dried and 
 its wings expanded, takes its part in the labors of the little com- 
 monwealth with as much apparent activity and efficiency as its 
 elders. It collects honey and builds a cell as adroitly in the 
 first as in the last hour of its existence. And so it is with the 
 species ; the internal economy of a hive was just as marvellous 
 in the days of Aristotle and Virgil as in those of Huber. The 
 reported cases of greater docility shown by the offspring of 
 trained animals than by the young of the same species when in 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 231 
 
 their wild state can all be explained from the fact, that most 
 quadrupeds and birds are more or less prone to imitate the habits 
 of those around them, so that they become more teachable by 
 observing, from the moment of birth, the movements of the elder 
 animals. 
 
 It is important to observe that the power of instinct in many 
 cases quite transcends that of reason ; if it differs from human 
 intelligence, not in kind, but in degree only, it is undoubtedly 
 the superior. Man may go to school to the dog, the swallow, 
 and the bee, but he can never equal his teacher. Let him at- 
 tempt, for instance, without the aid of any tools or machinery, 
 and with the utmost economy of space and material, to construct 
 a symmetrical hexagonal cell, closed at one end by a trihedral 
 pyramid, each side of which is a rhombus, with its obtuse angles 
 measuring precisely 109 28', and its acute angles 70 32'. 
 Without instruments or a pattern, he probably could not cut out 
 such a rhombus with perfect accuracy after a thousand trials. 
 But the bee does this before it is a day old. And in this state- 
 ment of the task, the greatest difficulty of all is left out of it ; we 
 have solved the most abstruse problem in it in order to make the 
 performance more easy. In order to make the cell with as little 
 wax and space as possible, it is necessary that the angles of the 
 rhombus should have precisely these dimensions, and no other. 
 It was only after the invention of the integral calculus that man 
 was able to determine the angles required for this purpose, or, in 
 other words, to discover how far the wisdom of the bee tran- 
 scended his own. In Virgil's time, the bee was wiser than the 
 greatest human mathematician of its day. 
 
 Those who are familiar with the habits of animals can produce 
 a multitude of other instances to show the vast superiority of in- 
 stinct, in its proper and limited sphere, over the best efforts of 
 human reason ; especially when we make the proper qualification, 
 that the animal usually works without instruments of any kind, ex- 
 cept those furnished in its own body, which affords nothing to be 
 compared, in point of convenience, with the human hand. But 
 I give one other case, which needs not this qualification ; it is 
 
232 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 found in the explanation of the proverbial phrase, "a bee-line." 
 Remove a man blindfold several miles from his home, by a route 
 with which he is entirely unacquainted, and require him to return 
 to his own door by a mathematically straight line. The bee will 
 do so ; but a man's path under such circumstances would prob- 
 ably be rather crooked. And the difference between them can- 
 not be explained on the supposition of the insect's greater 
 sharpness of vision, or by the greater elevation at which it flies ; 
 let the hive be in the midst of a forest, so that the intervening 
 trees hide it when one is a rod off in any direction, and the bee 
 still flies straight to its home. 
 
 The consideration of this manifest preeminence of instinct in 
 its limited sphere over reason was necessary in order to put in a 
 proper light the next peculiarity of it which I have to notice, and 
 which certainly divides it by a very broad line from any thing in 
 the mental constitution of man. Instinct is limited to a very few 
 ends, mostly to those which are essential to the preservation of 
 the animal itself, or of its species. It works in a prescribed and 
 narrow path, to accomplish these purposes and no others ; its 
 methods are invariable, or nearly so, its power of adapting itself 
 to circumstances being confined within a very narrow range. 
 Take the animal out of its sphere, and its mental endowments 
 cease to be even comparable with those of man. It falls infi- 
 nitely far below him. The bee, which in certain tasks seems 
 wiser than a Euclid or an Arkwright, is, when compelled to 
 labor for any other purpose than that for which nature has spe- 
 cifically adapted it, more stupid than -an idiot. If one acci- 
 dentally flies into a room through the lower half of an open 
 window, and, seeking to return, happens to strike against the 
 glass above, it will continue buzzing about and knocking its head 
 against the same pane oftentimes for an hour, though it would 
 find free egress a few inches below. 
 
 Again, the instinct often continues to act when the occasion 
 for its exercise has ceased, so that its operations are unmeaning 
 and purposeless. Thus, a squirrel, imprisoned in a wire cage, if 
 it has received more nuts than its appetite craves for the mo- 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 ment, will scratch diligently at the bottom of its cage, and then 
 place a nut upon the spot ; in this way showing the continuance 
 of the instinct which was needed only in its wild state, and its 
 utter ignorance of the effect of a change of circumstances. A 
 still more curious instance is that of the beaver, whose instincts 
 seem more closely than those of any other animal to simulate 
 human reason. " The building instinct," says Dr. Carpenter, 
 " shows itself even when the beaver is in captivity, and in cir- 
 cumstances in which it can be of no use. A half-domesticated 
 individual, in the possession of Mr. Broderip, began to build as 
 soon as it was let out of its cage, ( and materials were placed in 
 its way. Even when it was only half-grown, it would drag along 
 a large sweeping-brush, or warming-pan, grasping the handle with 
 its teeth, so that the load came over its shoulder ; and would en- 
 deavour to lay this with other materials, in the mode employed 
 by the beaver when in a state of nature. The long and large 
 materials were always taken first ; and two of the longest were 
 generally laid crosswise, with one of the ends of each touching 
 the wall, and the other ends projecting out into the room. The 
 area formed by the cross brushes and the wall he would fill up 
 with boots, books, sticks, dried turf, or any thing portable. He 
 woulcl often, after laying on one of his building materials, sit up 
 over against it, appearing to consider his work, or, as the coun- 
 try people say, to ' judge it ' ; this pause was sometimes fol- 
 lowed by changing the material judged, and sometimes it was 
 left in its place. After he had piled up his materials in one part 
 of the room, for he generally chose the same place, he proceeded 
 to wall up the space between the feet of a chest of drawers which 
 stood at a little distance from it, high enough on its legs to make 
 the bottom a roof for him ; using for this purpose dried turf and 
 sticks, which he laid very even, and filling up the interstices with 
 bits of coal; hay, cloth, or any thing he could pick up. This 
 last place he seemed to appropriate for his dwelling ; the former 
 work seemed to be intended for a dam." 
 
 " Other animals are, in like manner, occasionally conducted 
 by their instincts to the performance of actions equally irrational, 
 
 30 
 
234 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 and quite incapable of answering the purpose which the particu- 
 lar instinct is destined to serve." In all that goes beyond the 
 sensations of the present moment, in every thing that relates to 
 the future, and therefore requires the use of means, which in a 
 human being would imply sagacity and foresight, the several 
 classes of brutes do one thing in only one way. Following that 
 narrow path, they appear like prodigies of wisdom ; remove them 
 ever so little from it, and they again become brutes. In this 
 respect, the parallel between the human and the brute mind fails 
 entirely ; instinct is no longer to be compared with reason, but 
 with a machine. The analogy here is perfect ; a jenny or a 
 mule can spin yarn much better than man could with the aid 
 only of his fingers ; but it cannot card, weave, or dress ; it can 
 do nothing but spin. A machine performs a single task, usually 
 with wonderful speed, neatness, and precision ; but its utility is 
 limited to this single purpose. So a bee constructs its combs 
 with admirable art ; but it cannot build a hive, or house for 
 these combs. It cannot fashion a paper house, like the wasp, 
 or dig subterranean chambers for its home, like the ant. But 
 the pliability of the human mind, its power of adapting itself to 
 circumstances, is one of its most marvellous attributes. Sa- 
 gacity shown in one case is a good test of general ability for all 
 occasions. Increased facility in performing particular tasks is 
 acquired by habit ; but the mind is master also of its habits, 
 forming or destroying them at pleasure. 
 
 I do not say that instinct is the action of a machine, but only 
 that it resembles this action more nearly than it does the curious, 
 flexible, and far-reaching operation of reason. In one respect, it 
 is like a cunningly devised engine which admits of several adjust- 
 ments, so that, though it still performs but one kind of work, it 
 allows of a few variations in its pattern and fabric. These vari- 
 ations are limited in extent, and never amount to a change of the 
 main objects in view ; but if accident or man's device interferes 
 with the animal's ordinary mode of attaining that object, it will 
 often slightly modify the operation, so as to get rid of the diffi- 
 culty. Though walking in a narrow path, it can still turn aside 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 235 
 
 a little to the right or the left, so as to avoid an obstruction in the 
 way. Honey-bees can alter their work just enough to avoid 
 what may be termed the ordinary casualties of the hive. When 
 extraordinary disorders in the combs take place, Huber tells us 
 that they pull the grubs out of the cells to perish, demolish the 
 structure, and begin anew.* 
 
 Instincts have sometimes been called innate habits, and the 
 parallel thus indicated appears a very just and striking one. 
 Cuvier long ago remarked, that animals guided by instinct ap- 
 pear, like a man in a dream, to be haunted by one idea, or, like 
 a somnambulist, to perform a very difficult task without being 
 conscious of it. In the human mind, frequent repetition appears 
 to unite the parts of a long and complex mental process into one 
 whole, so that the several required volitions follow each other 
 
 * " Bees cemented their combs, when becoming heavy, to the top of the 
 hive with mitys, in the time of Aristotle and Pliny, as they do now ; and 
 there is every reason to believe that then, as now, they occasionally varied 
 their procedures, by securing them with wax or with propolis only, either 
 added to the upper range of cells, or disposed in braces and ties to the ad- 
 joining combs. But if in thus proceeding they were guided by reason, why 
 not, under certain circumstances, adopt other modes of strengthening their 
 combs ? Why not, when wax and propolis are scarce, employ mud, which 
 they might see the martin avail herself of so successfully 1 Or why should it 
 not come into the head of some hoary denizen of the hive, that a little of the 
 mortar with which his careful master plasters the crevices between his habi- 
 tation and its stand might answer the end of mitys? ' Si seulement Us ele- 
 voient une fois des cdbanes quarries J says Bonnet, when speaking as to 
 what faculty the works of the beaver are to be referred ; * mais ce sont eter- 
 nellement des cdbanes rondes ou ovales ' : and so we might say of the phe- 
 nomena in question, Show us but one instance of bees having substituted 
 mud or mortar for mitys", pissoceros, or propolis, or wooden props for waxen 
 ties, and there could be no doubt of their being here guided by reason. But 
 since no such instance is on record ; since they are still confined to the same 
 limits however surprising the range of these limits as they were two 
 thousand years ago ; and since the bees emerged from their pupae but a few 
 hours before will set themselves as adroitly to work, and pursue their opera- 
 tions as scientifically, as their brethren who can boast the experience of a 
 long life of twelve months' duration, we must still regard these actions 
 as variations of instinct." Kirby and Spence. 
 
236 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 with as much order and facility as if they were links of the same 
 chain. There is no delay in order to dwell on any part of the 
 operation, and consider what is to be done next. The needful 
 step is suggested precisely at the right moment, and instantly 
 performed, so that no effort of the will seems to have been 
 necessary, and we say that the whole was done unconsciously. 
 Thus, an absent-minded man may undertake a long walk by a 
 familiar path, his mind being occupied all the while with some 
 knotty subject of thought which has nothing to do with the cause 
 of his excursion ; and he arrives safely at the desired point, with- 
 out being aware of the bodily exertion he has made, or of having 
 attended to any object on the road, or to a single incident of the 
 journey. There may have been several diverging routes, and he 
 always selected the right path, without being aware that he exer- 
 cised a choice. At each step, a distinct volition was required to 
 lift his foot from the ground ; but he was not conscious of any 
 exertion either of the will or the body. It seems as if there was 
 a latent idea in his mind, never rising into the sphere of con- 
 sciousness, which still governed every motion of the will, and 
 brought out the desired result at last, though the man himself was 
 as ignorant of the process as if he had been a mere machine. 
 
 Now the bee, in constructing a comb, works like a somnam- 
 bulist, or like this person laboring under absence of mind. It 
 reflects not upon the object of its labors ; for, having had the ex- 
 perience but of one season, or perhaps of one day, it knows not 
 what that object is. Foresight it has not, unless it be the fore- 
 sight of a god rather than a man ; for human foresight is nothing 
 but the reflection of past scenes upon the mirror of the future. 
 It is not conscious of design or contrivance ; for this implies 
 preconceived ideas of ends not yet realized, and such ideas, we 
 have seen, it cannot possess. The bee toils on just as uncon- 
 sciously as the man moves his limbs in that dreamy walk ; there 
 is a purpose, a useful end, to be obtained by the exertion, but 
 neither of them is aware of it at the moment. In the man, in- 
 deed, the purpose was preconceived, and will come back to his 
 mind at the end of the walk. The bee knows nothing of a pur- 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 237 
 
 pose, but toils on as an humble instrument in the hands of an- 
 other. Its vocation is that only of the common laborer, to bring 
 bricks and mortar for the construction of those wonderful cells 
 whose real Maker and Architect is Divine, and who appears, in 
 this instance at least, if not in every other, constantly superin- 
 tending and controlling his own works. 
 
 And here we see an obvious reason why the instincts of ani- 
 mals are not susceptible of education or improvement. The 
 operation that is continued from the mere force of habit will 
 never be improved. If the pedestrian suddenly quickens or 
 slackens his pace, it is a sure sign that he has begun to think 
 about the object of his journey. So a practised musician may 
 play a familiar tune without appearing to bestow any attention 
 upon it, merely from habit. But he will make no progress in 
 his art by such exercise. In order to improve, he must pause 
 and dwell upon the process, note the defects in his execution, 
 and by distinct and conscious effort try to remove them. The 
 brutes, also, acting under their instincts, as men do when guided 
 only by habit, ignorant of the objects of their toil, and therefore 
 never reflecting upon the best means of obtaining those objects, 
 perform their last labor precisely like their first. Their physical 
 powers improve as they grow to maturity ; but their modes of 
 operation are never altered. 
 
 I say nothing of the feats which animals may be trained by 
 man to accomplish, because these may all be traced to the blind 
 and unconscious faculty of imitation or mimicry, and to the con- 
 tinued association of reward or punishment with certain actions. 
 An animal blindly repeats some movement which a man per- 
 forms only from a perception of its true meaning and purpose ; 
 we must not therefore attribute such a perception to the brute. 
 Parrots may be taught to articulate, but they do not thereby 
 learn to talk. A monkey in a painter's studio will seize his 
 brush, and cover the walls of the room with unmeaning scrawls ; 
 it imitates the physical act of the painter, but without any glimpse 
 of its intention and real character. The teachableness of the 
 different classes of animals seems to depend on the comparative 
 
238 THE NATURE OP INSTINCT. 
 
 strength of this imitative propensity ; and as many of the exhi- 
 bitions of this propensity, even in man, are blind and purposeless, 
 we may reasonably conclude that they are always so in the brute. 
 
 The acquired habits of domesticated animals mostly override 
 and conceal their natural inclinations, so that they do not seem 
 to possess as many or as striking instincts as some wild brutes 
 which are certainly inferior to them in the scale of being. Many 
 of these instincts, also, are of a social character, and therefore can 
 be manifested only when the individual is in the wild herd with 
 its fellows. But, in one degree or another, instinct is displayed 
 by all the animals inferior to man. We find the plainest marks 
 of it precisely where we should expect, among the means pro- 
 vided for the continuation of the species. What directs the 
 young colt, or the calf, at once, to the only proper source of its 
 nourishment, or why does it not attempt to crop the herbage for 
 food, like its dam ? The stratagems used by wild beasts to en- 
 snare their prey must all be attributed to instinct, as each species 
 uses but one or two forms of such artifice, and shows little or no 
 power of adapting them to circumstances. How many other 
 instincts are naturally conjoined with these it is impossible to tell, 
 as they are freely manifested only in the wild state, and are con- 
 cealed by artificial habits when they are subject to the care and 
 observation of man. 
 
 In one respect, indeed, all animals are admirably fitted for the 
 exigencies of their situation immediately after birth, while the 
 human infant is left to the slow inductions of experience under 
 the guidance of its elders. Man's first step in education is to 
 acquire the use of his own eyes, or to learn how to see. It is a 
 fact now firmly established, both by a priori reasoning and obser- 
 vation, that the eye directly sees nothing but colors, and cannot 
 perceive immediately either distance, figure, dimension, or situ- 
 ation. Colors are the only visible things, just as sounds alone 
 are audible ; experience teaches us, from slight variations or 
 peculiarities of these, to infer the distance, magnitude, and other 
 tangible qualities of the objects which possess or emit them. 
 This fact has been demonstrated by experiments on persons born 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 239 
 
 blind and subsequently restored to sight, and may be confirmed 
 by watching the movements of an infant soon after birth. Place 
 some bright or gayly-colored toy before its eyes, and its looks and 
 movements instantly betray its desire to grasp it ; and if the object 
 be actually placed in its hands, it will hold it firmly, and seem 
 unwilling to relinquish it ; but hold it a little way off, and the 
 hands grope for it seemingly at random, or so as to show the in- 
 fant's entire ignorance of its true distance and position. If its 
 bungling attempts be attributed in part to ignorance of the right 
 mode of using its arms and limbs, this only places in a stronger 
 light its inferiority for the time to the young brute. In a beau- 
 tiful experiment made by Galen, a kid, just snatched from the 
 matrix of its dead mother, used its limbs at once with perfect 
 facility and success, and with the characteristic movements of 
 its species. Like the newly-born colt or calf, also, it walked 
 with freedom, inspected objects near at hand, and avoided those 
 which were in its way, not, as in the case of man, with an 
 acquired judgment, but from an instinctive knowledge of their 
 true position. 
 
 Now, if in so important a respect as the use of his eyes, on 
 which man is dependent for safety at almost every moment of his 
 existence, while by their aid alone his other faculties attain their 
 full development, if on this cardinal point, man is left entirely 
 to the slow deductions of experience, we may well believe that 
 in no other respect with him is instinct made to supersede the 
 use of reason. We are led to conclude, then, not only that all 
 the lower animals are copiously endowed with instincts, but that 
 man is absolutely devoid of them, and is left to be guided by 
 reason alone. The utter helplessness of the human infant, when 
 compared with the young of other animals, appears in nothing so 
 strongly as in its inability to see, even when the eyes are opened, 
 and their physical structure is perfect. In fact, there is no in- 
 stance commonly adduced to prove that man is ever governed by 
 instinct, except the first mode in which he receives food ; and 
 even this is admitted to be, at most, but a transient instinct, given 
 to provide for his safety in the first helpless hours of his exist- 
 
240 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 ence. It is very doubtful, however, whether even this tempo- 
 rary impulse can properly be called instinctive. Recurring to 
 the definition already given, is it certain that this is an instance 
 of action not pleasurable in itself alone, but useful only as a 
 means for some ulterior object ? That mere muscular exertion 
 is pleasant in itself is evident enough to one who observes the 
 uneasiness of infants, and the strange gymnastic experiments of 
 children of a little larger growth. If a small object be placed in 
 the hand of an infant, its little fingers readily close around it, 
 apparently from the mere pleasure of calling the muscles into 
 activity. The sphincter muscle of the mouth may do the same, 
 when any object comes within its grasp ; and then the child 
 needs but a single inspiration, which automatically recurs at every 
 instant, with perhaps a little aid from the parent, in order to 
 have its first pleasant experience of the gratification of appetite. 
 When this pleasure has been a few times repeated, the habit, 
 aided by the uneasiness of hunger, becomes so strong, though at 
 the same time so blind, because the intellect is as yet not at all 
 developed, that the infant eagerly sucks every object presented 
 to its mouth. It is this eagerness, manifested at so early a 
 period, which has led most observers to consider the action as 
 instinctive. But one of the most eminent physiologists of our day 
 expressly refers this act of suction to the reflex function of the 
 nerves, thus considering it to be as mechanical as the shutting of 
 the eyelid or the beating of the heart ; for infants that have been 
 born destitute of brain, and have lived for some hours, and other 
 animals' young whose brain had been removed, have readily 
 sucked a moistened finger, when introduced between their lips. 
 It has now been conclusively shown, if I mistake not, that a 
 class of phenomena are manifested by the lower animals, which 
 may be as sharply distinguished from the effects of human rea- 
 son, on the one hand, as from those of appetite and natural 
 desire on the other ; and these phenomena are attributed to a 
 power which we call instinct. Give it any other name, and 
 it will answer the purpose equally well. All the lower ani- 
 mals manifest it ; man never does ; these are the only prop- 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 241 
 
 ositions with which we are now concerned. All the actions of 
 man, which have been loosely considered or described as instinc- 
 tive, may be referred either to the powers of organic life, that 
 is, to mechanical forces, or to the teachings of experience, or 
 to the class of appetites . Human nature shows no trace whatever 
 of that marvellous power which governs the bee in the construc- 
 tion of its cell, and guides the migrating bird to its winter home. 
 But man is the only being who is not under its influence ; every 
 other animal, from the noblest quadruped to the humblest insect, 
 gives frequent indications of its presence and control. 
 
 So numerous and striking, indeed, are the manifestations of it 
 by every species, that there appears good reason to doubt whether 
 it is ever mingled, even in them, with what is properly called in- 
 tellect ; whether all the reputed cases of sagacity and intelligence 
 in the higher animals may not be referred, after all, into a mere 
 blind propensity to imitate actions, the meaning and purpose of 
 which they cannot understand, or into an instinct more flexible 
 and varied, indeed, than that of the lower tribes, but which is 
 still seen to be radically different from reason. Without enter- 
 ing into this difficult discussion, I will merely allude to the strik- 
 ing improbability of the lower animals being endowed with reason, 
 which they need to exercise only on infrequent and extraordinary 
 emergencies, while all the ordinary occasions of their being 
 their wants, dangers, and the continuation of their species are 
 provided for by the lower attributes with which they are specially 
 endowed. These certainly suffice for the most wonderful works 
 that are performed by them ; the whole insect tribe unquestion- 
 ably knows no other guide than instinct ; and if this power be 
 enough to account for the actions of the ant and the bee, we 
 hardly need seek any other key to the supposed sagacity of the 
 dog and the elephant, as they also possess it, and it governs 
 nearly all their conduct. 
 
 But the negative on the other side is more easily supported, 
 and by direct evidence. However it may be with the brute, 
 reason is not united with instinct (properly so called) in man. 
 The human intellect is pure and unmixed. It may be obscured 
 
 31 
 
242 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 
 
 by appetite, or stormed by passion ; habit may render its opera- 
 tions so swift and easy, that we cannot note and remember their 
 succession. But when free from these disturbing forces, it acts 
 always with a full perception of the end in view, and by a delib- 
 erate choice of means aims at its accomplishment. We have the 
 immediate testimony of consciousness, that we never select means 
 until experience has informed us of their efficacy, and never use 
 them but with a full knowledge of their relation to the end. 
 
 Each of the qualities of instinct on which I have remarked is 
 a peculiarity of it in respect to reason, and serves more or less 
 to distinguish it from that faculty ; while the aggregate of these 
 peculiarities shows conclusively that the difference between the 
 two is fundamental. This will appear more clearly from a sum- 
 mary of the several points that have been considered. It has 
 been shown, then, that instinct exists before experience, and 
 is wholly independent of instruction ; that it is not susceptible of 
 education or improvement of any kind, either in the individual or 
 the race ; that it works successfully towards important and re- 
 mote ends by the use of complex and laborious means, yet with- 
 out any apparent consciousness of the difference between means 
 and ends ; that it acts, in truth, by impulse, and not through re- 
 flection, at least, as much so as the man who has gained by 
 habit the power of performing a long operation without reflecting 
 on any part of it ; that it is limited to a few objects, and out of 
 the narrow sphere of work required for these objects it is alto- 
 gether useless ; and that, consequently, it appears in the same 
 animal, and at the same time, both as the most brutish stupidity 
 and as the highest wisdom, for some of its creations shame the 
 greatest ingenuity of man. As we are confessedly ignorant of 
 the internal constitution of both faculties, reason and instinct, and 
 are compelled to judge of them exclusively by their outward 
 manifestations, it is difficult to conceive of two powers which 
 should appear more unlike. 
 
 It is vain to form conjectures respecting the inward essence, 
 or ultimate cause, of a faculty which appears to human reason so 
 anomalous. Yet one or two points, perhaps, may be satisfacto- 
 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT. 243 
 
 I 
 
 rily made out respecting the mental constitution of brutes, which 
 will afford us a glimpse of the final end of their being. Whether 
 instinct be the mere action of a curious machine, or the effect 
 of the constant agency and promptings of the Deity, or the work- 
 ing of some still more secret principle which is nowhere mani- 
 fested but in animal life, it is not a free and conscious power of 
 the animal itself in which it appears and works. It is, if I may 
 so speak, a foreign agency, which enters not into the individu- 
 ality of the brute. The animal appears subject to it, controlled 
 and guided by it, but not to possess and apply it by its own will 
 for its own chosen purposes. We cannot conceive of wisdom 
 apart from reflection and consciousness ; there is an absurdity in 
 the very terms of such a statement. The skill and ingenuity, 
 then, which appear in the works of the lower animals are not 
 referable to the animals themselves, but must proceed from some 
 higher power working above the sphere of their consciousness. 
 This assistance is meted out to them for specific and limited 
 ends, and has no effect on the rest of their conduct, which is 
 governed by their own individuality. In its highest functions, 
 the brute appears only as the blind and passive instrument of a 
 will which is not its own. The power is granted to it for a time, 
 but is not susceptible of improvement by practice while in its 
 keeping, is invariably applied in the same way, and with perfect 
 success, and is withdrawn as soon as the purposes for which it 
 was given are answered. No moral character is attributable to 
 a faculty which is unconsciously exerted, and no moral aim can 
 exist where progress or change is impossible. When deprived 
 of this extraneous pow:er, or viewed apart from it, the brute ap- 
 pears in its true light, as the creature of a day, born not for pur- 
 poses connected with its own being, but as an humble instrument, 
 or a fragmentary part, in the great circle of animated nature, 
 which, as a whole, is subservient to higher ends. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF ACTIVITY IN HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 THE object of my last Lecture was, by a brief inquiry into 
 the mental constitution of the animals inferior to man, to bring 
 out into a stronger light those peculiarities of human nature which 
 show what is the purpose of our being in this life, and what are 
 the leading features in the scheme of Divine Providence for the 
 government of man. I do not forget that the first object of this 
 course is to show what are the moral attributes of God, and to 
 ascertain if there is sufficient evidence to justify us in imputing 
 to him those qualities of infinite wisdom and benevolence, of 
 perfect justice and holiness, which the religious sentiment within 
 us instinctively requires in the person towards whom it is di- 
 rected. But these qualities can be manifested to our eyes only 
 in his works and ways ; and it is by studying these, that is, by 
 ascertaining what human nature is, how it is endowed, and what 
 is the part which it has to perform in this stage of existence, that 
 we can arrive at any certain and precise knowledge of the Divine 
 nature. Now we are so much accustomed to take for granted a 
 knowledge of the human constitution, both intellectual and moral, 
 it is so much easier to use our faculties in the study of external 
 objects than of the mind itself, that, without some object of com- 
 parison or contrast, it is difficult to understand, or, at any rate, to 
 have a clear and lively sense of, those endowments by which we 
 are distinguished among God's creatures, and of the purposes for 
 which these distinguishing attributes were granted to us. We 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 245 
 
 see the work that is accomplished by brutes, and how they are 
 fitted for its performance. We are conscious of the possession 
 of higher faculties than theirs, and we seek to know how our task 
 and our destiny differ from theirs ; or whether, in truth, we have 
 any task set to us, or any great end to obtain. The character 
 and intentions of the Deity must appear most clearly from a com- 
 parative examination of the two higher orders of animated being 
 which he has made. 
 
 One point I may now assume, as sufficiently established in the 
 Lectures of the last winter. It is inconsistent, I do not say 
 with infinite wisdom, for perhaps we are not justified at this stage 
 of the argument in considering any of the attributes of God, ex- 
 cept his duration, as infinite, but it is inconsistent with the 
 transcendent wisdom which is everywhere visible in the works 
 of creation, to suppose that any thing was created in vain, or 
 that a difference is established between two orders of being with- 
 out any reason for that difference. To act with reference to 
 improper or ill-chosen ends is the part of imperfect intelligence ; 
 but to act without any end at all is mere brutishness, or a sign of 
 the absolute want of understanding. We cannot believe that the 
 creation of man, or the constitution of his being in any respect, 
 is as meaningless as seems the direction of the clouds that float 
 athwart a summer's sky. 
 
 A comparison of the human with the brute mind shows, first, 
 that self-development is one of the great ends of our being here, 
 and that the fulfilment of this purpose is left in a great degree to 
 our own free-will. It is not enough that the intellect should be 
 competent for its task ; the work of preparation, or the act ol 
 rendering it competent, is itself the first object for which we are 
 urged to any kind of exertion. Discipline and progress, not 
 mere possession or enjoyment, is the great purpose of human 
 life. The workings of instinct, if we look only at the impor- 
 tance and difficulty of the results obtained, often surpass the most 
 strenuous efforts of the conscious mind. Man, as I have said, 
 may go to school to the ant and the bee ; in fact, there is hardly 
 one of the inferior animals whose habits he may not study with a 
 
246 THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 
 
 well-founded hope of obtaining direction for his own labors. 
 Why, then, is he not led, unconsciously and passively, as the 
 brutes are, by the wisest and most effective means, selected 
 without any effort of his own judgment and ingenuity, to the im- 
 mediate accomplishment of far more brilliant results than he has 
 ever yet worked out by the natural exercise of the faculties with 
 which he is at present endowed ? Why, for instance, after all 
 his bitter experience in the matters of government and social 
 institutions, and after the wisdom of thirty centuries has been 
 exhausted in pondering upon the several problems of social phi- 
 losophy, is he still unable to form a society which, in point of 
 orderly arrangement, harmony, and effective cooperation for the 
 general good, shall even approach the excellence of a community 
 of bees ? His faculties, his powers both of body and mind, are 
 unquestionably higher than theirs ; the gregarious appetite or 
 passion with him is as strong ; and his happiness, if not his safety, 
 is consequently as dependent as theirs on the perfection of the 
 arrangements which may be made for living and working in com- 
 pany with his fellows. Why, then, has not the same Almighty 
 Guide, who condescends to order and sustain the economy of a 
 hive, placed man also, without any effort of his own, in a perfect 
 social state, thus saving him from the disorder, contention, anar- 
 chy, and misrule, the long and painful recital and description of 
 which now constitutes the history of the human race ? It were 
 surely as easy to do this for man as for an insect ; and why, 
 then, is it not equally desirable in the two cases ? 
 
 There can be but one answer to this question. It is, that an 
 improved condition of society bestowed at once by the free gift 
 of the Creator, instead of being attained by human trial and 
 effort, is not an end so desirable as that very unassisted trial and 
 effort, however costly these may seem in respect to human hap- 
 piness or mere enjoyment. He who complains of the necessity 
 of this labor, and thinks it an impeachment of the goodness of 
 God that the object cannot be acquired without it, really envies 
 the condition of an insect, who is led blindfold, but in absolute 
 security, to the fulfilment of the conditions of his existence. 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 247 
 
 Will he consent to change places with it ? I do not yet say 
 that the lot of human beings, with all this necessity for toil, with 
 all their liability to repeated mistakes and failures, and conse- 
 quent sufferings, is still infinitely higher and happier than that of 
 the lower orders of animal life, who walk darkling, but in safety ; 
 who have no liberty of choice, and so never mistake ; who are 
 God-guided, and therefore never fail of the end that is placed 
 before them. The question of the comparative desirableness of 
 the two situations, or the two schemes of life, as they may be 
 termed, will depend on the result of our subsequent inquiry into 
 the comparative value of discipline and enjoyment ; of a charac- 
 ter self-formed and a nature endowed and wholly controlled, 
 however happily, by another ; of virtue united with free-will, and 
 happiness enjoyed of necessity. But it is important here to un- 
 derstand the radical difference of the two situations, and the con- 
 sequences which necessarily follow from the different endow- 
 ments of man and the brute, and the dissimilar parts which they 
 have to play upon the theatre of creation. 
 
 The plan of Divine Providence in the government of the uni- 
 verse must be studied as a whole. We cannot understand the 
 economy of one of the parts without contrasting it with that of 
 the others, and seeing how, in. the several cases, different ends 
 are obtained by different means, and one end, again, made sub- 
 servient to another and higher one, so that all work together for 
 good. Man is not the only denizen of the earth, nor is his hap- 
 piness the single purpose, or even the highest purpose, of cre- 
 ation. His improvement, the perfecting of his moral character 
 by his own choice and effort, may be this purpose ; but this is 
 the point to be established by our present inquiry. We have 
 seen that the course of merely physical events, or the succession 
 of what are called cause and effect in the material universe, is 
 sustained and guided by the immediate agency of the Deity, and 
 in every part it affords sufficient evidence of his wisdom and 
 power. These events do not succeed each other at random, 
 but according to what we term natural law ; that is, in a fixed 
 and orderly succession, similar antecedents being always followed 
 
248 THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 
 
 by similar consequents. There must be some reason for this 
 order and harmony, some purpose to be accomplished by it ; for 
 as each event is caused immediately, or without the intervention 
 of secondary causes, its character is in no wise necessarily deter- 
 mined by the event which preceded it, but its occurrence, if the 
 Deity had so willed, might have been marked by wholly unpre- 
 cedented circumstances. I say that there must be some rea- 
 son or purpose for this preservation of natural law, because all 
 physical arrangements and adaptations, all the organisms of na- 
 ture, as we have seen, reveal design ; and it is inconsistent with 
 the Divine wisdom that is evinced by this fact to suppose that 
 any thing is, or takes place, in vain, or without a purpose. 
 
 Now, this regularity of succession, or permanency of natural 
 law, is not needed for any object connected with the animal king- 
 dom, which is inferior to man. Brutes, as far as we can see, 
 make no selection of means, and seem wholly ignorant, indeed, 
 of the difference between means and ends. Every act per- 
 formed by them appears to be done from immediate impulse, or 
 desire relating, to that act, alone ; they are literally slaves of the 
 appetite of the present moment. Of the subserviency of the 
 action to some result which' is to take place hereafter, of its fit- 
 ness to satisfy some future want, or to make provision for satisfy- 
 ing it, they have no knowledge. They profit not by experience, 
 and indulge in no anticipations ; or, at any rate, they never con- 
 form their conduct to anticipations of the future. The resem- 
 blance, then, of the present and future to the past, the fact that 
 similar events may be expected under similar circumstances, is 
 not needed for their guidance. Order and harmony are not for 
 those who are incapable of comparing them with confusion and 
 discord, and who could not profit by their continuance. Limited 
 in its desires and feelings to the present moment, looking neither 
 before nor behind, and so incapable, as we may suppose, of any 
 purely intellectual exercise, the animal creation, excluding man, 
 is still susceptible of enjoyment, and its pleasures, as they are 
 evidently not of its own procuring, afford the clearest evidence 
 of the benevolence of the Deity. The exigencies of their situa- 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 249 
 
 don, the wants of their nature, and especially the, continuance of 
 their species, are all provided for, without any tax on their own 
 skill or energy, by the same power and wisdom which ordained 
 their existence. 
 
 The predominance of law, then, in the course of nature is 
 intended for the guidance of man ; we can imagine no other pur- 
 pose for it. It is a portion of the scheme of Providence for the 
 government of a being endowed with free-will, furnished with 
 motives or inducements to action, supplied with a capacity for 
 knowledge and means of instruction, and then left by his own 
 effort to form his character and shape his destiny. There must 
 be some object in such a plan of government beyond the mere 
 production of happiness ; that end, as has been shown, is suf- , 
 ficiently answered in the case of the lower animals by simpler* 
 means, by a less complex constitution of mind, and fewer adap- 
 tations to it of external circumstances. There must be some 
 higher and more desirable attainment than the mere sense of 
 pleasure or enjoyment for the time ; and therefore the suborX 
 dination of the lower end to the higher, the occasional sacrifice 
 of human happiness for the promotion of a worthier object, is per-; 
 fectly consistent with the infinite benevolence of the Creator. 
 Man, as has been shown, has no instincts whatever ; appetites, 
 desires, and affections, relating to objects immediately before 
 him, he has in common with the brutes ; and, like these, he is 
 susceptible of pleasure from the gratification of them. But he 
 has no means of foreseeing the exigencies of his situation, and, of 
 course, no power of providing for his future wants, or of aspiring 
 to any thing higher than this merely sensual pleasure, except 
 from what his reason teaches him respecting the course of na- 
 ture, and the laws which govern the succession of events. Rea- 
 son proceeds only by experience ; and the lessons of experience 
 would be of no worth, they would be mere reminiscences of past 
 events, without any inferences deducible from them, unless the 
 course of nature were uniform, and similar circumstances were 
 always attended with similar results. 
 
 This doctrine, that the fixed laws even of material nature have 
 
250 THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 
 
 a moral purpose, will appear to most persons, I am well aware, 
 as a bold and fanciful speculation. The prevailing opinion, 
 though it be not often openly avowed, is, that these laws have 
 no object but to uphold the beauty and order, the stupendous 
 mechanism, of the outward universe, one being subordinated to 
 another, or included in it, and all working together in grand and 
 complex harmony to keep up the perpetual cycle of events, and 
 sustain the unity of the system of created things. This, I am 
 sorry to believe, is the prevailing and increasing tendency of the 
 physical science of the present day, to reduce the study of 
 nature to the determination of its laws or regularities of succes- 
 sion and arrangement, to maintain that any one of these principles 
 has no object or function but its subserviency to a higher one, 
 'and that the widest generalization of them is the highest truth 
 attainable by the human faculties. According to this view, either 
 the material creation had no purpose beyond itself, or that pur- 
 pose is not discoverable by man ; we must look upon it, indeed, 
 as a grand and marvellous work ; but after we have explored all 
 its recesses and fathomed its lowest depths, the only impression 
 left on the mind is a vague feeling of wonder and admiration. A 
 more profound philosophy shows us that the object of God's 
 works was not merely to astonish, but to teach. To borrow the 
 eloquent words of Dr. Channing, " Mind is God's first end. 
 The great purpose, for which an order of nature is fixed, is 
 plainly the formation of mind. In a creation without order, 
 where events would follow without any regular succession, it is 
 obvious that mind must be kept in perpetual infancy ; for in such 
 a universe, there could be no reasoning from effects to causes, 
 no 1 induction to establish general truths, no adaptation of means 
 to ewds ; that is, no science relating to God, or matter, or mind ; 
 'no action, no virtue." 
 
 As we are compelled to admit, then, that there is a higher 
 purpose in the Divine government than the mere promotion of 
 happiness, that end being sufficiently provided for in the consti- 
 tution of the lower animals, we come to an examination of what 
 Dugald Stewart calls " the active and moral powers of man," as 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 251 
 
 our means of discovering what that purpose is. The first fact 
 that strikes us here is, that most of the lower incitements to ac- 
 tion all the appetites, and most of the desires and affections 
 are common to the human and the brute mind. They involve no 
 exercise of reason ; they are blind, but unerring, in their opera- 
 tion, and they supply a stimulus for exertion, which is either 
 constant, or recurs at frequent intervals. Their indulgence brings 
 with it certain consequences of good or evil, according as their 
 proper limits have been observed or transgressed ; but the per- 
 ception of such consequences is not necessary to their vitality or 
 efficiency as motives to action. This will be readily admitted in 
 regard to the appetites, such as those of hunger and thirst, for in- 
 stance. They first manifest themselves by a sense of uneasiness, 
 which subsides, and is followed by a feeling of enjoyment, as soon 
 as they are gratified. Afterwards, indeed, the recollection of this 
 enjoyment will be associated with the primitive craving, and may 
 lead us to stimulate or provoke it with a view to the pleasure 
 which is to come from its indulgence. But this association was 
 not needed to excite the appetites at first ; and though it may 
 heighten, it certainly does not wholly create, the pleasure which 
 they subsequently afford. 
 
 The only other remark needed as to these original impulses is, 
 that their adaptation to the necessities of the body, their gradu- 
 ated and periodically recurring influence, is in itself a beautiful 
 instance of design. Life is preserved by coupling with that 
 which is necessary for its preservation an imperative, but blind, 
 desire, which is not subject to the will, and is thus guarded 
 against the effects of inattention or carelessness. The uncer- 
 tainty of the voluntary action of mind, the intermittent .and fitful 
 character of attention and reason, is not permitted to hazard the 
 performance of those acts on which our continued existence de- 
 pends. The appetites are aided by other propensities, tending 
 either to action or repose, which are equally blind, and go to 
 keep up that salutary medium between sluggishness and undue 
 exertion which is necessary for the health both of body and 
 mind. 
 
252 THE ACTIVE POWERS OP MAN. 
 
 The desires and affections, which I come next to consider, are 
 distinguished from the appetites in so far as they do not take their 
 rise from the body, nor operate periodically ; but they agree with 
 them in being independent of reflection and calculation, and in 
 tending directly towards specific objects as their ultimate ends. 
 We can give no further account of them, nor explain their pref- 
 erence of one object over another, otherwise than by saying, that 
 such is the constitution of our being. Jouffroy calls them the 
 primitive and instinctive tendencies of human nature, which show 
 themselves in man almost from the first moment of his existence, 
 and develop and strengthen themselves with every step that he 
 takes towards maturer years. Among these original desires may 
 be mentioned the love of knowledge, of society, of approbation, 
 of power, and many other things, the number of which will de- 
 pend on the fineness of our analysis of the several objects, or on 
 our principles of classification. Why we should desire these 
 things rather than their opposites is a question that we are no 
 more able to answer than we are to tell why certain odors are 
 pleasant, and others offensive, or why glass is transparent, and 
 metal opaque. The desires, exist in greater or less strength in 
 different minds, but in some degree they are common to all 
 minds ; for without them man would sink into a state of entire 
 inaction and repose, or rather, he would never have risen out of 
 such a condition. He would still be capable of inert contem- 
 plation and reverie ; a perpetual succession of loosely connected 
 images and ideas might float for ever before the mind, and with 
 these might be coupled a consciousness of existence, all with- 
 out the will ever being called into activity. But to live and to 
 think are not the only ends of our creation. Action is necessary 
 for our improvement and our happiness, and the necessary stim- 
 ulus to action is supplied by these several desires, the number 
 and variety of which open a wide field for effort, and permit 
 many to labor side by side with less risk of interference. 
 
 These desires are among the earliest manifestations of the in- 
 fant mind. They do not wait for the development of the intel- 
 ligence, nor are the teachings of experience or the instructions 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 253 
 
 of our fellow-beings needed to call them forth, or to keep x them 
 in exercise. The infant shows the love of society and of appro- 
 bation almost as soon as the appetite of hunger. u Attend only," 
 says a distinguished naturalist, " to the eyes, the features, and the 
 gestures of a child on the breast when another child is presented 
 to it; both instantly, previous to the possibility of instruction 
 or habit, exhibit the most evident expressions of joy. Their 
 eyes sparkle, and their features and gestures demonstrate, in the 
 most unequivocal manner, a mutual attachment. When further 
 advanced, children who are strangers to each other, though their 
 social appetite be equally strong, discover a mutual shyness of 
 approach, which, however, is soon conquered by the more pow- 
 erful instinct of association." 
 
 But a stronger proof of the primitive and unreflecting charac- 
 ter of these desires is the fact, that most, if not all, of them are 
 shown in various degrees of intensity by the lower animals. Em- 
 ulation is the prevailing trait in the disposition of a horse, as the 
 love of approbation is in that of the dog, and the desire for society 
 in that of all the gregarious animals. In these cases, certainly, 
 it is not the utility of the several objects that are aimed at, or the 
 pleasure which they are capable of imparting, that is the founda- 
 tion of the desire ; for this pleasure is made known only by ex- 
 perience, the utility is discoverable by reason alone ; and brutes 
 are incapable of profiting by the one or the other. It is a proof 
 of the goodness of God, that these animals and human beings are 
 so organized, their sensibilities are such, that the gratification of 
 these desires is generally accompanied by a pleasurable feeling, 
 or a sense of enjoyment. But this is not a necessary accompa- 
 niment ; we can easily conceive of a sensibility so constituted, 
 that the fulfilment of the desire should be attended with pain in- 
 stead of pleasure ; and yet the desire would be not the less real, 
 not the less a stimulus to action. In fact, under certain circum- 
 stances, in certain states of body or mind, the satisfaction of our 
 longings becomes a source of torment, instead of happiness ; 
 Heaven punishes us by granting our guilty prayers ; and though 
 this result be foreseen, though we have a moral certainty that 
 
254 THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 
 
 more pain than pleasure will be the consequence of the accom- 
 plishment of our wishes, we persist in the effort. The vehe- 
 mence of the desire conquers every thing, even our regard for 
 our own happiness. 
 
 I have dwelt the longer on the uncalculating, and therefore, in 
 one sense of the term, unselfish, nature of the original appetites 
 and desires, in order to prepare the way for a similar conclusion 
 (where it is more important) in regard to the last class of these 
 primitive impulses which we have to consider, namely, the af- 
 fections. These are usually divided into two classes, according 
 as their object is the communication of enjoyment or of suffering 
 to our fellow-beings. In the first class are reckoned the affec- 
 tions of kindred, of friendship, patriotism, pity, gratitude, and 
 the like ; in the second are comprised hatred, jealousy, envy, 
 and revenge, all of which, however, are more properly consid- 
 ered as modifications of the single principle of resentment. 
 What benevolent purposes are answered by ingrafting these 
 principles in the human constitution is a point for subsequent 
 consideration. My only present aim is to show that these af- 
 fections, like the simple appetites and desires, are original ten- 
 dencies of our nature, and point towards their several objects 
 simply from an instinctive liking for those objects, and without 
 any regard to the pleasure or pain which may attend the exercise 
 of the affections themselves on the part of those who feel them ; 
 in other words, that there is such a thing as benevolent affection, 
 original and unmixed. There is pleasure consequent on their en- 
 tertainment, but a desire to receive that pleasure is not the reason 
 why we entertain them. We do this because we cannot help it. 
 Under certain circumstances, we are affected with love, pity, 
 gratitude, or resentment, whether we will or no ; we admit these 
 feelings as necessarily as the understanding yields assent on the 
 presentation of sufficient evidence. We act in accordance with 
 them, not from any selfish desire of the pleasure or profit which 
 such action will occasion to ourselves, but because the affection 
 itself prompts us to act ; and this prompting would be felt, though 
 injury or death should be the consequence of yielding to it. Why 
 has it ever been supposed that it was otherwise ? 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 255 
 
 To answer this question, I must explain the origin of the feel- 
 ing of self-love, and the nature of the selfish system in morals, as 
 it is called, which attempts to reduce all motives, and refer all 
 conduct, to this single principle. As every appetite, desire, and 
 affection, when gratified, brings with it a sense of enjoyment, the 
 sum of these several enjoyments constitutes our idea of happi- 
 ness. Experience of pleasure, of course, brings with it a desire 
 of its recurrence ; and as we wish that this pleasure should be as 
 extensive and varied as possible, we are led to study the art of 
 so combining and regulating our motives and actions, that one 
 shall not interfere with another, and that the general result shall 
 be the maximum of enjoyment. Reason teaches us often to 
 sacrifice a less pleasure for a greater, or to postpone a momen- 
 tary indulgence for a larger and more permanent good to be ob- 
 tained hereafter. To borrow the language of a great moralist, 
 u any condition may be denominated happy in which the amount 
 or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain, and the degree of 
 happiness depends upon the quantity of this excess." Reason, 
 guided by experience, that is, by the materials afforded by the 
 gratification of the several desires, decides upon the course of 
 conduct which will raise this excess of pleasure over pain to the 
 highest attainable point ; and to act from this rational and calcu- 
 lating regard for our own interest is said to be the dictate of self- 
 love. 
 
 Here, first, in the active part of his nature, does man show his 
 superiority over the brute. The latter, unable to profit by expe- 
 rience, and incapable of foresight, cannot regulate its actions by 
 a system, or plan of life, but necessarily follows the impulse or 
 desire of the moment. The complex and abstract idea of hap- 
 piness lies beyond its power of conception. It cannot foresee 
 even the enjoyment which will follow the gratification of its pres- 
 ent appetite, but it acts under the immediate pressure of that 
 appetite, almost as mechanically as a machine moves from the 
 impulse given to it by a spring. For all the lower animals, pru- 
 dence is an impossible virtue ; but with man, it is the dawning of 
 his intellectual and moral life, the first step which he takes as a 
 
256 THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 
 
 rational and self-improving being. He can restrain the impulse 
 of the moment, be it appetite, affection, or desire, till he can 
 study the consequences of yielding to it, till he can remember 
 what was the effect of a former gratification of it, till he can 
 ascertain if there be not other objects which he desires more 
 earnestly, while the attainment of them will be hindered or ren- 
 dered impossible by the present indulgence. To act thus delib- 
 erately, with reflection and foresight, is the part of prudence ; 
 this is the lowest in the scale of virtues, for it ends in self; but 
 it is also the first, for, without it, the practice of any other virtue 
 would seldom be possible. By the exercise of it man first rises 
 above the condition of the brutes, and manifests, not, indeed, 
 a moral nature, properly so called, but the capacity of receiv- 
 ing such a nature, and of acting up to its dictates. Here, also, 
 where morality first becomes practicable, was placed, as you will 
 remember, the decisive evidence of human free-will, in man's 
 power of governing and restraining for a time the operation of 
 motives, till he could consider and select from them a fitting 
 principle of action. 
 
 Prudence, which I here use as synonymous with self-love, is 
 only a well-considered and dispassionate regard for our own 
 future welfare ; and, as such, it is perfectly legitimate, and even 
 commendable, when it interferes not with higher obligations. Its 
 function is supervisory, and its sphere embraces all the lower 
 incitements to action, which we have already considered. It is 
 a governor and a judge among the appetites, affections, and de- 
 sires ; restraining, regulating, or indulging them, at the bidding of 
 the sovereign reason. If it abdicates its throne, man becomes a 
 mere brute, that is, a slave to the impulses and passions of the 
 instant. If it rules too absolutely, usurping or disregarding the 
 authority of a higher faculty, namely, the conscience, then man 
 becomes, not a brute, but a demon, or an utterly selfish being. 
 There is much less danger of this perversion of the faculty than 
 of the former one, for men yield far more readily to their imme- 
 diate passions than to calculations of their future interest. " A 
 regard to our own general happiness," says Sir James Mackin- 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 257 
 
 tosh, the safest and most philosophical of all modern commenta- 
 tors upon the theory of ethics, " is not a vice, but in itself an 
 excellent quality. It were well, if it prevailed more generally 
 over craving and shortsighted appetites. The weakness of the 
 social affections and the strength of the private desires properly 
 constitute selfishness ; a vice utterly at variance with the hap- 
 piness of him who harbours it, and as such condemned by self- 
 love." 
 
 But the fact, that the lower incitements to action are under the 
 government of prudence, and are directed with reference to our 
 future welfare, has given rise to the monstrous theory in morals, 
 that man's whole conduct is determined by the love of self, and 
 that he is incapable of disinterested action. He seeks only his 
 own interest, says Hobbes, and virtue consequently is but a 
 name. The benevolent affections are placed on the same level 
 with the private desires, such as those of emulation and revenge ; 
 because pleasure, or some ulterior advantage, follows the gratifi- 
 cation of them, we are said to yield to them only from a view to 
 our own happiness. The passions to which we give separate 
 names differ from each other, according to Hobbes, only in their 
 outward aspect, that is, with reference to the different objects 
 towards which they are turned ; at bottom, they are but modifi- 
 cations of the only true passion of which human nature is suscep- 
 tible, the love of self. If we honor or reverence another 
 being, he says, it is only because we are aware of his superior 
 power, and we desire to conciliate his good-will. Ridicule is only 
 an intense conception of our own superiority to the person who is 
 laughed at. Love, even that of a mother for her child, is but 
 prudent forecast, a lively anticipation of the services which may 
 be hereafter rendered us by the loved object. Pity is the imag- 
 ination of evil which may happen to ourselves, excited by con- 
 templating the misfortunes of another. To be charitable is only 
 to be proudly conscious of having power enough not merely to 
 create our own happiness, but to promote the happiness of an- 
 other. Thus, because the goodness of God has so ordered the 
 course of events, and so formed our hearts and minds, that every 
 
 33 
 
258 THE ACTIVE POWERS OP MAN. 
 
 kindly and noble feeling is its own reward, and every generous 
 and virtuous action redounds even to the temporal advantage of 
 the agent, does the perverse ingenuity of the theorist twist all 
 these feelings into forms of selfishness, and represent the action 
 as qnly simulating the virtues of which human nature is really in- 
 capable. Because honesty in the long run is the best policy, we 
 are said to be honest only because we are politic and dread the 
 consequences of detected knavery. 
 
 This repulsive and degrading theory could never have obtained 
 the notice which it has received, if it had not been urged with 
 great ability by Hobbes, a reasoner of singular acuteness, and 
 one of the greatest masters of prose style in the English lan- 
 guage. The refutation of it has already been laid before you, in 
 the obvious fact, that the primitive passions and desires fell seek 
 their several ends irrespective of the consequences of their grati- 
 fication. We claim no more for the social desires than for the 
 appetites. A man drinks because he is thirsty, and not in order 
 to preserve life, though death would be the consequence of an 
 utter privation, of liquids ; just so he seeks society because jie 
 is gregarious by nature, and not on account of the advantages he 
 may derive from the cooperation of his fellows, signal as these 
 advantages are found to be. In fact, he never could have known 
 that society would be useful to him except from experience ; 
 and he could certainly have had no experience till a society was 
 first formed. Men were first brought together, then, without a 
 possibility of being acquainted with the only motives which, ac- 
 cording to the selfish system, could ever bring them together. 
 
 Again, man is at one time benevolent or compassionate, just 
 as he is revengeful at another, without regard in either case to 
 the effect which giving way to the emotion may have upon his 
 own well-being. When stung by a keen sense of wrong, he will 
 often prosecute his revenge to the utter destruction of what are 
 called his worldly prospects, and knowing all the while that he is 
 rushing upon his ruin. So, if his pity is strongly excited, he will 
 attempt to relieve the distress in a manner which a moment's 
 reflection would have assured him would do great injury to him- 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 259 
 
 self and to society, without materially benefiting the object of 
 compassion. It is plain, therefore, that the benevolent affections 
 are just as uncalculating and disinterested as their opposites, or 
 those which tend to the harm of others, and no more so. In 
 truth, a theory which represents the affection of a mother, when 
 hanging over the cradle, of her child, as dictated only by a selfish 
 regard for the comfort and advantage which that child may here- 
 after afford to her declining years, hardly merits refutation. Why, 
 the brute feels this affection, if we may judge from appearances, 
 quite as strongly as the human being ; and we know that the brute 
 is incapable of calculating consequences. 
 
 I have dwelt thus long upon the selfish system only to bring 
 out into a stronger light the unreflecting and irrational character 
 of all the (jjrect incentives to action, including the affections and 
 sentiments as well as the appetites, and so to justify the arrange- 
 ment of them under so low an attribute even as prudence or 
 self-love ; the sphere of conscience, or the proper domain of 
 morality, being as yet hardly in sight. Our natural affections, 
 as Dugald Stewart observes, "cannot be exalted into virtues ; 
 for in so far as they arise from original constitution, they confer 
 no merit whatever on the individual, any more than his appetites 
 or desires ; at the same time, there is a manifest gradation in 
 the sentiments of respect with which we regard these different 
 constituents of character. Our desires, although not virtuous in 
 themselves, are manly and respectable, and plainly of greater 
 dignity than our animal appetites. In like manner, it may be 
 remarked, that our benevolent affections, although not meritori- 
 ous, are highly amiable." 
 
 To follow the blind impulse of a sentiment or emotion which 
 is not controlled or sanctioned by any higher faculty is conduct 
 little worthy of a rational being. Yet human nature is far more 
 prone to this fault than to the opposite excess of listening to 
 the cautious whisperings of self-love, which looks not only to 
 present gratification, but to future and permanent well-being. 
 There is an exaltation in fine sentiment, a nobleness in the gen- 
 erous affections, which hurries away the will, before conse- 
 
260 THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 
 
 quences can be estimated, or the claims even of justice can 
 obtain a hearing. But such enthusiasm is usually barren of good 
 results, and however amiable it may appear in the eyes of the 
 unthinking, it must not arrogate to itself the rewards of self-sac- 
 rificing virtue. In such conduct, indeed, there is no abnegation 
 of self ; for without reflection and forethought, there can be no 
 consciousness of any advantage that is resigned, or any enjoy- 
 ment that is sacrificed. To act thus is the part rather of reck- 
 less and shortsighted selfishness, which covets the brief pleasure 
 that always follows the immediate gratification of the impulse of 
 the moment, whether that impulse tends to the welfare or the in- 
 jury of our fellow-beings. It cannot be amiss to determine, as 
 I have attempted to do, the true moral character of these orig- 
 inal incitements to action, sinc it is part of the philosophy of 
 the day, .so called, to yield them implicit obedience. But I 
 pass on. 
 
 Prudence, or self-love, is distinguished from its rightful supe- 
 rior, the moral faculty, in this, that it has regard only to the 
 outward consequences of actions. It governs and directs the 
 desires and affections with a view to the effects, whether near or 
 remote, which their indulgence will have upon our future wel- 
 fare* Its functions, therefore, are rational, but not properly 
 moral ; while the motives that it governs, as has been shown, are 
 animal, for they are common to man and the brute. Prudence 
 never considers the nature of the motive in itself, before it passes 
 into action, but only questions whether it may be indulged to ad- 
 vantage in respect to the events which will follow its indulgence. 
 It is the servant of conscience, then, which never looks beyond 
 the inner man, and never speaks but with absolute authority. 
 
 Before considering the nature and functions of conscience, 
 which is the only point wanting to complete our survey of the 
 moral nature of man, it remains to be seen whether the affections 
 are so constituted as to afford any indications of the goodness 
 and the will of the Deity. As they are primitive in their char- 
 acter, or parts of the original constitution of our being, whatever 
 adaptations may be found in them to the situation and wants of 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 261 
 
 man are just as much proofs of design as the most curious and 
 useful contrivances in our animal frame. If they are found to 
 work together, so that the ends towards which one is impelled 
 by them severally do not conflict, but harmonize, and the general 
 result is conduct which tends to the good both of the individual 
 and the race, the arrangement certainly shows the wisdom and 
 benevolence of the Designer even more clearly than these are 
 seen in the material universe. If a finer analysis should show 
 that some of 'the feelings in question are not original, but ac- 
 quired, that is, that they are not implanted at first in the infant 
 mind, but necessarily spring up afterwards, under the influences 
 to which that mind is always exposed, this will make no differ- 
 ence as to the force or relevancy ^of the argument. It is enough 
 for our purpose, that the affection is necessarily developed sooner 
 or later, and that it tends to good. It may be, for instance, that 
 many of the kindly sentiments which are usually distinguished by 
 different names spring from the same root, and are in truth but va- 
 rious forms of one primitive feeling ; their subsequent divergence 
 may be accounted for by the association of ideas, or that law of 
 our nature which often transfers attachment from the end to the 
 means. As the miser loves gold at first only for the pleasures 
 that it will purchase, but finally for its own sake, so it may be 
 that friendship is but the transfer to persons of the feelings of 
 complacency and enjoyment first produced by the sense of mu- 
 tual obligation and by the wish for their recurrence. Thus there 
 may be a selfish element in the emotion at first ; but it purifies 
 itself by indulgence and habit, and is not perfected till it amounts 
 to self-sacrifice. 
 
 It is obvious enough, that the affections of kindred, especially 
 those of parent and child, are chiefly useful for the preservation 
 of the race ; and this we may suppose to be the leading purpose 
 of their creation. But observe, further, how they cooperate 
 with the social feeling, and first make society possible by afford- 
 ing a type of it in the family. Submission to paternal authority 
 paves the way for obedience to a political head ; and the love of 
 kindred needs but little expansion to become a love of country. 
 
262 THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 
 
 Since the affections weaken as they expand, the most general of 
 all, philanthropy or universal benevolence, is quickened and made 
 intense by sympathy, a principle which is as unquestionably prim- 
 itive or innate as the love of offspring, and is so universal and sal- 
 utary in its operation, that an eminent moralist has taken it to be 
 the foundation of our ethical nature, or the fountain of all the vir- 
 tues. It is the proper antagonist or corrective of selfishness, as 
 under its impulse we instinctively make the sorrows and pleasures 
 of others our own, and in turn feel our own joys heightened, and 
 sufferings diminished, through the consciousness that they are 
 shared by our neighbours. The endowment of the human mind 
 with this principle alone, peculiar and striking as its effects are 
 seen to be when we reflect upon them, seems to me as plain an 
 indication of the benevolence of the Deity, and of his will that 
 men should cultivate kindness and affection for each other, as 
 the explicit enunciation of the same truths in Scripture. 
 
 All the relations in which we stand to our fellow-beings have 
 separate affections corresponding to them, and our sense of the 
 duties which are incumbent upon us in each case is developed 
 and confirmed by this association. The strength of the affection 
 may generally be taken as a safe measure of the duty. Parental 
 love is stronger than friendship ; sympathy with distress is more 
 vivid than sympathy with enjoyment ; the love of family is more 
 powerful than the love of country ; and the love of country, 
 again, is more urgent than universal benevolence. Few will 
 deny that the scale of duties exactly corresponds to this grada- 
 tion ; so that, even if reason did not operate to show the com- 
 parative utility of the performance of these duties, we should 
 have what might be called an instinctive appreciation of their 
 relative importance. Theorists, it is true, have often tried to 
 invert this natural order of the virtues ; but, as might be ex- 
 pected, with small success. Thus, circumstances led the an- 
 cients to exaggerate the merits of patriotism ; and even Plato 
 held the opinion, that the indulgence of the domestic affections 
 unfitted men for the discharge of their political duties ; he went 
 so far as to propose, on this account, that children should be 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 263 
 
 separated from their parents immediately after birth, and brought 
 up at the public expense. The enthusiasm of modern times has 
 taken a somewhat different course ; universal philanthropy is now 
 the fashionable virtue, and it is preached up to an extent that 
 throws all the more private affections into the shade, even if it 
 does not menace their extinction. But the duties which lie 
 within the narrowest circle are most frequent in their recurrence, 
 and so tend to keep up the habit of virtue ; while the benevolent 
 feeling which can take in no less an object than the whole human 
 race, for want of striking occasions on which to manifest itself, 
 is apt to be wasted in speculation and magnificent professions. 
 There is deep meaning in the language of our Saviour, when he 
 inculcates love to all mankind under the figure of love to our 
 neighbour. 
 
 Be not always eager, then, to direct your course only by 
 some lofty, abstract, and distant principles, to the disregard of 
 the humbler and more practical rules of morals which shine di- 
 rectly around and near our daily life. This is the folly of attempt- 
 ing to steer always by the stars, though the coast be near at 
 hand, and the low, familiar beacons on it, if we will only heed 
 them, will guide us safely into port. And do not, if you get into 
 difficulty by acting in this manner, lay all the blame upon the 
 stars ; they shine in their proper places, but we have no instru- 
 ments nice enough to take their precise bearings, where a very 
 slight error might lead to fatal consequences. High principles are 
 always right ; but we make egregious mistakes in attempting to act 
 upon them on slight and familiar occasions, when there are less 
 ambitious, but safer, rules of guidance at hand, if we will only 
 heed them. These lofty maxims come into play but seldom, 
 on great occasions ; and even then, they serve only as compre- 
 hensive precepts for the general formation of our hearts and char- 
 acters, and not as precise rules of conduct, that are serviceable 
 on particular emergencies. We look to the stars for pilotage 
 when we are in the midst of a broad and trackless ocean, and no 
 landmarks are in sight ; and they show us only the general direc- 
 tion in which we ought to steer. When the breakers are close 
 
264 THE ACTIVE POWERS OP MAN. 
 
 around us, it is no time to look aloft. Goethe gives good ad- 
 vice : If perplexed by the many calls that are made upon us, 
 and by conflicting rules of life, let us always do first the nearest 
 duty ; when this is finished, the others will already have become 
 clearer. 
 
 The affections, like the desires, create a feeling of uneasiness 
 and discontent in the absence of their respective objects, and 
 prompt to exertion for the supply of the deficiency. The love 
 of friends is a craving which makes itself more or less distinctly 
 known according to the experience which we have had of com- 
 panionship. "As the lamb," says an able writer, "when it strikes 
 with the forehead while yet unarmed, proves that it is not its 
 weapons which determine its instincts, but that it has preexistent 
 instincts suited to its weapons, so, when we see an animal de- 
 prived of the sight of its fellows cling to a stranger, or disarm by 
 its caresses the rage of an enemy, we perceive the workings of a 
 social instinct, not only not superinduced by external circum- 
 stances, but manifesting itself in spite of circumstances which are 
 adverse to its operation. The same remark may be extended 
 to man ; when in solitude he languishes, and, by making com- 
 panions of the lower animals, or by attaching himself to inani- 
 mate objects, strives to fill up the void of which he is con- 
 scious." The feeling is blind, indeed ; instinct in animals, and 
 reason in man, alone can supply the means of satisfying the want ; 
 but we know that there is a want, and that the uneasiness will 
 remain till it is gratified. 
 
 A still more striking instance of this truth may be found in the 
 religious sentiment, to which I have already often alluded. Man 
 is created with a capacity and inclination for worship, with a 
 deep feeling of veneration, which finds no appropriate object on 
 which to expend itself among the persons and things with whom 
 he is associated on earth, but constantly seeks for such an object, 
 and usually finds it, in the conception of some spiritual existence 
 higher and holier than any created being. From this fact alone 
 can we explain the endless variety of religious systems which 
 have obtained in the world, no nation or race having ever been 
 
THE ACTIVE POWERS OF MAN. 265 
 
 discovered which had no form of religious worship. The savage 
 makes his idol of a block or stone. The half-enlightened bar- 
 barian finds a Divinity all around him, and peoples the mountains, 
 the streams, and the forests with their attendant deities. When 
 more cultivated, his thirst for knowledge leads him to study the 
 heavens, and the sun, moon, and stars become his gods. Finally, 
 whether as the last triumph of the unaided intellect or by special 
 revelation, the sublime doctrine of monotheism is preached to 
 the world, and calls forth the purest form and highest degree of 
 reverence of which the human heart is capable. 
 
 31 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 I ENDEAVOURED to show, in my last Lecture, from a com- 
 parison of the human faculties with those of the brutes, that 
 discipline or self-development is the great end of our existence 
 upon earth ; mere enjoyment, or the conscious gratification of 
 desire, being only a secondary aim. The prevalence of law, or 
 the uniformity of causation, in the material universe is not intended 
 merely to uphold and continue this universe, an object which 
 might be accomplished far more easily and directly, but to 
 operate as a means for this education of man ; that is, to guide 
 the conduct of a being who is not, like the brutes, conducted 
 blindfold and unconsciously to the performance of every work 
 that is necessary for the continuation and welfare of his species, 
 but is rendered capable, through free-will, judgment, and fore- 
 thought, of acting for himself. An examination of the lower 
 motive powers of the human mind the appetites, affections, 
 and desires was intended to prove that they are mere blind 
 impulses, or springs of activity, differing from each other in 
 strength, but having regard only to their own immediate gratifica- 
 tion ; the objects of them being sought invariably as ends, not as 
 means. So far as man is under their guidance, he has no supe- 
 riority over the other orders of the animal creation. Prudence, 
 or self-love, is the first element of his intellectual being ; the 
 office of this faculty is to restrain the primitive impulses and de- 
 sires, to ascertain the relative importance of the ends towards 
 
THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 267 
 
 which they are directed, and thus to subject the lower to the 
 higher, and to make all of them conduce to the working out 
 of that scheme of happiness, or general well-being, which has 
 been devised by the intellect. 
 
 Here, then, man first appears in his distinctive character as a 
 rational being. He is not yet a moral one. His own happiness 
 is the highest end that is yet in view, and all things are judged or 
 estimated by their relative fitness to promote this single object. 
 They are compared with each other, not as good or evil, but as 
 expedient or injurious. The desires and affections are not con- 
 sidered in themselves, or with reference to their inherent charac- 
 ter, but are viewed only indirectly, through the outward conse- 
 quences which will result from their indulgence. There is room 
 enough for the exercise of free-will, even if we look only to 
 these external results. The immediate impulse, or passion of 
 the moment, which always determines the action of the brute, is 
 checked or restrained by man till he can see the probable effect 
 of giving way to it. At least, this is what he is capable of 
 doing, and what he must do, if he would exercise those prerog- 
 atives of his nature through which alone he is placed at the head 
 of the animal creation. 
 
 But is this all ? Have we completed the description of hu- 
 man nature, when man is made to appear as a being endowed 
 with reason and foresight, free to act, and able to learn through 
 experience what actions will most effectually promote his present 
 and future happiness ? The consciousness of every individual 
 will answer, that it is not all ; that there is an element of our 
 nature which excels prudence more than prudence excels animal 
 instinct or passion. This principle extends its jurisdiction over 
 our whole being, claiming authority to control and subdue the 
 promptings of self-love as absolutely as it overrules the appetites 
 and desires. By the side of prudence, or above it, it introduces 
 the novel conception of duty, or moral obligation ; over personal 
 happiness, as an object of effort and a guide to action, it places 
 the idea of absolute right. Putting aside the consideration of ex- 
 ternal things, it erects its throne in the soul of man, and judges, 
 
268 THE NATURE OP CONSCIENCE. 
 
 not the outward act, but the motives and intentions which lead to 
 it and constitute its moral character. Dealing thus exclusively 
 with conceptions of the intellect, or pure ideas, all contingency 
 or uncertainty disappears from its decisions, and the sentence 
 which it pronounces is as unchangeable as the purposes of the 
 Almighty. It supplies the medium and the standard of judgment 
 through which we regard our own conduct and that of our fellow- 
 beings, and form our notions of the attributes of God. Here, 
 then, is the proper foundation of Natural Religion. Natural 
 Theology^ which is the product of the intellect, makes us ac- 
 quainted with the being and the natural attributes of the Deity, 
 such as his infinite duration, power, and wisdom, merely as facts 
 of science, or truths for contemplation. Natural Religion, pro- 
 ceeding from conscience, makes known to us his moral nature, 
 his purposes and will, and so terminates, not in knowledge, but in 
 action. 
 
 It is difficult to explain the nature and functions of conscience 
 without seeming to dwell on mere truisms, or to adopt an abstruse 
 and technical phraseology, which will tend rather to confuse than 
 to rectify our notions of the subject. The terms expressive of 
 moral distinctions, and of our feelings in regard to them, have so 
 passed into common use as an integral part of all languages, and 
 we have so frequent occasion for them both in writing and con- 
 versation, that it is not an easy task to call attention to the 
 fundamental facts in our constitution which they signify, or to im- 
 agine what the nature of man would be, or how it would appear, 
 if it were suddenly deprived of the moral faculty altogether, so 
 that these words and phrases should no longer convey any intel- 
 ligible meaning. Yet this is what is necessary to be done before 
 we can gain a clear conception of the office of conscience, or of 
 the nature of the addition which it makes to the merely animal 
 and the merely intellectual part of our being. To analyze or 
 otherwise describe the ideas of right and wrong is quite as diffi- 
 cult as to furnish correct and lucid definitions of the particles, or 
 connecting links of speech, which we learn to apply, through 
 long experience, with great precision, though their very common- 
 
THE NATURE OP CONSCIENCE. 269 
 
 ness makes it hard to show what is their exact meaning. The 
 particles themselves enter into every definition we can form of 
 them. So we cannot show what the dictates of conscience are, 
 without presupposing that every one has a conscience, and can 
 listen to its voice. My object is, to show the importance and 
 the distinctive character of this ethical element in the human con- 
 stitution ; that it is not blended with, or made up from, our other 
 faculties, but is original and peculiar ; that it makes a large addi- 
 tion to the stock of our ideas derived from other sources, and in 
 fact modifies and controls the whole nature of man. 
 
 It is not easy, perhaps, to imagine how our perceptions of ex- 
 ternal objects would be affected, if the number of the senses were 
 suddenly increased, and through the addition of another organ we 
 were enabled to look into the internal constitution of things, of 
 which we have now only a superficial knowledge. We may 
 form some idea, however, of the change that would thus be 
 produced by considering the case of a person born blind, and 
 remaining so for many years. To him, the word color has ab- 
 solutely no meaning, and no combination of words, no illustra- 
 tions drawn from the ideas furnished by the other senses, could 
 ever give him even the remotest conception of what the word 
 signifies. It is said, that such a person, being once asked what 
 idea he had of an object colored red, answered, that he thought 
 it must resemble the sound of a trumpet ; and this reply, extrav- 
 agant as it seems, really comes as near the truth as any which 
 the most gifted intellect, under such circumstances, ever has 
 given, or ever can give. Now suppose that from a human being 
 who has long labored under this awful privation the veil should 
 in one moment be removed, that the scales should fall from his 
 eyes, and for the first time in his life he should be able to see. 
 For the first time upon his aching and astonished sense bursts 
 the glorious prospect of this green earth, its hills, plains, woods, 
 and waters, with their thousand hues, and bending over all the 
 blue arch of heaven, relieved only by vast folds of white cloud 
 lit up by the intolerable splendor of a noonday sun, or, at eve, 
 "thick inlaid with patines of bright gold." The rush of over- 
 
270 THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 whelming sensations that would oppress and burden his spirit 
 under such circumstances could be adequately described only in 
 the poet's inspired language : 
 
 "He looked; 
 
 Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth, 
 And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay 
 
 In gladness and deep joy Sound needed none, 
 
 Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank 
 The spectacle ; sensation, soul, and form 
 
 All melted into him In such high hour 
 
 Of visitation from the living God, 
 
 Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired." 
 
 The addition to his stock of knowledge would not cease with 
 the first view of this grand spectacle, or be Mmited to ideas of 
 color alone. How long, it has been asked, would it take for a 
 person born blind to acquire, by the unaided sense of touch, a 
 complete idea of the front of a large Gothic cathedral, with its 
 profusion of ornament and minuteness of tracery ? The power 
 of vision would increase a thousand-fold the aptitude of this other 
 sense to convey the information that is really peculiar to it, though 
 it is now so quickly suggested by visual sensations, that it seems 
 to us attributable to the eye alone. Strictly speaking, as I ex- 
 plained in a former Lecture, we see nothing but color ; the ideas 
 of distance, magnitude, and shape, which seem to be derived 
 immediately from sight, being in truth first communicated to us 
 through touch, or what has been called the muscular sense, and 
 are afterwards suggested to the eye through the varieties of tint, 
 of light and shade, with which they are found to be invariably 
 associated. Then, as the education of the newly acquired sense 
 was gradually perfected, it would become the constantly enlarg- 
 ing inlet of new ideas, till all the knowledge previously acquired 
 from other sources should seem as nothing, when compared with 
 the flood of information thus swiftly and without effort conveyed 
 to the mind by a new organ of perception. It will hardly be 
 deemed too fanciful to add, that if in a future state of being our 
 power of acquiring knowledge is to be immeasurably increased, 
 we can imagine no more direct mode of effecting this end than by 
 
THE NATURE OP CONSCIENCE. 271 
 
 the endowment of the soul with new organs of sense ; or rather 
 by stripping it entirely of the opaque and perishable covering of 
 clay that now limits its perceptions and veils its glories, and in 
 which the senses that we now possess are but narrow loopholes 
 through which we catch faint glimpses of the universe that God 
 has made. 
 
 To apply this illustration to the subject before us, I say that 
 the situation of the intellect which had never known the eye for 
 its minister, or as an inlet of knowledge, would be but a faint 
 parallel of the condition of the soul, or the whole man, on whom 
 the light of conscience never beamed, and who, consequently, 
 has no moral ideas whatever, but is as ignorant of the meaning 
 of right and wrong, duty and obligation, as the man born blind 
 is of color. The ideas, conceptions, or feelings, call them 
 what you may, which come to us through this source, are as 
 peculiar and distinctive, as impossible to be derived from any 
 other fountain than that which actually does furnish them, as are 
 the sensations of vision. They enter into and influence all our 
 deliberations ; they mould our judgments of our fellow-beings 
 and of ourselves ; they furnish a new guide to conduct ; they 
 lend a new aspect to life. I do not speak now only of those 
 over whose actions and thoughts they habitually exercise a strong 
 influence. I do not speak only of good men, or of any class of 
 men as distinguished from others ; I speak of all human beings, 
 of man himself, and of that which makes him what he is, a 
 man, and not a brute. Human nature is essentially moral, and 
 we can no more put off", or lay aside, even for a time, this at- 
 tribute of our being, than we can discard reason and take instinct 
 in its place. There are immoral men who hear the voice of 
 conscience, but heed it not ; but there is no such thing as an un- 
 moral man, to whom conscience speaks not at all. At any rate, 
 no such being can be found out of a mad-house ; and even there, 
 what we see is not so much the absolute privation of the rational 
 and moral faculties, as the awful spectacle of reason and con- 
 science alike in ruins. 
 
 Let me try to illustrate this point ; though, for the reason al- 
 
272 THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 ready mentioned, it is hard to put it in a clear light for those 
 who are not accustomed to abstractions, without seeming to 
 dwell upon facts which are too obvious for notice. Suppose, 
 then, that two persons, in whom we are equally interested, re- 
 ceive each an injury of the same magnitude, and attended with 
 precisely similar results ; let the two cases, in fine, be entirely 
 parallel, except in this single particular, that in the one the injury 
 done was wilful, wanton, and unprovoked, while in the other it 
 was wholly accidental. Observe that the supposed distinction 
 between the two cases rests upon no outward fact, upon nothing 
 visible to sense, but upon the secret motives and intentions of the 
 authors of the deed, upon what was passing in their minds be- 
 fore the blows were struck. Yet all mankind acknowledge this 
 difference to be real and vitally important ; they allow it to exer- 
 cise entire control over their judgment of the two transactions, 
 over the opinions which they form and express of them, and 
 over their subsequent feelings towards the agents of the mischief. 
 In every language that is spoken upon the earth there are words 
 to express the difference between simple harm and positive wrong. 
 We can easily imagine a person wicked and brutal enough to com- 
 mit the injury in the causeless manner first mentioned ; but we 
 cannot imagine any human being either bad or stupid enough to 
 be affected in precisely the same manner in the two cases, and 
 to see only equal cause for blame or praise in them. An animal 
 grazing in the field might turn an equally careless eye upon the 
 outward tokens of the harm done in both instances ; and if we 
 could suppose its instinct to be so far supplanted by reason that it 
 could know the one deed to be intentional, and the other acci- 
 dental, we should still believe that it would retain its indiffer- 
 ence, unless, by a further change in its nature, the gift of moral 
 should be added to that of intellectual perception. My point is, 
 that conscience differs as widely from reason, as reason does from 
 instinct. 
 
 We may take another instance from the affection of general 
 benevolence, or the desire of doing good to mankind. This is 
 a primitive or natural impulse, somewhat strengthened by sympa- 
 
THE NATURE OP CONSCIENCE. 273 
 
 thy, which seeks its own end without regard to any ulterior grati- 
 fication, and, when pure and unmixed, without reference to any 
 higher law or motive. The private relations between the two 
 parties, the giver and receiver of the benefit, do not increase or 
 diminish the addition that is made to the stock of human happi- 
 ness. We sympathize involuntarily with happiness conferred ; 
 we rejoice at the opening of new avenues to human enjoyment. 
 Now suppose that the means of pleasure thus bestowed were not 
 the rightful property of the donor, that they were not his to give. 
 He had them only in trust from one to whom they properly be- 
 longed, and who would very certainly have made a bad use of 
 them, have devoted them only to selfish purposes, or perhaps 
 to doing evil instead of good to his fellow-men, if they had re- 
 mained in his possession. No matter ; justice requires that they 
 should have been restored to him, to be squandered or misused 
 as he saw fit. Here, then, the feelings of justice and benevo- 
 lence are in conflict ; and what human being hesitates to admit 
 that the claims of the former are superior ? I have intentionally 
 taken an instance which proves that mere philanthropy, or the 
 desire of promoting the happiness of others, though it is the most 
 estimable of the affections, is not the whole duty of man ; and 
 consequently, that the affections alone, being impulsive and irra- 
 tional in their nature, are an insufficient guide to conduct. There 
 are many, perhaps, who, in the case supposed, would sacrifice 
 justice to benevolence ; but they would still be conscious if 
 not at the moment, at any rate after time had come for reflec- 
 tion that they had acted wrong. 
 
 What is this sentiment or idea of moral wrong, which arises 
 not merely in the two instances I have mentioned, but so fre- 
 quently in every healthy mind as to influence our conduct in 
 all the relations of life ? It surely is not conveyed to us through 
 the senses ; nor is it the offspring of the affections or desires, the 
 impulsive part of our nature, to which it is frequently set in op- 
 position. Is it the product of intellect, then ? The office of 
 this faculty, we know, is to discover truth, to discern the fitness 
 of means to ends, to perceive the relation of premises to conclu- 
 
 35 
 
274 THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 sions. It has nothing to do with action, but is limited entirely to 
 contemplation. In the first case mentioned, reason might inform 
 us of the fact, that the one deed was purposed, and the other 
 casual ; this truth would be learned by inference from certain 
 outward circumstances that enable us to judge of the intentions 
 of the parties. The intellect stops here ; the judgment subse- 
 quently passed, the idea of guilt or innocence that supervenes, is 
 not related to the knowledge thus obtained, as an inference is to 
 its premises, or as an end to means employed. Why is inten- 
 tional harm done to a fellow-being a wrong ? We cannot tell. 
 Why are the claims of justice superior to those of benevolence ? 
 We cannot tell. But we know that it is so, not only in the 
 judgment of men, but in the councils of God. 
 
 And further, the idea of retribution or punishment arises after 
 that of acknowledged wrong, even when the injured person is 
 beyond the reach of reparation, and when we are not looking 
 to the reformation of the guilty. Human legislation, indeed, is 
 properly confined to these two ends, and to the protection of 
 society. Human laws aim to provide for the redress of injuries, 
 the reformation of the criminal, and the welfare of all classes ; 
 but they seek to accomplish these ends at the expense of the 
 offender. It is just, it is right, that the wrong-doer should 
 suffer : we admit this principle intuitively, though it is directly 
 opposed to the dictates of sympathy and natural benevolence, 
 which aim to prevent all suffering. The decisions of conscience, 
 then, are authoritative and supreme. It overlooks and controls 
 the lower motives to action, even those which are most amiable 
 or excellent ; its voice is never heard but in tones of absolute 
 command. "If it had might, as it has right, it would govern 
 the world." 
 
 This brings me to the next characteristic of the moral faculty 
 in its proper sphere, the absolute certainty of its decisions. I 
 say "in its proper sphere," because, as we had occasion to re- 
 mark in the former Course, the undue extension of the commands 
 of conscience beyond their proper subjects, the motives and in- 
 tentions of men, to the external acts or occurrences through 
 
THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 275 
 
 which those intentions are manifested, often creates doubts, and 
 gives opportunity to question its absolute veracity. But in its 
 own domain, in the sanctuary of the soul, where all thoughts and 
 motives are judged, it is an undoubted sovereign. The certainty 
 of its decisions is like that which belongs to the convictions of 
 the understanding in regard to abstract truth. Right and wrong 
 are not interchangeable even in idea ; we cannot imagine, we* 
 cannot even conceive, of any instance in which the one should 
 be substituted for the other. As it is not within the power even 
 of Omnipotence to reverse the abstract laws of number and space, 
 so it is not his to alter the moral relations of thoughts and acts, 
 and our judgments of them, through which we look up reverently 
 to his throne, and form our conceptions of infinite holiness, jus- 
 tice, and truth personified in him. This is only saying, that it 
 is impossible for the Divine nature to act contrary to itself. The 
 sublime exclamation of Pythagoras, when contemplating the im- 
 mutable relations of space, " God himself geometrizes," ex- 
 presses but feebly the absolute trust with which the soul reposes 
 on those intuitions of eternal and necessary truth which are 
 vouchsafed to us as the foundations of our moral and intellectual 
 being. 
 
 We may gain a clearer idea of the infallibility of conscience by 
 comparing it with the other capacities of our nature, with which, 
 at first sight, it seems most nearly allied. Take the emotions of 
 taste, for instance. The contemplation of an exquisite work of 
 art, or of grand and striking scenery in nature, affects us with a 
 lively and agreeable feeling, which we call the perception of 
 beauty or sublimity. All men are subject to it, though in dif- 
 ferent degrees, depending on the cultivation of the taste. But 
 there is nothing absolute or immutable in our ideas of the quali- 
 ties which call it forth. The child is delighted with that which 
 appears to the adult as gaudy, puerile, or unnatural. Nay, there 
 is a "want of agreement as to the presence and existence of 
 beauty in particular objects among men whose organization is 
 perfect, and who are plainly possessed of the faculty, whatever 
 it may be, by which beauty is discerned. Oae man sees it per- 
 
276 THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 petually, where to another it is quite invisible, or even where its 
 reverse seems to be conspicuous. Nor is this owing to the in- 
 sensibility of either of the parties ; for the same contrariety ex- 
 ists where both are keenly alive to the influences of the beauty 
 they respectively discern. The gardens, the furniture, the 
 dress, which appeared beautiful in the eyes of our grandfathers, 
 are odious and ridiculous in ours. Nay, the difference of rank, 
 education, or employments, gives rise to the same diversity of 
 sensation." And even if all men could be brought to unanimity 
 upon this point, we could still conceive of such an alteration in 
 their capacity of discerning beauty, that what is now most pleas- 
 ing to them should become disagreeable, and the reverse. In 
 fine, the beauty or sublimity which we discern is in our own 
 minds ; and we do not know, that is, we cannot be sure, that 
 there is any thing corresponding to them in the world without, 
 or in the intrinsic nature of things. 
 
 But it is not so with our perceptions of moral good and evil. 
 Try to imagine that the relations of right and wrong are reversed, 
 
 that it is just to deceive, or to withhold from another his own, 
 
 that it is commendable to inflict a wanton injury upon a fellow- 
 being, and that falsehood is more praiseworthy than truth. 
 You cannot do it. The principles which forbid such a reversal 
 of judgment are erected, whether you will or no, whether your 
 conduct conforms to them or not, into absolute standards in your 
 own minds, to which you refer every motive and action for ap- 
 probation or censure. The ideas of right, of duty, of moral 
 obligation, are inwrought with our inmost being, and we can no 
 more conceive that they are subjective only, or without a basis 
 in the essential nature of things, than we can imagine the annihi- 
 lation of time and space. It is conceivable, indeed, though the 
 supposition is a violent one, that the constitution of our minds 
 should be altered far enough for us to see these things reversed, 
 and to imagine that injustice and falsehood were meritorious. 
 Just so we admit the possibility of insanity. But we cannot 
 admit that such a change would be in the direction of the truth, 
 or that, when it had taken place, we should not be laboring under 
 
THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 277 
 
 a fatal error. Right and duty, as we now perceive them, are 
 absolute conceptions, and must exist as they are, wholly irrespec- 
 tive of the manner in which they are viewed by different minds. 
 
 The correctness and the unanimity of men's moral judgments 
 must be clearly distinguished from their universal acknowledg- 
 ment of the- supremacy of moral obligation. There is consider- 
 able diversity of opinion in the former respect, in the estimate 
 which we may form of the moral character of certain actions, and 
 especially of the relative importance of certain duties ; though 
 men's ideas on this subject usually converge just in proportion as 
 they become enlightened, and inform their minds by reflection 
 and experience. Savages may deem it right to plunder and to 
 kill ; the Spartans taught their children to steal ; the ancients 
 generally held that falsehood and deceit were justifiable, if prac- 
 tised for the public good, and not for one's individual advantage. 
 But none of these doubted that the right, as they esteemed it, 
 was obligatory ; they acknowledged with one voice, that they 
 were bound to practise it. The words duty and law had as 
 much meaning and force in their ears, as they have among the 
 most enlightened and most Christian communities of our own 
 times. It is this sense of obligation, this recognition of an act 
 as something which ought to be done, or to be left undone, 
 which is the capital fact in our moral being ; it is the foundation 
 and superstructure of our moral nature. It is not an idea fur- 
 nished by the senses, or in any way suggested by sensation. 
 Men may differ in applying this idea of duty ; they may consider 
 one or another act as binding upon them ; but they never fail to 
 recognize obligation somewhere, to acknowledge its rightful 
 supremacy, and to distinguish it clearly from the feeling of com- 
 pulsion, or restraint. And the instances even of mistaken appli- 
 cation of the idea of duty are so few and unimportant, that they 
 may properly be viewed as perversions of the moral faculty, 
 rather than as proofs of its original incapacity or blindness. Mo- 
 rality, as a general rule, needs not to be taught, but to be guard- 
 ed against the effects of wrong teaching. The unperverted 
 conscience of a child shrinks from the act which its fanatical 
 parents attempt to impose as a duty. 
 
278 THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Butler and Mackintosh, with other writers upon the theory of 
 ethics, have been much exercised in the attempt to find a basis 
 for the supremacy of conscience, or a reason for the despotic 
 authority which it claims over the other principles and motives of 
 our nature. They thought it necessary to justify the overruling 
 and despotic influence which the moral faculty claims over the 
 whole man, but does not always succeed in enforcing, since the 
 lower propensities often exceed it in strength. I have an im- > 
 pulse, it is true, to be just to my fellow-man ; but I have also an 
 impulse to gratify my anger, to pamper my appetites, to secure 
 the means of selfish enjoyment, and even to assist the unfortunate 
 with the property which happens to be in my hands, though it 
 really belongs to another. These two impulses often clash, and 
 the latter, which is rightfully the inferior one, frequently gets the 
 upperhand. Why, then, do I believe that it is rightfully infe^ 
 rior, or why do I feel compunction after it has triumphed ? If 
 the sentiment of duty comes in conflict with a feeling so powerful 
 as self-love, or so amiable as benevolence, though I have a dis- 
 tinct consciousness that the former ought to prevail, it is well to 
 see if there are any good grounds for this assumed superiority, 
 and thus to fortify the demands of conscience by satisfying the 
 reason. 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh thought that he had found a basis for 
 this claim of supreme authority in the fact that conscience acts 
 directly upon the inner man, having its throne within the soul, 
 while all the other impulses and desires point to outward objects. 
 The sense of duty governs the motives, intentions, and dispo- 
 sitions of men. Hence it is universal, or it regulates the whole 
 conduct and character ; while the objects of the other propensities 
 are particular, as well as external. If I yield to anger, for in- 
 stance, while all my other passions and appetites are restrained 
 by the law of conscience, the act of resentment is perceived to 
 violate the harmony of the system ; it is an act of disorder, which 
 will be recognized as such when the temporary excitement sub- 
 sides. Again, the objects of the passions and desires being ex- 
 ternal, I must use means for their gratification. I may not be 
 
THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 279 
 
 able to gratify my appetite, because I cannot find the jneans of 
 doing so. But I can always satisfy my conscience, because 
 here no means are needed ; the will, the intention, is enough ; 
 duty asks nothing more. The failure of the intention may cause 
 sorrow, but cannot produce remorse. Hence, conscience is 
 independent, or sufficient unto itself; while the gratification of 
 every other impulse depends on outward circumstances. Pas- 
 sion often defeats itself ; the desires remain unsatisfied ; appetite 
 cannot obtain its appropriate food ; self-love not infrequently 
 brings its own punishment. But the sense of duty never fails, 
 and yielding to it is at once success and enjoyment. 
 
 These suggestions of an accomplished moralist, though they 
 illustrate the general subject, do not seem to me to throw much 
 light upon the particular inquiry in which we are now engaged. 
 It is true, that conscience is universal and independent, as well 
 as supreme ; but it does not appear very clearly how the latter 
 attribute is a consequence of the two former ones. Though I 
 am independent, it does not follow that I am entitled to com- 
 mand ; though not subject to control, I may not be permitted to 
 exercise it. Moreover, prudence, or an enlightened self-love, 
 seems to have quite as wide a domain as the moral sense ; it also 
 is universal, for it often assumes to regulate the whole conduct 
 and character with a view only to the individual's own future 
 happiness. Yet no one thinks of saying that it is supreme. I 
 need not dwell upon attempts less ingenious and plausible than 
 that of Mackintosh to solve this problem, since all occasion for 
 them disappears when we come to examine the subject more 
 closely. 
 
 A full analysis of our moral perceptions will show, if I mistake 
 not, that the supremacy of conscience is an ultimate fact, and 
 that we cannot go behind it, or give a reason for it, without rea- 
 soning in a circle, or virtually denying the very point we attempt 
 to prove. To ask why I ought to obey the law of right is, in 
 truth, to suppose that there is some obligation of greater moment 
 than the sense of duty, some consideration which needs to be 
 alleged in its support, and thus to take for granted that it is not 
 
280 THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 supreme.. We might as well ask a reason for our belief that 
 every event must have a cause. 
 
 Certain motives and actions are made known to me, and recog- 
 nized by conscience, as good and right. I may simply contem- 
 plate them with complacency and approbation, just as I am 
 gratified with the view of a beautiful landscape, or struck with 
 awe at the sight of the starry heavens. A kind of moral taste is 
 thus formed, which is productive of as much enjoyment, when 
 properly cultivated, as our sensibility to the other emotions of 
 taste, or our capacity of receiving pleasure through the senses. 
 Though I were incapable of action myself, and therefore should 
 never have occasion to apply the epithets to my own conduct, I 
 should still derive pleasure from awarding them to others, and 
 from reflecting on their deeds which merit to be so distinguished. 
 We see an obvious illustration of this fact in the pleasure that we 
 derive from fictitious representations of life, which call all our 
 moral sentiments into play, though we are perfectly conscious at 
 the time that the incidents are imaginary. In reading a novel, or 
 seeing a theatrical performance, we are pained and disappointed, 
 if the rules of " poetical justice," as it is termed, are not ob- 
 served. It is a noble characteristic of the taste and conscience of 
 man, that they require in art a closer adherence to the principles 
 of the beautiful, the just, and the right, than we can reasonably 
 expect to be exemplified in nature and life. The beau-ideal is 
 not found in the world ; poetical justice is confessedly unreal ; it 
 does not follow merit and demerit in this stage of existence. 
 But the restraint of circumstances is not felt in the province of 
 invention ; and where man is the creator, he becomes responsible 
 for the whole work. He is bound to " submit the shows of 
 things to the desires of the mind." If he cannot embody in his 
 work that perfect beauty and absolute right, of which we dream, 
 and to which we are constantly reaching forward, he is under an 
 obligation, at least, not to allow the virtuous to go finally unre- 
 warded, nor the wicked to triumph. 
 
 But we shall have a most imperfect view of the action of the 
 moral faculty, if we stop here. This merely intellectual view of 
 
THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 281 
 
 f* 
 
 right and wrong, this cool survey of motives and conduct in their 
 ethical aspect, this feast of the moral sensibilities at the table of 
 fiction, will be almost as profitless in its consequences as it is 
 meagre and unsatisfactory in point of scientific truth. We must 
 go back to the origin of these distinctions, to the primal revela- 
 tions of conscience, and see where it is that the ideas of moral 
 good and evil have their birth. What is most peculiar and orig- 
 inal in the action of this faculty, and from which, indeed, all the 
 other moral facts of our nature are but inferences and generaliza- 
 tions, is the impulse of duty, or the feeling of moral obligation. 
 / am bound to act with justice and benevolence ; / ought to do 
 right and to follow after truth. This sense of obligation, this 
 recognition of an absolute and rightful command, having refer- 
 ence only to conduct, is what we call conscience, in its simplest 
 and primitive meaning. The words right and wrong have no 
 significance except as convenient appellations afterwards given 
 by the intellect to those deeds which I am thus bound to perform 
 or abstain from. Merit and demerit signify only the feelings 
 which arise in my mind according as this command has been 
 obeyed or violated. We cannot analyze this feeling or idea of 
 duty, for, being simple, it does not admit of resolution into parts, 
 or explanation by any more obvious terms. To have it is to 
 recognize its authority, for positive obligation is supreme in its 
 very nature ; nothing can come in conflict with it but desire, 
 which is no obligation at all. 
 
 There is a confusion of speech, then, in asking why we are 
 bound to comply with the requisitions of conscience ; it is re- 
 quiring one to tell why it is a duty to perform a duty, thus 
 indicating a doubt whether there is any such thing as original and 
 necessary obligation. Whatever answer is given, it is evident 
 that the question may be continually repeated. If it be said, for 
 instance, that I must obey conscience because it is expedient, or 
 because it is conformable to the fitness of things, or to reason, or 
 because it is the will of God, the question instantly recurs, Why 
 am I obliged to do what is expedient, or to conform to reason or 
 the fitness of things, or to obey the will of God ? The higher 
 
282 THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 reason of man never thus returns in a circle upon itself, for ever 
 seeking without coming to a knowledge of the truth. What we 
 mean by asking in reference to any particular action, Why is it 
 a duty ? why ought I to perform it ? is no more than this : 
 Prove to me that it is a duty ; only place it before me in so 
 clear a light that my conscience shall recognize and approve 
 it, and I ask for no higher sanction. The absolute obligation of 
 the deed is then revealed to me. 
 
 This doctrine is very clearly and forcibly stated by Dr. Ad- 
 ams, a moralist of Oxford. " Right," says he, {C implies duty 
 in its idea. To perceive an action to be right is to see a reason 
 for doing it in the action itself, abstracted from all other con- 
 siderations whatever ; and this perception, this acknowledged 
 rectitude in the action, is the very essence of obligation, that 
 which commands the approbation and choice and binds the con- 
 science of every rational human being. Nothing can bring us 
 under an obligation to do what appears to our moral judgment 
 wrong. It may be supposed our interest to do this, but it can- 
 not be supposed our duty. For, I ask, if some power, which 
 we are unable to resist, should assume the command over us, 
 and give us laws which are unrighteous and unjust, should we 
 be under an obligation to obey him ? Should we not rather be 
 obliged to shake off the yoke, and to resist such usurpation, if it 
 were in our power ? However, then, we might be swayed by 
 hope or fear, it is plain that we are under an obligation to right, 
 which is antecedent, and in order and nature superior, to all 
 other. Power may compel, interest may bribe, pleasure may 
 persuade, but reason [conscience] only can oblige. This is the 
 only authority which rational beings can own, and to which they 
 owe obedience." * 
 
 All lesser obligations are resolvable into this primal idea of 
 duty, and are in truth but the various forms which this idea as- 
 sumes when it is applied to the various relations and circum- 
 stances of life. Thus, the state, the society, or the family, to 
 
 * Quoted in D. Stewart's Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers 
 of Man. 
 
THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 283 
 
 which one belongs, is said to have authority over him, and he is 
 bound to render obedience to that authority, and to its expressed 
 will in the form of law. But so far as this obedience is not 
 effect of compulsion or of the persuasion of interest, it is ren- 
 dered only because reason brings the acts which are preservative 
 of such associations within the sphere of conscience, and this 
 faculty makes them obligatory, in the proper sense of that word. 
 Law itself, whether human or Divine, is but a generalization of 
 the commands of conscience, and has no proper authority but 
 what is derived from this source, however it may be surrounded 
 with rewards and punishments, which are intended to act upon 
 our prudence or self-love. It is this wide compass and un- 
 measured application of the primitive sense of duty which lends 
 all its force to Wordsworth's magnificent exaggeration of the idea, 
 in his Ode to this "stern daughter of the voice of God." 
 
 " Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong-, 
 And the most ancient Heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong." 
 
 We see, then, how violent is the metaphor by which we apply 
 the term law to the uninterrupted, or causal, succession of events 
 in the physical world. We speak, for instance, of the constant 
 movements of the planets in their courses as the consequence of 
 the law of gravitation, finding no figure more appropriate to 
 express the immutable order of their motions, than to represent 
 these vast orbs as voluntary agents hearkening to the stern moni- 
 tor within the breast, following its dictates with implicit obedience, 
 and thus preserving the eternal harmony of the universe. The 
 awful supremacy of conscience is thus extended, though by a 
 figure of speech, over the material creation, and we mark our 
 sense of the absolute character of moral obligation by applying 
 it to what is most fixed and unchangeable among the works of 
 God. 
 
 I draw one other illustration of this subject from Dugald 
 Stewart, in his fine remark, that "the supreme authority of 
 conscience is felt and tacitly acknowledged by the worst, no 
 less than by the best, of men ; for even they who have thrown 
 off all hypocrisy with the world are at pains to conceal their real 
 
284 THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 character from their own eyes. No man ever, in soliloquy or 
 private meditation, avowed to himself that he was a villain ; nor 
 do I believe that such a character as Joseph in the School for 
 Scandal, (who is introduced as reflecting coolly on his own 
 knavery and baseness, without any uneasiness but what arises 
 from the dread of detection,) ever existed in the world. Such 
 men probably impose on themselves fully as much as they do 
 upon others. Hence the various artifices of self-deceit, which 
 Butler has so well described in his discourses on that subject."* 
 
 " We may defend villany," says Lord Shaftesbury, as quoted 
 by Dugald Stewart, " and cry up folly before the world. But to 
 appear fools, madmen, or varlets to ourselves, and prove it to our 
 own faces that we are really such, is insupportable. For so true 
 a reverence has every one for himself when he comes clearly to 
 appear before his close companion, that he had rather profess the 
 vilest things of himself in open company than hear his character 
 privately from his own mouth. So that we may readily from 
 hence conclude, that the chief interest of ambition, avarice, cor- 
 ruption, and every sly insinuating vice, is to prevent this inter- 
 view and familiarity of discourse which is consequent upon close 
 retirement and inward recess." 
 
 The metaphorical application of words, the frequent inter- 
 change of terms between the Moral and the Physical Sciences, 
 has tended greatly to obscure and perplex the subject of which 
 we are now treating, and to cover up some essential differences 
 which would otherwise appear in the clearest light to the under- 
 standing. A statement of these differences and distinctions may 
 serve to elucidate the theory of human nature, and to show how 
 we are related to the natural world at the same time that we are 
 subjects of a moral government. The object of the physical 
 sciences, and of the intellect generally in its searches after truth, 
 is to answer the question, What is 1 All degrees of probability 
 or certainty attend our answers to this inquiry, and serve only to 
 mark how successful we have been in the undertaking. We en- 
 
 * Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, p. 205. 
 
THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 285 
 
 deavour not only to ascertain facts, but to arrange and classify 
 them with a view to their mutual relations ; and the use of gen- 
 eral terms enables us to make comprehensive statements of the 
 results of our study, and to store them up in a form convenient 
 for future reference. Such statements are often called laws, and 
 are said to govern all the cases which are merely included under 
 them. From the idea of government we pass naturally to that 
 of influence and production, or causation ; and the law, or gen- 
 eral statement, is then said to cause all the particular facts which 
 it comprehends. Unable to find the true cause, we assign a fic- 
 titious one, which is at first recognized by the understanding to 
 be fictitious, but which comes at last to claim as its own the 
 character which it had only borrowed. 
 
 The object of ethical science, and of the moral faculty gen- 
 erally, is quite distinct from this ; here we ask, What ought to 
 be? our aim being not so much to satisfy our curiosity as to 
 regulate our conduct. We seek to ascertain " the rules which 
 ought to govern voluntary action, and to which those habitual 
 dispositions of mind which are the source of voluntary actions 
 ought to be adapted." The conception of duty, and of abso- 
 lute right, which then comes before the mind, corresponds to 
 nothing physical, and has no archetype in the external universe. 
 We enter a new world here ; we may ask for the cause of a fact, 
 an event ; but it is irrelevant and absurd to inquire after the cause 
 of an obligation. Duty is not caused, for it never began to be ; 
 it has existed from eternity. We cannot even conceive of a 
 period when justice was not, or will not be, obligatory upon ev- 
 ery being capable of understanding what justice requires. Upon 
 the idea or feeling expressed by the word ought the whole sci- 
 ence of morals depends. It differs not in degree, but in kind, 
 from desire and appetite, so that these can never really come in 
 competition with it. In truth, it does not admit of degrees, for 
 there are no half-way obligations ; conscience either speaks abso- 
 lutely, or not at all. I am obliged either to cultivate a certain 
 disposition of mind, or to repress it, if it be not indifferent in a 
 moral point of view whether it be cultivated or not. The de- 
 
286 THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 sires, on the other hand, exist in all conceivable degrees, from 
 the faintest shade of inclination up to the strong passion which 
 takes the reason prisoner. 
 
 It is only when the dictates of conscience are drawn out into 
 the form of propositions, and stated as general laws, that any 
 question can arise as to their certainty. Even then, the ques- 
 tion would not be hard to answer. The intellect, we know, 
 must begin with propositions which it cannot prove, because 
 nothing more evident or certain can be found on which to rest 
 the argument. That which is self-evident is not, surely, to be 
 deemed inferior to that which requires to be supported by other 
 evidence before we can receive and act upon it. He who can 
 seriously distrust the evidence of his senses, or doubt his own 
 identity, or deny that every event must have a cause, must be 
 permitted, also, to exercise his skepticism as to the grounds of 
 morality, and to maintain that he sees no reason why we should 
 sometimes be obliged to sacrifice ourselves for others, or to sub- 
 mit our compassionate or benevolent impulses to the sense of 
 duty and justice. It would avail nothing, if we were to hold up 
 general expediency, or the command of God, as such a reason. 
 He who cannot recognize the independent nature and entire su- 
 premacy of moral obligation, as such, will never yield to consid- 
 erations like these, which have in fact no weight, unless a sense 
 of duty be taken for granted. We cannot argue with those who 
 will not first admit the principles upon which all reasoning is 
 founded. 
 
 But fortunately for the world, skepticism in morals can never 
 be any thing more than a diversion or a whim. The matter is 
 exclusively a practical one. We are not concerned here about 
 the truth of propositions, and therefore cannot be perplexed by 
 the artifices of the logician and the sophist. Whether we know 
 the meaning of words or not, we cannot but be conscious that 
 we are urged to do and to refrain from doing certain things by 
 a principle which is not coincident with self-love, but often runs 
 counter to jt, and assumes to moderate and restrain it with abso- 
 lute authority. Call this principle what we may, its existence 
 
THE NATURE OP CONSCIENCE. 287 
 
 is a fact attested by consciousness ; and whether we submit to 
 its guidance or not, we cannot but be conscious that it puts forth 
 a higher claim to our obedience than all other motives and springs 
 of action united. No one had a clearer perception of this fact, 
 or avowed it more frankly, than Hume himself. 
 
 " Those," says he, "who have denied the reality of moral 
 distinctions may be ranked among the disingenuous disputants ; 
 nor is it conceivable, that any human creature could ever seri- 
 ously believe that all characters and actions were alike entitled 
 to the regard and affection of every one. 
 
 " Let a man's insensibility be ever so great, he must often be 
 touched with the images of right and wrong ; and let his preju- 
 dices be ever so obstinate, he must observe that others are sus- 
 ceptible of like impressions. The only way, therefore, of con- 
 vincing an antagonist of this kind, is to leave him to himself. 
 For, finding that nobody keeps up the controversy with him, it 
 is probable he will at last, of himself, from mere weariness, come 
 over to the side of common sense and reason." 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 THE object of my last Lecture was to explain the nature and 
 operations of that faculty by the possession of which, even more 
 than by the gift of reason, man is raised above all the other 
 orders of created being with which we are acquainted. Con- 
 science, I endeavoured to show, is the inlet of a new set of ideas, 
 which differ as widely from those which are furnished by the 
 intellect, as the perceptions of vision do from those of touch and 
 hearing. The object of the intellect is truth ; that of conscience | 
 is duty. The former teaches us what is ; the latter shows us 
 what ought to be. The moral faculty is universal ; for the most 
 depraved and wicked person that ever lived is not ignorant of 
 what the words ought and duty mean, though he may not heed 
 them in his conduct. The uninstructed or perverted under- 
 standing may apply them wrongfully ; but, however applied, their 
 obligatory or binding character is always recognized. The idea 
 of duty or moral obligation is simple or uncompounded ; it does 
 not admit of definition, because it is not susceptible of analysis, 
 or of division into parts. Hence, it is not communicable by in- 
 struction ; if it did not already exist in the infant mind, all the 
 teaching in the world could never place it there, any more 
 than mere words could inform a man what the color yellow is, if 
 he had never seen a yellow object. In the latter case, indeed, 
 the senses give us the necessary information ; having once seen 
 the unclouded sky, or the distant hills, or the deep ocean, I can 
 
THE NATUKE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 289 
 
 afterwards form a conception of them, and can then learn what 
 the word blue signifies, or the objects to which it is applicable. 
 Not so in the moral world ; sense renders no aid here. The 
 primary application of the words right and wrong is not to visi- 
 ble or tangible things, or even to any outward act, but to the 
 secret purposes of the heart ; for however strange or mischievous 
 the deed may appear, as soon as we ascertain that it was unin- 
 tentional, or that it proceeded from the best motives, we immedi- 
 ately relieve the doer from any moral blame. Just as the under- 
 standing discerns resemblance or contrariety between two ideas, 
 does the moral faculty pronounce that truth-telling is right, and 
 falsehood wrong ; the only distinction between the two cases is, 
 that, in the former one, the mental act terminates when the judg- 
 ment is formed, truth or knowledge being the only end in view ; 
 while, in the latter, the conception of duty or moral obligation 
 immediately rises, the judgment pointing directly to action. It 
 is not properly a judgment, then, but a precept or command. 
 I not only know that falsehood is wrong, but I feel that veracity 
 is a duty, that I am bound on all occasions to tell the truth. 
 More properly speaking, indeed, the conception of duty is in- 
 volved in the judgment of right, and forms a part of it ; to per- 
 ceive the motive to be sinful, and to recognize the obligation to 
 repress it, is one and the same act. 
 
 It was remarked, further, that the paramount character of 
 moral obligation over all other motives or incentives to conduct 
 is involved in the very idea of obligation. It is an impertinence 
 to ask for a foundation for the supremacy of conscience. He 
 who commands, indeed, assumes that he has authority ; and we 
 often reasonably doubt the fact, and require him to show his 
 commission. But in so doing, we virtually acknowledge that 
 there is authority somewhere, that a higher power exists, whom 
 we are bound to obey, and who is capable of delegating his right 
 to command. Now it is only by a metaphor, though an apt and 
 natural one, that we speak of the commands, or the voice, of con- 
 science. It is the office of this faculty to create that primitive 
 and simple feeling of obligation which is expressed by the word 
 
 37 
 
290 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ought, and which alone gives to duty and authority any proper 
 meaning. There is a common confusion of thought here. With 
 regard to a particular act or duty, it is reasonable to inquire if I 
 am under a moral obligation to perform or to cherish it ; but 
 when this point is ascertained, to seek a reason for that obligation 
 is to ask why it is a duty to perform a duty, which is non- 
 sense. It is demonstrable that no answer can be given to the 
 'question which will prevent it from being instantly repeated. 
 That what is right is of higher authority than what is merely 
 expedient is evident from the simple fact that right and obligation 
 are correlative terms, or merely two aspects of the same idea ; 
 while obligation does not enter at all into the meaning of the 
 word expedient. 
 
 It is with great diffidence that I venture to differ on this point 
 from so eminent an authority in ethical science as Sir James 
 Mackintosh. But what he has here attempted to add to the 
 theory of ethics as expounded by Bishop Butler seems to me a 
 violation of the simplicity and truth of the whole scheme, and, 
 instead of furnishing a basis for the authoritative claims of con- 
 science, to deprive this faculty of that original and supreme au- 
 thority which is its most striking characteristic. There is a 
 fundamental difference between the ideas of obligation and com- 
 pulsion, which, though often lost sight of in the metaphorical use 
 of language, is essential to any proper understanding of the sub- 
 ject. A subordinate officer may say, that he is obliged to obey 
 the commands of his superior ; but this is constraint, not duty ; 
 because he knows, that if need were, a file of soldiers would 
 enforce the command. On the other hand, the dictates of con- 
 science are enforced by no power whatever. Any one may dis- 
 obey them who will. But, even in the moment of disobedience, 
 he is conscious that he is violating an obligation, properly so 
 called, which is in its very nature supreme. We do not do right 
 because God commands it, but God commands it because it is 
 right. The idea of moral obligation, then, I speak it rever- 
 ently, lies behind the authority of the Almighty, and is the 
 only buttress of his throne. As for the other supports that have 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 291 
 
 been devised for the sense of duty, that the action is obli- 
 gatory because it is expedient, or because it is conformable to 
 reason, to order, or to the fitness of things, they hardly merit 
 notice. 
 
 And here I rest what I had to say upon the moral nature 
 of man as preparatory to the further inquiry into the attributes of 
 the Deity, and into that manifestation of them which calls for the 
 religious homage of the whole human family. The question now 
 is, Have we satisfactory assurance, even from the light of 
 nature, that God does indeed govern the earth ? and if so, by 
 what rule does he govern it ? The doctrine of uninterrupted 
 Divine agency, which was considered at length, and, as I think, 
 established, in the former Course, teaches us, indeed, that all 
 events are of his disposal ; but the doctrine was then viewed 
 chiefly in relation to physical occurrences, or to what are called 
 the laws of the outward world. Is the moral world equally 
 under his guidance and dominion ? and does conscience, in its 
 purity and supremacy, only mirror to us the light of his counte- 
 nance ? Is man, also, in his intellectual and moral nature, sub- 
 ject to laws as inflexible as those which govern the planets in 
 their courses ? and as the latter manifest to us the wisdom and 
 power of the Lawgiver, so do the former evince to us his justice, 
 benevolence, and holiness ? 
 
 The answer of these questions in the affirmative, upon satisfac- 
 tory grounds, you perceive, will afford evidence a posteriori of 
 the moral character of the Deity, and, as a necessary conse- 
 quence, of the religious duties of man. It is customary with 
 writers upon this subject, I am well aware, to proceed entirely 
 upon abstract reasoning, and to deduce the moral attributes from 
 the natural ones, the whole doctrine resting upon arguments 
 a priori. Thus, the doctrine of the omniscience of the Divine 
 Being is upheld as " a necessary inference from that of a univer- 
 sal Creator. He who made all creatures and things that is 
 to say, who gave them their being and properties cannot but 
 know the being and properties which himself has given, and the 
 ways in which they will be developed and will operate." Again, 
 
292 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the infinite benevolence and holiness of God are deduced imme- 
 diately from a consideration of his omniscience and infinite power 
 and wisdom. 
 
 Now I am far from denying the validity of such reasoning as 
 this, and there is unquestionably a certain class of minds so pe- 
 culiarly constituted that it is more satisfactory to them than any 
 other. But it seems to me to be chargeable with this great de- 
 fect, that unless it can be supported by the evidence of facts, 
 that is, by observation and experience, it leaves the inquirer in 
 a worse condition than he was before he began the study of the 
 subject. Of what use is it to demonstrate to him by abstract 
 reasoning, that the Almighty must govern in holiness the world 
 which he has made, when, from his knowledge of history, from 
 the mode in which he has been accustomed to look upon natural 
 occurrences and the conduct of mankind, and from his personal 
 experience, he is compelled to doubt whether the world is gov- 
 erned at all ? Perplexed by this contradiction between reason 
 and experience, he will be tempted to reject the doctrine and 
 the argument along with it, not that he can detect any flaw in 
 the latter, but because he is obliged to distrust the power of the 
 human mind ever to arrive at any truth. Prove to him that an 
 omniscient God must necessarily be infinitely benevolent and 
 holy, and at the same time allow him to believe that the his- 
 tory of mankind is one long record of wretchedness and sin, 
 and what conclusion can he draw except that the doctrine of 
 a superintending Providence is either an inexplicable mystery or 
 a delusion, or that reasoning which seems to be demonstrative is 
 in truth wholly treacherous and unsound ? The adoption of the 
 latter alternative only adds skepticism in philosophy to disbelief 
 in religion. If we were concerned with the truths of theology 
 only as we are with the principles of abstract science, then this 
 mode of evolving them one from the other in logical succession, 
 as it would add to the symmetry and elegance of the theory, and 
 lead to no consequences that would be practically injurious, might 
 well be adopted, if for no other reason, yet as a diversion of the 
 intellect. But as matters of immediate and momentous interest, 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 293 
 
 it behooves us to study them in such a manner as to leave clear 
 and deeply rooted convictions in the soul. They relate not 
 merely to faith, but to practice ; and experience is therefore 
 our surest guide in the investigation, and the safest teacher in 
 conduct. By approaching the subject in this manner, we re- 
 move the difficulties alleged by the skeptic before laying the 
 foundations of our religious belief, and then proceed to erect 
 the structure with a firmer assurance that "the gates of hell 
 shall not prevail against it." 
 
 I go back, therefore, to the question as I first propounded it : 
 Looking at the world only as the theatre of human experience, is 
 there sufficient evidence that it is constantly under the govern- 
 ment of its Creator, who directs the conduct, and takes an in- 
 terest in the welfare, of the beings whom he has made ? The 
 inanimate universe and the inferior orders of living creatures, as 
 we have seen, depend immediately, and in all their movements, 
 upon the constant care and agency of the Supreme Being. The 
 same power which brought them into existence sustains and 
 guides them, whether in motion or at rest. Every event, every f 
 change in their condition, from the falling of an atom up to the 
 revolutions of a system of worlds, is attributable directly to the 
 agency of God. But this agency here is immediate and exclu-^f 
 sive ; it is the direct exercise of power, not cooperating with or 
 modified by any power inherent in the bodies themselves, but 
 negativing the existence of such secondary power ; it is con- 
 straint, not government. But man is a free agent ; in one sense, 
 and to a certain extent, he governs himself. Endowed with free- 
 will, and left to choose among many motives of action, his obe- I \ 
 dience, if rendered at all, is voluntary, not mechanical. Is such \\ 
 obedience claimed of him ? Is man, also, under Divine govern- 
 ment, the will of his Creator being signified to him in language 
 that he cannot mistake, and enforced, not indeed by the iron 
 law of necessity, which is incompatible with his whole moral na- 
 ture, but by such considerations as may influence the conduct of 
 a free and rational being ? 
 
 To this question it is usual to answer, as Bishop Butler has 
 
294 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 done, that the pleasures and pains of our mortal existence are 
 properly considered as rewards and punishments, the distribution 
 of which was intended to influence our conduct. They mark 
 out the course in which it was designed that we should walk, 
 and serve at once to indicate the will of the Ruler of the uni- 
 verse, and to supply strong motives for compliance with his 
 commands. " All which we enjoy, and a great part of what we 
 suffer, is put in our own power. For pleasure and pain are the 
 consequences of our actions, and we are endowed by the Author 
 of our nature with capacities of foreseeing these consequences. 
 
 It is certain matter of universal experience, that the 
 
 general method of Divine administration is, forewarning us, or 
 giving us capacities to foresee, with more or less clearness, that 
 if we act so and so, we shall have such enjoyments, and if so 
 and so, such sufferings ; and giving us those enjoyments, and 
 making us feel those sufferings, in consequence of our actions."* 
 
 It is hardly necessary to adduce examples to illustrate this 
 mode of government, as every human being has daily experience 
 of its operation. Imprudence, negligence, or feebleness in the 
 management of our ordinary concerns is sure to be followed by 
 mischievous consequences, which form its appropriate punish- 
 ment. If I transgress the known laws of physiology, I am sure 
 to suffer for it by bodily weakness or disease ; and if the trans- 
 gression becomes extreme, sickness ends in death. The health 
 of the mind is equally cared for ; we are admonished in very sig- 
 nificant language, that mental cultivation, exertion, and repose 
 are appointed to us each in its season and proper degree, and the 
 evils of neglect, delay, or excess, are the sharp penalties that en- 
 force the law. As yet, I intentionally pass over all instances 
 relating to the breach of moral laws ; these will be considered 
 hereafter, in a different connection. 
 
 It is no objection to this view of the matter to say, that these 
 assumed penalties are but the inevitable results of the natural con- 
 stitution of things, the necessary effects of known physical causes. 
 
 * Butler's Analogy of Religion, pp. 74, 75. 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 295 
 
 The constitution of things is the appointment of the Creator, and 
 what is called physical causation is the constant working of Di- 
 vine power. When we speak of the laws of nature as invariable, 
 and of the consequences of a failure to comply with them as in- 
 evitable, we only mark our sense of the constancy and stability 
 of his administration. The government under which we live 
 never fluctuates, wavers, or sleeps ; its care extends to the regu- 
 lation even of our minutest concerns, and the offence against it 
 which is committed in secret bears its penalty as surely as that 
 which was flagrant and avowed in the face of day. 
 
 But I go much farther. From the analysis of our moral 
 nature, which has just occupied our attention, it appears that 
 obedience to law is demanded of us for its own sake, irre- 
 spective of the consequences that will follow transgression. Prior 
 to all experience, in the mind of every human being, arises spon- 
 taneously the idea or sense of obligation, of duty as such, of sub- 
 mission to authority which is recognized as supreme, and obeyed 
 without compulsion or reference to the consequences of disobe- 
 dience upon our personal welfare. This idea is the one that lies 
 at the root of all government, and without which, in fact, no 
 government is possible, except that of despotism supported by 
 irresistible power. Authority can have no other title but that of 
 might or of right. In the former case, obedience, being com- 
 pulsory, is, properly speaking, no obedience at all. It is but a 
 mechanical yielding to superior force. An offender who is actu- 
 ally in the grasp of the officers of the law, and is dragged away 
 by them to punishment, may be said to obey their motions ; but 
 in no other sense than as a ship is said to obey the impulse of 
 the winds. There is no will, no proper volition, in the case ; 
 and therefore no proper submission or obedience. Even if vio- 
 lence is not actually applied, but only threatened, there being a 
 moral certainty that the threat will be executed, the individual 
 may be said to yield, but he does not properly obey, or recog- 
 nize the authority which thus constrains him against his will. 
 He is still, either in expectation or reality, moved by brute 
 force, not governed. 
 
296 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Perhaps it will not be deemed refining too far, if I add that a 
 mere system for influencing the conduct of others through re- 
 wards and penalties, without reference to an assumed legitimate 
 authority, or right to command, is not government, but persua- 
 sion. Thus, I may determine the conduct of my neighbour by 
 making sufficiently liberal appeals to his interest ; I may induce 
 him to give up to me his house and land, or even to sell his ser- 
 vices. Still, he is not governed ; there being no assumption of 
 f"*" authority, no claim of right, on either side. He only governs 
 whose commands are obeyed from a sense of moral obligation ; 
 I and the fruits of disobedience are properly considered as punish- 
 \ ment only after it is admitted that the disobedience is a moral 
 \wrong. Hence, no one is justified in violating the law simply 
 because he is willing to suffer the penalty attached to that infrac- 
 tion, nor does the* suffering expiate the guilt which he has incur- 
 red. Penalties are means of enforcing obedience which are but 
 one degree less violent than the direct application of superior 
 strength. 
 
 I do not say that a system of rewards and punishments is so 
 inconsistent with the nature of moral government that the two 
 cannot exist together, or that the one cannot be a supplement of 
 the other, operating to make it more universal and effective. On 
 the contrary, I shall attempt to show hereafter that such a sys- 
 tem, very complete and admirable in its arrangements, is an 
 actual adjunct of the Divine government, which, without it, 
 would be quite too limited in its effects upon human conduct. 
 But my present point is, that the government itself, or the pro- 
 nunciation of a law and the recognition of its authority and bind- 
 ing power, is perfectly distinct from the means and appliances by 
 which it is made effective and men are brought under its control ; 
 the promulgation of a law is one thing, and the apparatus for its 
 enforcement is another. We can conceive of a community so 
 virtuous, that rewards and penalties should not be needed or 
 known among them, but obedience should be spontaneous and 
 universal ; their state, then, would not be the absence of govern- 
 ment, but its perfection. With less compliant dispositions, some 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 297 
 
 means of enforcing the law are needed till obedience becomes 
 a habit, and the yoke, as in the former case, is easily borne. 
 Thus, in the scheme of Divine Providence, rewards and punish- 
 ments are our schoolmasters ; by them we are educated into 
 obedience, and become willing subjects of the reign of God upon 
 the earth. 
 
 " Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round ! 
 
 Parents first season us ; then schoolmasters 
 Deliver us to laws ; they send us bound 
 To rules of reason, holy messengers, 
 Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin, 
 
 Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, 
 Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, 
 Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, 
 Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness, 
 The sound of glory ringing in our ears ; 
 Without our shame, within our consciences ; 
 Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. 
 Yet all these forces, and their whole array, 
 One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away." 
 
 That beautiful law of our mental constitution, which accounts 
 for the formation of what are called " secondary desires," affords 
 a means for the purification of the motive, and for a passage from 
 the selfish to the disinterested stage of moral progress. The 
 process is a simple one, being merely a transference of the affec- 
 tions from the end to the means. By the association of ideas, 
 that which was at first loved or practised only as an instrument 
 becomes the leading idea and the chief object of pursuit. Thus, 
 in the downward course, money, at first desired only as a means 
 of gratifying the appetites, or of answering some higher ends, 
 becomes itself u an appetite and a passion," and the vicious 
 habit of avarice is formed. And so, in our upward progress, 
 the honesty which was first practised only because it was the 
 best policy, the worship of God which was first paid only as 
 the price of heaven, become at last the unbought and unselfish 
 homage of the soul to uprightness, holiness, and truth. Virtue 
 deserves its name only when, by long practice, it has become a 
 fixed habit ; for then only is it freed from the stain of selfishness. 
 
 38 
 
298 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The terrors of the law are proclaimed to the sinner only that he 
 may be able to overcome the first shock of the transition from 
 sin to holiness ; its promises are reserved for those only who, by 
 patient continuance in well-doing, have become alike indifferent 
 to the debasing fear and the debasing hope. 
 
 But to return to the leading branch of our subject ; I do 
 not see that there is any possibility of regarding the most promi- 
 nent fact in the moral constitution of man in any other light than 
 as a direct proof of the government which the Deity exercises 
 over him, and of the constant submission and obedience which 
 are required of him, even at the expense, if necessary, of his 
 temporal interests. His consciousness informs him, that the au- 
 thority thus exercised is absolute, or supreme ; all considerations 
 of interest, all earthly authority, must give way to it. At the 
 same time, this subject of the Divine government remains a free 
 agent ; he may, he often does, act in opposition to the law within 
 the heart, and braves the consequences of the violation. What 
 those consequences are, or how the moral law is upheld by cor- 
 responding arrangements in the physical universe, or the general 
 constitution of things, I do not now consider ; nor is it necessary 
 for our present purpose to ask what the commands are which are 
 promulgated under this awful authority. It is enough at present 
 to show that a claim to supreme authority, for commands of 
 whatever nature, is actually set up and universally recognized ; 
 for this is sufficient proof that the affairs of the moral universe 
 are under the constant direction and government of its Creator. 
 The Epicurean theory, that God exists, but does not govern, is 
 not a whit less improbable and absurd than the hypothesis of the 
 atheist. 
 
 To this argument it may be objected, that, according to the 
 view already taken of the theory of ethics, the obligation of the 
 moral law does not in any wise depend upon the will of the 
 Deity, but exists anterior to all command, and forms, in truth, 
 the only ground upon which we can impute holiness to him, or 
 justice to his dealings with men. Certainly, this law does not 
 appear to us as arbitrary, or dependent upon mere will ; if it did, 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 299 
 
 we could not recognize its absolute and inherent obligation. But 
 it may properly be regarded as his law through whose agency 
 alone it is made known to us ; he who promulgates and sanc- 
 tions a law may be regarded as the author of it by those whom 
 he addresses. He has so constituted our minds, that we cannot 
 escape a knowledge of the law, and frequent monitions of its 
 paramount claims to obedience. The endowment of conscience 
 is as plain an indication of his will in this respect, as the curious 
 structure of the eye is of his intention that we should see. Com- 
 pliance with the law of conscience, then, is obedience to God. 
 
 The extraordinary number, obviousness, and beauty of those 
 illustrations of the argument from design, which are drawn from 
 the physical universe, arrest and detain the attention with so 
 strong a grasp, that it is difficult to give due prominence and 
 effect to the other branch of the same argument, which rests 
 upon the intellectual and moral nature of man. If we were not 
 accustomed to dwell so exclusively upon the former, attracted 
 by the copious and interesting details which it brings to our 
 notice, I think every one would acknowledge that the latter was 
 really even more direct, logical, and convincing. The marks of 
 contrivance in the arrangements of matter which fill earth, sea, 
 and skies, the effects that are constantly reproduced, all work- 
 ing together harmoniously, often by long and complex processes, 
 for the production of specific and useful results, compel us to 
 believe not only that God exists, but that he is constantly present 
 in his material creation, sustaining, vivifying, acting with cease- 
 less energy ; the objects themselves, and all the changes and move- 
 ments which take place in them, affording equally striking proofs 
 of his immediate agency and universal Providence. But minds 
 which are compelled to admit this conclusion without hesitancy 
 are so much perplexed by the history of man upon the earth, by 
 the long and gloomy record of human folly, ignorance, passion, 
 wilfulness, suffering, and sin, that they are half disposed to make 
 our race the only exceptions to the universality of Divine care 
 and forethought, and to believe that man alone is left to him- 
 self in this world, free to work out his own inventions, and to 
 
300 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 endure their consequences. A belief in the absolute freedom 
 of the human will seems, at first sight, almost necessarily to 
 <'""lead to this doctrine. How can man, they ask, be both free 
 and governed, self-directed and subject to another's will and 
 power, at the same moment a sovereign and an automaton 
 ''_or a slave ? And the result, the effects that are actually pro- 
 duced, appear to corroborate this opinion, to which we have 
 been led by the antecedent view of the case. If man be gov- 
 erned at all by Supreme Power, his history seems to prove that 
 he is very ill-governed. To recur to a former illustration, the 
 economy of a hive of bees puts to shame the most orderly soci- 
 ety that the wit of man ever framed and maintained. No won- 
 der that the doctrine of the original and total depravity of the 
 human race has obtained so ready an acceptance with most 
 theologians, even on grounds apart from Scripture ! The his- 
 tory of the civilized portion of the race, to say nothing of the 
 earlier ages of the world, or of the great majority of its present 
 inhabitants still sunk in barbarism and all the evils of savage life, 
 seems to sustain and almost to demonstrate it. 
 
 I admit the difficulty to its full extent, and have endeavoured 
 to make the statement of it as full and forcible as possible, so as 
 to give no room for the imputation of evading the real knot and 
 perplexity in the argument. But it is on account of the great- 
 ness of the difficulty, because we see that human reason alone, 
 unaided by conscience, , could not reconcile the contradiction which 
 is here presented to it, that we are so much struck by the dis- 
 play of infinite wisdom which has solved the problem so com- 
 pletely, that not a shadow remains from it upon the faith of the 
 believer. To reconcile absolute government with perfect free- 
 will on the part of the governed, and to account for the exist- 
 ence of moral and physical evil without imputing either careless- 
 ness or malevolence to the ruler, is the problem to be solved. 
 The instinct of brutes, which is a power acting above their in- 
 dividual nature and the sphere of their consciousness, shows us 
 how man might be guided to the highest and noblest ends, so 
 that all the lower purposes of his being should be answered, and 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 301 
 
 his happiness provided for in full measure, without any moral en- 
 dowment whatever, and of course without any responsibility on 
 his part, or any possibility of sin. But merit and demerit would 
 then be words without meaning, as compulsory virtue is a contra- 
 diction in terms. Man, then, must be self-guided, but must still 
 act under the consciousness of a law which he acknowledges to 
 be supreme, and to which he owes implicit obedience. The 
 point is, that he should be able to recognize the supremacy of 
 this law, and still be free to obey it or not. Admitting his free- 
 dom, and the full force of the instinctive passions and appetites 
 by which he is swayed or impelled, how can he remain a subject 
 of the Divine government ? 
 
 Suppose, then, that a voice from heaven should proclaim to 
 him distinctly, at every hour and minute of the day, the will of 
 an infinitely superior being as to the regulation of his conduct, 
 the voice being accompanied by such manifest and imposing 
 tokens of the majesty and omnipotence of the source whence it 
 came, that even the natural sentiment of awe, not supported by 
 any direct reference to consequences, would incline him to sub- 
 mit implicitly to the command. Suppose that the purport of the 
 order thus supernaturally communicated to him was to restrict 
 his natural impulses and desires, and to set before him a rule of 
 conduct more perfect even than a chastised and rational regard 
 for his own happiness, so that a self-guided will should submit to 
 the sacrifice of self. Still it might be said, that his awe-struck 
 faculties were terrified into submission, so that in truth compli- 
 ance was no longer free. And so, if man were endowed only 
 with appetite and intellect, must every other attempt fail to get 
 rid of the difficulty in question, and to remove what seems, in 
 the eye of reason alone, the absolute inconsistency between the 
 ideas of subjection and freedom. 
 
 Now change the supposition a little, but enough to conform it 
 to the real state of the case. Imagine, that, instead of a voice 
 from heaven thus constantly proclaiming to us the will of the 
 Supreme Being, enforced by all the outward terrors of the law 
 given from Sinai, the injunction should constantly be repeated 
 
302 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 within the mind itself, in a manner far more impressive than if it 
 were accompanied by the thunder and the earthquake from with- 
 out. Imagine that the order thus made known is attended by a 
 conception that of duty which the intellect alone could never 
 frame, and which alone can reconcile the idea of law with that 
 of liberty, of absolute obligation with perfect freedom. Yet 
 this imagining is but a plain statement of the functions of con- 
 science, of the miracle, so to speak, which is constantly 
 wrought within us, in order that we may perceive that our moral 
 freedom is compatible with our subjection to the Divine govern- 
 ment. Remember how numerous are the occasions on which 
 this idea rises, and the variety of applications of which it is sus- 
 ceptible. It colors nearly every action of our lives, and mod- 
 ifies every judgment that we can form of the conduct of our 
 fellow-beings. By introducing the idea of a law of paramount 
 obligation, and at the same time removing all show of compul- 
 sion or even of terror, and speaking without reference either to 
 rewards or punishments, it first makes the conception of virtue 
 possible. Far from negativing the freedom of the will, it pre- 
 supposes freedom, it is not compatible with any condition but 
 that of freedom, and therefore we cannot even conceive of its 
 application to brutes. 
 
 All virtue is conformity to the rule thus made known to us, 
 and all vice is departure from it. It is demonstrable, then, that 
 moral good flows from the same fountain as moral evil, and that 
 the one cannot exist without the possibility of the other. Why 
 is it that we are so painfully affected, on reviewing the history of 
 mankind, or examining into their present condition ? It is be- 
 cause the requisitions of conscience are so high and pure, and in 
 judging of the conduct of others, at least, it is so natural to apply 
 them, that we almost involuntarily dwell upon the examples of 
 transgression, upon the amount of sin and consequent woe which 
 is in the world, and which operates to divert our attention from 
 the moral good of which these evils are the necessary price, and 
 by which they are accompanied and redeemed. It is only to 
 this one-sided view that the prospect seems dark, and God's 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 803 
 
 scheme of government of the human family appears one of 
 doubtful wisdom or benevolence. Why not dwell rather upon 
 the virtues that are practised, the amount of good that is actu- 
 ally done, and then admire the perfection of the scheme which 
 renders such excellence attainable by man ? It is true that moral 
 excellence is not usually so prominent, or so likely to arrest the 
 attention of the observer, as moral delinquency ; for great crimes 
 usually announce themselves with startling effect, and are attend- 
 ed by a long train of disastrous consequences, which extend 
 and deepen the impression ; while the virtues love the shade, 
 and the good which flows from the observance of them is a 
 noiseless stream. But if we judge men by their intentions rather V 
 than their outward conduct, and this is obviously the only 
 correct judgment, I am inclined to believe that the law of 
 conscience is far more frequently obeyed than violated. The 
 worst man that ever lived is still conscious at times of noble and 
 virtuous impulses, and in his own view of the matter, at any 
 rate, if not in that of his neighbours, his conduct often conforms 
 to them. A conscious transgression of the most obvious prin- 
 ciples of rectitude is too unnatural and too painful an act to 
 be wantonly or frequently repeated. Certainly, a whole life of 
 crime, of gratuitous violence and wrong, relieved by no com- 
 punctions, and unvaried by any act of mercy, truthfulness, or 
 justice, is so monstrous a conception, that no one ever expects 
 to see it realized. 
 
 "'How small is the number of individuals who draw the atten- 
 tion of the world by their crimes, when compared with the mil- 
 lions who pass their days in inoffensive obscurity ! Of this it 
 is scarcely necessary to produce any other proof than the fact 
 which is commonly urged on the other side of the argument, 
 the catalogue of crimes and calamities which sully the history of 
 past ages. For whence is the interest we take in historical read- 
 ing, but from the singularity of the events it records, and from 
 the contrast which its glaring colors present to the uniformity and 
 repose of private life ? Even in those unhappy periods which 
 have furnished the most ample materials to the historian, the 
 
304 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 storm has spent its rage in general on a comparatively small 
 number of men, placed in the more conspicuous stations of soci- 
 ety by their birth, by their talents, by their ambition, or by an 
 heroical sense of duty ; while the unobserved multitude saw it 
 pass over their head, or only heard its noise at a distance. Nor 
 must we pronounce all those to have been unhappy who are com- 
 monly styled the unfortunate. The mind suits itself to the part 
 it is destined to act, and, when great and worthy objects are be- 
 fore it, exults in those moments of hazard and alarm, which, 
 even while they threaten life and freedom, leave us in the pos- 
 session of every thing that constitutes the glory and the perfec- 
 tion of our nature." * 
 
 It is the sensitiveness of our moral constitution, alive to the 
 slightest appearance of wrong, and painfully affected by any 
 manifestation of it on a large scale, which leads us, on a specu- 
 lative view of the subject, to exaggerate the amount of moral 
 evil in the world. Far from being a defect, this sensitiveness 
 should be accounted an excellence in our moral being, as it 
 shows how strong is our appreciation of the authority of con- 
 science, how wide a field in our view is covered by its com- 
 mands, and how quick is our perception of any case in which 
 these commands are violated. Thus, as Butler finely remarks, 
 the judgments which men form of each other tend to carry out 
 the purposes of the Almighty, by constituting a part of the pun- 
 ishment which he has appointed for every transgression. They 
 enter into the scheme of Divine government, which, even as 
 manifested in the history of our race, is far more direct, compre- 
 hensive, and searching than most persons imagine. A little 
 reflection will convince them that they have greatly underrated 
 the number and minuteness of the occasions in which the moral 
 faculty is called into exercise, and really determines the conduct 
 even of the worst of men. 
 
 The institution of property, for instance, is founded entirely 
 on our sense of justice, which is correctly defined to be " the 
 
 * Stewart's Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, pp. 350, 351. 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 305 
 
 constant intention to give to every man that which is rightfully 
 his own." He who voluntarily deprives himself of any thing ^ 
 which seems to him at all valuable or desirable, for the mere 
 purpose of restoring it to another who has a better claim to it, or 
 who even abstains from the attempt to seize and appropriate 
 it when it is in the possession of its rightful owner, is so far actu- 
 ated by the feeling of justice, or is obedient to that injunction of 
 the Almighty which is manifested through the conscience. Now 
 no nation has ever been discovered on the earth, so low and 
 brutal in their inclinations and habits, so destitute of any idea of 
 right, that the institution of property, to a greater or less extent, 
 does not exist among them. The right of the savage to the 
 tools and weapons which his own hand has fashioned, and to 
 the game which he has caught, is universally respected by 
 his fellows ; or if this original title is ever violated, it is from 
 some rude notion of government, or authority in the head of the 
 tribe, or punishment inflicted for some offence, at the bottom of 
 which notion, also, lies the feeling of right, as distinct as in the 
 case of original ownership. That the property continues in the 
 possession of the owner is owing only to a constant exercise of 
 self-denial on the part of those who have it not and still desire it, 
 thus showing that the sense of rectitude is, to this extent at least, 
 a permanent and effective rule of conduct. The familiar proverb, 
 that there is honesty even among thieves, at any rate in their 
 treatment of their fellows, proves that this remark holds true 
 even of those who are commonly supposed to live in open defi- 
 ance of every law, both human and Divine. Now a single in- 
 stance of robbery on a great scale, by the general indignation 
 that it creates, occupies a larger space in the minds and mem- 
 ories of men than all this continuous observance of the rule. 
 
 If any doubt remains as to the entire dependence of this insti- 
 tution on our primitive and habitual regard for law, it will be 
 removed by a glance at the brute creation. The low r er animals 
 have not even an instinct which leads to restitution ; the power 
 of the strongest is with them the only law. The hungry mastiff 
 wrests the bone from his feebler companion, and blind appetite 
 
 39 
 
306 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 or fear alone guides the more ferocious beasts in the appropria- 
 tion of their food. The mother-bird, indeed, stints its own 
 appetite for the benefit of its young ; but this is only from the 
 strong impulse of natural affection, which is as blind and unrea- 
 soning in the brute as in the human heart. The constant re- 
 spect for property, then, proves the universality and ceaseless 
 operation of the moral nature of man. 
 
 It is obvious that this argument for the constancy and imme- 
 diateness of the moral government of God applies with the 
 greater force in proportion to the culture which our moral per- 
 ceptions have received. I have already hinted, that bad men 
 are not so bad as they seem ; and one reason why they are not 
 is, that they look at their own conduct from a different point of 
 view from that which is taken by the bystanders. A good deal 
 of the disorder and injustice which we see does not demonstrate 
 any ill intention on the part of its authors ; nay, it often proceeds 
 from an uncultivated or misdirected sense of duty, and is so far 
 meritorious. We must distinguish carefully between absolute 
 and relative right. u An action is said to be absolutely right," 
 says Dugald Stewart, " when it is in every respect suitable to 
 the circumstances in which the agent is placed ; or, in other 
 words, when it is such as, with perfectly good intentions, un- 
 der the guidance of an enlightened and well-informed under- 
 standing, he would have performed. An action is said to be 
 relatively right when the intentions of the agent are sincerely 
 good, whether his conduct be suitable to his circumstances or 
 not. According to these definitions it is evident, that an action 
 may be right in one sense and wrong in another ; and it is no < 
 less evident that it is the relative rectitude alone of an action 
 which determines the moral desert of the agent in the sight of 
 God and of his own conscience." 
 
 Conscience gives us the conception of duty, or feeling of ob- 
 ligation, but does not apply this feeling to outward conduct. Its 
 sphere of action is wholly internal, motives and intentions being 
 its only subjects ; what course of conduct will best carry out 
 these intentions is a question, not for the moral faculty, but the 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 307 
 
 intellect, to answer ; and the uninformed or perverted under- 
 standing may answer it very ill. Thus, conscience approves and 
 enjoins justice, benevolence, veracity, which is a form of justice, 
 and patriotism, which is a department of benevolence ; it even 
 pronounces upon the relative claims of these virtues to observ- 
 ance, though not so distinctly, affirming that justice is of higher 
 obligation than benevolence. But what conduct, what outward 
 acts, will be truly just or truly benevolent, or whether a patri- 
 otic intention will justify deceitful words or cruel deeds, are 
 doubts of which it furnishes no solution. Reason must here be 
 our guide. The train of consequences, some of them very re- 
 mote, which every action carries with it, must be foreseen and esti- 
 mated, a work for the understanding, before these questions 
 can be answered. Our moral sense, which is infallible in its 
 sphere, only declares that an action is just to him who intends it 
 for justice ; and to him who thinks a certain deed is benevolent, 
 to him it shall be accounted for benevolence. Apply these prin- 
 ciples to history and to our common observation of mankind, and 
 much of what we are accustomed to consider as evidence of the 
 depravity and wickedness of the human race disappears alto- 
 gether ; nay, if fully considered, it affords- proof of the existence 
 of high virtues among men, for the action in the case considered 
 becomes not only innocent, but meritorious. 
 
 Take war, for instance. To one who reads history in a proper 
 spirit, there is probably nothing so painful as the almost continuous 
 record which it affords of the bloodshed, misery, and corruption 
 caused by this brutal and detestable practice. War is, indeed, 
 " the garment of vengeance with which the Deity arrays himself, 
 when he comes forth to punish the inhabitants of the earth." 
 Looking at it from a distance, in the light of a calm philosophy, 
 no less than of a pure morality, we are tempted to believe that 
 it must be waged by demons rather than by men, and that its 
 motives are as bad as its consequences are afflicting. The lan- 
 guage of Robert Hall seems hardly exaggerated, when he says, 
 that "the plague of a widely extended war possesses, in fact, a 
 sort of omnipresence, by which it makes itself everywhere felt ; 
 
308 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 for while it gives up myriads to slaughter in one part of the 
 globe, it is busily employed in scattering over countries exempt 
 from its immediate desolations the seeds of famine, pestilence, 
 
 and death While the philanthropist is devising means 
 
 to mitigate the evils and augment the happiness of the world, a 
 fellow-worker together with God, in exploring and giving effect 
 to the benevolent tendencies of nature, the warrior is revolving, 
 in the gloomy recesses of his capacious mind, plans of future 
 devastation and ruin. Prisons crowded with captives, cities 
 emptied of their inhabitants, fields desolate and waste, are among 
 his proudest trophies. The fabric of his fame is cemented with 
 tears and blood ; and if his name is wafted to the ends of the 
 earth, it is in the shrill cry of suffering humanity, in the curses 
 and imprecations of those whom his sword has reduced to de- 
 spair." 
 
 The picture is indeed a terrible one, though but few will think 
 it is overdrawn. Yet the truth, I suppose, unquestionably is, 
 that almost every person concerned in war, whether an originator 
 of the strife or an actor in it, is either actuated, or, what amounts 
 to the same thing in the light in which we are now viewing the 
 matter, believes himself to be actuated, by the highest and holiest 
 motives. The statesman thinks that the welfare and honor of his 
 country are at stake, and that it is his stern duty to stifle his feel- 
 ings of compassion for the multitude, and to punish aggression, 
 arrogance, and injustice, even at the expense of a long and 
 bloody conflict. The military chieftain feels that the safety and 
 honor of his troops depend upon his courage and conduct, and 
 that he acts under an awful responsibility to the rightful govern- 
 ment of his country, which has confided this awful mission to his 
 hands ; it may be that he goes to a hopeless contest, and then the 
 feelings which support the martyr at the stake are hardly superior 
 to his. Hence the strange contradiction, as it seems, of which 
 history affords more than one instance, that a commander, on the 
 morning after he had achieved a great victory, should be found 
 weeping like a child over the spectacle that the field afforded of 
 suffering and death which his own hand had caused. Lord Col- 
 
THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 309 
 
 lingwood was one of the most high-minded, pure, affectionate, 
 and strictly moral men of whom the British peerage can boast ; 
 yet this man commanded the ship which fired the first English 
 gun in the sanguinary naval conflict of Trafalgar. The common 
 soldier is ignorant and brutal, most likely ; but he, too, in the 
 moment of action, has learned to suppress all other feelings at 
 the mandate of i duty, the duty on which every thing then de- 
 pends, that of implicit submission to his superiors. It would be 
 a strange paradox to say, that a camp is a nursery of lofty and 
 stern virtues ; yet it certainly does foster a chivalrous exaltation 
 of feeling, which reason, indeed, condemns as an impure mixture 
 of false sentiment with an austere regard for duty, but which has 
 so much of the moral element in it, that it cannot be harshly rep- 
 
 ibated. 
 
 I am not palliating the evils of war ; God forbid that I should 
 say one word to make any human being look upon the practice 
 of it with less horror and detestation than he now feels ! I am 
 only suggesting some reasons why it should not make us think so 
 badly of our fellow-beings as to doubt whether they are under the 
 moral government of God. If the distinctions here suggested do 
 not tend at all to abate the severity of our condemnation of im- 
 moral practices, but only to render our feelings more charitable 
 and just towards those who are engaged in them, they may well 
 be kept in mind even by the professed philanthropists. The 
 spirit of our religion certainly requires us to hate sin, but holds 
 up the sinner to us as an object of compassion, kindness, and 
 love. 
 
 I have not intended in this Lecture even to approach the 
 great problem of the origin of evil ; that remains for subsequent 
 consideration. I have only wished to show, that, in the moral 
 constitution of man, there is the plainest proof not only that we 
 live under the immediate government of God, but that this gov- 
 ernment is effectual, the results produced being commensurate 
 with the means employed. Not only is the will of God made 
 known to us at every moment of our lives as the absolute rule of 
 our conduct, the supreme law, but the announcement of this law 
 
310 THE NATURE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 is made compatible with human freedom, and the law itself is 
 practically recognized and observed, to a greater or less extent, 
 by every human being. Human government, the direction and 
 control of organized societies of men, rest upon this Divine gov- 
 ernment, and would not be practicable without it. Property, as\ / 
 we have seen, is supported in the same manner. The law of 
 God, promulgated through the conscience, and acknowledged 
 both by the savage and by civilized man as supreme, exerts an 
 influence that no man can measure over the life of every individ- 
 ual ; it forms the basis of those institutions which are essential to 
 the very existence of society ; it sways the councils of nations ; 
 it governs the course of human affairs. 
 
 And the means by which these great ends are accomplished 
 especially the manner in which we are perpetually reminded of the 
 Divine command, as if by a voice from heaven, and the mode of 
 reconciling liberty with law are as beautiful instances of con- 
 trivance, they furnish quite as striking indications of Divine wis- 
 dom and goodness, as any which the material universe affords. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE CONTENTS OF THE MORAL LAW A REVELATION OF THE 
 CHARACTER OF THE DEITY: THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE 
 MORAL LAW. 
 
 I ATTEMPTED to prove, in my last Lecture, that the moral 
 constitution of man affords direct and irrefragable evidence, that 
 he is under the constant and immediate government of God. 
 That the pleasures and pains which we experience in this life, 
 and which proceed from regular and determinable causes, and 
 therefore may be foreseen by us, may properly be regarded as 
 rewards and punishments, indicating to us the will of the Deity 
 that we should perform certain actions and abstain from others, 
 is another argument tending to the same conclusion ; but it does 
 not seem to me so complete and satisfactory as the former one. 
 Conscience announces to us a law of absolute authority for the 
 guidance of our hearts and lives ; its monitions are frequent, if 
 not incessant, and the obligation which it imposes is recognized, 
 whether we will or no, to be supreme. At the same time, it 
 does not compel or force obedience, so that the liberty of the will 
 is not infringed, but government is made compatible with freedom. 
 This idea of pure and absolute obligation, or the sense of duty 
 as such, as distinguished from compulsion on the one hand, and 
 from a perfectly unregulated and ungoverned will on the other, 
 is one which the intellect alone could never frame, and it does 
 away with the apparent contradiction between liberty and law. 
 Here, I observed, is contrivance, the indication of purpose, in 
 
312 THE CONTENTS OF THE MORAL LAW. 
 
 the moral nature of man, just as visible as in the curious phys- 
 ical apparatus by which we see, and just as clearly indicative of 
 the intention of the Creator. The law thus revealed to us is 
 His law who reveals it. If the fashioning of our bodies these 
 wonderful but perishable tenements of clay that we inhabit for a 
 season shows the wisdom and the purposes of Him who made 
 them, how much more does the framework of our intellectual and 
 moral being testify to the same effect ! This is equally His con- 
 trivance, His work. It is not more evident that the ear was 
 made to hear with, or the organs of voice to speak, or the 
 lungs to breathe, than that the law proclaimed by conscience 
 should be obeyed as His will ; otherwise, the moral faculty is 
 constituted in vain, and exists for no conceivable purpose. 
 
 The scheme of government, I remarked, is both comprehen- 
 sive and minute ; it assumes to regulate every purpose of the 
 heart, and to mould the whole life and character. And it is 
 effectual ; the purpose which is indicated by this endowment of 
 the mind with the power of distinguishing right from wrong is 
 carried out and realized to the fullest extent that is consistent 
 with individual liberty. The conduct even of the vicious and the 
 profligate, of the savage as well as the civilized man, is daily and 
 hourly influenced by the law written on the heart. Society itself 
 could not exist without it, as its most important institutions, gov- 
 ernment and property, recognize it, and are, in fact, supported by 
 it. Through the sensitiveness of our moral nature, I endeav- 
 oured to show, we are prone to exaggerate the moral disorder 
 and depravity which are in the world and are revealed in his- 
 tory. If we judge men by their intentions, instead of their out- 
 ward conduct, and it is the former alone which the plan of 
 Divine government assumes directly to regulate, much of their 
 seeming lawlessness and wickedness disappears. Even war, that 
 great scourge of the human family, is carried on, by most of those 
 who are engaged in it, with a high moral purpose, misdirected, 
 it is true, but pure. I am well aware that this explanation leaves 
 the ignorance of men, and the blinding power of their passions, 
 as evils still to be accounted for ; these remain for subsequent 
 
THE CONTENTS OF THE MORAL LAW. 313 
 
 discussion. At present, I am only concerned to show that there 
 is a Divine government, not that it is a perfect government. 
 
 So we have not considered as yet, except incidentally, the 
 purport or contents of the law which is revealed in the con- 
 science ; the mere existence of such a law, and its claim of 
 absolute supremacy, with the fact that it is recognized and acted 
 upon, being the only points upon which stress has been laid. 
 We have now to consider what the law enjoins. The very 
 brief answer may be given, that it requires of us a pure heart 
 and a virtuous life ; all that is comprehended under these phrases 
 being entitled to the name of purity or virtue only because it is 
 required by conscience. Disinterestedness is included ; for the 
 most obvious characteristic of the voice of conscience is, that it 
 is to be obeyed at all hazards. The obligation is perfect ; no 
 matter by what sacrifice, I must render to another that which is 
 his own, and my word must be kept. And as no fear or hope 
 with regard to the consequences of the act upon my own welfare 
 should tempt me to wrong-doing, so they ought not to be my 
 reasons for following the right. Virtue must be cultivated for 
 its own sake ; otherwise, it is not virtue, but selfishness. It is"" 
 hardly necessary to say, that the law is so watchful and exacting, 
 that it descends to the secrets of the heart, and declares what 
 the purpose shall be, before that purpose is realized in the act ; 
 this is the primary function of the conscience. The immediate 
 object of the law, as already observed, is not conduct, but the'' 
 intention which regulates the conduct. And all these points in 
 the law are rendered so plain and familiar, even to the unin- 
 structed, that in enlarging upon them I must appear to you to be 
 dwelling upon mere truisms. It is only when we come to reflect 
 upon the marvellous constitution of our bodies and minds, con- 
 sidered as the work of the Almighty, and as indicating his will, 
 that these worn truths reassume freshness and interest. At other 
 times, we take them for granted, and intend to act upon them. 
 
 The question may now be asked, Why is it that we are en- 
 joined to cultivate such dispositions of mind, or to act upon such 
 intentions, in preference to all others ? In one sense, the an- 
 
 40 
 
314 THE CONTENTS OF THE MORAL LAW. 
 
 swer has been already given ; it is because we have an intuitive 
 knowledge that virtue is of paramount obligation, or absolutely 
 binding for its own sake, so that to inquire why it is obligatory is 
 just as much an impertinence as it would be to ask why two and 
 two make four. The axioms of morals stand on the same basis 
 with the axioms of mathematics ; they cannot be proved because 
 they need no proof; they are self-evident. But as we are here 
 considering the subject in reference to the Divine government 
 and the character of God, I put the question in a little different 
 form : Why has the Deity so constituted our minds that we 
 must perceive the supreme obligation of virtue ? If it was not 
 his will alone which established the moral law, it was certainly 
 his will which gave us the power or faculty of perceiving that 
 law and its absolute obligation, and thereby of distinguising right 
 from wrong. He might have constituted us like the lower ani- 
 mals, who have no knowledge of it whatever. Why did he 
 impart that knowledge to us ? or, in other words, why has he 
 given to man a conscience ? 
 
 Certainly, not for the same reason for which we are endowed 
 with appetites ; these were intended to stimulate us to the exer- 
 tions that are requisite before the wants of the body can be sup- 
 plied. Without hunger, we should forget or neglect to eat, just 
 as we now omit many precautions and exercises which are really 
 important for the preservation of health, though not, like food, 
 absolutely essential to life. But conscience is not essential for 
 the preservation of animal life ; like the brutes, we might get 
 along without it ; that is, we might preserve a merely animal ex- 
 istence. So one use of intellect a lower use, but yet a suf- 
 ficient reason for implanting the faculty in man is to direct 
 those exertions to which we are stimulated by the appetites and 
 desires, or to discover appropriate means for those ends which 
 are pointed out to us by our physical constitution. In this 
 respect, reason takes the place in man of instinct in the brute 
 creation. But a sense of duty is not needed for the performance 
 of this office, so that we still ask why we were gifted with this 
 sense. The manifold arrangements and beautiful contrivances, 
 
THE CONTENTS OF THE MORAL LAW. 315 
 
 with which the purely material universe abounds, all subserve 
 important ends, and in these ends we read the purposes of their 
 Contriver. Each has its part to play in upholding the fabric of 
 that universe of which it is a portion, and we know that it was 
 designed to fill that part. But the law of right, with the con- 
 sciousness of it which animates every human breast, has no such 
 function to perform. Earth's base is not built upon it ; nor 
 does it form the pillars which support the material firmament. 
 The outer world might exist without it, as the geologists tell us 
 it did for ages before it was tenanted by man. The laws of 
 gravitation, chemical affinity, and the like, if I may adopt for 
 a moment the phraseology of a theory which I repudiate, all 
 work to visible and highly useful ends ; does the law of mo- 
 rality alone answer no purpose in the universe which God has 
 made ? 
 
 The question becomes still more striking, when we remember v 
 that conscience not only is not needed for any of the offices 
 which we have thus far considered, but that it absolutely pre- 
 cludes all reference to them when their performance would come 
 in conflict with any of its own absolute commands. The call of 
 duty must be obeyed, though the appetites should remain with- 
 out their appropriate food, and the desires should languish, and 
 the intellect should forget its cunning ; the demands of justice 
 must be satisfied, though the body should perish, and even 
 though the heavens should fall. And this peculiarity in the law 
 of conscience enables us to prove, that one beneficial result, 
 which actually is accomplished by implanting this faculty in man, 
 still does not reveal the reason or purpose for which it was so 
 implanted. The law does conduce to the welfare of society, 
 which probably could not even exist without it. That state 
 of things which Hobbes imagined and described with so much 
 graphic power, as the natural state of man, unquestionably would 
 be his natural state, if, as Hobbes supposed, his desires and ac- 
 tions were not controlled by any innate sense of right. Every 
 man would be the natural enemy of his fellow, the passions and 
 appetites stimulating him to grasp at every thing which pleased 
 
enuity had 
 jiety ; and j 
 utish, and j 
 
 316 THE CONTENTS OF THE MORAL LAW. 
 
 his senses, or promised future enjoyment, without regard to any 
 principle of ownership, and without consciousness of any law, 
 whether human or Divine, which forbade robbery or unprovoked 
 aggression. Man would be a solitary and purely selfish animal, 
 never meeting even his nearest relative except in a struggle to 
 wrest from him any valuable which his strength or ingenuity had 
 created. There could be "no arts, no letters, no society 
 the life of man [would be] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, 
 short." 
 
 But conscience furnishes that restraining and regulating force 
 which Hobbes could find only in a wise despotism. The feel- 
 ing of moral obligation introduces order into this chaos. The 
 individual voluntarily submits to the ordinances of society de- 
 creed and enforced for the common good, because the sense 
 of duty, the idea of submission to law and right, is inwoven in 
 his constitution. He becomes capable of human government, 
 because Divine government is established in his own bosom. 
 And as society in this way first becomes practicable, so its 
 welfare is promoted just in proportion to the prevalence of the 
 sense of right among its members. If the practice of virtue 
 were universal, if men acted up to their own convictions of 
 duty, there would be no need of human legislation, or of any 
 external apparatus for the government of man. 
 
 Still, I say, the great good thus effected is not the object for 
 which the practice of virtue is enjoined. Conscience itself in- 
 forms us that it is not ; far from laying down the rule because its 
 observance would be beneficial to society, it erects the rule itself 
 into a standard to which our regard for the welfare, the material 
 well-being, of the community must conform. Justice must be en- 
 forced, though the commonwealth should suffer for it. Though 
 the pride of the state should be humiliated, and its power be di- 
 minished, and its prosperity should receive a real or a seeming 
 check, the law of right must be obeyed. It must have absolute 
 sway and masterdom, for in this light alone it is revealed to us. 
 Virtue is an end, never a means ; and, of course, the end can 
 never become subservient to the means. Instead of saying, 
 
THE CONTENTS OP THE MOKAL LAW. 317 
 
 therefore, that the moral law was enacted for the benefit of so- "1 
 ciety, in order that men might live peaceably and profitably to- 
 gether, it would be more proper to affirm, that, so far as we can 
 see into the designs of Providence, society itself was intended 
 to be only the occasion and the theatre for the display and 
 development of this law, in order that the virtues which it en- 
 joins might have scope and objects on which they might be 
 exercised. The good which the community reaps from the 
 cultivation of virtue is therefore an incidental advantage of the 
 law, not the great purpose for which it was ordained. 
 
 Finding, then, that no object or purpose inferior in dignity 
 and excellence to the law of rectitude itself affords any sufficient 
 reason why that law was engraved on the human soul, we are 1 
 compelled to admit, that the contents of the law are simply a 
 revelation of the character of the Creator. Absolute rectitude ^ 
 or holiness is his will because it is his nature, and the law which 
 requires it is a reflection of that nature. In its purity and com- 
 prehensiveness, in its primary reference to character rather than 
 conduct, to governing the affections and motives whence the acts 
 proceed rather than the acts themselves, and in its claim to ab- 
 solute dominion and supremacy, excluding even the idea of sub- 
 serviency to lower ends, the law images to us the perfections of 
 Him from whom we received it. 
 
 Thus, by the way of observation and experience, we arrive 
 at that conclusion respecting the moral attributes of the Al- 
 mighty, which is usually obtained deductively, or by necessary 
 inference from his eternal and uncaused duration. This course 
 is most satisfactory to my own mind, because it does not leave 
 us to reconcile as we may the unlimited conclusions of a priori 
 reasoning with the subsequent lessons of experience ; but the 
 doctrine carries its own justification along with it, and harmo- 
 nizes with all which we have previously learned from the study 
 of external nature, and of our own intellectual and moral being. 
 
 It is unnecessary here to carry out the reasoning in detail, 
 and deduce the moral attributes of God one by one from the 
 requisitions of our moral nature. This application of the argu- 
 
318 THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 
 
 ment is sufficiently easy and obvious. We need only remark, 
 that these requisitions are unlimited. Every virtue, every trait 
 of character, that is to be cultivated at all, is enjoined to its 
 utmost extent, perfection being the only standard that is placed 
 before us. It is not a certain measure of justice that we are 
 required to render towards our fellow-beings, but absolute jus- 
 tice to all men, and on all occasions. We have proof, then, 
 that the moral attributes of the Almighty exist each in its per- 
 fection ; in him are absolute justice, purity, truth, and love. 
 
 It only remains to inquire, if the evidence from without tends 
 to strengthen and confirm that belief in the moral government 
 of God which is founded primarily upon the internal constitu- 
 tion of our faculties ; in other words, if the natural course of 
 things in the external world, the ordinary tendencies of human 
 affairs, harmonize with and enforce those laws which are set 
 up in the conscience. As both the inner and the outer world 
 are under the guidance of the same wise and omnipotent Being, 
 we naturally expect that the testimonies of the two will coin- 
 cide, or that the principles established in the one will be, to a 
 great extent, or in all their main features, carried out in the 
 other. I say, " to a great extent," because we do not look, in 
 the current of human fortunes, for that immediate and invariable 
 enforcement of the moral law, which would either deprive man 
 of his free agency, or reduce his virtue to a mere selfish regard 
 for his own happiness. If, for instance, honesty were the best 
 policy not merely as a general principle, and in the long run, but 
 always, instantly, and plainly, there would be great danger that 
 men would altogether cease to be honest, in the proper sense 
 of the term, and would be only politic. So weak are human 
 purposes, that we cannot often be certain of ourselves until an 
 emergency arises in which tve are required to be virtuous at 
 some apparent cost, or by some sacrifice. God's justice will 
 be sufficiently vindicated, if it shall at length appear that the cost 
 is only apparent, and that the sacrifice is ultimately repaid a 
 hundred fold. 
 
 What we observe of the distribution of happiness in this world 
 
THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 319 
 
 between the virtuous and the wicked has been so clearly and fully- 
 stated by Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, 
 that I borrow his language. "If we consider," he says, " the 
 general rules by which external prosperity and adversity are 
 commonly distributed in this life, we shall find, that notwith- 
 standing the disorder in which all things appear to be in this 
 world, yet even here every virtue naturally meets with its proper 
 reward, with the recompense which is most fit to encourage and 
 promote it ; and this, too, so surely, that it requires a very ex- 
 traordinary concurrence of circumstances entirely to disappoint 
 it. What is the reward most proper for encouraging industry, 
 prudence, and circumspection ? Success in every sort of busi- 
 ness. And is it possible, that, in the whole of life, these vir- 
 tues should fail of attaining it ? Wealth and external honors 
 are their proper recompense, and the recompense which they 
 can seldom fail of acquiring. What reward is most proper for 
 promoting the practice of truth, justice, and humanity ? The 
 confidence, the esteem and love, of those we live with. Hu- 
 manity does not desire to be great, but to be beloved. It is 
 not in being rich that truth and justice would rejoice, but in 
 being trusted and believed, recompenses which those virtues 
 must almost always acquire. 
 
 " By some very extraordinary and unlucky circumstance, a 
 good man may come to be suspected of a crime, of which he 
 was altogether incapable, and upon that account be most un- 
 justly exposed, for the remaining part of his life, to the horror 
 and aversion of mankind. By an accident of this kind he may 
 be said to lose his all, notwithstanding his integrity and justice ; 
 in the same manner as a cautious man, notwithstanding his ut- 
 most circumspection, may be ruined by an earthquake or an 
 inundation. Accidents of the first kind, however, are perhaps 
 still more rare, and still more contrary to the common course 
 of things, than those of the second ; and it still remains true, 
 that the practice of truth, justice, and humanity is a certain and 
 almost infallible method of acquiring what those virtues chiefly 
 aim at, the confidence and love of those we live with. A per- 
 
320 THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 
 
 son may be very easily misrepresented with regard to a particular 
 action ; but it is scarce possible that he should be so with regard 
 to the general tenor of his conduct. An innocent man may be 
 believed to have done wrong ; this, however, will rarely happen. 
 On the contrary, the established opinion of the innocence of his 
 manners will often lead us to absolve him where he has really 
 been in fault, notwithstanding very strong presumptions. A 
 knave in the same manner may escape censure, or even meet 
 with applause, for a particular knavery in which his conduct is 
 not understood. But no man was ever habitually such, without 
 being almost universally known to be so, and without being even 
 frequently suspected of guilt when he was in reality perfectly 
 innocent. And so far as vice and virtue can be either punished 
 or rewarded by the sentiments and opinions of mankind, they 
 both, according to the common course of things, meet even here 
 with something more than exact and impartial justice."* 
 
 But my point is, perhaps, sufficiently established by a gen- 
 eral reference to the fact, that nearly all writers upon the theory 
 of ethics, some of whom have written against the evidences of 
 religion, have yet traced a close connection between virtue and 
 happiness ; many of them going so far as to maintain that virtue 
 is obligatory only because it is useful, and others, more trust- 
 worthy, holding up utility as the only safe criterion or test of 
 right conduct ; so that, when we are in doubt whether a certain 
 action is morally right or wrong, the only mode of resolving that 
 doubt is to inquire whether the action is on the whole beneficial 
 or injurious to the agent, to society, and to mankind. There 
 may be a few moralists who would not accept either of these 
 doctrines in so broad and unqualified a manner as I have stated 
 them ; but I never heard of one who was bold enough to main- 
 tain, that vice, on the whole, was the best policy for the indi- 
 vidual, or most likely to promote the interests of society ; the 
 common sense of mankind would instantly reject so monstrous 
 a paradox. For the truth on this subject is held not merely by 
 
 * Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 265. 
 
 
THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 321 
 
 instructed and reflecting men, by those who are inclined to spec- 
 ulative pursuits, or who have made ethics a favorite study, but it 
 is embodied in a multitude of those proverbs and axiomatic say- 
 ings which are the repositories of the wisdom and the experience 
 of the bulk of mankind. Poor Richard's morality is a mere 
 string of such sayings, all going to show the invariable connec- 
 tion between integrity, sobriety, and industry on the one hand, 
 and health, peace of mind, reputation, and riches on the other. 
 The indignation or sorrow which we feel, when one of these vir- 
 tues fails to meet its appropriate reward, or when, in solitary in- 
 stances, knavery or indolence seems for a time to prosper, is 
 always mingled with surprise at an occurrence so unlocked for ; 
 and the prominence which the case at once assumes, the fre- 
 quency of the allusions to it, shows both that our moral constitu- 
 tion is very sensitive in this respect, and that the vast majority of 
 examples turn the other way. 
 
 There are many pleasures and pains which follow so closely 
 upon the virtuous and vicious actions of which they are the legit- 
 imate consequences, or have so obvious and intimate a connec- 
 tion with them, that even the most unthinking or immoral persons 
 are obliged to admit, that these consequences are proper rewards 
 and punishments, which were intended both to guide and to urge 
 us to right conduct. Take the effects upon the bodily health, 
 for instance. It is notorious, that vice enfeebles, corrupts, 
 poisons, and destroys the physical constitution, while virtue in- 
 vigorates and preserves it, retards the approach of disease, or 
 mitigates its virulence when it comes, sweetens life and prolongs 
 it. The laws of hygiene, when well understood, are but inter- 
 pretations of the laws of morals. The physician will tell you, 
 that he who desires the greatest of all earthly blessings a sound 
 mind in a sound body has no shorter course for obtaining it 
 than by making himself a thoroughly good man. The unhappy 
 consequences of intemperance and debauchery, of riotous and 
 malevolent passions, are so many beacons erected along the 
 roadside, to warn the traveller against even occasional deviations 
 from the path of rectitude. Debility, consumption, fever, in- 
 
 41 
 
322 THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 
 
 sanity, and nearly all the other ills that flesh is heir to, when 
 traced to their sources, are usually seen to be the results of 
 imprudence or sin ; and even if apparently transmitted by in- 
 heritance, so that the immediate sufferer under them is guiltless, 
 the warning which they utter is only the more impressive, as they 
 show that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, 
 and the natural affections are thus more strongly enlisted on the 
 side of virtue. Can any one even imagine, that this direct con- 
 nection between right conduct and bodily health is accidental or 
 meaningless ? Ought we not rather to consider it but as one fea- 
 ture, and that not the most prominent one, in the broad scheme 
 of Divine government, all the parts of which are consistent with 
 each other, and all visibly tend to the upholding of that law which 
 is written upon the heart ? 
 
 We have still further proof that virtue is advantageous both to 
 the virtuous man and to society, if we look not only to its direct 
 consequences, but to its tendencies. There are many hinder- 
 ances here below to what may be called the natural operation 
 of things. Take away these impediments, give time, scope, and 
 opportunity for each cause to work separately, and produce its 
 appropriate results, unobstructed by the action of other causes, 
 and we shall more easily discern its true nature and peculiar 
 effects. Virtue and vice, for instance, are commingled among 
 men, and even in the same person ; the beneficial effects of the 
 one are hidden or neutralized by the unhappy consequences of 
 the other ; the merit of a good action is obscured by the miscon- 
 duct that follows it. An upright man suffers from the crimes of 
 his ancestors or his neighbours ; even in this case we see that 
 crime is punished, or has injurious tendencies ; only merit does 
 not seem to receive its due. In fact, it is rewarded, for the 
 suffering w r hich flows from the crimes of others would be en- 
 hanced, if the sufferer himself were also guilty. As it is, his in- 
 nocence mitigates the blow, the consciousness of integrity under 
 any circumstances being one of the greatest delights the mind 
 can experience. Isolate each case, consider how virtue and 
 vice would work, if they were not brought in contact with each 
 
THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 323 
 
 other, and their respective tendencies or the true character of 
 their effects will be revealed. 
 
 Suppose, for example, as Bishop Butler has done, the exist- 
 ence of a republic or society of men, perfectly virtuous, during a 
 succession of ages. Selfishness, fraud, or treachery, would have 
 no part in their councils ; they would deliberate only about the 
 best means of effecting good, and no force would be needed in 
 order to carry their decisions into effect. Envy having no place 
 among them, the direction of affairs would readily be conceded 
 to those who had the most intelligence and capacity ; and these 
 would covet the post only from the superior advantages it afford- 
 ed for carrying out their benevolent schemes or projects for ad- 
 vancing the common welfare. As all would be equally indus- 
 trious, poverty with its long train of ills would be unknown ; 
 almshouses would be no more needed than prisons. Health and 
 long life would reward their temperance and the restraint of their 
 passions, and death would be only the painless sequel of old age, 
 when one was satiated with living. The neighbouring commu- 
 nities, revering their virtues or admiring their prosperity, would 
 hasten to place themselves under their dominion, and their peace- 
 ful victories would far exceed all that have ever been gained by 
 the sword. 
 
 I know that this supposition could never be realized, except 
 by a change miraculously effected in the hearts of men ; but im- 
 probable as it seems, is it any thing more than a faithful delinea- 
 tion of what the consequences of virtue would be, if it were pos- 
 sible to separate them from the effects of vice ? Grant that such 
 characters are possible, and even from what we now see of the 
 current of this world's affairs, is it not certain that such conduct 
 and such prosperity would be the result ? If so, the intentions 
 of the Almighty are apparent even in the present and actual con- 
 stitution of things. Virtue as such is rewarded, and vice as such 
 is punished, in spite of the seeming confusion that results from 
 both these classes of effects being visible at the same time. 
 
 However the outward advantages of right conduct may be 
 hidden for a time, the inward delights which it produces are con- 
 
324 THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 
 
 slant and of vast importance ; and as these result from the gen- 
 eral constitution of our minds, apart from the moral faculty itself, 
 they are properly ranked among the incentives to and rewards 
 of virtue. It is well observed by Sir James Mackintosh, that 
 although there may be immoral acts which, in some sense, or for 
 a season, appear to be advantageous to the actor, "the whole 
 sagacity and ingenuity of the world may be safely challenged to 
 point out a case in which virtuous dispositions, habits, and feel- 
 ings are not conducive in the highest degree to the happiness of 
 the individual ; or to maintain that he is not the happiest, whose 
 moral sentiments and affections are such as to prevent the possi- 
 bility^of the prospect of advantage through unlawful means from 
 presenting itself to his mind. It would indeed have been impos- 
 sible to prove to Regulus, that it was his interest [voluntarily] to 
 return to a death of torture in Africa [merely because he had 
 plighted his word that he would return] . But what if the proof 
 had been easy ? The most thorough conviction on such a point 
 would not have enabled him to set this example, if he had not 
 been supported by his own integrity and generosity, by love of 
 his country, and reverence for his pledged faith. What could 
 the conviction add to that greatness of soul, and to these glorious 
 attributes ? With such virtues, he could not act otherwise than 
 he did. Would a father, affectionately interested in a son's hap- 
 piness, of very lukewarm feelings of morality, but of good sense 
 enough to weigh gratifications and sufferings exactly, be really 
 desirous that his son should have these virtues in a less degree 
 than Regulus, merely because they might expose him to the fate 
 which Regulus chose ? On the coldest calculation, he would 
 surely perceive, that the high and glowing feelings of such a 
 mind during life altogether throw into the shade a few hours 
 of agony in leaving it. And if he himself were so unfortunate, 
 that no more generous sentiment arose in his mind to silence 
 such calculations, would it not be a reproach to his understanding 
 not to discover, that, though, in one case out of millions, such a 
 character might lead a Regulus to torture, yet, in the common 
 course of nature, it is the source not only of happiness in life, 
 
THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 325 
 
 but of quiet and honor in death ? A case so extreme as that of 
 Regulus will not perplex, if we bear in mind, that, though we 
 cannot prove the act of heroic virtue to be conducive to the 
 interest of the hero, yet we may perceive at once, that nothing is 
 so conducive to his interest as to have a mind so formed that it 
 could not shrink from it, but must rather embrace it with gladness 
 and triumph." * 
 
 This case is not so singular as we are apt to imagine. Every 
 prisoner of war who observes his parole, though the consequence 
 to himself is a long and irksome captivity, acts from the same 
 motives which guided the conduct of the Roman hero, and at a 
 sacrifice, which, though less than his, is still considerable. But 
 in the estimate not only of his comrades, with their peculiar no- 
 tions of honor, but of all mankind, this sacrifice is so far from 
 being unaccompanied by a full recompense in the high and pleas- 
 urable feelings which attend it, that, if he fails to make it, he 
 becomes an object of universal pity and contempt. 
 
 That many of the rewards and punishments which wait upon 
 the observance or infraction of the Divine law are dispensed at 
 human tribunals, or through the agency of men in society, is no 
 proof that they are not Divinely appointed. Human government 
 is but one form or manifestation of Heaven's direction and con- 
 trol, rendered somewhat less upright and sure, it is true, by 
 passing through man's hands, but yet created in all its essential 
 features by what are called the necessities of the case ; that is, 
 arranged with reference to the wants and interests of society, 
 these wants and interests being determined by the general consti- 
 tution of things, or by the ordinary current of human affairs, 
 which is formed and guided by the wisdom and power of the 
 Deity. Grime, for instance, is punished by men, not so much 
 because it is disobedience to God, as because it is prejudicial to 
 society ; but then it is God's appointment that it should be thus 
 prejudicial to society, and that men should thereby be urged to 
 punish it. Now the prevailing tone and direction of human law, 
 
 * Progress of Ethical Philosophy, p. 104. 
 
326 THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 
 
 in all countries and all ages, is coincident with the dictates of 
 conscience. Virtue is rewarded, and vice is punished, by soci- 
 ety. Examine all the codes of law that have ever been framed, 
 and you will find that their chief purpose and tendency are to 
 repress immoral conduct, and to encourage and protect the inno- 
 cent and the virtuous. That government is a bad one, which 
 fails to carry out these purposes with sufficient vigor, prompt- 
 ness, and effect, or which mingles up with them more or less of 
 unholy ambition and arrogant self-will ; but no government was 
 ever wicked enough to reverse these purposes, and to aim 
 directly and avowedly at the encouragement of vice, the dis- 
 tress of innocence, and the punishment of goodness. Even an 
 Asiatic despotism professes, and probably intends, to punish 
 theft, perjury, fraud, and unprovoked injury, in all cases where 
 its own interest is not immediately concerned ; that is, of course, 
 in the vast majority of cases that arise among its subjects. It 
 may omit all the forms and precautions that civilized nations 
 have come to observe as the safeguards of innocence and pre- 
 servatives against unintentional wrong ; it may administer wild 
 justice, but justice is its aim ; it wields the sword against crime, 
 and often with terrible effect. Even the law which regulates the 
 intercourse of nations with each other, and which, probably, is 
 the most imperfect of human codes, still founds most of its pro- 
 visions on the natural sense of right, and most of the actions 
 which it forbids are decidedly immoral and injurious. 
 
 It is an obvious remark, that a system or scheme of gov- 
 ernment should be distinguished from a number of single, un- 
 connected acts of distributive justice and goodness. Now the 
 instances already adduced are surely enough to show, that if 
 there be such a system or general plan, it is favorable to virtue, 
 and was designed to encourage men in right conduct. All that 
 can be urged on the other side amounts to a gleaning of discon- 
 nected facts, in regard to which it may be difficult to see that the 
 law of equity, of righteous retribution, has been observed ; it is 
 not pretended that these facts are numerous or grave enough to 
 afford a presumption, either that the government is favorable to 
 
THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 327 
 
 vice, or else that there is no government at all, pleasure and 
 pain, prosperity and adversity, being allotted at random. Thus 
 much is admitted on all hands ; that the virtuous man is pros- 
 perous is the rule ; that the vicious sometimes succeed is the ex- 
 ception. We have a right, then, to appeal to our ignorance and 
 shortsightedness, to our limited means of observation, in order to 
 explain away even these few exceptions. We cannot trace all 
 the consequences of another's act ; those which are near may be 
 injurious, those which are remote may be beneficial, and far more 
 numerous and important. We cannot enter into the mind of the 
 agent, and discern what secret satisfaction is there, which far 
 outweighs the external harm. Above all, we may be mistaken 
 in the character of the act itself, and lose sight of the distinction 
 between absolute and relative rectitude. A seemingly meritori- 
 ous deed may have had its origin in selfishness ; another, wrong- 
 ful in its outward aspect, may have proceeded from the highest 
 and holiest intentions. We are not, then, lightly to suppose that 
 the moral government of God is at fault, even in isolated cases. 
 
 We conclude, then, from an abundance of testimony, that the 
 sense of moral obligation, which rises spontaneously in the mind 
 of every human being, and is as much a part of his constitution 
 as his reason or his senses, is supported and enforced by ar- 
 rangements in the world without, and by the course of events in 
 the external history of man. The law has been traced up to the 
 Lawgiver, and in the contents of the law we have found a deline- 
 ation of the character of its Author. We now learn, that, as the 
 Creator and Governor of the universe, he has established a har- 
 mony between the requisitions of that law which he has imprinted 
 on the conscience, and the external for tunes of men, or the cur- 
 rent of this world's affairs . The moral world, or the history of 
 mankind, is no more an unregulated chaos, or a fortuitous com- 
 bination and succession of dissimilar and characterless events, 
 than is the physical universe. In both we discern not merely 
 the filaments of order, but a closely woven web covered with a 
 uniform and glorious pattern. General laws, as they are called, 
 literally in the former case, metaphorically in the latter, are 
 
328 THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 
 
 found to pervade the whole fabric. It is not more certain that 
 the forms and changes of aggregations of matter are determined 
 according to the principles of gravitation, affinity, definite pro- 
 portions, and the like, than it is that the consequences of human 
 action and the annals of human life accord with the fixed princi- 
 ples of morals and the stern demands of distributive justice. To 
 the uninstructed mind, not trained in habits of scientific observa- 
 tion, and unskilful in finding the key which converts an apparent 
 maze into an harmonious and well-proportioned plan, there are 
 not only many anomalies, but seeming lawlessness and confusion 
 in both. 
 
 If the child or the savage, for instance, should begin to trace 
 the yearly paths of the planets among the stars, as they actually 
 appear to the observer from the earth, should combine and com- 
 pare such observations for successive years, and thus come to 
 know the alternate direct and retrograde motions of these bodies, 
 recurring at irregular intervals, the quickening and retarding of 
 their pace, their occasional stops, and the strange curves which 
 they describe on the nightly skies, he would certainly conclude 
 that their seemingly fantastic movements could neither be traced 
 to any fixed cause working uniformly, nor reduced to any plain 
 and symmetrical system. He would rather class them with the ar- 
 bitrary turns, the inconstant swaying, rising, and falling of a single 
 feather left to float at random in the wind. But the man of sci- 
 ence places before you the simple diagram of the solar system, 
 explains each illusion that arises from the position of the observer 
 on the earth, deduces every movement that takes place from the 
 single principle of gravitation, by the aid of which he can pre- 
 dict the very point of space which either of the orbs will occupy 
 at any future moment, and thus shows, in truth, that the simplicity 
 of the scheme and the harmony of all its parts with each other 
 are its most striking features. He will even find harmony and 
 law in the capricious movements of the feather, and show that 
 all its gyrations may be traced to the same law of gravitation 
 which directs the planets, and which operates as regularly and 
 absolutely in this case, as in guiding those vast bodies in their 
 swift flight around the sun. 
 
THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 
 
 Just so the moral world, the history of the individual, of na- 
 tions, and of the race, to the unreflecting or careless mind seems 
 to present a mere jumble of events, the blind goddess of fortune 
 distributing the parts, and allotting at random to each performer 
 the measure of good and evil in this life which he is fated to 
 receive. But study this maze by the aid of the eternal princi- 
 ples of right and wrong which are enthroned in every heart, 
 strive to go behind the external trappings of prosperity and ad- 
 versity, to count the hours of real, not merely seeming, enjoy- 
 ment, or, in other words, to explore the private history of every 
 man, as well as the story of his outer and public life, and this con- 
 fusion will clear away almost as fully as in the case of the physi- 
 cal universe. I say u almost as fully " ; for it cannot be denied, 
 that the problem is more complicated in its very nature ; the ma- 
 terial universe, in all its large features, presents to us exclusively 
 the picture of God's doings ; the moral world, so far as it is vis- 
 ible to our eyes, shows the union of man's action with that of 
 his Maker. God still governs, and that absolutely ; but through 
 moral, not mechanical means. Human free-will is allowed a 
 large theatre on which to develop itself, and the results are 
 necessarily more complex and intricate than when Divine agency 
 alone is exerted. Still, the government prevails, order reigns, 
 eternal laws are prescribed and enforced, and the purposes of 
 the Almighty are carried out. In the distribution of bodily and 
 mental health and disease ; in the conditions of what is called 
 success in life ; in the secret contentment and joy which wait on 
 the unostentatious fulfilment of ordinary duties, and in the glow 
 and exaltation of feeling which accompany and reward a great ap- 
 parent sacrifice for the right ; in the institutions of society and 
 the sympathies of mankind, which aim directly to encourage the 
 good and to punish the evil-doer ; in these and many other 
 circumstances, I see all the grand features of a comprehensive 
 plan, wisely contrived and efficiently carried out, to win men to 
 the practice of virtue and to punish every violation of the moral 
 law. If, in a few cases, I behold apparent exceptions to the 
 rule, or am not able to trace the workings of the plan, I do but 
 
380 THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 
 
 follow the ordinary principles of scientific method and inductive 
 logic in maintaining, with full-assured belief, that a more com- 
 plete knowledge of the circumstances would show that the 
 schemej operates even here, the seeming anomalies being in 
 truth its most beautiful exemplifications. If a planet on the 
 outer verge of our system shows purturbations for which, ac- 
 cording to our present knowledge of that system, the law of 
 gravity will not account, I do not therefore conclude that the 
 law is suspended in this single case, but rather wait with firm 
 trust for the progress of discovery to point out some still exterior 
 orb, as yet invisible to mortal eyes, the action of which will 
 explain the seeming disturbance, and make the law appear as 
 universal as it is wise. 
 
 The argument for the moral government, the justice and be- 
 nevolence of the Deity in his ways with men, has, I think, suf- 
 fered somewhat by the injudicious course of those who have 
 treated it, in dwelling at too great length upon these isolated 
 cases and seeming anomalies, as if at least a probable expla- 
 nation of every one of them was needed before we could believe 
 in the system ; or as if there could be no government at all, un- 
 less, with our present imperfect means of information, we could 
 plainly see that it was a perfect government. But the man of 
 science will tell you, that the principle which really holds 
 throughout a class is to be sought for, not among the few scat- 
 tered members of that class which are least known, but in the 
 vast majority of those cases which are most directly exposed to 
 observation. Look away from these specks and anomalies, and 
 contemplate the broad features of the case. He who, on the 
 evidence thus presented, will still doubt whether the general and "* 
 widely prevailing tendency of this world's affairs is really to up- 
 hold the law of conscience by a system of rewards and punish- 
 ments graduated to that end, and actually intended by the Dis- 
 poser of all things so to influence the conduct of men, is not a 
 person to be reasoned with, but to be pitied. 
 
 The history of distant countries and past ages affords some 
 perplexities in this view of the subject, precisely because it 
 
THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 331 
 
 is a very imperfect description of men and events that are little 
 known. We are prone to consider nations as individuals, mor- 
 ally responsible, and having a continuous life, and hence to 
 require that their external fortunes should be adjusted to their 
 deserts, and thus the justice of God be vindicated on a large 
 scale. Why, then, we ask, for instance, were the Northern bar- 
 barians allowed to overrun what was then the only enlightened 
 portion of the globe, and to tread out all but the last spark of 
 learning and civilization, as it seemed, for centuries to come ? 
 I answer, first, that the researches of modern historians and 
 philosophical inquirers have fully established the point, that this 
 seeming deluge of barbarism actually renovated a soil that had 
 become effete, and planted in it the fresh seeds of knowledge 
 and progress, which afterwards shot up in such luxuriance at the 
 Revival of Letters. If a stranger, wholly unacquainted with the 
 circumstances of the case, should happen to visit Egypt at the 
 season when all its cultivated fields are under water, and the in- 
 habitants are compelled to move about in boats, he would prob- 
 ably conclude that the inundation of the Nile was a judgment 
 upon the people for their sins. I answer, secondly, that a nation 
 has only a fictitious unity and personality, individuals being the 
 only actual subjects of the Divine government. Now history 
 teaches us but very little about individuals, except of the few 
 who occupy thrones or other prominent stations in the state, and 
 who, from the very peculiarity of their position, afford us no safe 
 rule by which we can estimate the characters and fortunes of the 
 multitude. If, therefore, when we trace the fortunes of nations, 
 the operation of the law is not very manifest, this is precisely 
 what we might expect ; let the inquirer take the history of a single 
 person, especially his own history, the only one that he can 
 know thoroughly, and the fact that he lives under the Divine 
 government becomes far more obvious. Let him inquire whether 
 his own situation and experience furnish greater inducements for 
 the practice of virtue or vice, and there is little fear that he will 
 arrive at a false conclusion. 
 
 It is true, then, in the moral as well as the physical sense, that 
 
332 THE MORAL LAW ENFORCED. 
 
 God governs the earth, governs it, too, in both cases, not 
 by secondary causes or vicarious means, but by the direct and 
 constant exertion of his own wisdom and power. The belief of 
 the pious heart is also the conclusion of the enlightened under- 
 standing, that the will of the Almighty determines all events, and 
 disposes them for good. Science adopts and sanctions the theory 
 of religion in regard to an overruling Providence ; the theory 
 which discerns a moral purpose in all things, maintaining that 
 they were specially designed to produce a certain effect on the 
 character and the conduct ; which subordinates the physical to 
 the moral, considering the former as means and the latter as an 
 end ; which regards life as a gift and a trust, to be exercised for 
 certain purposes, and death as a warning and a token that, in a 
 particular case, these purposes have been accomplished. 
 

 LECTURE VII 
 
 THE GOODNESS OP GOD. 
 
 THE brief examination, in the last Lecture, of the contents 
 of the law imprinted upon the conscience, of the nature of the 
 precepts which it issues for our observance, was intended to 
 prove, that these injunctions reveal to us the character and attri- 
 butes, as well as the purposes, of the Almighty. They do so, 
 because they answer no lower purpose ; they are not subservi- 
 ent as means to any end but this. They were not required to 
 stimulate the body or mind to exertion, or to direct that exer- 
 tion, or to preserve and uphold the arrangements and the work- 
 ings of the material universe. They are of absolute obligation, 
 so that the advantages which the observance of them actually 
 procures are to be considered as their guards and enforcers, not 
 as their object or final cause. Consequently, they are, to the hu- 
 man mind which receives them, a revelation of pure will, or a 
 manifestation of the Divine nature and glory irrespective of any 
 purposes which may be answered by the display. Requiring 
 perfection, or unlimited obedience, they show the perfections of" 
 their Author. 
 
 The scheme of Divine government, I attempted to show, 
 includes a system of rewards and punishments which follow im- 
 mediately upon the observance or transgression of the law. Hu- 
 man life presents so many instances of these as to make the 
 conclusion irresistible, that the current of this world's affairs, the 
 natural course of events, is superintended and directed with a 
 
334 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 view to moral retribution. The object of the pains and pleas- 
 ures which we experience, whether they grow out of our con- 
 nection with the body, appearing as health or disease ; or out 
 of the relations which bind men together in society, then taking 
 the form of success or failure in life, and of the honors and 
 penalties which society has to bestow ; or out of the constitution 
 of the mind itself, in the various forms and degrees of remorse 
 or inward gratification and the consciousness of merit ; the 
 object, I say, in all these cases, is to uphold and enforce the 
 law of right. That the incidents of life are distributed with a 
 view to this end is the general rule ; the apparent instances of 
 an unequal or fortuitous distribution of them are only apparent, 
 and they are the exceptions. There are a few seeming anom- 
 alies, which are most apt to present themselves in the considera- 
 tion of those cases of which we know the least, for instance, 
 of historical personages and events, while they very seldom 
 trouble one's retrospect of his own experience ; here, knowing 
 all, he knows that the law is carried out completely. And the 
 proper conclusion, from the presence of such anomalies as we 
 cannot explain, is, not that the doctrine of a superintending 
 Providence must be given up altogether, that doctrine being 
 supported by the vast majority of cases, but that we do not 
 always know how such a Providence acts. It is certain that 
 we are under a scheme of government ; but we are not able to 
 follow all the workings of that scheme, or to assure ourselves, 
 from direct observation, that it is perfect. The belief of the 
 pious mind 'is hereby amply confirmed, that all events which 
 affect our personal welfare are dispensations of almighty wis- 
 dom and justice. 
 
 It has not been without design, that I have placed the argu- 
 ment for the moral government of God by a system of rewards 
 and punishments before the consideration of the evidences of the 
 Divine benevolence, though this is reversing the order usually 
 adopted by writers upon the subject. But it is certain that the 
 claims of justice are superior to those of mere benevolence. 
 We are required to do good to our fellow-beings so far as we 
 
THE GOODNESS OP GOD. 335 
 
 can without violating other and higher obligations ; we ought not 
 to deprive another of that which is rightfully his own, or to utter 
 an untruth, or to break our pledged faith, even for the sake of 
 benefiting millions, while the wrong would be felt only by an 
 individual. Nay, as the appointed ministers of justice, it may 
 often be our duty to inflict suffering, and to stifle the emotions 
 of sympathy and compassion which prompt us only to increase 
 his happiness. What is done from such motives is no imputa- 
 tion upon the benevolence of the individual ; his heart may be 
 overflowing with love to his neighbour at the very moment when 
 he is doing him harm, or is the minister of the law to him for a 
 righteous retribution. And generally we may say, that the meas- 
 ure of immediate happiness or pain which is dispensed by any 
 being is a very imperfect criterion of the real goodness of his 
 disposition. The surgeon, for instance, is not necessarily a 
 hard-hearted man, though he passes his life in causing pain to 
 others ; he intends, indeed, to benefit them ultimately, but the 
 benefit is remote and contingent, while the suffering caused by 
 the operation is immediate and certain. In like manner, it may 
 be better for the criminal himself, it may be more for his highest 
 and most permanent interest, that he should be punished for his 
 present offence, than that he should be permitted to sin with 
 impunity. Yet men have argued as if the presence of any pain, 
 the existence of any suffering, in the moral universe, was a fact 
 irreconcilable with the infinite benevolence of the Creator. 
 
 I do not dwell upon this consideration now, as a better occa- 
 sion will arise for developing it afterwards. I have alluded to it 
 here only to remind you, that, as the obligation to promote the 
 happiness of others is always secondary to the demands of jus- 
 tice, we may at once, in estimating the proofs of the benevolence 
 of the Deity, leave out of the account entirely all the pain which 
 is evidently produced for the punishment and repression of sin. 
 And how great is the deduction that will thus be made from the 
 amount of suffering in the world ! How large a portion of the 
 evils borne both by individuals and communities are attributable 
 directly to their own misconduct, to their wilful disregard of the 
 
336 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 monitions of conscience ! The bodily frame, which is now lan- 
 guid from inaction or enfeebled by disease, might have been 
 active and vigorous, prompt to second every wish of its owner, 
 and ministering to his enjoyment through every sense, joint, and 
 limb. The community which is now torn with civil dissensions, 
 or prostrated in an unequal strife with its rivals, might have been 
 peaceful, affluent, and flourishing, if its rulers and their subjects 
 had heeded the stern calls of duty instead of blindly following 
 their own tumultuous passions. Once admit the great truth, that 
 virtue, not happiness, is man's highest interest, and most of the 
 pains of this life indicate the goodness of God quite as clearly as 
 its pleasures. Consider, further, that virtue must be spontaneous 
 or self-cultivated, since what is compulsory or mechanical can 
 afford no ground either for praise or blame, and most of the 
 problems which would otherwise perplex us in a view of this 
 world's affairs admit of an easy solution. 
 
 But our present object is to inquire whether there be not, on 
 the whole, a vast preponderance of enjoyment in the world, from 
 which, without troubling ourselves yet about the presence of evil 
 in a few cases, we may directly infer the kindness and benignity 
 of the Supreme Being. It is hardly possible to add any thing 
 to Paley's admirable summary of the argument upon this point, 
 nor can the heads of it be more forcibly and succinctly stated 
 than in his language. The first proposition is, " That in a vast 
 plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the de- 
 sign of the contrivance is beneficial " ; the second, " That the 
 Deity has superadded pleasure to animal sensations beyond what 
 was necessary to any other purpose, or when the purpose, so far 
 as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation 
 of pain." 
 
 His assertion, however, that evil is never the object of con- 
 trivance, needs to be explained and limited, before we can admit 
 it. Evil here does not mean mere pain, for this, I believe, is 
 often intended and provided for, both to punish wrong, and to 
 warn us against danger. But the distribution of this pain indi- 
 cates pure benevolence united with perfect justice. It is never 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 337 
 
 placed where it is not needed for some higher purpose ; and 
 therefore it is never the ultimate object of contrivance. It is 
 needed, for instance, to discourage and repress wrong-doing, 
 the moral education of man being here the final aim of the ar- 
 rangement. So the physiologists tell us, that the parts of the 
 body which are most delicate and most exposed to injury from 
 without are rendered most acutely sensitive ; while those which 
 are guarded in the main by their position are not liable to pain. 
 A mote, a grain of dust, in the eye, causes an intolerable smart ; 
 while the deeply seated muscles and tendons may be cut or torn 
 almost without the consciousness of suffering. There are good 
 reasons to believe, that the sensibility of the lower animals to 
 pain is very slight, a warning of danger being comparatively use- 
 less to them, who have not reason and foresight to take measures 
 to avert it. The horse and the cow, when shockingly wounded 
 in the lower extremities, have been observed to move about, 
 even upon their bloody stumps, and to graze with apparent 
 unconcern. The head of a dragon-fly will eat after it is severed 
 from the body ; and Mr. Kirby saw a cockchafer walking with 
 no show of uneasiness after a bird had almost wholly deprived its 
 body of the viscera. The noted saying, that 
 
 " the poor beetle which we tread upon, 
 In corporal sufferance, feels a pang as great 
 As when a giant dies," 
 
 however calculated to extend the range of our sympathies, cer- 
 tainly contains more poetry than truth. 
 
 But we are more concerned now to observe, that in unnum- 
 bered instances throughout God's creation, the production of 
 happiness is the sole object of the contrivance. The natural 
 operation of all the senses, organs, and faculties is a source of 
 pleasure. It is sweet to see, to hear, to eat, to breathe, to per- 
 form any of the ordinary functions of life, when the body is in 
 its normal state. There is just enough of uneasiness recurring 
 at intervals to remind us of the work that must be done in order 
 to keep the body in this healthy condition. Even the conscious- 
 ness of living, of continued existence, under common circum- 
 
 43 
 
338 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 stances, is agreeable ; for those who are most apt to complain of 
 the burden of existence would resent the proposal, if you should 
 offer immediately to rid them of it. It is finely observed by 
 Abraham Tucker, that our " pleasures spring from steady, per- 
 manent causes, as the vigor of health, the due returns of appe- 
 tite, and calls of nature to exercise or rest ; but pains proceed 
 from accidents which happen rarely, or diseases which are 
 either slight or temporary." " Even our troubles come at- 
 tended with their alleviations ; we have remedies and assist- 
 ance in diseases, comfort in distresses, and hope lies ready as 
 a salve for every sore ; nor are there any in so forlorn a con- 
 dition but may find something to thank God for, if they will 
 look about to seek it. Epicurus, though disposed to find all the 
 faults he could in the system of nature, yet made it one among 
 his collection of Maxims, ' That pain, if grievous, was short ; if 
 long, it was light.' "* 
 
 Happiness is so far the normal condition of existence, that we 
 are hardly conscious of the extent and the perpetual succession of 
 our enjoyments, till something occurs to interrupt them. Thus, 
 we mourn the loss of friends, though their departure ought to 
 remind us of the length of years through which we have had the 
 comfort of their society. Most of our sorrows are of a negative 
 character ; they are not so much positive pains, as occasional 
 privations of blessings to which we have been long accustomed. 
 " The rays of happiness," a poet tells us, " like those of light, 
 are colorless when unbroken." It is no paradox, then, to say, 
 that pains, when not too frequent or too violent, contribute di- 
 rectly to increase our conscious enjoyments, which could not be 
 perpetually renewed without them. An attack of illness, if not 
 too severe, is generally more than compensated by the pleasure of 
 returning health, that comes with a glow and freshness of which 
 one who has never been an invalid can have no conception. 
 But these pains, because they are infrequent, stand out like land- 
 marks in our remembrance, while the wide expanse of happiness 
 
 * The Light of Nature Pursued, Vol. II. Chap. 16. 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 339 
 
 which they diversify is unnoticed or forgotten. Probably the 
 happiest portion of our existence is that which leaves the least 
 impression on the memory, and the happiest man is he whose 
 life affords the fewest incidents for the biographer. 
 
 The adaptation of external nature to the mind of man, its fit- 
 ness to excite pleasurable emotion, is another proof of the benefi- 
 cence of the Creator. The beauty of the vegetable creation, 
 from the tiniest flower up to the moss-grown oak, its almost end- 
 less variety of form and hue, the delicacy and high finish of its 
 minutest parts, with the luxuriance and grandeur of its aggregated 
 masses, are enough to stir the most sluggish soul to admiration 
 and gratitude. The useful functions of plants in the economy of 
 nature, their effects, for instance, in purifying the air and elab- 
 orating food for the animal kingdom, might all be performed 
 without this richness of embellishment. Their beauty is some- 
 thing superadded, for no conceivable purpose but that of impart- 
 ing pleasure. And the ear is gratified as well as the eye. All 
 natural sounds, the song of birds, the hum of insects, the break- 
 ing of waves on the shore, the murmuring of the wind amid the 
 branches of a forest, even the sullen plunge of the cataract, and 
 " the bass of heaven's great organ," are harmonious ; the oper- 
 ations of man alone jar the delicate sense, 
 
 " Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps." 
 
 u The necessary purposes of hearing," as Paley observes, 
 cc might have been answered without harmony ; of smell, without 
 fragrance ; of vision, without beauty. The properties given to 
 the necessaries of life themselves, by which they contribute to 
 pleasure as well as preservation, show a further design than that 
 of giving existence." It is so with the chief articles of food, 
 eating being certainly necessary for the continuance of animal 
 life ; but " why add pleasure to the act of eating, sweetness 
 and relish to food ? why a new and appropriate sense for the 
 perception of the pleasure ? That this pleasure depends, not 
 only upon our being in possession of the sense of taste, which is 
 different from every other, but upon a particular state of the or- 
 gan in which it resides, a felicitous adaptation of the organ to 
 
340 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 the object, will be confessed by any one who may happen to 
 have experienced that vitiation of taste which frequently occurs 
 in fevers, when every taste is irregular, and every one bad." 
 And if this pleasure forms but a small and rather ignoble item 
 among the enjoyments of man, let it be remembered that it is 
 spread over a large portion of the existence of brutes, especially 
 of the ruminating animals. 
 
 It matters not at all, for the purposes of this argument, whether 
 the beauty of forms, colors, sounds, and the like, is something in- 
 trinsic, inherent in the nature of the things themselves, or is super- 
 added by our modes of perception ; whether, to speak techni- 
 cally, the beauty be objective or subjective. It is indifferent 
 whether we say, that objects are so constituted as to impart 
 pleasure to the mind, or that the mind is so constituted as to re- 
 ceive pleasure from them, when our only object is to prove that 
 the pleasure itself is actual and abundant. In truth, I can see no 
 reason why the emotions of beauty and sublimity were added to 
 our mental faculties except the mere purpose of enlarging the 
 sphere of our enjoyments. They do not conduce to the preser- 
 vation of life, they are not needed to keep up society, or to 
 influence our conduct. They often stimulate to action, it is true ; 
 for when we have once experienced the pleasure that they afford, 
 we desire its repetition, and seek the objects which occasion 
 them. But this is only their secondary effect ; and it is neither 
 certain nor necessary, the stimulus to activity which is otherwise 
 provided being stronger and quite sufficient. They are copious 
 sources of delight, which is often vivid and intense, and is shared 
 in a greater or less degree by all ; this is the only important part 
 which they play in the economy of our being, and is the obvious 
 purpose for which they were created. 
 
 Acknowledged differences of taste form no argument against 
 the reality and abundance of the pleasure which every person re- 
 ceives from this endowment of his nature, however mistaken his 
 notions may be as to the beauty or sublimity of particular ob- 
 jects. A child's delight in a daub of bright colors, or an unmean- 
 ing jingle of sounds, is as real and hearty as the connoisseur's 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 341 
 
 appreciation of the merits of a Raphael or a Mozart. Indeed, I 
 count the flexibility of these emotions, the numberless occasions 
 on which they rise, their adaptation to all ages and conditions of 
 life, and the rapid changes which cultivation effects in them, 
 among the perfections of their contrivance, when regarded as a 
 means of enlarging human happiness. We have thus a greater 
 range and variety in our pleasures, every stage in our existence 
 and education having its own peculiar stock of them, every day 
 contributing some new occasion on which they are felt, and the 
 effect of familiarity and repetition in dulling the sense of enjoy- 
 ment being thus completely obviated. We see here a reason 
 for that infinite variety in the details of the material universe, 
 amidst which, as I remarked on a former occasion, we trace the 
 threads of uniformity and the prevalence of law. In the glorious 
 mass of foliage which crowns an oak, it was then observed, there 
 are no two leaves which perfectly resemble each other ; and I 
 may now add, that there is not one of them which is not grace- 
 ful. Objects are seen under different and very dissimilar aspects, 
 and under all contribute largely, if not equally, to the pleasure of 
 the beholder. No two sunsets are exactly alike, nor is there one 
 mass of white cloud on the blue sky which is the very pattern of 
 another. The changes of the seasons are continually altering the 
 appearance of the landscape ; every month in the year it images 
 a new feeling, but never lapses into ugliness. 
 
 I find a striking account of the beauty of spring and of child- 
 hood in a writer who uses it only to illustrate his theory of taste ; 
 and I borrow it, as it seems far more appropriate to the purposes 
 of this argument, and as it is free from even a suspicion of any 
 bias in favor of the doctrines of theology. 
 
 u Winter has shades as deep and colors as brilliant, and the 
 great forms of nature are substantially the same through all the 
 revolutions of the year. We shall seek in vain, therefore, in the 
 accidents of mere organic matter, for the sources of that 'vernal 
 delight and joy' which subject all finer spirits to an annual in- 
 toxication, and strike home the sense of beauty even to hearts 
 that seem proof against it under all other aspects. And it is 
 
342 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 not among the Dead, but among the Living, that this beauty 
 originates. It is the renovation of life and of joy to all ani- 
 mated beings that constitutes this great jubilee of nature ; the 
 young of animals bursting into existence, the simple and uni- 
 versal pleasures which are diffused by the mere temperature of 
 the air and the profusion of sustenance, the pairing of birds, 
 the cheerful resumption of rustic toils, the great alleviation 
 of all the miseries of poverty and sickness, our sympathy with 
 the young life, and the promise and the hazards of the vegetable 
 creation, the solemn, yet cheering, impression of the constancy 
 of nature to her great periods of renovation, and the hopes that 
 dart spontaneously forward into the new circle of exertions and 
 enjoyments that is opened up by her hand and her example. 
 Such are some of the conceptions that are forced upon us by 
 the appearances of returning Spring, and that seem to account 
 for the emotions of delight with which these appearances are 
 hailed by every mind endowed with any degree of sensibility, 
 somewhat better than the brightness of the colors or the agree- 
 ableness of the smells that are then presented to our senses. 
 
 " They are kindred conceptions that constitute all the beauty 
 of childhood. The forms and colors that are peculiar to that 
 age are not necessarily or absolutely beautiful in themselves ; 
 for, in a grown person, the same forms and colors would be 
 either ludicrous or disgusting. It is their indestructible connec- 
 tion with the engaging ideas of innocence, of careless gayety, 
 of unsuspecting confidence, made still more tender and at- 
 tractive by the recollection of helplessness, and blameless and 
 happy ignorance, of the anxious affection that watches over 
 all their ways, and of the hopes and fears that seek to pierce 
 futurity for those who have neither fears nor cares nor anxieties 
 for themselves."* 
 
 I have dwelt thus long upon the pleasures of taste, because 
 the capacity for them, more than any other part of our constitu- 
 tion, seems to have been created for the sole purpose of increas- 
 
 * Jeffrey on the Nature and Principles of Taste. 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 343 
 
 ing the store of human happiness. Let it not be thought, on 
 account of their gentle and unobtrusive character, and the trifling 
 value which we put upon them in moments of excitement, or 
 when we think that greater interests are at stake, that they form 
 an insignificant addition to that store. They are diffused, so to 
 speak, over the whole plain of human existence, making up, by 
 their variety, their duration, and their constant recurrence, for 
 their lack of intensity and the slightness of their hold when the 
 stronger passions assert their power. The pleasures of ambition, 
 pomp, and power visit us only in lightning flashes, as brief as 
 they are vivid ; they are often purchased, also, at a heavy sacri- 
 fice, they are crossed by the pains of failure and disappointment, 
 and even the happiness which they are thought to constitute is 
 more properly ascribed to the toil and effort which we expend 
 in their pursuit. But the enjoyments procured by the faculty of 
 taste are unmingled with losses and sacrifices, and for the most 
 part are unbought. They come to cheer the intervals of exer- 
 tion, and to speed the long hours which are not filled with grave 
 cares or enterprises of great pith and moment. They form the 
 relaxation alike of the monarch on his throne and of the peasant 
 in his hut ; the social instinct prompts each to seek companion- 
 ship, and the conversation which turns not upon business or 
 causes of anxiety is prolonged merely for pleasure into an idle 
 chat. A company of laborers, talking around the fire after the 
 day's work is ended, experience this delight quite as strongly as 
 the crowd which fills the apartments of the fashionable and the 
 learned. " It is a happy world, after all." In spite of all the 
 labors, cares, and troubles of life, we still spend a considerable 
 portion of our time merely in amusing ourselves. 
 
 The wide diffusion of these simple pleasures suggests another 
 arrangement in nature, which affords still stronger proof of the 
 benevolence of the Deity ; I mean the adaptation of the ca- 
 pacity of happiness to all orders of being and to all conditions of 
 life. Considered in reference to its sources and occasions, hap- 
 piness is not an absolute, but a relative term. When we say, that 
 any creature is as happy as it is capable of being, we express its 
 
344 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 perfect enjoyment ; the lowness of the capacity does not lessen 
 this perfection. The causes and nature of the enjoyment may 
 make it very unsuitable for a being of a different order, or for 
 one of the same order, but of different pursuits and tastes. Still, 
 it is real and perfect, and in this argument, therefore, is entitled 
 to just as much weight as pleasure of a higher character. But 
 we are all prone to erect our own ideas upon this subject into an 
 absolute standard, and to pity all who do not come up to our pe- 
 culiar notions of happiness ; we do not always remember, that, 
 very likely, the objects of our compassion are at the same mo- 
 ment pitying us. This propensity leads us greatly to overrate 
 the amount of misery that there is in the world, when, if we 
 would but reflect upon it, the propensity itself is an additional 
 indication of the goodness of God ; each individual supposes 
 that his own happiness is the highest possible happiness, and 
 his enjoyment is naturally enhanced by this belief. Ideas of 
 what constitute pleasure and pain vary more widely than we are 
 apt to imagine, especially if we include the lower animals in the 
 survey. To take the strongest instance that I can think of ; 
 the sight of a wild beast eagerly tearing and devouring the prey 
 that it has just seized makes us shudder ; yet the animal is then 
 experiencing the keenest enjoyment that it is capable of, and 
 if, as is generally the case, the prey is instantly killed by its cap- 
 tor, so that there is little or no suffering on either side, the spec- 
 tacle, apart from its effect on* our involuntary sympathies, ought 
 rather to make us rejoice. We look upon the condition of a 
 tribe of savages with similar feelings, and, so far as mere hap- 
 piness is concerned, we almost equally misjudge the case. Pity 
 them, if you will, for not being able to appreciate your refined 
 and elevated pleasures, but for nothing else, since they are not 
 only unconscious of suffering, but, for most of the time, they are 
 enjoying themselves. We are shocked by the ignorance of great 
 multitudes of men, and the feeling is a proper one in regard to 
 their future, as the want of instruction frequently leads to crime ; 
 but in connection with our present topic, we ought to remember 
 that ignorance is often bliss. Information on many points would 
 only breed discontent. 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 345 
 
 These considerations seem to me to have so much weight, 
 that I cannot regard Abraham Tucker's animated picture of the 
 distribution of happiness as at all exaggerated. " We should 
 cease," he says, " to measure others' satisfaction by our own 
 standard, and to think nothing desirable to them which we would 
 not choose for ourselves ; we shall then discern a variety of 
 tastes adapted to the several conditions wherein men are placed, 
 and things which are irksome at first becoming pleasant by cus- 
 tom. We may see that children have their plays ; the vulgar 
 their amusements, coarse jokes, and May-games ; even folly does 
 not exclude pleasure, nor poverty banish contentment. There 
 is as much mirth in the kitchen as the parlour, and as great diver- 
 sion in a country fair or a cricket-match as at a card assembly 
 or a ridotto. The cobbler whistles at his stall ; the dairy-maid 
 sings while she is milking ; the ploughman munches his mouldy 
 crusts with as good a relish as the rich man eats his dainties 
 with, for he has that best of sauces, hunger, to season his 
 victuals. Labor purifies the blood, invigorates the limbs, 
 strengthens the digestion, insures quiet sleep, and renders the 
 body proof against changes and inclemencies of weather ; all 
 which are considerable articles in the enjoyment of life, nor can 
 their loss be compensated by any enjoyment of family, fortune, 
 learning, and politeness. Nor is the lowest herdsman incapable 
 of that sincerest of pleasures, the consciousness of acting right ; 
 for rectitude does not consist in extensiveness of knowledge, but 
 in doing the best according to the lights afforded ; and many 
 artisans, servants, and laborers find as much satisfaction in fulfil- 
 ling the duties of then* station, as the philosopher in his researches 
 into nature. Nor need we stop at the human species ; for the 
 brute creation, too, exhibits scenes agreeable for the good-natured 
 man to look upon ; he may rejoice to see the cattle sporting 
 in the fields, to hear the birds singing and chirping out their joys, 
 to behold the swallow building nests to hatch her young, the ant 
 laying in stores of provision for her future accommodation, the 
 flies in a summer evening dancing together in wanton mazes, the 
 little pucerons in water frisking nimbly about, as if delighted with 
 
 44 
 
346 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 their existence. Whoever has a heart to enjoy such contempla- 
 tions will be apt to pursue them until he has satisfied himself that 
 there is a much greater quantity of enjoyment than suffering upon 
 earth."* 
 
 Suppose that the belief which every individual is prone to enter- 
 tain on this subject were well founded ; suppose that there were 
 an absolute standard of happiness, as there is of virtue. Is it not 
 obvious, in the first case, that all the lower orders of being, differ- 
 ing fundamentally in their endowments and constitutions from man, 
 would be as incapable of enjoyment as they now are of recti- 
 tude ? Deprived of all access to refined and elevated pleasures 
 by the coarseness of their organization, and the ruder delights of 
 eating and mere bodily activity being struck out of the scale, 
 what would remain to them but the life (if we may call it by that 
 name) of a machine, or, in other words, mere senselessness and 
 the incapacity either of joy or woe ? Again, unless all the dif- 
 ferences of character and variety of talents and occupations, 
 which now distinguish men from each other, were done away, 
 the establishment in their minds of but one standard of happiness 
 would deprive all but an insignificant fraction of their number of 
 any experience of pleasure. If this standard were accommodated 
 to a man's character, the child could not rise to it ; if it were 
 suited only to the cultivated mind, the savage would have no 
 compensation for the evils of his lot ; if it had regard to differ- 
 ence of sex, one half of the human family would be joyless. If 
 it were made known to all in the absoluteness of its conditions, 
 just as the standard of rectitude is, even the few could have but 
 partial enjoyment ; for perfection in happiness would be as un- 
 attainable as perfection in morals. There must be such a stand- 
 ard, for absolute happiness alone can express the condition of an 
 omnipotent and omniscient Being ; but in his mercy, it is not 
 revealed to man in this stage of existence, nor to any of the crea- 
 tures which He has made. Yet such a revelation would be con- 
 sistent with mere justice ; for the pleasures of virtue alone would 
 
 * Light of Nature Pursued, Vol. II. Chap. 16. 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 347 
 
 satisfy all the requisitions of the moral sense. Men might be 
 made happy only in proportion as they were good. Now, in- 
 deed, their pleasures are enhanced by the consciousness of recti- 
 tude ; but they are not wholly destroyed by the recollection of 
 sin. God sendeth his rain alike on the just and the unjust, his 
 government being one not merely of absolute rectitude, but of 
 perfect love. 
 
 I shall allude to but one other proof of the benevolence of 
 God, and that is, the endowment of the mind with benevolent 
 affections, care being thus shown for the happiness of all by ren- 
 dering men the guardians and partakers of the happiness of each 
 other. We are not left in this respect to the monitions of con- 
 science alone, though the general obligation to relieve the dis- 
 tressed and to do good to all is recognized, and even strongly 
 inculcated, by that faculty. But the social and kind affections 
 also, which stand foremost among our primary impulses, and 
 which are prompt to act before reason can come into play or 
 the voice of conscience be heard, are so many ever-watchful 
 sentinels to increase the joys and lessen the sorrows of our mor- 
 tal lot. So quick and powerful is their operation, that the action 
 which proceeds from them seems involuntary. The sight of dis- 
 tress prompts an instant attempt to relieve it, no matter who may 
 be the sufferer. Imminent peril hanging over the head of an- 
 other causes a shuddering in ah 1 our limbs, as if our own lives 
 were menaced ; and often the sharp cry of warning is uttered 
 before reason can teach us that the distance is too great for the 
 voice to be heard. We rejoice in the happiness of others, 
 though the difference of taste, situation, or character makes 
 their standard of enjoyment the farthest possible from our own. 
 The aged are always the most ready to encourage the sports of 
 childhood, to join in the shout that follows their success, and to 
 please the infant with a rattle or a straw. The affections of kin- 
 dred are indestructible while life and sense remain ; they often 
 overbear all regard for our own comfort, and a painful death be- 
 comes a pleasant one, if suffered for their sake. Disinterested- 
 ness is so prominent a trait in them, that even the suggestion of 
 
348 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 their being alloyed by the hope of compensation is resented as an 
 affront. They often rise to enthusiasm, so as to need the curb 
 of reflection and a sense of duty to keep them from a harmful 
 excess. So exquisite is the pleasure of their indulgence, and so 
 easily are they brought into play, that, when real occasions to 
 call them forth are wanting, we seek fictitious ones, and grieve 
 over the sorrows or sympathize in the joys of imaginary beings. 
 What direct interest has the spectator at the theatre, or the 
 reader of a romance, in the characters represented, his sympa- 
 thy with whom is attested by his emotion and his tears ? 
 
 " What 's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, 
 That he should weep for her? " 
 
 We cannot explain this effect but by admitting that our affections 
 and sympathies are more speedy and overpowering than the ac- 
 tion of the intellect, which would teach us, if it had time or 
 could gain an audience, that we were weeping over shadows and 
 airy fancies. 
 
 Consider, now, the human mind, figuratively, with its complex 
 and delicate network of faculties and springs of action, as a ma- 
 chine or a contrivance, the problem being, how to constitute it 
 so as to take the greatest possible security for the happiness of 
 the race. What more effectual means could be devised for this 
 end than to endow men first with the social or gregarious in- 
 stinct, which keeps them always near to each other, and then to 
 knit their hearts together with so many of these kindly affections, 
 that not a chord of joy or sorrow can be touched in one without 
 finding an instant response in many others ? Observe, too, how 
 these affections are distributed in regard to their objects, the 
 strongest always uniting those who live nearest and most famil- 
 iarly with each other, and who consequently stand most in need 
 of mutual aid, the assistance that is most readily offered being 
 thus also always the nearest at hand ; while the other feelings 
 weaken, indeed, as they expand, but continually take in a larger 
 number, till that of general benevolence includes the whole hu- 
 man race. The love, for instance, which surpasses all others, 
 is that of a mother for her child, these two being for months 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 349 
 
 and years inseparable, and the latter being wholly dependent on 
 another's care. 
 
 Indeed, the bodily constitution of the human infant, when 
 compared with that of the young of other animals, shows that it 
 is trusted for protection and support almost exclusively to ma- 
 ternal affection ; and the trust is not in vain. " One animal is 
 armed with the horn, another with the tusk, a third with the 
 paw ; most of them are covered with furs, or with skins of a 
 sufficient thickness to protect them from the inclemencies of the 
 seasons ; and all of them are directed by instinct in what manner 
 they may choose or construct the most convenient habitation for 
 securing themselves from danger, and for rearing their offspring. 
 The human infant alone enters the world naked and unarmed ; 
 exposed without a covering to the fury of the elements ; sur- 
 rounded with enemies who far surpass him in strength or agility ; 
 and totally ignorant in what way he is to procure the comforts or 
 even the necessaries of life."* A being formed for tears, says 
 Pliny, but soon to exercise dominion over all the other creatures 
 that God has made, Flens animal, cwteris imperaturum. 
 
 That it is the living constantly together, and not some hid- 
 den virtue in mere kindred blood, which forms the groundwork 
 of the family affections, seems to me to be proved by the fact, 
 that long separation greatly weakens these natural ties, while the 
 factitious unions of marriage and friendship put others in their 
 place which are equally effective. Wherever we are placed, 
 then, however far our journeyings may be, these kindly feelings 
 spring up around us in a natural growth, the Divinely appointed 
 guardians of our happiness ; a removal separates us from one 
 class of them, but the loss is soon repaired by others. It is 
 hardly possible for man to occupy a position so isolated, that he 
 shall not be joined by one or more of these peculiar bonds to a 
 portion of his fellows, to whom he may look for especial sympa- 
 thy, consolation, and aid. Even if all others should drop away, 
 the last and most comprehensive of all, which must remain, the 
 
 * Stewart's Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, p. 342. 
 
350 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 tie of a common origin and a common nature, that makes a 
 brotherhood of all mankind, is one of no mean force. When 
 a fit occasion arises, its strength is manifested. If, for instance, 
 the cry of famine or pestilence is heard, though it comes from 
 the uttermost isles of the sea, from a people with whom we have 
 no relationship or common interest, the sympathies of all are ex- 
 cited, and the means of relief, if possible, are sent. The same 
 feeling, trained into a custom and guarded by religious sanctions, 
 protects the wandering stranger even among the robber tribes of 
 the desert ; the head, it may be, of the fugitive from justice is 
 sacred, when he has once tasted of the salt at the chieftain's 
 board. The rights of hospitality are more or less respected all 
 over the globe, merely from a recognition of the common hu- 
 manity of the host and the guest. 
 
 Observe, also, how these feelings intertwine and support each 
 other. Compassion is met by gratitude, the latter often rising 
 into heroism, and the charge of a want of it, next to the accusa- 
 tion of falsehood, being the bitterest reproach that can be uttered. 
 An interchange of kind offices strengthens the benevolent pur- 
 poses of either party. Maternal love is repaid by filial affection, 
 friendship by its like, and every kindly emotion has its counter- 
 part and reward in the mind of him who is its object. It is 
 justly observed by Mr. Stewart, that u the peculiar sentiment of 
 approbation with which we regard the virtue of beneficence in 
 others, and the peculiar satisfaction with which we reflect on 
 such of our actions as have contributed to the happiness of 
 mankind, to which we may add the exquisite pleasure accom- 
 panying the exercise of all the kind affections, naturally lead 
 us to consider benevolence or goodness as the supreme attribute 
 of God. It is difficult, indeed, to conceive what other motive 
 could have induced a Being, completely and independently 
 happy, to call his creatures into existence." Indeed, the ex- 
 perience of our own day has shown, that general philanthropy 
 can become a profession and a fascinating pursuit. There is 
 so much luxury in the indulgence of feelings which point to the 
 general improvement and moral elevation of the race, that they 
 
THE GOODNESS OP GOD. 351 
 
 have sometimes thrown off the yoke of reason and justice, to 
 which they are rightfully subject. We respect or reverence 
 men for the sterner virtues which they exhibit, but we love them 
 for their benevolence, although the objects of their kindness are 
 persons for whom we entertain no peculiar esteem. The mem- 
 ory of John Howard, for instance, is as sacred to us as if we 
 had personally known, esteemed, and loved every one of the 
 wretched beings to the improvement of whose lot his life was 
 devoted. Considering, then, how much our daily comforts and 
 enjoyments depend upon our fellow-beings, especially upon those 
 with whom we constantly associate, it may well be doubted 
 whether any other arrangement of Providence to secure our 
 happiness is so effectual as that which animates us all with the 
 spirit of active love and kindness towards each other. 
 
 It is unnecessary to carry these illustrations any farther, though 
 any exposition of this broad theme, the benevolence of God as 
 displayed in the material and moral universe, must necessarily 
 seem imperfect. It is important to mark the breadth of the 
 conclusion at which we have now arrived. It is proved, not 
 only that good predominates to a vast extent, but that, sec- 
 ondary only to the support and enforcement of the law of right, 
 the production of happiness is the chief purpose in the creation 
 and government of the world. Strike out the pains which were 
 intended to vindicate the law of primary obligation, and to show 
 that virtue was of more importance than mere enjoyment, and 
 happiness is seen to be the normal condition of mankind, hap- 
 piness, which was contrived and which is the sole object of the 
 contrivance, happiness, which fills up so large a portion of the 
 hours of existence, that hardship and suffering are restricted in 
 comparison to minutes. Evil exists, undoubtedly ; but it is the 
 exception, and not the rule. It is never designed for its own 
 sake ; it is nowhere the ultimate object of the contrivance. 
 
 There is, then, sufficient, even abundant, proof of the benevo- 
 lence of the Creator. And this benevolence is not scanty or 
 parsimonious in its character ; its arrangements are vast, impos- 
 ing, commensurate with the scale on which the universe is made. 
 
352 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 The whole difficulty which is presented to us in the problem 
 respecting the origin and continuance of evil relates to the infinity 
 of Divine benevolence. That there is some evil in the world is 
 an apparent indication that the Deity is not infinitely benevolent ; 
 but it is no indication whatever that he is not benevolent at all. 
 It affords no presumption even against the doctrine that he is 
 largely benevolent, bountiful and gracious to man far beyond 
 the measure of his absolute wants or rightful claims. This con- 
 clusion, therefore, that God wishes the happiness, not the 
 misery, of his creatures, and has made rich provision to this 
 end, remains to us unshaken, whatever may be our success in 
 the subsequent part of the inquiry. 
 
 I insist strongly upon this point, because the nature of the dif- 
 ficulty occasioned by the presence of any evil in the world has 
 been greatly misunderstood. Nearly all writers upon the subject 
 have argued the matter as if the existence of sin and suffering in 
 any degree, however small, or however overbalanced by virtue 
 and happiness, afforded a presumption that the Deity was not 
 benevolent at all, nay, that he was malevolent, that he intend- 
 ed the misery of his creatures. But not so. It is one thing to 
 prove that God is wise, powerful, and good ; and another and 
 quite a different thing to prove that he is infinitely wise, infinitely 
 powerful, and infinitely good. The difference between these 
 two lines of proof has sometimes (and very properly) been made 
 a topic for discussion by itself ; the infinity of the Divine attri- 
 butes is to be made out by reasoning somewhat different from 
 that which establishes the reality of the attributes themselves. 
 Infinity is a metaphysical idea ; our notion of it is confessedly 
 inadequate. We have but a negative idea of it ; it implies that 
 certain qualities exist in an unknown perfection. To prove that 
 the attributes are infinite, then, may be desirable for philosophical 
 purposes, for the completeness of theory, and for rounding out 
 with entireness a system of theology ; but it is not essential 
 either for religious faith or practice. For these latter purposes, 
 it is enough to show that the qualities exist unlimited by the attri- 
 butes of any other known being or thing, and in a degree which 
 
THE GOODNESS OP GOD. 353 
 
 challenges our wonder and adoration. This has been already 
 done, and religious faith, properly so called, is sufficiently vin- 
 dicated. It is proved that God exists, and that he governs 
 the world in righteousness and with mercy, at once upholding 
 the law which he has revealed through the conscience, and 
 showing by manifold provisions his care for the happiness of 
 his creatures. 
 
 It is observable, in the next place, that there are difficulties 
 in the very conception of infinite goodness united with infinite 
 power, which ought to warn us that the imperfection, after all, is 
 more apt to be in our limited modes of thought than in the con- 
 stituted nature of things. I borrow on this point the very clear 
 and precise statement of Abraham Tucker. 
 
 " God," he observes, " is completely happy in himself, nor can 
 his happiness receive increase or diminution from any thing be- 
 falling his creatures ; wherefore his goodness is pure, disinter- 
 ested bounty, without any return of joy or satisfaction to himself. 
 Therefore it is no wonder we have imperfect notions of a quality 
 whereof we have no experience in our own nature ; for we know 
 of no other love than inclination, which prompts us to gratify it in 
 the same manner as our other inclinations. In the next place, 
 let us examine our idea of infinite goodness taken in the abstract, 
 before we inquire whether God be good or no, and we shall 
 find it incompatible with that of infinite power ; for infinite good- 
 ness, according to our apprehension, requires that it should ex- 
 haust omnipotence, that it should give capacities of enjoyment 
 and confer blessings until there were no more to be conferred ; 
 but our idea of omnipotence requires that it should be inexhaust- 
 ible, that nothing should limit its operations so that it could do no 
 more than it has done. Therefore it is much easier to conceive 
 of an imperfect creature completely good than of a perfect being ; 
 for if he pursues invariably all opportunities of doing good to the 
 utmost of his power and knowledge, he deserves that character ; 
 and if there are any injuries sustained which he cannot redress, 
 any distress unrelieved which he knows not of, his weakness and 
 ignorance are a full excuse for his omission. But where there is 
 
 45 
 
354 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 
 almighty power, unlimited knowledge, and perfect wisdom, we 
 can neither conceive that infinite goodness should extend to the 
 utmost bounds of that 'which has no bounds, nor yet that it 
 should stop until it can proceed no further. Since, then, we 
 find our understanding incapable of comprehending infinite good- 
 ness joined with infinite power, we need not be surprised at find- 
 ing our thoughts perplexed concerning them ; for no other can 
 be expected in matters above our reach ; and we may presume 
 the obscurity rises from something wrong in our ideas, not from 
 any inconsistencies in the subjects themselves." In short, here 
 as elsewhere, whenever we apply a purely metaphysical idea to 
 matters of fact, we end in a contradiction or an absurdity. 
 
 You will not understand me, by these remarks, as holding forth 
 the opinion, that the problem respecting the origin of evil is insol- 
 uble, or as evading the difficulty of solving it. On the contrary, 
 I believe, and I shall attempt to show, that all events are order- 
 ed for the best, and that the supposed evils which we suffer are 
 parts of a great system conducted by almighty power, under the 
 direction of unlimited wisdom and goodness. I adopt the opin- 
 ion maintained in all ages by the best and wisest philosophers, 
 that the creation of beings endowed with free-will, and conse- 
 quently liable to moral delinquency, and the government of the 
 world by general laws, from which occasional supposed evils 
 must result, furnish no solid objection to the perfection of the 
 universe. This, I admit, is a system of optimism ; but it is not 
 the optimism of Leibnitz, grounded upon a denial of man's free 
 agency, and as such justly ridiculed by Voltaire. And the gen- 
 eral doctrine of the benevolence of God is in no wise account- 
 able for or dependent upon the sufficiency of the argument in 
 defence of this metaphysical system. That doctrine rests upon 
 its own proofs, which are abundant, undisputed, and irrefragable. 
 This question respecting the presence of any evil in the world is 
 a collateral affair, which must be considered, indeed, before we 
 can complete a scheme of theology, and about which theologians 
 and metaphysicians may differ. But the religious man has no 
 concern with it, and his faith, whether derived from the teach- 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 355 
 
 ings of nature, or from express revelation, is not burdened with 
 its doubts and intricacies. It is enough for him, that he can 
 trace everywhere the footprints of a wise, just, and benevolent 
 Ruler of the universe. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 THE argument in my last Lecture for the benevolence of 
 God was not founded upon metaphysical reasoning, or upon any 
 consideration a priori of the Divine nature, but upon observation 
 and the results of experience. It is because human life, on the 
 whole, is a happy one, because its pleasures far exceed its pains, 
 and because these pleasures were evidently designed, while the 
 pains are only incidental or secondary to some great object, that 
 we are enabled to pronounce with confidence, that the Deity 
 wishes the happiness of his creatures. The sufferings which 
 are the immediate consequence and punishment of vice, it was 
 remarked, are properly left out of the account, since these 
 evince the goodness of God no less than the happiness re- 
 sulting from virtue, the object in both cases being to advance 
 man's highest interests by the improvement of his moral charac- 
 ter ; just so the affectionate parent rewards the obedience and 
 punishes the faults of his child, love equally constraining him to 
 adopt either course. Now these sufferings constitute so large a 
 portion of the misery that is in the world, that, when they are de- 
 ducted, the balance inclines altogether on the side of happi- 
 ness. Our enjoyments, also, proceed from steady and permanent 
 causes ; the performance of all the ordinary functions of life, 
 when the body is in its normal state, being a source of pleasure. 
 Sickness is an accident and an exception ; health is the intended 
 and usual condition. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 357 
 
 The pleasures of taste arise from an adaptation of external 
 nature to the mind of man, which must have had for its sole 
 purpose the increase of our happiness ; and these pleasures are 
 so various, recur so frequently, and occupy so many hours of 
 our existence, as to give a smiling aspect to the whole. Happi- 
 ness, it was also observed, is accommodated to all beings and 
 conditions ; there is no absolute standard of it, which would 
 necessarily limit its distribution. The pleasures of the child, 
 the savage, and the brute are as real and hearty, as complete 
 in their way, as those of the mature and cultivated mind. All 
 have the means of enjoyment provided for them, suited to their 
 peculiar sphere, adapted to their organizations and their tastes. 
 Lastly, the endowment of the mind with the benevolent affec- 
 tions is a most effectual security for our happiness, by making us 
 all the guardians of the happiness of each other. It is not only 
 the duty, but one of the primitive impulses, of man, acting spon- 
 taneously, and for the time irrationally, to aid, protect, and sym- 
 pathize with his neighbour. These affections profit not only the 
 objects of them, but him who cherishes them ; the luxury of their 
 indulgence being so great, that when real occasions to call them 
 forth are wanting, we seek fictitious ones, and spend them upon 
 imaginary beings. 
 
 These facts, I observed, show a vast predominance of happi- 
 ness in our condition, and so, notwithstanding the occasional 
 presence of evil, amply vindicate the benevolence of the Creator. 
 What remains is a point of curiosity and theory, rather than of 
 substantive importance, for the religious inquirer. Insist as we 
 may upon the existence of sin and suffering in the world, these, 
 in the amount in which they are visible to us, do not disprove, do 
 not even cast a doubt upon, the goodness of God ; they affect 
 only the doctrine of the infinity of his benevolence, a subject 
 with which we, his finite creatures, with our limited intelligence, 
 have little or no concern. It is probable, it is even certain, 
 that the whole difficulty consists, not in the nature of the facts 
 themselves, but in the imperfect comprehension of our minds, 
 which cannot unite the conceptions of infinite power and infinite 
 
358 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 goodness without stumbling upon a contradiction and an absurd- 
 ity. After this explanation, we approach the deep and dark 
 problem of the origin of evil without anxiety. 
 
 The question in its simplest form is. How can there be any 
 evil in the world, if it was created and is governed by an all- 
 powerful and all-gracious God ? The difficulty disappears, and 
 the problem is solved, if we can prove that the existence of any 
 amount, however small, of sin and suffering is compatible with a 
 belief in the omnipotence and infinite benevolence of the Deity ; 
 for, in the first place, it was shown in the last Lecture, that the 
 amount is actually small, when compared with the happiness and 
 virtue for which provision is made, and which are really experi- 
 enced or exercised ; and, secondly, if any evil, however slight, 
 can be satisfactorily accounted for without bringing the infinite 
 power and goodness of God into doubt, the question respecting 
 the magnitude of this necessary evil can be determined by infinite 
 wisdom alone. It is not competent for us to settle this question ; 
 nor is it desirable, for the answer to it does not at all affect our 
 belief in the moral attributes of the Supreme Being, and is ob- 
 viously beyond the reach of the human faculties. We might as 
 well assume to determine how many stars there ought to be in 
 the sky, as to say how much or how little of any quality or thing 
 ought to be permitted under God's government, when we have 
 once clearly seen that its presence in some degree is essential. 
 Only an Alphonso of Castile could be guilty of such folly. He 
 alone who knows the whole, and governs the whole, of the uni- 
 verse of which we form but an infinitesimal part, our time in 
 it being but a moment, and our space a dot, can tell how much 
 is essential, when we know that some is essential. Our ideas of 
 quantity and magnitude are wholly relative ; however great the 
 sum may appear to us, no one can affirm, that, in the eye of In- 
 finite Wisdom, it is not a minimum. Nay, after the proofs al- 
 ready advanced of the Divine benevolence, the presumption is 
 inevitable, that it is a minimum. 
 
 I place stress upon this point, because, both by the friends 
 and the opponents of religion, the problem respecting the origin 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 359 
 
 of evil has been unnecessarily darkened and rendered formidable 
 by declamatory and exaggerated statements of the amount of sin 
 and woe which sadden the annals of mankind. Thus, Bayle, the 
 most acute and sarcastic of modern infidels, after quoting Cicero's 
 pathetic account of his voyage home from Asia, at one point in 
 which he beheld around him the deserted ruins of so many cities, 
 once renowned for their power and splendor, goes on to say, 
 " History is, properly speaking, only a record of the crimes and 
 the misfortunes of the human race. But let us remark that these 
 two evils, the one moral and the other physical, do not occupy 
 the whole of history, nor cover all the experience of individuals. 
 We find everywhere some moral good, some physical good, and 
 some instances of happiness ; but it is these which constitute the 
 difficulty. For if there were only wicked and unhappy beings, 
 we should not be driven to the hypothesis of two creative and 
 
 governing principles If man is the creation of a single 
 
 being, who is supremely good, supremely holy, and supremely 
 powerful, how can he be exposed to disease, to cold, to heat, 
 to hunger, to thirst, to pain, to sorrow ? How can he have 
 so many wicked inclinations ? How can he commit so many 
 crimes ? Can infinite holiness create a wicked being ? Can 
 infinite goodness create an unhappy being ? Will not sove- 
 reign power, joined with infinite benevolence, overwhelm its 
 creature with benefits, and remove far from him all that can 
 offend or sadden ? " 
 
 The following picture, by Abraham Tucker, though well in- 
 tended, is quite as exaggerated and unnecessary. " That there 
 are innumerable evils," he says, u the phenomena of nature suf- 
 ficiently assure us : storms and tempests, earthquakes and inun- 
 dations, lay fields and cities desolate with all their produce and 
 inhabitants ; blighting winds and pestilential vapors wither up and 
 destroy, ravenous beasts devour, villains assassinate, thieves 
 break through and steal, tyrants oppress, diseases torment, cross 
 accidents vex, old age debilitates, our necessary employments 
 fatigue, our wants interfere, our very pleasures cloy, and man is 
 born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. We are necessitated 
 
360 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 to destroy vermin that would overrun us, to slay our fellow- 
 creatures for our sustenance, to weary them out with toil and 
 labor for our uses, to press one another into wars and sea-ser- 
 vices for our preservation. Nay, evil is so interwoven into our 
 nature, that the business of mankind would stagnate without it ; 
 most of our cares being employed in delivering ourselves from 
 troubles we lie under, or warding off those that threaten. If a 
 man were placed in such a situation as that no pain or mischief, 
 no satiety or uneasiness, no loss or diminution of enjoyment 
 could befall him, he would have no inducement ever to stir a 
 finger ; but it is the perishable nature of our satisfactions that 
 urges us to a continual exertion of our activity to renew them."* 
 It is hardly necessary to say, that such statements as these are 
 one-sided and exaggerated, and that the general impression which 
 they leave on the mind is wholly unfounded. The great but 
 covert fallacy in this general impression is, that the whole human 
 race is regarded but as one individual, whose existence extends 
 through all ages and over all parts of the earth, so that his single 
 experience comprises all the woes and crimes which are actually 
 distributed among countless millions of beings. Now it is the 
 veriest truism to say,, that happiness or misery is experienced 
 only by individuals ; that there is no such thing as the suffering of 
 the race in general ; that any one man would be considered as 
 marked out for sorrow, as a special object of compassion, who 
 should be afflicted by any one of the great evils above mentioned ; 
 that it is impossible in the nature of things for any one to suffer 
 from all of them ; and that the occurrence even of one would 
 occupy but a small portion of the experience of an individual, all 
 the rest of which might be almost unmingled enjoyment. How 
 many of those who now hear me have been plagued by famines, 
 inundations, earthquakes, the assassination of friends, robbery, 
 ravenous beasts, tyranny, the necessity of slaying a fellow-crea- 
 ture for sustenance, or the like ? And if, which is very im- 
 probable, there be an individual who has experienced one of 
 
 * The Light of Nature Pursued. 
 
THE ORIGIN OP EVIL. 
 
 these calamities, how small a portion of his whole existence has 
 been immediately saddened by the event, and how many compen- 
 sating hours has he had of amusement, indifference, or positive 
 happiness ? How idle is it, then, to make out a catalogue of all 
 the calamities and crimes of which there is any mention in his- 
 tory, and to speak of human life as vexed by them, thus convey- 
 ing the impression, though it is not a logical inference, that it is 
 the life of an individual which is thus spoken of ! For when 
 happiness or misery is the topic of discussion, if it be not an 
 individual existence that is referred to, this enumeration, this 
 adding of one woe to another, and one crime to another, is 
 meaningless and impertinent. To take a particular instance, 
 it was a misfortune and a wrong that Socrates should drink the 
 hemlock. But how many, with the same virtues and the same 
 genius, have suffered the same fate as the Grecian sage ? and 
 how great or how long was this suffering even for him, when 
 compared with the many and bright hours of instruction and hap- 
 piness which constituted the remainder of his individual experi- 
 ence ? If we were wise, we should thank God that Socrates 
 lived and taught as he did, rather than grieve or murmur because 
 he died a felon's death. 
 
 Putting aside, then, these rhetorical exaggerations of human 
 wretchedness, we come to the real problem, how to reconcile 
 the presence of any pain or wrong, however slight, with the infi- 
 nite power and goodness of the Governor of all things. The 
 whole difficulty here is well stated in the form of a dilemma by 
 Lactantius, who professes to have taken it directly from Epicu- 
 rus, into whose philosophy it entered as a proof of his doctrine, 
 that the Deity existed indeed, but that he exercised no oversight 
 or government of the affairs of this world. " The Deity," he 
 says, " is either willing to take away all evil, but is not able to 
 do so, in which case he is not omnipotent ; or he is able to re- 
 move the evil, but is not willing, in which case he is not benevo- 
 lent ; or he is neither willing nor able, which is a denial of the 
 Divine perfections ; or he is both able and willing to do away 
 with the evil, and yet it exists." Now it is obvious, in the first 
 
362 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 place, that this dilemma is made to cover too much ground ; for 
 while inability to remove the evil is rightly held to disprove the 
 infinite power of God, his unwillingness to remove it is held 
 to prove, not that his benevolence is imperfect, which would 
 be a just conclusion, but that he is not benevolent at all, or 
 rather that he is malignant, the evil being intentional, and not 
 incidental. The facts, certainly, support no such conclusion. 
 We may suppose, if we will, that the Deity has a general inten- 
 tion to provide for the happiness of his creatures, and, in the 
 long run, or as a general rule, has taken measures to secure it ; 
 but that he is not watchful in every case, and has not provided 
 for all emergencies, thinking it best, perhaps, that on a few occa- 
 sions slight evils should be endured. Such is often the conduct 
 of an earthly parent, who would never be accused of a want 
 of love for his offspring. But this is not general enough to be 
 considered as a satisfactory solution of the problem, nor do I 
 propose it as such. 
 
 We shall gain a clearer idea of the true purport of the ques- 
 tion by examining more closely the meaning of the words 
 employed. Omnipotence and benevolence are apparently very 
 simple and very comprehensive terms, though few are more 
 vaguely used. The former means a power to do every thing ; 
 but this does not include the ability to do two contradictory 
 things at the same moment, or to accomplish any metaphysical 
 impossibility. Thus, the Deity cannot cause two and two to 
 make five, nor place two hills near each other without leaving a 
 valley between them. The impossibility in such cases does not 
 argue a defect of power, but an absurdity in the statement of the 
 case to which the power is to be applied. A statement which 
 involves a contradiction in terms does not express a limitation of 
 ability, because in truth it expresses nothing at all ; the affirma- 
 tion and the denial, uttered in the same breath, cancel each other, 
 and no meaning remains. All metaphysical impossibilities can 
 be reduced to the formula, that it is impossible for the same 
 thing to be and not to be at the same moment, as this would be 
 an absurdity, that is, an absurd or meaningless statement. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 Thus, virtue cannot exist without free agency, because a free 
 choice between good and evil is involved in the idea of virtue, so 
 that the proposition means no more than this, that what con- 
 tains freedom cannot be without freedom. Compulsion is a de- 
 nial of freedom ; therefore the phrase compulsory virtue does not 
 so much express an impossibility as an absurdity ; it is nonsense. 
 We cannot choose between good and evil, unless good and evil 
 are both placed before us, that is, unless we know what these 
 words mean ; and we cannot express our choice in action, un- 
 less we are able to act, that is, unless we have the power of 
 doing either good or evil. In the dilemma quoted from Epicu- 
 rus, a contradiction in terms is held to prove a defect of power, 
 or to disprove omnipotence ; the dilemma, therefore, is a mere 
 logical puzzle, like the celebrated one of Achilles and the tor- 
 toise. The only difficulty is, how to lay bare the fallacy, or 
 expose the contradiction, since it is very skilfully covered up by 
 the language employed. 
 
 The meaning of benevolence appears simple enough ; but it 
 is often difficult to tell whether a certain act was or was not 
 prompted by kind intentions. Strictly speaking, of course, be- 
 nevolence is a quality of mind, that is, of will (bene volo) or 
 intention, not of outward conduct. An action is said to be 
 benevolent only by a metaphor ; it is so called, because we infer 
 from it, with great positiveness, that the agent must have had 
 benevolent intentions. "We think that the motives are indicated 
 by the act ; but we may be mistaken. He who gives food to the 
 hungry poor would be esteemed benevolent ; but he may do it 
 with a view to poison them. To strike for the avowed purpose 
 of causing pain usually argues ill-will or a malignant design ; but 
 the blow may come from the kindest heart in the world, for the 
 express purpose of benefiting him who receives it. In the pres- 
 ent argument, Epicurus assumes that the presence of evil, that is, 
 the outward fact, is enough to prove a want of benevolence, or 
 even a malignant design, on the part of him who might have pre- 
 vented it. But if by evil is here meant mere pain or suffering, 
 whether proceeding from bodily or mental causes, we may boldly 
 
364 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 deny the inference. If pleasure or mere enjoyment is not the 
 greatest good, if sometimes it is even inconsistent with the 
 possession of a higher blessing, then a denial of it may be a 
 proof of goodness instead of malice. The problem respecting 
 the existence of evil is really solved by the single proposition, 
 that virtue, not happiness, is man's highest interest. Not only 
 mere harm or suffering, but the liberty to do wrong, is essen- 
 tial for the existence of virtue. 
 
 I cannot admit, then, on general grounds, that the presence 
 either of moral or physical evil in the world throws any doubt 
 whatever upon the perfections of the Deity, or offers any argu- 
 ment against the doctrine of an ever-watchful and ever-gracious 
 Providence. It is demonstrable, that there could be no such 
 thing as holiness, if sin were not possible ; that happiness is not 
 man's greatest good ; and that occasional privation of it, or posi- 
 tive suffering, may be essential for our education in virtue. We 
 cannot always trace the immediate connection between the evil 
 that we now endure, or which we compassionate in others, and 
 the moral purpose that it is designed to further, or the benevo- 
 lent intention of which it is the index. But we can discern all 
 the great features of the scheme, and see that what is hard to 
 bear or painful to look upon in a particular case may be a neces- 
 sary part of a system of government contrived by infinite wisdom, 
 and executed with almighty power and perfect love. But as it 
 is not the general argument, in the somewhat abstruse and tech- 
 nical form that I have here given to it, which usually perplexes 
 our ideas of Divine Providence, but rather the hardship and the 
 wrong in particular cases, which, we are prone to think, might 
 have been prevented by the goodness of God, without altering 
 in any material respect the broad features of his administration of 
 human affairs, it may be worth while to develop and apply these 
 principles with some minuteness. 
 
 All that we know of the human mind and of the history of this 
 world's affairs, with the intimations that these respectively afford 
 of the designs of Providence, leads us to conclude that moral 
 discipline, or the formation of character by our own efforts, 
 
THE ORIGIN OP EVIL. 365 
 
 aided, indeed, but not determined, by power from on high, is 
 the great end of our being here below. Not mere attainment, 
 but progress, is the law of our finite condition, progress de- 
 sired, planned, and accomplished by ourselves, assisted by 
 means that are placed within our reach, though we are free to 
 use them or not. Trial and effort, mistakes committed and rec- 
 tified by increased effort, temptations to be met and vanquished, 
 and difficulties to be overborne, are essential parts of such a 
 scheme. Our progress is to be measured, or, in other words, 
 our merit is to be determined, by the quantity of ground that we 
 have passed over, not by the absolute distance of the point 
 that we have reached from the termini of the course. Therefore, 
 all start fair in the race, though their points of departure may be 
 far apart. Mere happiness, however elevated and unalloyed, is 
 not the grand object ; for happiness is a state or fixed point, im- 
 plying neither movement nor effort ; the desire of happiness is 
 implanted in us only as a principle of activity, to stimulate, never 
 to be fully satisfied. Virtue, on the other hand, is not a state, 
 but an action ; it is not being, but doing! All advancement made 
 in it conveys increased power of progress, the motive constantly 
 elevating itself and becoming purer, obstacles vanishing, and 
 temptations losing their force, as we go on. Mere enjoyment, 
 on the other hand, satiates and cloys ; a fresh struggle with diffi- 
 culties is soon required, or the cup loses all its sweetness. Re- 
 pose is pleasant, but continued idleness is intolerable. 
 
 There cannot be a better illustration and proof of the correct- 
 ness of this view of life than is afforded by the contrast, which I 
 have already placed before you, between instinct and reason. 
 The safety and comfort of the lower animals are provided for, 
 and all the ends of their being obtained, under an unerring guide 
 acting above the sphere of their consciousness. They reverse 
 the law of human condition ; enjoyment, not progress, is their 
 highest good. Results, which, if brought about by man, would 
 imply great sagacity and inventive power, would tax the loftiest 
 intellect and the most profound study, are accomplished by them 
 without effort, without education, and without liability to error. 
 
366 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 Their faculties, if we may call them theirs, are not susceptible 
 of any discipline or improvement whatever ; at the dawn of their 
 existence they begin their allotted tasks, and finish them as per- 
 fectly as at its close. Having no foresight, they have no foretaste 
 of evil. With little, if any, sensibility to suffering, their enjoy- 
 ment, such as it is, appears always complete. Death which 
 cannot be foreseen has no terrors ; for them, it is simply ceas- 
 ing to live, and is therefore no more an evil than their non-exist- 
 ence was during all time anterior to their birth. 
 
 Contrast their situation with man's, who is born helpless, ig- 
 norant, and unprotected, save by the affection of his own kind. 
 He is left to himself; his will is free, and his reason must be de- 
 veloped by its own efforts, through constant trials and mistakes, 
 and frequent pain. With ah 1 his boasted learning and ingenuity, 
 so slowly and laboriously acquired, he cannot build so perfect 
 a cell, he cannot form so perfect a society, as the bee, be- 
 cause the construction of a house or a society, however fault- 
 less, is not the object of his being. The purpose for which he 
 was created is, that he may fit himself for these and greater 
 tasks ; the education thus self-acquired being the great end in 
 view, and not the mere accomplishment of the task, which is 
 comparatively of little moment. We are constantly mistaking 
 means for ends, the importance of the supposed ends being 
 exaggerated in our view in order that we may be induced to 
 use the supposed means ; in this use or application, in this effort 
 and the consequent improvement, lies the real end. Most of the 
 ends which men pursue are pointed out to them by the passions 
 and the appetites, that is, by the lower part of their nature ; 
 the strain of the faculties in this pursuit is counted as a necessity 
 and a hardship, but is submitted to as the condition of success. 
 Reason and conscience, if properly developed, are continually 
 admonishing us, it is true, that we mistake in this matter ; that 
 the end in view is not the real end, or of substantive impor- 
 tance ; that the formation of character, the development of in- 
 tellectual and moral power by our own efforts, is the true 
 object ; but their voice can scarcely be heard amid the din 
 of the passions. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 367 
 
 I do but take the most general instance tinder these remarks, 
 when I say, that the love of happiness itself is but one of these 
 lower desires, and as such is rightfully restrained by the con- 
 science, which declares to us with an authority that we cannot 
 but recognize, though our actions are too seldom directed by 
 it, that mere enjoyment is not the greatest good. How, then, 
 is it an impeachment of the goodness of the Creator, that the 
 happiness of man, though carefully provided for within certain 
 limits, is still made secondary to his moral improvement ? As 
 the idea of virtue includes trial, temptation, suffering, and the 
 liability to sin, it is a contradiction in terms to ask that prog- 
 ress in virtue should be made compatible with the non-exist- 
 ence of evil. All improvement presupposes a lower state as a 
 point of departure ; all merit presupposes that the improvement 
 is voluntary, and is due to one's own exertions. 
 
 It may be disputed, perhaps, that the happiness of the brute 
 creation is complete ; but we have a right to imagine that it is 
 so, and then to compare our own condition with theirs, sup- 
 posing all drawbacks to their enjoyment to be taken away. Is 
 there a human being, whatever may have been his individual ex- 
 perience, or however large may be his estimate of the sin and 
 misery which darken the lot of mankind, who will not exclaim, 
 " God be thanked that he has not made me a happy brute, 
 or a senseless machine " ? Is not our lot, with all our experi- 
 ence of pain and wrong, vastly preferable to theirs, even with 
 their supposed immunity from physical suffering ? Sin, of 
 course, they are not capable of. Or can we imagine any pos- 
 sible constitution of the human mind, or any government of this 
 world's affairs, which shall effectually exclude evil without re- 
 ducing man to the situation of an animal or a machine ? If not, 
 if no better system in this respect is even conceivable, to say 
 nothing of its possibility, then is the present one the best pos- 
 sible, and both the justice and the benevolence of its Author 
 are amply vindicated. Our inability to conceive of a better one 
 cannot be referred to the limitation of our faculties, since we are 
 not called upon to devise a scheme, but are enabled to see that 
 
368 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 any improvement of the present one, in respect generally of the 
 presence of evil, would involve a contradiction or an absurdity. 
 
 In order to apply this general solution of the problem to par- 
 ticular instances of misfortune and wrong, we must remember 
 that the scheme of Divine government is to be taken as a whole. 
 Whatever is essential to carry out any part of the plan must be 
 regarded as a necessary feature of the system, and we must ac- 
 cept all its consequences along with it. The education of man, 
 both moral and intellectual, by his own effort, being the object 
 to be gained, it becomes necessary that the course of events 
 should be governed by general laws, or, in other words, that the 
 action and government of the Deity should be uniform, so that 
 events should not appear to us to succeed each other confusedly 
 or at random, but in a fixed relation of antecedence and conse- 
 quence. If reason is to take the place of instinct, that is, if man 
 is to be self-taught, instead of being directly moved, like an au- 
 tomaton, by superior wisdom and power, then the means and 
 appliances must be provided through which alone reason can act. 
 As a guide to conduct, reason would be useless without fore- 
 sight. We could not shape our actions beforehand without some 
 knowledge of the future which they are to affect ; nor could this 
 knowledge be gained without such a clew as is afforded by the 
 uniformity of nature. Experience, the great teacher of reason, 
 derives all its efficacy from our belief that the future will resem- 
 ble the past, that bodies will always retain their properties, that 
 food will continue to nourish, fire to burn, and poison to kill, and 
 that different motives will retain generally the efficiency they 
 have often shown in swaying the conduct of others. A rational 
 being could not move a step, except at random, but for this con- 
 fidence in the permanency of natural causes, as they are called. 
 We have a right to say, then, that the preservation of general 
 laws is an essential feature of that scheme of Divine government 
 which we have tried to develop, that, without them, man could 
 not be self-taught, would not be capable of progress, could not be 
 a free agent or a moral being. It is no paradox to say, that the 
 continuance, the inflexibility, of the law of gravitation is essential 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 369 
 
 to the support of the law of morality, is vital to the existence of 
 virtue itself. 
 
 Then we must accept all the necessary consequences of gen- 
 eral laws along with them. In the vast majority of instances, we 
 may presume that they will work for good, tending equally to 
 guide the conduct, satisfy the wants, and promote the happiness 
 of man ; and this presumption, as we have seen, is amply sus- 
 tained by experience. But in particular cases, their very inflex- 
 ibility occasions their doing apparent harm ; and these are the 
 instances of evil which most frequently incline men to murmur 
 against Divine Providence. They are called " accidents," 
 " misfortunes," and even the believer sometimes repines be- 
 cause the good are not protected against them. But it has been 
 proved that there is no such thing as chance, or accident, or 
 fortune. The position even of a grain of sand, the waving of a 
 leaf in the wind, is determined, not indeed by the blind and 
 mechanical cooperation of the properties of matter, but by the 
 same wisdom and goodness which made human nature capable of 
 virtue, and which dispose all events for the guidance and the 
 moral improvement of the human family. Unless the course of 
 these events were uniform and inflexible, the whole effect of the 
 lesson would be lost. It seems a light thing for the sufferer 
 under a particular calamity to ask that the law of order may be 
 suspended in his case, at least for this time, that the tempest 
 may not wreck his vessel, or the fire consume his dwelling, or 
 the blight visit his fields, that the hand of the oppressor may 
 be stayed, and the wicked may cease to triumph. But as mil- 
 lions have equal reason to ask for the same indulgence, if the 
 prayers of all were granted, general disorder and confusion would 
 ensue. We could no longer profit by the past, or prepare for 
 the future. Prudence would be a word without meaning, and 
 foresight an impossible attainment. The study of nature, which 
 now, in a greater or less degree, taxes and improves the intellect 
 of every human being, would be a profitless collection of indi- 
 vidual and isolated cases, from which no instruction could be 
 gleaned ; and, as such, it would be abandoned. Having no 
 
 47 
 
370 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 means of divining the future, man could only stumble onward 
 in the dark, or be led by the hand at every step, like a blind 
 child, through the palace of God's works. 
 
 " If we attempt," says Dr. Ferguson, " to conceive such a 
 scene as some skeptics would require to evince the wisdom and 
 goodness of God, a scene in which every desire were at once 
 gratified without delay, difficulty, or trouble, it is evident that on 
 such a supposition the end of every active pursuit would be 
 anticipated ; exertion would be prevented, every faculty remain 
 unemployed, and mind itself would be no more than a con- 
 sciousness of languor under an oppression of weariness, such as 
 satiety and continued inoccupation are known to produce. On 
 this supposition, all the active powers which distinguish human 
 nature would be superfluous, and only serve to disturb our peace, 
 or sour the taste of those inferior pleasures which appear to be 
 consistent with indolence and sloth." 
 
 But you ask that the law may be suspended only in this in- 
 stance, and still be allowed to prevail elsewhere, so that here 
 signal virtue may be rewarded or saved from suffering, while the 
 uniformity of Providence may be maintained as a guide to man 
 on all other occasions. Passing over the difficulty already ad- 
 verted to, that the number of equally just applications for inter- 
 ference would so far balance the number of cases in which the 
 law held good, as to destroy all confidence in the uniformity of 
 nature, it is important to consider how far the consequences 
 of any one interference might extend. If the wind is not to 
 blow, in order that the hopes of one righteous man may not be 
 wrecked, the atmosphere may stagnate and corrupt over large 
 regions of space, bringing pestilence and death to thousands. 
 The inundation that sweeps away one house may fertilize a whole 
 district. 
 
 " Think we, like some weak prince, the Eternal Cause 
 Prone for his favorites to reverse his laws ? 
 Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires, 
 Forget to thunder, and recall her fires ? 
 On air or sea new motion be imprest, 
 O blameless Bethel ! to relieve thy breast ? 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 371 
 
 When the loose mountain trembles from on high, 
 
 Shall gravitation cease, if you go by? 
 
 Or some old temple, nodding to its fall, 
 
 For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall? " 
 
 Besides, in order that the good may improve in goodness, 
 there must be something contingent and uncertain in the rewards 
 of virtue. Constituted as we are in other respects, and general 
 laws still holding good in the majority of cases, the invariable 
 visible connection of virtue with happiness would destroy the 
 whole foundation of disinterested conduct. Moreover, the mis- 
 chance, as we call it, affects only the outward advantages of 
 rectitude ; its inward rewards are always sure, and these are 
 a sufficient compensation for the hardship or loss. 
 
 " What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy, 
 The soul's calm sunshine and the heartfelt joy, 
 Is virtue's prize ; a better would you fix, 
 Then give Humility a coach and six, 
 Justice a conqueror's sword, or Truth a gown, 
 Or Public Spirit its great cure, a crown." 
 
 And this suggests the next consideration, that, if we examine 
 separately the requisitions of the moral law, we shall find that each 
 individual virtue presupposes the existence either of misfortune 
 or wrong. Thus, courage would not be possible without danger, 
 nor fortitude without pain. There could be no temperance but 
 for the liability to excess, and no benevolence unless there were 
 wants to satisfy, or sufferings to relieve. Even justice would 
 lose the greater part of its merit, if there was no self-denial in 
 satisfying its demands. Prudence could not be exercised, if 
 recklessness could not suffer ; and even veracity would be no 
 virtue, if one could not help telling the truth. In short, merit 
 consists in withstanding temptation, alleviating pain, and opposing 
 wrong ; so that, without the presence of evil, there would be 
 nothing to praise, and nothing to blame. These reasons, be it 
 observed, account not only for the permission of the crimes, 
 whether of omission or commission, which men are guilty of, 
 but for the physical evils which befall us from the unalterable 
 
372 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 course of external nature, or are only so far connected with mind, 
 that we must assume the existence of a sentient being before the 
 mischief can be felt. 
 
 That there is no evil, dependent on natural causes alone, 
 which has not its compensating good, is a truth which has been 
 so much insisted upon by writers on this subject, that I need 
 not dwell upon it here. The difficulty of finding out what this 
 compensation is, in some cases, shows the imperfection of our 
 faculties, but certainly does not accuse the benevolence of God. 
 The most obvious reason for this difficulty is the vast compass 
 of the system, of which each individual being constitutes so 
 small a part. " Imagine only," says Shaftesbury, "some per- 
 son entirely a stranger to navigation, and ignorant of the nature 
 of sea or waters : How great his astonishment, when, finding 
 himself on board some vessel anchored at sea, remote from all 
 land prospect, whilst it was yet a calm, he viewed the ponder- 
 ous machine, firm and motionless in the midst of the smooth 
 ocean, and considered its foundation beneath, together with its 
 cordage, masts, and sails above, how easily would he see the 
 whole one regular structure, all things depending on each other ; 
 the uses of the rooms below, the lodgments, and the conven- 
 iences of men and stores ! But being ignorant of the intent and 
 design of all above, would he pronounce the masts and cordage 
 to be useless and cumbersome, and for this reason condemn the 
 frame and despise the architect ? O, my friend, let us not thus 
 betray our ignorance, but consider where we are, and in what a 
 universe ! Think of the many parts of the vast machine, in 
 which we have so little insight, and of which it is impossible that 
 we should know the ends and uses : when, instead of seeing to 
 the highest pendants, we see only some lower deck, and are in 
 this dark case of flesh confined, even to the hold and meanest 
 station of the vessel." 
 
 Every discovery in science, all progress in the knowledge of 
 nature, goes to illustrate and confirm the truth, that the tendency 
 of the general laws which prevail in the universe is favorable, 
 on the whole, to order and to happiness. Time is necessary, 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 373 
 
 that this truth may become known. An observer of vegetable 
 life, whose knowledge was confined to a single year, would con- 
 sider the approach of winter as an irreparable calamity. The 
 falling of the foliage, the death of annual plants, the earth sealed 
 up by frosts, and the skies darkened by storms, would appear 
 to him not merely as unredeemed evils, but as tokens of a uni- 
 versal cessation of life, if not of a dissolution of all things. But 
 so familiar to us is the fact, that the decay of plants is neces- 
 sary to keep up the fertility of the ground, and that the powers 
 of vegetation, suspended during the winter, burst forth with ad- 
 ditional luxuriance in the spring, that we hardly think of reckon- 
 ing the end of the glories of autumn among the evils of nature. 
 The most poisonous plants, when administered with skill and in 
 moderate doses, have been found to possess the most valuable 
 medicinal qualities. The pain which follows cutting or other- 
 wise wounding the flesh, and generally the great sensitiveness of 
 the outer surface of the body, were thought, till very recently, to 
 be unmitigated evils ; but it is now ascertained, from the distri- 
 bution of this sensitiveness, that its purpose is unquestionably 
 one of pure benevolence, its office being to warn us against the 
 approach of bodily harm, since those parts which are not liable 
 to injury are not rendered sensitive. But the skeptic will ask, 
 if Omnipotence could not guard us against such harm without the 
 use of means that involve suffering. Certainly it could, just as 
 it does in the case of the lower animals, by leading us blindfold 
 away from the harm, compelling us to take precautions against it 
 without our being conscious that they are precautions. But then 
 where would be human reason, forethought, and free-will ? or how 
 would mental and moral discipline, or self-education, be possible ? 
 Consistently with the preservation of these great ends, which we 
 have seen to be paramount in importance over all others for man's 
 own good, we may confidently say, that the means actually adopted 
 in man's case are the wisest, kindest, and best. 
 
 But the progress of discovery within a year or two has added 
 another and still more striking illustration of the truth here re- 
 ferred to. To the perfection of the plan just described for 
 
374 THE ORIGIN OP EVIL. 
 
 warding off bodily harm it might have been objected, that sur- 
 gical operations sometimes become necessary for removing a 
 deeply seated injury, and that the pain which the surgeon is then 
 obliged to inflict, being useless for its original purpose of warning 
 us against danger, is an evil without compensation. This ob- 
 jection, I say, might have been made, though it would not have 
 seemed a very reasonable one ; for it amounts to asking, that, 
 under a system of which the preservation of general laws is an 
 essential part, precisely the same thing namely, the cutting 
 of the flesh should be attended with pain, if done accidentally, 
 but should be free from pain, if done intentionally, and with a 
 benevolent purpose. This would seem to be a contradiction. 
 But who shall prescribe bounds to the wisdom and goodness of 
 God ? Certain substances in nature have been endowed with 
 such properties, that when administered to the patient, without 
 causing any harm to his bodily constitution, his sensibility to 
 pain, for a time, is entirely destroyed, and the surgeon may do 
 his most formidable office upon him, while he is enjoying the 
 happiest of dreams. Will even the skeptic dare affirm, that the 
 marvellous anaesthetic properties of ether and chloroform were 
 not added to these substances for the express purpose which 
 they have recently been discovered to answer, or that the dis- 
 covery itself, so unexpectedly made, was not intended both to 
 reward and stimulate man's researches in science with a view 
 of doing good to his fellows, so that it is comprehended under 
 that vast scheme of self-education which is the great object of 
 man's earthly existence ? In reference only to this discovery 
 and its immediate results, it is not going too far to apply the 
 remark first made in regard to the astronomer, and to say that 
 the undevout surgeon is mad. 
 
 Self-improvement, both of the individual and of the race, 
 seems to be the leading purpose of the Deity in the government 
 of mankind. The several parts of man's nature are developed 
 through their influence on each other, and in due proportion. 
 The cultivation of his intellect, and the stores of knowledge 
 thereby amassed, are continually adding to the safeguards of 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 375 
 
 conscience and to the evidences of religion, continually doing 
 away with those objections to the providence of God, which, in 
 the infancy of the race, perhaps, can be met by the humility and 
 the power of Faith alone. Who can say how many of the ap- 
 parent individual evils of man's condition upon earth, now inex- 
 plicable, except from the general consideration that the possi- 
 bility of suffering and sin is absolutely essential to any progress 
 in happiness and virtue, will be directly explained away by the 
 future triumphs of science, which has recently shed so much light 
 upon the beneficent constitution of the body in regard to pain ? 
 
 That the general laws of the universe are favorable to order 
 and to happiness is an observation, says Mr. Stewart, which " I 
 am persuaded will appear, upon an accurate examination, to hold 
 without any exception whatever ; and it is one of the noblest 
 employments of philosophy to verify and illustrate its universality, 
 by investigating the beneficent purposes to which the laws of na- 
 ture are subservient. Now it is evidently from these general 
 laws alone that the ultimate ends of Providence can be judged 
 of, and not from their accidental collisions with the partial inter- 
 ests of individuals ; collisions, too, which so often arise from 
 an abuse of their moral liberty. It is the great error of the vulgar 
 (who are incapable of comprehensive views) to attempt to read 
 the ways of Providence in particular events, and to judge favor- 
 ably or unfavorably of the order of the universe from its acciden- 
 tal effects with respect to themselves or their friends. Perhaps, 
 indeed, this disposition is inseparable in some degree from the 
 weakness of humanity. But surely it is a weakness which we 
 ought to strive to correct ; and the more we do correct it, the 
 more pleasing our conceptions of the universe become. Acci- 
 dental inconveniences disappear, when compared with the magni- 
 tude of the advantages which it is the object of the general laws 
 to secure : c or,' as one author has expressed it, c scattered evils 
 are lost in the blaze of superabundant goodness, as the spots on 
 the disk of the sun are lost in the splendor of his rays.' " 
 
 That progress in knowledge, happiness, and virtue, effected 
 through our own exertions, and not the mere attainment of any 
 
376 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 fixed point or degree in either, is the main purpose of our being 
 here below, and really our greatest good, is a doctrine which 
 immediately explains away all those supposed evils in human 
 condition which are usually classed under the heads of inequality 
 and imperfection. All conditions are alike in this respect, inas- 
 much as all admit of advance and improvement ; the progress 
 of each individual being measured from his own starting-point, 
 all have an equal chance of winning the prize, though the lot of 
 some be cast in the early ages of hoar antiquity, and others are 
 seemingly favored by the intelligence, the arts, and the morals of 
 civilized nations and modern times. The happiness of each, as 
 we have seen, is computed by his own standard of happiness, 
 whatever that may be ; and his merit, also, is determined by the 
 measure of his moral improvement, and not by the refinement of 
 those ideas of virtue which he may finally attain. It is, then, so 
 far from an impeachment of the goodness of the Creator that he 
 has made us finite beings, finite in our existence, our capacities, 
 our virtues, and our enjoyments, that we see at once infinity or 
 perfection to be the only point from which progress is impossible. 
 Death alone, or in itself considered, apart from the antecedent 
 dread of it, and from the injury to the feelings of the survivors, 
 is not even an apparent evil, any more than the fact of our non- 
 existence through antecedent ages. It is matter of the common- 
 est observation, also, that it is not the possession of any given 
 quantity of the means of enjoyment, however great, but the in- 
 crease of that quantity, whether the original sum were a unit or a 
 million, which makes a man happy. To adopt Paley's illustra- 
 tion, "It is not the income which any man possesses, but the 
 increase of income, that affords the pleasure." 
 
 How unphilosophical, then, as well as ungrateful, is that frame 
 of mind which looks with a jaundiced eye over creation, intent 
 only on spying out its evils and imperfections ; which pities 
 the oyster because it is inferior to the vertebrated animal, the 
 quadruped because it is not equal to man, and man because his 
 finite capacities are far below the perfections of the Infinite One ! 
 Yet it is only such reasoning as this, which has made the prob- 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 377 
 
 lem respecting the origin of evil to appear insoluble. However 
 great the good which is actually provided may be, the skeptic 
 fancies that he may always ask, Why is it not greater ? if man- 
 kind are happy, why were they not created earlier, or .why do 
 they not now exist in greater numbers ? Here is the error of 
 supposing that virtue and happiness are tangible products, in- 
 stead of abstract ideas, are quantities which may be weighed 
 or measured, the goodness of the Creator being estimated by the 
 magnitude of the aggregate. But it is not so ; each can be de- 
 termined only in reference to the capacities of the individual, 
 whose cup of enjoyment, whatever its dimensions may be, being 
 full, or whose merit being positive from the moral improvement 
 that he has made, no matter where he began or where he leaves 
 off, the equity of the Divine government in his respect is suf- 
 ficiently vindicated. Hence the justice as well as the beauty of 
 the solemn affirmation of our Saviour, that " there is more joy in 
 heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine 
 just persons who need no repentance." A German writer has 
 expressed the same general truth in a forcible, perhaps hyper- 
 bolical, manner. " If," says Lessing, "God should hold all 
 truth inclosed in his right hand, and in his left only the ever- 
 active impulse to the pursuit of truth, although with the condition 
 that I should always and for ever err, and should say to me, 
 Choose ! I should fall with submission upon his left hand, 
 and say, Father, give ! Pure Truth is for Thee alone." 
 

 LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 IT was remarked in the last Lecture, in reference to the 
 problem respecting the origin of evil, that we need not con- 
 sider how much evil there is in the world ; for the problem is 
 solved when we can account for the existence of any evil, how- 
 ever small, and show that it is reconcilable with a belief in the 
 infinite goodness and almighty power of the Creator. Now 
 omnipotence does not include the power to accomplish a meta- 
 physical impossibility, the statement of which always involves a 
 contradiction, or, in other words, is an absurd and meaningless 
 statement. It is just as contradictory to suppose that virtue can 
 exist without a free choice between good and evil, as that four is 
 not equal to twice two ; for freedom is involved in the idea of 
 virtue, just as twice two is involved in the idea of four. The 
 phrase compulsory or enforced virtue is quite as absurd as that of 
 a virtuous machine. Sin and suffering, therefore, must be pos- 
 sible, if virtue is to be possible ; and if virtue is man's highest in- 
 terest, which both reason and conscience loudly declare, then it 
 is not only compatible with infinite benevolence, but essential to 
 it, that pain and wrong should be permitted. The balance is, 
 therefore, on the side of good, or a greater good is accom- 
 plished than would otherwise be possible. Benevolence does 
 not consist simply in preventing pain, but in bestowing the 
 largest amount, or balance, of pleasure ; just as a man with an 
 income of a thousand a year, but who is in debt for a hun- 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 379 
 
 dred, is still richer than one with an annual revenue of five 
 hundred, which is wholly unencumbered. It was shown that no 
 exemption from evil was possible, or even conceivable, which 
 would not reduce man to the condition of a brute or a ma- 
 chine ; and as his state, at the worst, is immeasurably prefer- 
 able to theirs, his state is, in fact, the best possible ; for we 
 cannot even conceive of a better one, that is, we cannot point 
 out any defect in it. 
 
 In applying this solution to particular cases of evil, it was re- 
 marked, that education self-acquired, or progress in virtue and 
 happiness through one's own efforts, is our greatest good, and 
 the final end of our being here below. It is essential for such 
 progress that the universe should be governed by general laws ; 
 that is, that the course of nature, or the action of the Deity, should 
 be uniform ; reason would otherwise be inferior to instinct, and 
 could not operate as a guide to conduct. We may expect that 
 the general tendency of these laws will promote order and happi- 
 ness ; but, for the very reason that they are general and inflexible, 
 they must sometimes conflict with the interests of individuals. 
 The weakness of human nature is prone to magnify the impor- 
 tance of these collisions, and to complain of them as defects 
 in the order of Providence. In a broader view, they are seen 
 to be necessary parts of a system devised by infinite wisdom 
 and benevolence for the highest interests of mankind. Some 
 good always results from them ; none are without compensation, 
 either in respect of outward advantages or of inward enjoy- 
 ment. The imperfections and inequalities of human condition 
 cease to appear as evils, when self-improvement, or an advance 
 in knowledge, virtue, and happiness, is regarded as the principal 
 aim of our existence ; upon this theory, all start alike, and we 
 no longer regret that absolute perfection is unattainable, when 
 we remember that it is the only state in which progress is im- 
 possible. As science advances, as we learn more of the secrets 
 of nature and the purposes of the Deity, these apparent evils 
 lessen in number and gradually fade away. Bodily pain, which 
 ranks first among them in the estimation of the vulgar, has been 
 
380 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 shown by recent discoveries to be a purely beneficent institu- 
 tion ; and as our horizon enlarges and our vision improves, there 
 is every reason to hope that all the other ills of our lot will appear 
 either imaginary, or such as would in no way interfere with the 
 enjoyment of a wise and good man. The specks that are ap- 
 parent in the administration of this world's affairs will be lost in 
 the unutterable splendors of Divine justice, mercy, and love. 
 
 Among the most remarkable theories to which the discussions 
 respecting the origin of evil have given rise, is the doctrine of the 
 Manichaeans, who maintained that the world is governed by two 
 coeternal and independent principles, or deities, the one benevo- 
 lent and the other malicious ; and that from the perpetual conflict 
 between them arises the mingling of joy with woe in the condition 
 of mankind. This belief, irreconcilable as it appears either with 
 sound reason or pure religion, existed even in the bosom of the 
 Christian church in its earlier ages, so renowned a theologian as 
 St. Augustine having once adhered to it ; and some traces of it, 
 perhaps, remain to the present day, in the vulgar doctrine respect- 
 ing devils. It is hardly necessary to say, that from a warfare 
 which has been going on from all eternity between two equally 
 powerful deities nothing but confusion could ensue ; so that the 
 theory is at once rebuked by the order and harmony that prevail 
 throughout the universe. Their alternate reign might explain 
 recurrent periods of unmingled happiness and unmingled misery, 
 but would not do away with the objection arising from the mix- 
 ture at the same moment of good with evil. Both could not be 
 almighty, since the unbounded power of one would be a limita- 
 tion (that is, a negation) of the infinite power of the other. On 
 the other hand, they must be equally mighty, since, otherwise, 
 their purposes always clashing, the stronger would certainly de- 
 stroy the weaker, or reduce him to inaction. But the existence 
 of two finite beings of equal attributes, the one perfectly good, 
 and the other irredeemably wicked, is just as difficult to be ac- 
 counted for as the coexistence of good and evil among mankind, 
 to explain which this theory was first invented. It is but sup- 
 posing that the class of the virtuous is diminished in number till 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 381 
 
 but one representative of it remains, and that the same thing 
 takes place with regard to the wicked ; a supposition which 
 throws no light upon the main question, why any wickedness is 
 permitted. 
 
 But having already accounted for the presence of evil, we 
 need not concern ourselves about this fable, for it is a fable, 
 or legend, rather than a doctrine of philosophy or theology, 
 except to point to it as one of the forms of polytheism, or of those 
 religious systems that are not based upon the dogma of the unity 
 of God, the subject which I propose to discuss in the present 
 Lecture. If we look only at what Hume calls the natural his- 
 tory of religion, and put aside the inquiry respecting a primitive 
 revelation to mankind, there is no doubt that polytheism is the 
 most ancient form of religious faith, as it is still the most preva- 
 lent one. It is the natural belief of a barbarous or half-civil- 
 ized nation, who have neither tradition nor philosophy to set 
 them right. The religious sentiment in man is indestructible. 
 Men are inclined to venerate and worship some unseen power 
 or powers, just as strongly as to exercise the benevolent affec- 
 tions, and to seek out some objects, if none happen to be orig- 
 inally near at hand, on which these feelings may expend them- 
 selves. The manifestation of power is so firmly associated in 
 one's own mind with the presence of a conscious individual 
 agency, that striking physical occurrences, such as tempests, 
 earthquakes, inundations, thunder, and the return of the seasons, 
 are unhesitatingly referred, at first, each to its peculiar deity, or 
 conscious cause. The faith of the vulgar is soon systematized, 
 expanded, and recorded in the first rude attempts of a people 
 at poetry, philosophy, and theology, pursuits which are nat- 
 urally antecedent to those of the physical sciences, for the same 
 reason that poetry precedes prose ; namely, that the imagina- 
 tion works with greater facility and pleasure than the judgment 
 or the logical faculty. When thus partially reduced to order, 
 and enshrined in verse, this faith becomes a system of mythol- 
 ogy, which, from the variety and interesting character of its ma- 
 terials, will always maintain a strong hold upon uncultivated 
 
382 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 minds, though the learned and the philosophical will be struck 
 with a view of its incongruities and absurdities, and will strive 
 to fashion for themselves an esoteric doctrine of a single prin- 
 ciple, which sustains and governs all things. 
 
 The opinion, that polytheism is the first natural product of 
 the religious sentiment among mankind, and that it everywhere 
 preceded a belief in the unity of God, is ably sustained by 
 Hume, a portion of whose argument I borrow the more wil- 
 lingly, as it is sanctioned by the high authority of Dugald Stewart. 
 "It seems certain," says Hume, "that, according to the nat- 
 ural progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude must first 
 entertain some grovelling and familiar notion of superior powers, 
 before they stretch their conception to that perfect Being who 
 bestowed order on the whole frame of nature. We may as rea- 
 sonably imagine, that men inhabited palaces before huts and cot- 
 tages, or studied geometry before agriculture, as assert that the 
 Deity appeared to them a pure spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, 
 and omnipresent, before he was apprehended to be a powerful, 
 though limited being, with human passions and appetites, limbs 
 and organs. The mind rises gradually from inferior to superior ; 
 by abstracting from what is imperfect, it forms an idea of perfec- 
 tion ; and, slowly distinguishing the nobler parts of its own frame 
 from the grosser, it learns to transfer only the former, much ele- 
 vated and refined, to its divinity. Nothing could disturb this 
 natural progress of thought but some obvious and invincible ar- 
 gument, which might immediately lead the mind into the pure 
 principles of theism, and make it overleap, at one bound, the 
 vast interval which is interposed between the human and the 
 Divine nature. But though I allow, that the order and frame 
 of the universe, when accurately examined, affords such an ar- 
 gument, yet I can never think that this consideration could have 
 an influence on mankind when they formed their first rude no- 
 tions of religion." 
 
 The number and variety of the operations of nature suggest to 
 the ignorant and uninquiring mind a corresponding number of un- 
 known causes which are active in producing them. The move- 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 383 
 
 ments and changeable aspects of the clouds, the air, the rivers, 
 the sea, the growth of plants, and the diurnal and annual revo- 
 lutions of the starry firmament, are referred each to its hidden 
 cause or separate deity ; every volcano has an imprisoned demi- 
 god struggling under it, and every thunder-storm suggests an 
 angry deity launching his bolts against his foes. As science ad- 
 vances, objects and events are classified, and causes generalized. 
 Phenomena the most unlike are found to be explicable through 
 the operation of one and the same power. The law of gravita- 
 tion alone explains most of the physical changes which were 
 arranged by the ancients under so many distinct heads and sove- 
 reigns ; many others are traceable to the single law of chemical 
 affinities. Hence, if a mythology were to be constructed now, 
 on the same general principles as of old, Olympus would be less 
 crowded. 
 
 If from purely physical occurrences we turn to the vicissi- 
 tudes of man's condition and the general course of human affairs, 
 we find a similar effect produced on religious belief. In bar- 
 barous ages, the lot of individuals seems to be determined by 
 chance, or by the conjunction of an indefinite number of causes. 
 The fortunes of war, the caprices of sovereigns, the ravages 
 (against which ignorance has no shield) of famine and pestilence, 
 the rise and fall of dynasties, and the brief cycles of national 
 prosperity and adversity, introduce so much uncertainty into all 
 calculations respecting the future, that men are tempted to refer 
 all events to the agency of a crowd of independent and often 
 hostile deities, against whose power human strivings produce but 
 little effect. But the study of history and of the laws of the 
 human mind, with a knowledge of the fundamental principles of 
 politics and political economy, brings order into this chaos, and 
 makes the past intelligible and the future a subject of calculation 
 and foresight. Good and ill fortune are now referred to their 
 true sources in the characters of men themselves, and the num- 
 ber of special deities who exert any influence over human affairs 
 is rapidly reduced to one. 
 
 Two conclusions may be drawn from this fact of the early 
 
884 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 growth of polytheism. The first is, that the religious sentiment 
 alone is no safe guide to the doctrine of the unity of God ; it is 
 equally well satisfied by the worship of a crowd of inferior deities. 
 Reason alone, or reason aided by revelation, can enable us to 
 form fit conceptions of the Supreme Being. Natural theology 
 is the product of the understanding and the moral sense ; feeling 
 or sentiment only affecting the mode of our perception of its 
 truths, or forming the atmosphere through which we regard them. 
 The second inference is, that if, at an early period of civilization, 
 among a people otherwise rude and ignorant, or at any rate en- 
 joying no special advantages over surrounding nations, a belief in 
 the unity of God is found to be a prominent feature in their 
 religion, the conclusion is unavoidable, that this belief came from 
 immediate revelation. It is not the natural product of the human 
 mind under such circumstances ; the unassisted reason could not 
 have attained to it. It is supernatural, then, whether it be a 
 remnant of the knowledge with which man was originally endow- 
 ed when he was first placed upon the earth, and by which alone 
 he could be fitted for the exigencies of a situation at once novel 
 and perilous, or a special communication from on high, designed 
 as a foundation for a purer faith, and as seed for subsequent dif- 
 fusion among all tribes, languages, and nations. 
 
 Polytheism being the earliest product of the religious senti- 
 ment, and maintaining a strong hold upon the imaginations of the 
 vulgar, we might expect that high mental cultivation would either 
 enable a few minds to detect its absurdities, and to refine it into 
 a system of pure theism, or that these few would themselves fall 
 back into utter skepticism. The enlightened class among the 
 Greeks and Romans really fluctuated between these two ex- 
 tremes. They derided the popular faith, but they had nothing 
 certain to put in its place. Their speculations upon the subject 
 have the air rather of exercises of fancy and rhetoric, than of the 
 argumentative examination of a theme of vital importance to man. 
 Socrates was perhaps the only one among them, of whose opin- 
 ions and reasonings we have any full statement, who entertained 
 decided notions respecting the character and functions of the Su- 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 385 
 
 preme Being ; and it was the purity of his ethical system, rather 
 than the soundness of his philosophy in general, which guided 
 him to a right conclusion. His pupil, Plato, mystified his 
 teacher's doctrine with so many strange fancies and untenable 
 conceits, that it is difficult to believe that he was earnest in the 
 inquiry. Of course, I speak only of those who wrote before the 
 promulgation of Christianity, as the silent influence of this faith 
 modified the opinions of many who did not avowedly embrace it. 
 Cicero has little claim to originality in any of his philosophical 
 speculations ; and as, at different times, he argued with about 
 equal warmth on both sides of the question respecting the exist- 
 ence of one God, it is not likely that he had formed any decided 
 belief about it. 
 
 It is matter of history, then, that a system of polytheism has 
 never satisfied the requisitions of the cultivated and inquiring 
 intellect ; failing to struggle up from it to clear ideas and firm 
 convictions respecting the unity of the Deity, the best minds, 
 educated under such a system, have fallen back upon a contemp- 
 tuous estimate of the faith of the common people, and a general 
 distrust of man's capacity to form a purer and better-grounded 
 doctrine. It is unnecessary, therefore, to disprove polytheism, 
 for there is no evidence or presumption in its favor. It is a 
 popular prejudice, or a poetical fancy, not an opinion resting 
 upon argument, or a system devised after rational inquiry and 
 upon philosophical principles. We have found proof, clear and 
 abundant, of the existence of one God ; but we have no testi- 
 mony, no intimations even, that there are many gods. The pre- 
 sumption is all the other way ; the whole course of the reasoning 
 going to show that there is one Supreme Being, Creator and 
 Governor of all things. To assert the existence of others is to 
 deny his supremacy ; if polytheism be true, there are beings 
 whom he did not create and does not govern. Indirectly, then, 
 the whole argument that we have thus far considered is an argu- 
 ment for the unity of the Deity ; since the conclusion to which it 
 leads us is directly opposed to polytheism. I do not say that it 
 disproves the existence of an order of beings superior to the 
 
 49 
 
386 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 human, but still finite, created, and dependent. There may be 
 such intermediate natures, though the universe to our eyes affords 
 no trace of them, and the question whether they exist or not is 
 one which it does not concern us to answer. By whatever name 
 they may be designated, angels, demons, or ministering spirits, 
 they are not deities ; that is, they are not uncreated, indepen- 
 dent, and eternal. u It seems a self-evident proposition, that the 
 First Cause must be one ; because, if there were more, they 
 would want some prior cause to assign them their several sta- 
 tions and properties." 
 
 The argument, if it can be called such, in favor of the unity of 
 God is usually stated thus : If one cause is sufficient to ac- 
 count for all the phenomena, it is needless and unphilosophical 
 to suppose that there are several causes. This is the only sort 
 of proof that a negative proposition admits of ; and it is admitted 
 to be satisfactory in physical and moral science, the study of 
 which would otherwise be profitless and vain, as it could lead to 
 no definite conclusion. Indirectly, however, we may substan- 
 tiate the doctrine of the Divine unity by pointing out the unity 
 of design which prevails throughout the universe. This is a 
 profitable inquiry, though its direct result is rather to establish 
 the wisdom than the singleness of the creative and governing 
 Power. As it throws light, however, upon the character of the 
 creation, and upon the nature of the Divine government, I shall 
 devote to it what remains of the present Lecture. 
 
 Objects and events are considered as simple or complex in 
 more senses than one. If absolutely simple, as, for instance, 
 a clap of thunder, or the personality of one human being, the 
 propriety of assigning but one cause to it is sufficiently evident. 
 It is inconceivable that many causes should cooperate for the 
 production of one effect, which has no complexity of parts and 
 does not admit of degrees. Many arms and levers may act 
 together in turning over a heavy stone ; but the effect here is 
 really complex, each lever actually raising some of the weight, in 
 proportion to the power and effort expended upon it. But to 
 call an absolutely indivisible atom or being out of nothingness 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 387 
 
 necessarily implies unity of cause ; for every exertion of power 
 must produce some effect, and if two powers were exerted at the 
 same instant, two effects, or an effect in some way complex, must 
 be produced. The indivisible personality of one human being, 
 then, proves, to a demonstration, that the beginning of his exist- 
 ence is an effect due to one creative Cause. If one man, there- 
 fore, formed the whole of creation, the unity of the Creator 
 would be demonstrable. But this is not the case. 
 
 An object, however, may be considered as single in another 
 sense. If it is not a mere aggregate of parts, but a system in 
 which the whole is the result of all the parts taken and acting 
 together, there is a strong presumption, though not an absolute 
 proof, that it is the effect of one cause. Such is every organ- 
 ism, a plant, or a human body, for instance, as distinguished 
 from inorganic masses, like a rock or a heap of sand. Here the 
 probability is very great, though it does not amount to certainty, 
 that one creative mind presided over the formation of this vir- 
 tual whole. The organism is complex, indeed, for it is made up 
 of many parts ; but as all these parts have an intimate connec- 
 tion with each other and with the whole, we presume that one 
 mind must have planned the whole, and executed it either di- 
 rectly by its own power, or mediately through subordinate 
 agents. It is hardly possible to conceive of two minds, or 
 more, perfectly coinciding in their purposes and modes of exe- 
 cution ; to our apprehension, at least, two such minds run to- 
 gether and make up one being, when there is no distinction of 
 bodies to keep them apart. Two purely immaterial existences 
 cannot be distinguished from each other, according to human 
 conception, except by the difference of their purposes and acts ; 
 and any such difference precludes the supposition of their coop- 
 erating with perfect equality in the formation of one of these vir- 
 tual wholes. If their shares in the work were not absolutely 
 equal, then one was superior to the other, and supremacy im- 
 plies unity. This reasoning, chiefly directed against the hy- 
 pothesis of two creators, applies a fortiori to that of three or 
 more. If to this strong presumption we add the fact, that we 
 
388 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 have abundant evidence of the being of one God, but not a 
 shadow of proof that there is more than one, the doctrine of the 
 Divine unity is established beyond all question. 
 
 Is the universe, then, one of these virtual wholes ? Does 
 it everywhere evince unity of design, and show such a corre- 
 lation of parts that the whole may properly be considered as 
 an organism, or as the result of the parts, and not merely as 
 their aggregate ? To give all the evidence for the affirmative 
 of this question would require an enumeration of particulars too 
 copious for your time and patience ; but enough may be adduced 
 here to leave no doubt upon the subject. 
 
 The universe is composed of matter and mind, and it is in the 
 close, but, as we believe, temporary, union of these component 
 parts, and in their present mutual dependence and fitness for 
 each other, that the more striking part of the proof consists. 
 But we will look first at the material universe alone ; and in 
 doing this, I must use, for brevity of speech, the common 
 phraseology of physical science, though with the protest already 
 expressed against the mechanical theory which it implies. Sup- 
 ply the correction in every case, by substituting for supposed 
 secondary causes the immediate agency of the Divine mind, and 
 the argument becomes all the stronger. 
 
 Consider, first, that the same physical laws, as wonderful for 
 their simplicity as for the vastness of their sphere of operation, 
 govern the motions and determine the state of all the particles 
 and all the aggregations of matter which make up the solar and 
 stellar systems. Through the principles of inertia and the equal- 
 ity of action and reaction, it is demonstrable, that, if I strike the 
 ground with a hammer, the effect produced, small as it is, is 
 propagated beyond the path of Neptune. It is the same law of 
 gravity which guides the falling of a tear, and governs the revo- 
 lutions of the planets ; which binds the influences of the Pleiades, 
 and loosens the bands of Orion. The simplicity of this law en- 
 ables us to calculate its effects with so much precision, that, not- 
 withstanding the erratic path, as it appears to direct observation, 
 which the planets describe in our sky, the astronomer turns his 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 389 
 
 telescope with perfect confidence to a mere point in the heavens, 
 where one of these bodies will be found at a given moment a 
 century hence. It has been justly observed, that, but for this 
 marvellous coincidence of observation with the calculated results, 
 we should wholly distrust the assumed precision and minuteness 
 of our knowledge of bodies which are seemingly so far removed 
 from the sphere of human agency and research. Again, the light 
 which streams from these remote orbs is in all respects identical 
 with that produced by artificial means to illumine our own dwell- 
 ings ; it is diffused in the same manner, travels with the same 
 speed, obeys the same laws of reflection and refraction, and the 
 experiments made in one are repeated with unerring precision in 
 the other. If we extend our view over vast tracts of time as 
 well as space, the operations of nature still appear uniform, ex- 
 act, and unchangeable ; the same laws hold. The astronomer 
 calculates and verifies the observations made by the shepherds 
 on the plains of Chaldaea, and the eclipses that were noted in 
 China at the distant period when that empire seems to have 
 excelled all other nations of the earth in physical science. 
 If we come down to the properties and internal constitution 
 of the various substances with which we are surrounded, to the 
 rocks, the metals, the salts, and the earths which form the crust 
 of our globe, we find a similar unity of plan and the same pre- 
 dominance of a few fixed laws. u Ah 1 things in the universe," 
 says Hume himself, the chief of modern skeptics, "all things are 
 evidently of a piece. Every thing is adjusted to every thing. 
 One design prevails through the whole." Cohesive attraction 
 binds the particles of all bodies together, their chemical ele- 
 ments unite in the same proportions, and the numbers which 
 express these proportions are combined in constant ratios, so 
 that the results of chemical analysis are now recorded by a uni- 
 versally applicable scheme of algebraic notation. It is quite 
 probable, that, before long, chemistry will attain the rank of an 
 exact science. The simple bodies retain their properties all 
 over the globe ; one lump of a metal or an earth is always a 
 perfect specimen of the rest, though found in opposite hemi- 
 
390 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 spheres. The specific gravity, determined to the thousandth 
 part of a grain, is a perfect test of the purity of gold, whether it 
 is brought from Peru or the Ural Mountains. The elements of 
 pure water, the constituents of the atmosphere, are the same, 
 and are combined in precisely the same proportions, wherever 
 water flows or the air penetrates. 
 
 The organic kingdoms show a still more marvellous unity 
 of plan, and a nicer adaptation to each other and to the in- 
 organic world. The chemistry here is more intricate, but it 
 is still uniform ; and its complexity arises from the great variety 
 of purposes which each organism is designed to answer, and from 
 the numberless relations which bind each to each throughout the 
 animal and vegetable creations. You have heard the plans of 
 God in the animal kingdom explained from this place with a 
 clearness of method, and a fulness and beauty of illustration, 
 which leave it necessary now only to remind you of the applica- 
 bility of the facts to the purposes of the present argument.* 
 Remembering how the same general type of the skeleton is 
 preserved throughout the vertebrate branch, amidst numberless 
 
 * " It was a great discovery in physiology, when it was ascertained that 
 all vertebrata, that fishes, as well as reptiles, as well as birds, as well as 
 mammalia, arose from eggs, which have one and the same uniform struc- 
 ture in the beginning, and proceed to produce animals, as widely different as 
 they are in their full-grown state, simply by successive gradual metamor- 
 phoses ; and these metamorphoses upon one and the same plan, according to 
 one and the same general process. The unity of structure in vertebrated 
 animals had been ascertained, had been understood, (and well understood,) 
 long before embryology had added any thing to show how deep this unity of 
 plan was imprinted upon that type. By the investigations of comparative 
 anatomy, it had been ascertained, that the external differences which charac- 
 terize the class of fishes, of reptiles, of birds, and of mammalia, were only 
 modifications of one and the same structure , that the head of fishes, for 
 example, though apparently so different from that of man, was made up of 
 the same bones, arranged in the same manner, only subdivided into more 
 distinct points of ossification, with modified proportions, most of them 
 remaining movable for life, but, after all, arranged upon the same uniform 
 plan." Lowell Institute Lectures on Comparative Embryology, by Profes- 
 sor Louis Agassiz. 1848-9. p. 96. 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 391 
 
 modifications of the size and shape of all its parts, so that each 
 animal might be fitted for the exigencies of its peculiar situation 
 and the part that it has to play, believe, if you can, that one 
 mind did not preside over the formation of all the species, and 
 adapt each to its place in one vast system. The laws of birth, 
 growth, and reproduction have the same general character for all, 
 and varieties suited to each ; the progressive development of 
 creatures that are so low down in the scale even as the mollusca 
 throws light upon the embryotic changes of the most perfect 
 animal organisms. If we go back to the extinct races of the 
 oldest geological periods, so far from finding that another general 
 scheme then prevailed, we seem to witness the historical devel- 
 opment of one and the same plan ; the fossil varieties fill up 
 some gaps that appear in the scale as it exists at present, and 
 the order in which the several new creations appeared shows with 
 what facility the plan was adapted to the greatest variety of cir- 
 cumstances. Indeed, the whole science of zoology, with the light 
 that it has received from recent investigations, is a most instruc- 
 tive commentary upon the doctrine of the unity of God. 
 
 " To study the phenomena manifested by a single individual would give 
 us an idea of the organic world as imperfect as that which an astronomer 
 would obtain of the sidereal system by studying the motions and phenomena 
 of a single planet. It is not true that there exists, strictly speaking, a phys- 
 iology, as of man, peculiar to a single being. Examine any organ, and the 
 processes of which it is the seat, in a given animal ; then refer to any other 
 being in the animal series, and you will generally find the organ and its pro- 
 cesses repeated. Examine the process of respiration, as it exists in man 
 and in those animals nearly allied to him, and it will be seen, that, so far as 
 regards the essential process, it is one and the same in all, though the man- 
 ner in which it is carried out may vary to a considerable degree in the differ- 
 ent races. By the researches of the comparative physiologist, it has been 
 shown that the animal kingdom is subdivided into certain great groups, and 
 that all the members of those groups are constructed on one and the same 
 plan. It has also been shown, that, as we pass from one to another of the 
 members of a group, this plan is modified in its details. And it has been 
 still farther shown, that this change of plan is always attended with some 
 modification of function." Lowell Institute Lectures on Comparative Physi- 
 ology, by Professor Jeffries Wyman. 1849. p. 6. 
 
392 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 Extending our view to the vegetable creation, and to the rela- 
 tions which connect it with the animal kingdom, we obtain fresh 
 and beautiful illustrations of the same great truth. The two 
 kingdoms are essential to each other's existence, both entering 
 into the circuit through which inorganic matter passes, sustaining 
 organic life on its way, and then returning to its primitive or ele- 
 mentary state. " While animals," says the most eminent botanist 
 of this country, u consume the oxygen of the air, and give back 
 carbonic acid, which is injurious to their life, this carbonic acid 
 is the principal element of the food of vegetables, is consumed 
 and decomposed by them, and its oxygen restored for the use of 
 animals. Hence the perfect adaptation of the two great king- 
 doms of living beings to each other ; each removing from the 
 atmosphere what would be noxious to the other ; each yield- 
 ing to the atmosphere what is essential to the continued existence 
 of the other." And further, " Animals consume what vegeta- 
 bles produce. They themselves produce nothing directly from 
 the mineral world. The herbivorous animals take from vege- 
 tables the organized matter which they have produced ; a part 
 of it they consume, and in respiration restore the materials to the 
 atmosphere, from which plants derived them, in the very form in 
 which they were taken, namely, as carbonic acid and water. 
 The portion they accumulate in their tissues constitutes the food 
 of carnivorous animals, who consume and return to the air the 
 greater part during life, and the remainder in decay, after death. 
 The atmosphere, therefore, out of which plants create nourish- 
 ment, and to which animals, as they consume, return it, forms 
 the necessary link between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 
 and thus completes the great cycle of organic existence. Organ- 
 ized matter passes through various stages in vegetables, is raised 
 to higher conditions in the herbivorous animals, undergoes its 
 final transformations in the carnivorous animals. Portions are 
 consumed at every stage, and, leaving the ascending current, 
 fall back to the mineral kingdom, to which the whole, having 
 accomplished its revolutions, finally returns."* 
 
 * Gray's Botanical Text-Book, pp. 158, 159. 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 393 
 
 We are accustomed to consider the unity of organization of 
 a single plant or animal, to trace the relation, for instance, of 
 digestion to the supply of blood or nutritive fluid, of respiration 
 to the purifying of this fluid, and of its circulation to the nutrition 
 of every part of the body, as well as the fitness -of the vessels, 
 conduits, and other means provided for carrying on this round of 
 operations, the growth and continued existence of one particular 
 organism being the combined result. But does not this grand 
 circuit of animate and inanimate nature, this mutual dependence 
 of the atmosphere, in regard to its purity, and of all animal and 
 vegetable life, point out with equal clearness the unity of organ- 
 ization of the universe, and cause us to regard the whole as one 
 vast apparatus, from which no single organ or portion could be 
 taken away without vitiating the result, and reducing the entire 
 fabric to a chaos ? 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body nature is, and God the soul." 
 
 Consider, also, that the discovery or generalization of these 
 facts, which throw so much light upon the unity of plan in the 
 creation, is among the latest triumphs of science ; and what 
 may we not expect from the future progress of discovery, as 
 tending to reveal to our eyes in full what as yet we see but im- 
 perfectly, that there is not a stone or a clod of earth in the crust 
 of our globe, nor one of the shining points which dot in myriads 
 our nightly sky, that does not play an essential part in the work- 
 ing of the universal organism, the most intimate relations binding 
 it alike to what is nearest and what is most remote ? It was on 
 some small, and seemingly irregular and purposeless, features in 
 the arrangement of the planetary orbits around our sun, namely, 
 upon the eccentricities of those orbits, that Laplace founded the 
 sublime calculations which demonstrated the stability^ of the sys- 
 tem. What are now called the u secular variations," because, 
 after a long lapse of years, they begin to retrace their steps, 
 as it were, and thus compensate the disturbance that had gone 
 on increasing during that period, were formerly regarded as dis- 
 turbing causes that would operate for ever in the same direction, 
 
 50 
 
394 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 so that they were proceeding slowly, but inevitably, to make ship- 
 wreck of the whole plan. Laplace proved that they were cycles, 
 and therefore that they should be ranked highest among those pe- 
 riodic revolutions which are so frequent in the economy of nature ; 
 instead of tending to destroy, they guaranty the permanency of 
 the system. When but a few more such steps have been taken 
 in the career of discovery, we shall see unity of organization in 
 the universe as clearly as we now do in the human body. 
 
 Coming back, in some measure, to details, it is remarkable 
 that we can trace similarity of structure and function in cases 
 apparently removed from each other by so wide an interval that 
 we should not have expected any resemblance whatever, except 
 from the general consideration, that order and harmony must 
 characterize all the works of infinite wisdom. For instance, 
 how unlike, at the first glance, appear plants and animals, and 
 how dissimilar their offices, though each kingdom, as we have 
 seen, is necessary to the other, and the two play an equally im- 
 portant part in the accomplishment of the universal design ! Yet 
 it is not more certain, that the rudiments of the human skele- 
 ton, as they may be figuratively called, can be traced in the 
 bones of one of the lowest fishes, than that the plant is, so to 
 speak, a rudimentary animal. The functions of digestion, as- 
 similation, circulation, nutrition, and respiration, for example, 
 are common to the two ; the distinction of sex belongs to both, 
 and the means of reproduction are strikingly similar. And, gen- 
 erally, the botanist will tell you, between the organs which serve 
 corresponding purposes in the two kingdoms very obvious re- 
 semblances exist. Nature seems for ever at work upon the same 
 general pattern ; she is haunted, as it were, by one idea ; and in 
 out-of-the-way corners of creation, whither we had wandered in 
 search of novelty, we are startled by the spectral reappearance 
 of the old familiar face. 
 
 Mr. Stewart speaks of "the effects which philosophical habits 
 and scientific pursuits have in familiarizing the mind to the order 
 of nature, and in improving its penetration and sagacity in antici- 
 pating those parts of it which are yet unknown. A man con- 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 395 
 
 versant with the phenomena of physics and chemistry is much 
 more likely than a stranger to these studies to form probable 
 conjectures concerning those laws of nature which still remain 
 to be examined. There is a certain style (if I may use the ex- 
 pression) in the operations of the Great Author of all things, 
 something which everywhere announces, amidst a boundless va- 
 riety of detail, an inimitable unity and harmony of design, and 
 in the perception of which what we commonly call philosophical 
 sagacity seems chiefly to consist. It is this which bestows an 
 inestimable value on the conjectures and queries of such a phi- 
 losopher as Sir Isaac Newton." 
 
 I have but one other remark to make in this connection re- 
 specting the scheme of the material universe, which is, that 
 the proportions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms and the 
 constituents of the atmosphere to each other were not always the 
 same as they exist at present. There was a time, so geology 
 tells us, when the air was greatly overcharged with carbonic acid, 
 and thus unfitted for the support of animal life. Accordingly, 
 plants were then almost the sole representatives of organic na- 
 ture, and their continuous operation through many ages gradually 
 purified the atmosphere till animals could live in it. Animals 
 were then introduced, by their consumption of oxygen, and by 
 rendering it back united with carbon, to serve as an offset for the 
 action of vegetables, and to prevent the stock upon which the 
 latter live from being eventually exhausted. The present exact 
 balance between the wants and the products of the cooperating 
 agents in nature is the result of one great scheme, which has 
 come gradually to perfection, thus leading us to infer that one 
 mind not only presides over the system now, but has watched 
 and guided it through the several stages of its growth, the com- 
 mencement of which dates far back in eternity. 
 
 If there remains comparatively little to say on the unity of plan 
 that is evinced in the constitution of mind, and in the adaptation 
 of the intellectual and moral to the material universe, it is be- 
 cause most of the important facts have been already mentioned 
 in connection with other parts of our subject. Thus, I have 
 
896 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 dwelt at length upon the general laws which uphold and consti- 
 tute external nature, considered as the necessary means through 
 which reason and free-will are enabled to rival the works of in- 
 stinct. Looking at the body, also, in its true light, as really exter- 
 nal and foreign to the mind which inhabits it for a season, the laws 
 of bodily health and disease, as formerly remarked, are among 
 the strongest safeguards of morals. The organs of sense form the 
 direct avenues of communication between the outer and the inner 
 world, and in their curious and delicate structure are found the 
 most striking tokens of infinite wisdom adapting the same general 
 plan to a great variety of purposes and circumstances. Man does 
 not find himself a stranger upon the earth, though he is the latest 
 comer ; he enters a dwelling fitted and garnished for his recep- 
 tion, and yet taxing his faculties to the utmost before he can as- 
 certain and apply to use all its accommodations and contrivances. 
 Or rather, to change the figure, he is admitted to a school, where 
 the means and the stimuli of education are furnished in great 
 abundance, together with a bountiful provision for his mere en- 
 joyment. 
 
 Even his senses must be educated before they can do their ap- 
 propriate work. His first and most important step in knowledge, 
 as has been before observed, is to learn to see. The eye is 
 sensible to the impulse of light, and the complex structure of 
 this organ is adapted with the utmost nicety to the laws of re- 
 fraction. Thus far, however, provision is made only for painting 
 on the retina a very accurate picture, though on a much reduced 
 scale, of external objects. The mind now must do its part in 
 projecting off this picture, as it were, in referring these impres- 
 sions to their outward cause, and in making the mere bodily 
 sensation to be the type and material of knowledge, the basis 
 of perception of surrounding things. The sensation alone can 
 teach us nothing as to the distance, magnitude, or even the ex- 
 ternality of material objects ; nor does instinct, as in the case of 
 animals, supply the deficiency. Slowly the mind learns to refer 
 the sign to the thing signified, and to spell out the world of 
 knowledge which at first lies hidden in the hieroglyphic language 
 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 397 
 
 oi mere visual impressions. And when the organ is fully edu- 
 cated, how quick and various is the information that it gives ! 
 The traveller arrives at the crest of a hill which commands a full 
 prospect of a renowned city that he had never before seen, to- 
 gether with a long reach of the beautiful valley in which it lies. 
 In a moment, his eye takes in the extended and widely diversified 
 scene, the maze of houses and streets, the projecting spires and 
 towers, the swelling dome of the cathedral, the variegated tints of 
 roofs and walls, the tufted tops of trees rising here and there at 
 irregular intervals, the river winding through the vale ; and a tol- 
 erably correct estimate of the size, distance, and relative position 
 of these objects is so quickly formed, that it seems a part of the 
 picture. It is marvellous that so great an accession to our 
 knowledge, so large a stock of new and interesting perceptions, 
 should be gained in an instant of time. 
 
 Here, then, in the most familiar of all cases, body and mind 
 cooperate so perfectly, and the adaptation of both to the wants 
 of man, considered as an inhabitant of the material universe, is so 
 complete, that we cannot avoid referring all the parts of the com- 
 plex contrivance to one Author. Our admiration of the design 
 is enhanced when we reflect that the organ of sight is entirely 
 formed at a period when no communication exists between it and 
 that element to which every portion of it has so manifest a refer- 
 ence. The scheme of education, of self-improvement, with its 
 obvious moral bearings, which we have seen to be the chief pur- 
 pose of our being here below, is here visibly kept in view in the 
 earliest physical arrangements that are made for our security and 
 happiness upon earth. In other respects, the adaptation of the 
 organ to man's physical wants, and to the formation of his char- 
 acter, is hardly less remarkable. " If, by the help of micro- 
 scopical eyes," says Locke, " a man should penetrate further 
 than ordinary into the secret composition and radical texture of 
 bodies, he would not make any great advantage by the change, if 
 such an acute sight would not serve to conduct him to the market 
 and exchange, if he could not see things he was to avoid at a 
 convenient distance, or distinguish things he had to do with, by 
 
398 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 those sensible qualities others do. He that was sharp-sighted 
 enough to see the con6guration of the minute particles of the 
 spring of a clock, and observe on what peculiar structure and 
 impulse its elastic motion depends, would no doubt discover 
 something very admirable ; but if eyes so framed could not view 
 at once the hand and the characters of the hour-plate, and 
 thereby discover at a distance what o'clock it was, their owner 
 could not be much benefited by that acuteness which, whilst it 
 discovered the secret contrivance of the parts of the machine, 
 made him lose its use." 
 
 It would be easy to follow out this line of argument in regard 
 to the other senses, and the several remaining points in the 
 physical organization of man, and show how he is fitted in all 
 respects to the scale of the world in which he dwells, and to the 
 objects by which he is surrounded. " No other cause," says an 
 eminent naturalist, " can be assigned why a man was not made 
 five or ten times bigger, but his relation to the rest of the uni- 
 verse." The law of the association of ideas, which is the regu- 
 lative principle of memory, corresponds so exactly with the uni- 
 form succession of cause and effect, which is the regulative prin- 
 ciple of the universe, that no one can doubt that the one was 
 specially designed to be the complement of the other. The 
 child associates the idea of burning with that of the fire, and 
 every pleasant or painful feeling reminds him of the occasion 
 when it was first excited ; on these connections of thought the 
 whole value of experience depends. If memory acted disor- 
 derly, the effect, for all practical purposes, would be the same 
 as if events succeeded each other at random, and not in an un- 
 changeable sequence. Before the past can be a safe guide as to 
 the future, it is necessary, not only that the same effect should 
 always follow the same cause, but also that the sight of the cause 
 should always and instantly remind us of what is sure to suc- 
 ceed. In this respect, as in many others, the mind is a micro- 
 cosm ; it mirrors to us those aspects of external nature which 
 are most necessary to be presented for the safety of the individ- 
 ual. The law of causation is also the law of memorv. 
 
THE UNITY OP GOD. 399 
 
 A still more pleasing proof of uniformity of design may be 
 found in the preservation of the common type of humanity among 
 all nations, and in all ages of the world. Make out the differ- 
 ence as wide as you can between the savage and the civilized 
 man, yet it is as nothing when compared with the interval which 
 lies between the savage and the brute. This interval is constant. 
 Exhaust all the means and artifices of instruction upon one of the 
 lower animals, and he never even approaches the boundary line 
 of humanity. On the other hand, all projects for reclaiming the 
 criminal or the savage go upon the supposition that he is a hu- 
 man being, like ourselves, that he is moved by the same 
 desires, agitated by the same passions, and has faculties which, 
 though latent now, are capable of as high development. We 
 instinctively recognize this common humanity, and act upon it ; 
 the taking of human life is everywhere viewed as a grave and 
 awful deed, to be justified only by pressing necessity ; while 
 mere animal existence is sacrificed without a touch of remorse. 
 Persons of delicate feelings, indeed, may shrink from the work ; 
 but their repugnance is founded mainly on an amiable illusion, 
 which invests the dumb creature a favorite domestic animal, 
 perhaps with some of the attributes of humanity. The indi- 
 viduals who make up the race are constantly changing ; one gen- 
 eration succeeds another, and, at the close of a century, hardly 
 one human being survives who was alive at its commencement. 
 But the unchanging characteristics, the type, of the species, sur- 
 vive all mutations, and the subject of history is still the same. 
 In every age and every country, the great features of humanity 
 appear as steadfast as if they were engraved in marble. " It is 
 this," says an eminent writer, " which gives the great charm to 
 what we call nature in epic and dramatic compositions ; when 
 the poet speaks a language to which every heart is an echo, and 
 which, amidst all the effects of education and fashion in modifying 
 and disguising the principles of our constitution, reminds all the 
 various classes of readers or spectators of the existence of those 
 moral ties which unite us to each other and to our common 
 Parent." 
 
400 THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 The facts upon which I have dwelt in this Lecture are suf- 
 ficiently familiar ; and it is true of all of them, that they suggest 
 rather than prove the great doctrine of the unity of God. The 
 truth of this doctrine is sufficiently established, as was remarked 
 in the outset, by the absence of all evidence to the contrary. 
 We have abundant testimony that one God exists ; we have not 
 even an intimation that there is more than one ; and this is 
 enough. I have sought to show, however, that this truth, like 
 the other doctrines of natural theology, is continually suggested 
 to us by a study of the universe in which we live, and of which 
 we form a part. In the unity of our own life and consciousness 
 we find reflected the unity of Him from whom we derived our 
 being. " Every man, a single, active, conscious self, is the 
 image of his Maker. There is in him one undivided animating 
 principle, which, in its perceptions and operations, runs through 
 the whole system of matter that it inhabits ; it perceives for the 
 most distant parts of the body ; it cares for all and governs all ; 
 thus leading us, by analogy, to form an idea of the one great 
 quickening Spirit which presides over the whole frame of nature, 
 the spring of all motion and operation in it, understanding and 
 active in all parts of the universe, not as its soul, indeed, but 
 as its Lord, by whose vital directing influence it is, though 
 so vast a bulk and consisting of so many parts, united into one 
 regular fabric." * 
 
 * Abernethy on the Divine Attributes, I. p. 173. 
 
LECTURE X. 
 
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL CANNOT BE PROVED WITHOUT 
 THE AID OF REVELATION. 
 
 POLYTHEISM, it was remarked in the last Lecture, is the re- 
 ligion of a barbarous age, and of the uncultivated understanding. 
 It is the natural product of the religious sentiment before the rea- 
 soning power is developed, or the mind informed by reflection 
 and careful study of the phenomena of the physical and moral 
 universe. I do not say that polytheism is a natural form of re- 
 ligion, because I do not believe that barbarism and ignorance are 
 natural to man. The great purpose of our being, as I have at- 
 tempted to show, is self-improvement in the largest sense, is 
 moral, intellectual, and religious progress achieved by our own 
 efforts ; and we are in our natural condition only when we are 
 active in that work. Barbarism is no otherwise natural to the 
 human race than infancy is ; it is a point of departure, a com- 
 mencement of growth. The religious sentiment of an uncivilized 
 people first manifests itself in idolatry, that is, in a worship of 
 false gods, or a system of polytheism. History and the reports 
 of travellers inform us, that this is the universal faith of savage 
 tribes. A few minds, far in advance of the others in refine- 
 ment and habits of reflection, may throw off this belief of the 
 populace ; but they usually take refuge from it in general skep- 
 ticism or fanciful speculation, rather than in pure theism. It is 
 of no more use, then, to disprove polytheism than to argue 
 against barbarism ; that cannot be disproved which does not rest 
 
 51 
 
402 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 upon argument or conviction, and which is not so much an opin- 
 ion or belief, as a popular delusion, the origin or natural history 
 of which is distinctly traceable. Striking events in nature, when 
 no progress has been made in the study of general laws, are re- 
 ferred each to its separate conscious cause ; and the savage, who 
 is awed or terrified by a storm, an earthquake, a volcano, or the 
 heaving of the ocean, soon comes to worship a crowd of deities. 
 When the nature of these phenomena comes to be understood, 
 the whole basis of the system is taken away, and polytheism dies 
 a natural death. 
 
 There is no need, then, I remarked, to prove the unity of the 
 Deity, because nothing can be alleged against it ; and having 
 found one cause that accounts for all the phenomena, it is a 
 wholly gratuitous hypothesis to suppose that there are other 
 causes. Still, a study of God's works in various ways indicates 
 or suggests the unity of their Author, and I briefly reviewed 
 some of these indications. What is absolutely single, we can 
 demonstrate, has but one cause ; for every power in action must 
 produce some effect ; and if there were two causes, there must 
 be two effects, or an effect in some way complex, or consisting of 
 parts or degrees. Again, if the unity is only virtual, like that of 
 an organism or a machine, in which all the parts visibly conspire 
 to one end, and the whole is not merely their aggregate, but their 
 result, we see unity of intention throughout that organism, and the 
 presumption is irresistible in favor of the unity of its cause. 
 
 The universe, I endeavoured to show, is such an organism, all 
 its parts being essential to the perfection of the whole. The same 
 laws prevail throughout its immeasurable extent, governing alike 
 the least events and the greatest. Light, gravitation, electricity, 
 chemical affinity, and the like, are universally operating agents, 
 that bind all the parts of the vast system together. Organized 
 life, whether animal or vegetable, is cast in the same general 
 mould, the great features of one plan being preserved through- 
 out, though with numberless modifications to adapt it to particu- 
 lar cases. The boundary lines of the species are immovable, 
 the type of each race being preserved through countless genera- 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 403 
 
 tions. Plants and animals resemble each other in their organs 
 and functions, and, in connection with the atmosphere, form a 
 great circuit through which matter is continually passing, alter- 
 nately in an organic and an inorganic state ; each of the three 
 component parts or agents is essential to the continuance of the 
 system ; for, any one of them being taken away, the balance 
 would be destroyed, the circulation would soon stop, and the 
 organization of nature would sink into nothingness or ruin. All 
 these physical laws and agencies can be traced up to their ulti- 
 mate purpose in the education of mind and the formation of 
 character ; thus the universe of matter and mind constitutes one 
 whole, all the parts working to one great end, so that we are un- 
 avoidably guided to the conclusion that it has but one Author, 
 Designer, and Sovereign. 
 
 The proof of the other attributes of God, to the full extent 
 that is needed for religious faith and practice, follows imme- 
 diately from the doctrines that have already been established. 
 He is omnipresent and omniscient, who not only designed and 
 created, but directs and governs all. His power and wisdom 
 are commensurate with his works ; and as those works constitute 
 but one system, and are directed to one end, every portion of 
 it, however minute, is essential to its perfection and continuance, 
 and therefore, cannot have escaped his oversight and control. 
 The sphere of his existence is certainly coextensive with the 
 sphere of his operation ; and this, in our ignorance of the true 
 relation of pure mind to space, is the only conception that we 
 can form of universal presence. Whether this ubiquity, in the 
 language of the schools, be virtual or essential, those can judge 
 who can best determine whether the human agent, the indivisible 
 unit of personality, is directly or mediately present through the 
 whole of the complex structure of bones and muscles which it 
 inhabits, and with every portion of which it certainly exists in 
 intimate union. The question is one purely of curiosity or mere 
 speculation ; the attribute is made known to us as real to the 
 full extent to which we are able to form a conception of it. 
 There is little use in being able to demonstrate the reality of 
 what is inconceivable?* 
 
404 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 The duration of the Deity is infinite, since the argument 
 adopted does not stop short of the First Cause, and that which 
 is uncaused must have existed from everlasting. Moreover, that 
 which is ingenerable must also be incorruptible ; for there cannot 
 have been originally any cause of dissolution from without, and 
 any inherent principles of decay and ruin must have manifested 
 themselves during an infinite series of years. If they have not 
 done so in the infinite duration that is past, it is a proof that they 
 do not exist, and that there are none to operate in all future time. 
 Again, as the agency of the Supreme Being throughout his crea- 
 tion is immediate, his moral government is also immediate. The 
 whole series of arrangements and events by which his law is made 
 known to man, and is upheld by the ordinary course of human 
 affairs, is the direct consequence of his presence and action. 
 The uniformity of this action is a proof of his wisdom and the 
 unchangeable character of his purposes ; but it is no proof that 
 his government is exerted through agencies or means which are 
 left to operate of themselves, without his constant supervision 
 and power. The complete recognition of this great truth, the 
 immediate and universal government of God, is the vital prin- 
 ciple of all religion, the sustaining belief without which true piety 
 cannot exist. 
 
 I am aware of the common objection to the reasoning which 
 has here been pursued, that human experience, arguing from a 
 limited number of effects, can only establish the existence of a 
 cause proportionate to them, or that the infinite power and 
 wisdom of the Deity cannot be inferred directly from the finite 
 evidences which alone are subject to our observation. The im- 
 portance of this objection will depend upon the meaning we attach 
 to the word infinite. It is commonly said to imply, in regard to 
 the Deity, not merely that his power and wisdom are " beyond 
 all comparison greater than any such qualities possessed by our- 
 selves," but that these attributes exist " in such a degree, that 
 any extent whatever of them being either presented to our ob- 
 servation or conceived by our imagination, the Deity possesses 
 them in a still greater degree, a degree to which our concep- 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 405 
 
 tion can affix no bounds." Now, of course, we cannot demon- 
 strate a fact which is inconceivable, any more than we can prove 
 a proposition which is unintelligible ; so far as the infinity of God 
 cannot be comprehended or understood by the human mind, so 
 far is it removed from the sphere of all argument. Our only 
 understanding of an infinite quality is that of one which has no 
 limits or restraint, nothing to prevent it from existing to an in- 
 definite extent or perfection. In this sense, the infinity of the 
 Divine attributes does admit of full proof. The universe, in- 
 deed, is finite, in respect both to space and time ; but it compre- 
 hends all that is, its Creator and Ruler alone excepted. The 
 universe, then, being subject to him, as his creature or the work 
 of his hands, there is nothing beyond it to limit his perfections ; 
 no restraint, no bound, therefore, is possible. Or the same rea- 
 soning may be proposed in another form : from the unity and 
 infinite duration of the Supreme Being it follows that a time must 
 have been when he was literally all in all ; every thing that now 
 exists is derived from him, or was made by him, and he must 
 have existed before any thing was made. Then he must have 
 been infinite, as nothing existed to set bounds to his attributes ; 
 and what has been created since cannot limit them, as other- 
 wise the creature would be more perfect than the Creator. 
 
 I have now finished all that it seems appropriate on the pres- 
 ent occasion to say respecting those doctrines of natural religion 
 which rest upon full and satisfactory evidence, and so cannot be 
 called in question without impeaching the validity of the ordinary 
 laws of belief, and denying the capacity of man to obtain a knowl- 
 edge of any facts that lie beyond the immediate cognizance of the 
 senses. Many will think that I have attempted both too much 
 and too little ; too much, because I have tried to prove, from 
 the light of reason and nature alone, that the moral and physical 
 government of the Deity is immediate and incessant, every event, 
 even the minutest, being directly caused by him with a view to 
 the moral and religious improvement of man ; and too little, be- 
 cause I have omitted all argument for the immortality of the soul, 
 and have not considered it necessary, in order to vindicate the 
 
406 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 justice and goodness of God, to represent our present existence 
 only as a preparation for a life beyond the grave, or to maintain 
 that the scheme of Providence which is now visible to us is but a 
 faint and imperfect image of a more glorious one, which is to be 
 unfolded in some subsequent stage of our being. As to the for- 
 mer objection, I need not recapitulate the argument that has been 
 laid before you, and which is perfectly satisfactory to my mind, 
 in favor of the immediate agency and perfect moral government 
 of God. As to the latter, I hold that the doctrine of the immor- 
 tality of the soul cannot be proved from the light of nature, 
 that there is indeed no presumption against it, but nothing con- 
 clusive or reasonably satisfactory in its favor, that men never 
 have attained to a full belief in it except by direct aid from on 
 high, and that all proper faith in the doctrine rests upon reve- 
 lation alone. 
 
 The only evidence of a future life which the unassisted reason 
 can furnish is of the same kind, and has about equal force, with 
 the argument that is commonly offered, I will not say to prove, 
 but to show, that it is not unlikely that the other planets and 
 satellites of our system are tenanted by human beings like our- 
 selves. Certainly we cannot disprove this hypothesis, and I do 
 not think that there is any strong presumption against it. Why 
 should the third attendant orb, counting from our sun, be fully 
 Stocked with animal and vegetable life, while the second and the 
 fourth are left desolate, answering no other purpose known to us 
 ; but that of preserving the balance of the system, and of appear- 
 ing as shining points in our firmament ? The only rational an- 
 swer to this question is, that we do not know. The subject lies 
 as much beyond the reach of our faculties as the bodies them- 
 selves do beyond the cognizance of our senses. The impossi- 
 bility of disproving the conjecture that these orbs are inhabited 
 proceeds from the same cause as the difficulty of substantiating 
 it, namely, that we have no facts to reason about, no knowl- 
 edge of the circumstances of the case. 
 
 Persons who are fond of pure speculation and hypothesis are 
 very apt to confound what may 6e, for aught we know to the 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 407 
 
 contrary, with what is, so far as we are able positively to deter- 
 mine it from our present means of observation and experiment ; 
 they mistake the possibility that is measured only by human igno- 
 rance, for the probability that is fairly inferred by the legitimate 
 exercise of the understanding. But we cannot found knowledge 
 upon ignorance ; and the theorist who has had no experience 
 under the conditions of his theory, and has no proper knowledge 
 of the subjects to which it relates, necessarily speaks from igno- 
 rance and appeals to ignorance, so that, even if we could not 
 point out a single difficulty, a single false assumption, in his whole 
 scheme and argument, it would still remain a mere hypothesis, 
 alike incapable of proof and disproof. The fallacy to which such 
 speculatists have recourse is, that the weakness or the absence 
 of any considerations against their theory constitutes a positive 
 argument in its support. No such thing ; it affords only a fair 
 presumption of the baseless character of the whole fabric^ We 
 cannot prove a negative ; we can show only the insufficiency of 
 the ground on which an assumption is made to rest. 
 
 Coming back for a while to the hypothesis of inhabited planets, 
 it may be remarked, that the common argument in its favor is 
 founded, first, upon the impossibility of seeing or proving that 
 they are not inhabited ; secondly, upon the analogy between their' 
 situation and circumstances and those of our own globe ; and 
 thirdly, upon the assumed fact, that it is inconsistent with what we 
 know of the character and purposes of the Deity to suppose that 
 he would leave such large orbs tenantless. Change only a few 
 names of things in this description, and it becomes a very exact 
 analysis of the ordinary reasoning from the light of nature to 
 prove the immortality of the soul. This argument rests, first, 
 upon the impossibility of seeing or proving that what we call 
 death is the absolute termination of our personal existence ; sec- 
 ondly, upon the analogy between the transformation which takes 
 place at the close of the embryotic period (which is a stage in 
 all animal life, our own included) and the transformation wljich 
 we may suppose to occur at death ; and thirdly, upon the as- 
 sumption, that the course of affairs in this life, the prevalence of 
 
408 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 sin and suffering, and the promiscuous distribution of happiness, 
 are inconsistent with our notions of the character of the Supreme 
 Being, are irreconcilable with Divine wisdom, justice, and love, 
 so that we must suppose a future state of existence, to give 
 opportunity for redress, for completion, and for retribution. 
 
 I may here remark, that it is the offensive, and, as I think, 
 groundless, nature of this last argument which makes one feel 
 less scrupulous about exposing the fallacy of the whole reasoning. 
 Those who have labored most earnestly to establish, independ- 
 ently of revelation, the doctrine of a future life, have unwittingly 
 decried and calumniated the course of Providence in the govern- 
 ment of this world's affairs. That there is some danger in press- 
 ing such considerations has been shown by Mr. Hume, who 
 argues with much plausibility, u that the only safe principle, on 
 which we can pretend to judge of those parts of the universe 
 which have not fallen under our examination, is by concluding 
 them to be analogous to what we have observed. 
 
 1 Of God above or man below 
 What can we reason but from what we know ? ' 
 
 Now the only fact we know with respect to the moral govern- 
 ment of God is, that the distribution of happiness and misery in 
 human life is in a great measure promiscuous. Is it not, then, a 
 most extraordinary inference from this fact, to conclude that 
 there must be a future state of existence to correct the inequali- 
 ties of the present scene ? Would it not be more reasonable, 
 and more agreeable to the received rules of philosophizing, to 
 conclude either that the idea of a future state is a mere chimera, 
 or that, if such an idea shall ever be realized, the distribution of 
 happiness and misery will continue to be as promiscuous as we 
 have experienced it to be ? " 
 
 Returning to the comparison, we may observe, that as the 
 reasoning in the two cases is parallel and of the same intrinsic 
 weight, it might be expected that we should arrive at the same 
 sort of conclusion. All will admit, that it is not impossible that 
 the planets should be inhabited ; some will think that the balance 
 of probability, on the whole, inclines in favor of the hypothesis. 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 409 
 
 But no one, certainly, will place this hypothesis among the ac- 
 credited facts of science, and make it a basis of his calculations 
 and reasoning upon cognate subjects. Just so, looking at the 
 matter in the light of nature alone, we must confess that it is 
 not impossible that this life should extend beyond the grave ; 
 perhaps there are a few faint indications that it will, a few 
 gleams that pierce the darkness of that undiscovered bourn from 
 whence no traveller returns ; but he who fully accepts and be- 
 lieves the doctrine allows his wish to be father of the thought, 
 and must be ready on all occasions to yield his faith on very 
 slight testimony. I do not say, that, in such a case, he would be 
 justified in disregarding practically the least chance of the doc- 
 trine proving true ; for this, unlike the question respecting the 
 planets, is a practical matter, and a wise man will always choose 
 the safe side. It is not likely, perhaps, that one of those who 
 are here assembled will die within the hour ; but it is the part 
 both of prudence and of duty so to act as if the knell were to be 
 sounded for each of us within that time. In abstract cases, how- 
 ever, in matters of pure science, we argue very differently ; 
 nothing can be accepted here which is not proved. In examin- 
 ing the other doctrines of natural theology, it has been my aim 
 throughout to show, that they are supported by evidence of the 
 same general character with that on which the whole fabric of 
 inductive science depends, though it is stronger and more abun- 
 dant than what is often admitted to be conclusive in scientific 
 reasoning. The natural arguments for a future life do not come 
 up to this tet ; they cannot sustain this comparison ; and I 
 therefore discard them, that they may not discredit the reason- 
 ing employed to defend the other truths of natural religion. 
 
 I continue the parallel which has been begun, by showing that 
 virtually the same answer may be made to the proofs alleged in 
 either case. First, the impossibility of proving that life is con- 
 fined to our planet, or that the grave is the limit of human exist- 
 ence, as I have already shown, is no argument at all to prove 
 that the other -planets are inhabited, or that the soul cannot die. 
 It simply clears the ground for it, if such an argument should 
 
 52 
 
410 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 ever be discovered. It leaves the subject entirely open, as one 
 which we know nothing about, and therefore as one that affords 
 no occasion either for belief or disbelief. The well-known prin- 
 ciple, that the burden of proof rests upon him who maintains the 
 affirmative in a discussion, is a dictate of common sense no less 
 than of sound logic. I admit this impossibility to the fullest ex- 
 tent, and still maintain that not one step has been taken towards 
 the solution of the problem. 
 
 Secondly, the analogy that is offered, in the one case, appear- 
 ed just as applicable, a few years ago, to our moon, as to the 
 planets Venus and Mars, nay, even more applicable, as, 
 owing to the nearness of our satellite, the circumstances are 
 more nearly alike. But the recent discovery that our moon has 
 neither atmosphere nor water, and that its surface is an almost 
 chaotic scene of volcanic action, renders it almost demonstrable 
 that it is not inhabited. If the analogy leads to a false conclu- 
 sion where it is most nearly perfect, what confidence can we 
 place in it where it is incomplete ? In the other case, the anal- 
 ogy offered is just as conclusive for proving the immortality of 
 an oyster as that of a man, the former having also passed 
 through embryotic transformations. He who builds his faith, 
 therefore, upon this analogy between birth and death, must 
 accept the doctrine of the Indian, 
 
 " Who thinks, admitted to that distant sky, 
 His faithful dog will bear him company." 
 
 
 
 To some writers upon the subject, this conclusion has not ap- 
 peared so revolting as to induce them to give up the argument ; 
 but as it is certain that the lower animals have no moral nature 
 whatever, their immortality seems very questionable. 
 
 Thirdly, the argument that is based upon our opinion of what 
 is required by the nature of the Divine attributes, in cases which 
 go beyond our experience, our wants, and our powers of obser- 
 vation, appears, as I have already hinted, both unsound and 
 presumptuous. You say, in the one case, that Divine wisdom 
 cannot have created bodies so large as the planets for no other 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 411 
 
 purpose than that of keeping up the balance of the system, 
 and that no purpose is so worthy as that of making them the 
 abodes of vegetable, animal, and human life. After all, then, the 
 force of your reasoning depends upon the size of these bodies ; 
 for if they were no larger each than a grain of sand, the suppo- 
 sition that they are inhabited would never have been made. But 
 our ideas of magnitude are wholly relative ; or, at any rate, to 
 Omnipotence the task of creating a planet is no greater than that 
 of fashioning a grain of sand. Is it derogatory to the wisdom of 
 the Almighty to suppose that any particle of earth or rock upon 
 our own globe does not contribute its part to the support of life ? 
 Who will venture to decide in a case presenting so many consid- 
 erations that are obviously beyond the reach of the human intel- 
 lect ? Besides, we have no assurance that the extension of the 
 plan of organic creation, as it is developed upon the surface of 
 our earth, is the only object, or the worthiest one, that can en- 
 gage the attention of the Deity. Our observation is limited to a 
 speck of earth, and we may not spell out all His designs to whom 
 the universe is indebted for its being. So, in the other case, the 
 assumption, that the existence of evil belies all our notions of the 
 goodness of the Creator, must depend on our ideas of the nature 
 and magnitude of that evil. If the presence of misfortune and 
 wrong in any shape, or to any extent, is inconsistent with his 
 perfections, then the permission of them, even for a limited pe- 
 riod, though they should be redressed or removed in a future life, 
 leaves a stain upon his attributes. It may be consoling for us to 
 believe, that the virtue which does not meet with its desert in 
 this stage of existence, will be rewarded or compensated here- 
 after ; but this does not remove the reproach from the adminis- 
 tration of Him who has the government equally of this life and of 
 that which is to come. Besides, what do you assume to be the 
 only proper reward of purity and virtue ? Is it happiness ? 
 Then is happiness man's greatest good, and holiness is only a 
 means for its attainment. You shrink instinctively from this con? 
 elusion, and still demand another life, or the immortality of the 
 soul, not as a means for the improvement of character, an object 
 
412 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 which is obtainable in this world, with all its imputed defects and 
 evils, but as a sphere or an opportunity for the more perfect en- 
 joyment that you crave. Turn the matter as we may, there is 
 selfishness as well as presumption in thus building our hopes of 
 another life on the supposed imperfect justice with which the 
 concerns of this life are administered. 
 
 Leaving now this parallel, which I have followed so far only 
 to show that the reasoning which would not be admitted as legit- 
 imate in the ordinary investigations of science must be rejected 
 also in theology, I pass to a more particular examination of the 
 usual arguments for the immortality of the soul, or rather for a 
 future state, inasmuch as hardly one of these arguments has 
 any bearing upon the subject of an endless existence. They 
 are properly divided into the metaphysical and the moral argu- 
 ment, the former being derived from the immaterial or indivis- 
 ible nature of mind or self, while the latter is drawn chiefly from 
 a comparison of the constitution of man with the circumstances 
 in which he is placed at present. In the former, it is urged that 
 death is a very different thing from annihilation, and though the 
 course of nature gives us abundant instances of the one, it fur- 
 nishes not a single example of the other. What we call death 
 is the cessation of the activity of a complex organism or ma- 
 chine, the various parts of which subsequently decay, or are re- 
 solved into their primitive elements ; but not an atom of them is 
 lost, not one particle is annihilated. The carcass of an animal 
 is resolved into its constituent gases and earths, which go, for a 
 time, to increase the stock of inorganic matter, perhaps to be 
 again withdrawn from it, to enter into fresh combinations, and 
 contribute to the support of a new life. Here is no absolute 
 destruction, nothing but the resolution of a compound into its 
 elements, and the formation of new compounds. There is no 
 reason to believe that the quantity of matter in the universe is 
 less by one particle than it was at the creation ; but there is 
 every reason to believe the contrary. Now we have perfect 
 evidence that the mind, the person, what we call self, is an ab- 
 solute unit ; it is even inconceivable that it should be complex, or 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 413 
 
 should consist of parts. What power, then, has death over it ? 
 We claim no more for mind than we do for matter, in maintain- 
 ing that it survives death. Of either it may said, that it " can- 
 not, but by annihilation, die " ; and we have no instance to show 
 that annihilation is possible. 
 
 This reasoning is ingenious and plausible ; but you perceive 
 that its only effect is to refute the skeptical assumption, that life 
 terminates at the grave. It opens the way for a proof from reve- 
 lation or some other source, if any such proof can be found, that 
 life actually continues beyond the grave ; it shows the possibil- 
 ity of such continuance, but not its certainty, not even its proba- 
 bility. For there is this capital distinction between the effects of 
 death upon matter and upon mind. We know that death is not 
 the annihilation of the particles or elements that make up the ma- 
 terial organism, for these remain subject to our observation ; 
 we can see and handle them, and trace them into the new com- 
 pounds of which they go to form a part. But the mind, the 
 man, disappears to mortal vision when the breath has once left 
 the body ; we cannot trace him after the dissolution of the frail 
 tenement that he once inhabited. Beyond the tomb, to our hu- 
 man perceptions, is a blank, is nothingness. No voice has 
 ever broken that awful silence, no form has ever returned from 
 that impenetrable shade, save that of Jesus of Nazareth, and 
 those to whom he spake. While we admit, therefore, the pos- 
 sibility that our friends survive, though we see them not, we must 
 admit, also, that we have no evidence of their existence but from 
 revelation. A similar remark may be made on the analogy that 
 is often proposed between sleep and death. We know that man 
 awakes out of sleep, as we have repeatedly witnessed the fact ; 
 and this shows the possibility of such an awakening hereafter. 
 But we do not know, except from God's revealed word, that he 
 awakes after the sleep of death, for such a resurrection we have 
 never witnessed. 
 
 The metaphysical argument proves nothing, unless we assume 
 that the elements or primary particles of matter, and, generally, 
 all things which are not compounded or made up of parts, are 
 
414 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 essentially indestructible ; that is, that they exist by a necessity 
 of their own nature. Then the time never could have been 
 when they did not exist ; what is indestructible must also be 
 ingenerable, as the possibility of its non-existence at any ante- 
 cedent period, however remote, negatives the supposition of its 
 necessary existence. I adopt, therefore, the conclusion of Mr. 
 Stewart, who says, that " this argument, supposing it were logi- 
 cal, proves too much ; for it concludes as strongly against the 
 possibility of the soul's being created as dissolved ; and, accord- 
 ingly, we find that almost all the ancient philosophers who be- 
 lieved in a future state maintained, also, the doctrine of the soul's 
 preexistence. Nay, some of them seem to have considered the 
 latter point as still better established than the former. In the 
 Phaedon of Plato, in which Socrates is introduced as stating to 
 his friends, immediately before his execution, the proofs of a 
 future state, Cebes, who is one of the speakers in the dialogue, 
 admits that he has been successful in establishing the doctrine of 
 the soul's preexistence, but insists on further proofs of the possi- 
 bility of its surviving the body." 
 
 I may add, that in the most remarkable passage of Cicero's 
 writings referring to this subject, the Dream of Scipio, 
 the same fact is held to prove both the preexistence and the 
 immortality of the soul. The argument, indeed, is translated 
 literally from the Phaedrus of Plato. The shade of Africanus 
 argues thus : Every thing which derives its motion from some- 
 thing else may evidently cease to move and cease to exist ; for 
 the cause of its motion may be withdrawn. On the other hand, 
 that which moves itself, as it does not derive its movement from 
 any thing else, but is the source or origin of its own motion and 
 of the motion of other things, never began to be ; for that which 
 is itself a source and a primal cause has no beginning. So, also, 
 as it moves itself, the cause of its motion can never be with- 
 drawn ; ' for it cannot leave or desert itself. It must, therefore, 
 live and move for ever. Now the body of man is moved by 
 the indwelling soul, which may depart from it, so that the body 
 will cease to move, and will perish ; but that soul moves itself, 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 415 
 
 and, accordingly, it was not created, and it can never cease to 
 be.* 
 
 This is a good specimen of the acute metaphysical reasoning 
 of the ancients ; but as it wholly overlooks the consideration, 
 that a superior being may not only directly move an inferior one, 
 but may give it the power of moving itself for a limited period, 
 just as man fashions and winds up a watch, which will then, in a 
 certain sense, move itself for twenty-four hours, we need not dwell 
 upon it here. The whole scope of the metaphysical argument, 
 if properly carried out, is to prove the necessary existence both 
 of matter and mind through an antecedent eternity, and through 
 the eternity which is to come. 
 
 As I had occasion to remark in the former Course, the prov- 
 ince of human science in regard to objects that exist is strictly 
 limited to that which is and that which has been ; the former 
 being known to us through observation and experiment, the latter 
 through memory and the testimony of others, or through the per- 
 manency of the effects which it has produced. The present and 
 the past constitute our sphere of knowledge ; vainly do we at- 
 tempt to descry the future, except through supernatural illumina- 
 tion. The only exceptions to this rule are the eternal future 
 duration of the Deity, which we immediately deduce from his 
 antecedent eternity as the First Cause, and the probability of 
 certain events, which is founded upon our knowledge of the 
 uniformity of his modes of operation, and of the fact that infinite 
 wisdom cannot change. 
 
 The moral argument for a future state seems to me still more 
 vague and unsatisfactory than that which is metaphysical. Under 
 this head are ranked, first, the presumptions arising from u the 
 natural desire of immortality, and the anticipations of futurity in- 
 spired by A,ope";f the presumptions, I say, for these feelings 
 surely cannot be considered as affording any positive proof of 
 
 * This is a paraphrase rather than a translation ; the original may be 
 found in Plato, Phadrus, 51-53, and in Cicero, Tusc. Disp. I. 23, and 
 Somn. Scip. 8, 9. \ 
 
 f Stewart's Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, p. 385. 
 
416 THE IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 
 
 the reality of that state of existence to which they point. But 
 it is argued, that "whatever desires are evidently implanted in 
 our minds by nature, and are encouraged by the noblest and 
 worthiest principles of our constitution, we may reasonably con- 
 clude, will in due time be gratified under the government of a 
 Being infinite both in power and goodness. "f Now it is obvi- 
 ously difficult for those who have always lived under the light of 
 the Christian revelation to know how strong or how natural these 
 desires are, when they have not been fostered by positive as- 
 surances from a source that we cannot distrust. Our minds have 
 been nurtured, our lives guided, by the well-founded hopes which 
 Christianity affords ; and certainly it would be a rude and painful 
 shock to learn that these hopes were vain. But go back to the 
 times antecedent to the birth of our Saviour, and ask how many 
 of the common people, under the Grecian and Roman common- 
 wealths, were accustomed to cherish the desire of an existence 
 beyond the grave. I do not mean to imply, that they had no 
 such hope or expectation. Unquestionably, life is sweet, with 
 all its vexations, sufferings, and cares ; and most persons shrink 
 from the termination of it, if for no other reason, from an unwil- 
 lingness to have the projects of the hour cut short, to leave 
 the plough in the furrow, the book half read, or the house half 
 finished. It is not so much that they wish for immortality, as 
 that they fear death ; and it is not because death, if painless, is in 
 itself so terrible, as that at no one time are they just ready for it. 
 Accordingly, with the pagan world, a future state was but a 
 shadowy counterpart, a dream-like continuance, of their earthly 
 life, a prolongation in the dusky realms of Pluto of its exer- 
 cises, its amusements, and its cares. In the Elysian fields, the 
 warrior still bore his armour and brandished his javelin, the 
 huntsman pursued the flying game, " the hunter and the deer a 
 shade," the poet-priest sang to his harp, and the athletes wrestled 
 in the arena. " Whatever delight, when alive, they had in 
 chariots and arms, whatever pleasure in keeping fine horses, the 
 
 * Stewart's Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, p. 389. 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 417 
 
 same tastes continue with them after their bodies have been con- 
 signed to the earth."* And still they are vexed with a dim 
 notion of the shadowy and unsubstantial character of these enjoy- 
 ments of the dead. The shade of the warrior, when questioned 
 on the subject, impatiently declares, that he would rather be a 
 poor slave on the earth than a monarch over all the spectres 
 of the departed, f 
 
 " The weariest and most loathed worldly life, 
 That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death." 
 
 In these pictures, which certainly represent the faith of the 
 most refined nations of pagan antiquity, I see a love of life, or a 
 dread of death, but no proper desire for a future state of endless 
 being. If a few philosophers and moralists discarded these vain 
 and unworthy conceptions of futurity, they had nothing to substi- 
 tute for them but some speculations, almost equally paltry, about 
 the preexistence and the transmigration of souls. It may well 
 be doubted, therefore, whether any such desire as is here made 
 the basis of an argument for immortality, is natural to man ; 
 that is, whether it is a primitive impulse, an original and universal 
 principle in our constitution, so that it would be an impeachment 
 of Divine wisdom to suppose that it was implanted in us without 
 a purpose, or of Divine goodness to believe that it is not to be 
 gratified. 
 
 " If life," says Dr. Brown, " be pleasing, and even though 
 there were no existence beyond the grave, life might still, by 
 
 * Quae gratia currum 
 Armorumque fuit vivis, quae cura nitentes 
 Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos. 
 
 l. 653-655. 
 
 f Mq &T) ftoi Qavarov ye trapavSa, 
 
 BovAotpji/ K e-rrdpovpos fotv OijTevepcv oXA<u, 
 *Av8pi Trap* axX^po), <u p.^ /Si'oros TTO\VS to;, 
 H irao-ivyfKVfffo-i Kara(f)6ip.evoicriv dvdffa-civ. 
 
 Odyssey, XI. 489-491. 
 53 
 
418 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 the benevolence of Him who conferred it, have been rendered a 
 source of pleasure, it is not wonderful that we should desire 
 futurity, since futurity is only protracted life. The universal de- 
 sire, then, even if the desire were truly universal, would prove 
 nothing but the goodness of Him who has made the realities 
 or, if not the realities, the hopes of life so pleasing, that the 
 mere loss of what is possessed or hoped appears like a positive 
 evil of the most afflictive kind." " This pleasing hope, this 
 fond desire, this longing after immortality " is the sentiment of a 
 Christian poet, though he has put it into the mouth of a Roman 
 Stoic, who is made to find in it a provocation to suicide. Not 
 all the desires which are natural to man are intended to be grati- 
 fied, as we are continually hankering after a greater measure of 
 happiness than we actually enjoy. It is enough that this wish, 
 and others of a similar kind, answer a useful purpose by con- 
 stantly stimulating us to action, since life itself would otherwise 
 become vapid and sterile. 
 
 Another branch of the moral argument depends on a compari- 
 son of our intellectual powers, our impulses and conceptions, 
 with the condition in which we are placed in this life,, where cir- 
 cumstances are for ever impeding our efforts, thwarting our am- 
 bition, and baffling our plans. It is urged, that u our faculties 
 are above our condition, and our curiosity is still greater than our 
 faculties can satisfy." The instincts of the lower animals are 
 exactly accommodated to their wants, and to the state in which 
 nature has placed them. They do not appear to be troubled 
 with any desires that they cannot satisfy, or with any fears that 
 extend beyond the safety of their possessions for the moment. 
 But man is restless, curious, and impatient ; his conceptions are 
 vague and vast, his ambition unbounded, and his curiosity insa- 
 tiable. He has the mind of an archangel imprisoned in the car- 
 cass of a worm. It is affirmed, that " if he had no intimations of 
 a future existence, it would have been better for him never to 
 have extended his views beyond this globe and the period of 
 human life, instead of embracing, as at present, a stretch of 
 duration and of space which throws a ridicule on the whole 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 419 
 
 history of human affairs."* We aspire to know the history, 
 not only of the earlier generations of our own race, but of the 
 mutations which the solid globe underwent in those geological 
 periods the remoteness of which can hardly be represented by 
 figures, while to our aching conceptions they seem to lie upon 
 the confines of eternity. Not content with the ability to predict 
 the motions and future positions of the heavenly bodies, we tor- 
 ment ourselves with unanswerable questions as to the beings who 
 inhabit them, or the purpose which they serve in the grand 
 scheme of the universe, or the order and law under which they 
 were successively created. The mind returns from these sub- 
 lime and far-reaching inquiries, to find itself tied to a body which 
 is limited, in comparison, to a speck of earth and a moment of 
 duration. The wants of this body afflict it with a multitude of 
 petty cares, and the ordinary business of life, referring mostly to 
 these wants, seems vexatious and contemptible. It is said that 
 the disproportion here is so vast, that it cannot be reconciled 
 with the notions we have formed of the attributes of the Creator 
 and Governor of the universe, except by regarding it as an inti- 
 mation of a future and higher state of existence, in which this 
 curiosity and these aspirations shall be fully satisfied. 
 
 I am far from wishing to lessen the force, or take away the 
 applicability, of such elevated considerations as these. Those 
 whose belief in a future life rests entirely upon the teachings of 
 the author of Christianity may still dwell upon them with satis- 
 faction and pleasure, as they open new views of the purposes 
 to which the existence beyond the tomb may be subservient. 
 Speculations upon the nature of our employments in another 
 stage of being, and upon the accession to our knowledge that will 
 instantly take place when we are released from the incumbrance 
 of the flesh, though they may not often command our unhesitat- 
 ing assent, will often afford scope for profitable meditation. But 
 their use is secondary ; they tend to fortify and render inviting 
 the faith which was first conceived upon other grounds. Such a 
 
 * 
 
 * Stewart's Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, p. 379. 
 
420 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 mode of reasoning as is here adopted, if reasoning it can be call- 
 ed, would hardly occur to any one who had not been educated in 
 the Christian belief from infancy, nor to such a one, even, if his 
 life had not been devoted chiefly to scientific investigations and 
 speculative pursuits. Vastly the larger portion of the Christian 
 world, even at the present day, can with difficulty be persuaded 
 to use even those means of knowledge which are opened to 
 them ; those cannot complain of the barriers which limit the 
 progress of science, who do not know where these barriers are 
 placed, who have not gone over the hundredth part of the field 
 which tbey circumscribe. There is more danger that men will 
 attach undue importance to the petty cares and transitory inter- 
 ests of this world, than that they will be led to slight and despise 
 them because their intellects can traverse creation, and their curi- 
 osity aspires to number the stars in the heavens. 
 
 The grand openings which philosophy and science afford into 
 the scheme of God's universe seem intended, not so much to 
 warn us of a future state to which we are destined, as to counter- 
 act the influence of those passions and appetites which relate only 
 to the petty objects that are immediately before us, and to the 
 concerns of the moment. They answer a useful purpose, then, 
 in the economy of this life, and have no visible necessary refer- 
 ence to that which is to come. If the only purpose of reason 
 were to take the place of instinct in guiding us to the proper 
 mode of satisfying our bodily wants, then, indeed, we might ex- 
 pect that curiosity would be limited to those things which imme- 
 diately affect our temporal well-being. But if a moral end is 
 superadded, if self-improvement is desirable for its own sake and 
 in any stage of being, then there is an obvious utility in rendering 
 our curiosity boundless, so that the efforts and investigations to 
 which it leads may tend to the unceasing, the indefinite, develop- 
 ment of our faculties. To what other purposes in God's provi- 
 dence this insatiable thirst for knowledge may be subservient, we 
 do not know ; it is enough for us to see that it is useful here, 
 that it enlarges the sphere of our enjoyments, sustains our activ- 
 ity, and dignifies our life. Surely we are not driven to the sup- 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 421 
 
 position of another, an untried, state of existence, in order to 
 find any benevolent purpose, or any useful result, in causing man 
 to thirst after knowledge as for hidden treasure. 
 
 I need not dwell long upon the only remaining branch of the 
 moral argument, the discordance between our moral judgments 
 and feelings and the course of human affairs, as much of what 
 was necessary to be said upon this point has been anticipated. 
 I do not believe that the moral government of this world stands 
 in need of an apology, or that we must imagine another world in 
 which its errors may be corrected and its imperfections supplied. 
 Do not let us make the same mistake as the Mahometans, and 
 believe in the immortality of the soul, only because we crave a 
 sensual paradise, and cannot find one here below. You say, 
 that the course of human affairs often does not coincide with 
 your ideas of absolute right ; that is, the good often seem un- 
 happy, and the wicked triumphant. To remedy these evils, you 
 would create an Elysium in which there should be no temptation, 
 no suffering, where there would be no call for benevolence, no 
 opportunity for self-sacrifice, and where, consequently, virtue 
 would be a mere abstract conception, never a reality. If such 
 a state be preferable to the one in which we live, why were we 
 not placed in it from the beginning ? why not admitted at once 
 to the joys of heaven, without carrying thither any stains from 
 earth ? By applying the doctrine of a future life only as a solu- 
 tion of the problem respecting the origin of evil, we do not de- 
 stroy the difficulty ; we only push it a little farther off. And, 
 without this doctrine, the presence of apparent evil in this life 
 will not seem inexplicable to those who can see the whole force 
 of our Saviour's allusion to the righteousness which hath its re- 
 ward, or who can penetrate the meaning of his solemn declara- 
 tion, " They shall not say, Lo here ! or Lo there ! for behold, 
 the kingdom of God is within you." 
 
 I do not fear lest these observations should seem opposed 
 even to that belief in the immortality of the soul which is founded 
 wholly upon revelat^m. It is certainly conceivable, that the same 
 scheme of government, which is begun here, should be continued 
 
422 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 hereafter, when, though its essential features remain unchanged, 
 its excellence shall be more apparent. We can conceive that 
 the two periods of human existence should stand related to each 
 other as childhood to mature age, the former being a preparation 
 for the latter, and still so justly and benevolently constituted in 
 itself, that, if existence did not extend beyond it, it would yet 
 mirror to our eyes the perfections of the Infinite One. The 
 commands of conscience, though of absolute obligation, are too 
 frequently so weak as to lose their supremacy over the passions. 
 Nothing could tend so effectually to increase their hold upon our 
 attention, and to strengthen their influence, as the assured belief 
 that the consequences of obeying or neglecting them will extend, 
 and will be recognized by us, through an endless futurity. The 
 din and tumult of earthly passions, the force of earthly appetites, 
 which now obscure or drown their utterance, through infinite ages 
 will be hushed or will have passed away ; and as we have formed 
 ourselves here by respecting or contemning their authority, so 
 shall we continue for ever. The incalculable value of a revela- 
 tion which should fully establish this great truth cannot be more 
 impressively set forth than in the few words with which Paley 
 closes his view of the importance of Christianity. 
 
 " Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than the 
 following, c The hour is coming, in the which all that are in 
 the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; they that 
 have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have 
 done evil unto the resurrection of damnation,' he had pro- 
 nounced a message of inestimable importance, and well worthy 
 of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which 
 his mission was introduced and attested ; a message in which the 
 wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, 
 and rest to their inquiries. It is idle to say, that a future state 
 had been discovered already ; it had been discovered as the Co- 
 pernican system was ; it was one guess among many. He 
 alone discovers who proves ; and no man can prove this point, 
 but the preacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes 
 from God." 
 
LECTURE XI. 
 
 THE RELATION OF NATURAL TO REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 THE object of my last Lecture was to show, that the doctrine 
 of a future life, and, for yet stronger reasons, that of the absolute 
 immortality of the soul, cannot be made out from the light of na- 
 ture alone, or by the unassisted intellect of man. Questions of 
 fact come within the range of human investigation only when they 
 relate to the present or the past ; the future is for us a sealed 
 book, except so far as we can determine what may be from what 
 has been, or can know directly that what always has been always 
 must be. We believe that fire will burn the flesh, and thus cause 
 pain, because we have observed that it has done so ; but the fact 
 that man has lived only establishes a presumption that he will 
 continue to live as he has done, that is, in this stage of ex- 
 istence, subject to our powers of observation. When this exist- 
 ence is interrupted by death, and he is wholly removed from 
 our sight and observation, we have no antecedent fact on which 
 to found even a presumption that he continues to live, though in 
 a different state of being ; for, apart from revelation, we have 
 never known the grave to give up its dead, we have had no 
 experience of this other state of being. We perceive, then, 
 that a future life is possible, but we have no natural grounds for 
 believing that it is either probable or improbable. 
 
 I remarked, therefore, that the doctrine of a future life stands 
 on the same basis with the opinion, that the other planets of our 
 system are inhabited by beings like ourselves ; it is a mere con- 
 
424 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 jecture, which never has been, and never can be, either proved 
 or disproved. It lies beyond the sphere of human knowledge ; 
 there is no evidence of it in nature, and the only proof of which 
 it is susceptible must be supernatural. If we pass to a particu- 
 lar examination of the several analogies and presumptions which 
 have been offered, from the light of nature, in favor of either 
 of these opinions, we shall find either that they prove too much, 
 or that they are wholly vague and unsatisfactory, answering 
 rather as topics of declamation than as scientific grounds of be- 
 lief. Thus, the analogy between birth and death affords just as 
 conclusive evidence of the immortality of the whole animate cre- 
 ation as of that of man ; since all members both of the animal 
 and vegetable kingdoms have equally undergone transformations, 
 or passed from one stage of being to another and quite a dif- 
 ferent one. The argument from the essential unity of our per- 
 sonal being, and from the fact that death is dissolution, not 
 annihilation, proves the preexistence, quite as strongly as the 
 future existence, of the soul, affords not even a presumption 
 that mind is any more immortal than the ultimate particles of 
 matter, and in fact proves nothing in regard to either, unless 
 we make the perfectly baseless assumption, that every absolute 
 unit is essentially indestructible and ingenerable. The general 
 desire for immortality, on which so much stress has been laid, 
 I attempted to show, from an examination of the opinions of 
 the ancients upon the subject, was rather a love of this life and 
 a desire for its prolongation, than any natural wish for a state 
 of retribution and endless existence beyond the grave. To as- 
 sume, as is often done, that another life is necessary in order to 
 make up for the imperfections and redress the injustice which 
 are apparent here, is to assert that the Deity does not govern 
 this world in righteousness, and therefore to afford very insecure 
 grounds for the hope that he has provided another, whicji he 
 will administer on different principles. That our curiosity is 
 insatiable, and our aspirations after knowledge are so large, that, 
 in comparison with them, the ordinary business of this life seems 
 vexatious, and the sphere of our present existence contemptible, 
 
NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 425 
 
 is a fact of immense importance for the moral education of man, 
 and thus answers so useful a purpose here, that it affords no clear 
 indication of what is to be hereafter. 
 
 Christianity, then, is not a mere republication of the doctrines 
 of Natural Religion. Apart from its precepts, and its communica- 
 tion of abstract truth as to the relations which connect man with 
 the Deity, it has revealed to the world a fact of momentous 
 interest, of which the human intellect alone never could obtain 
 any satisfactory assurance, and which is better calculated than 
 any other to exert a salutary influence on the life and character, 
 Our conscious being, our hopes, and the consequences of our 
 actions, do not terminate at the grave, but extend onward into a 
 boundless futurity ; this is now the assured belief of almost the 
 whole civilized world. Most persons no more think of seriously 
 questioning it than they do of doubting the fact of their present 
 existence. Whence came this general assent, this unquestioning 
 faith ? Contrast it with the dim conceptions and universal uncer- 
 tainty upon the subject which prevailed before the promulgation 
 of Christianity, and thus recognize the folly of those who, " upon 
 pretence of the sufficiency of the light of nature, avowedly reject 
 all revelation, as in its very notion incredible, and what must be 
 fictitious." 
 
 In passing to a consideration of this topic, the connection 
 between Natural and Revealed Religion, the importance of the 
 latter, and the nature of the evidence to be required in its sup^ 
 port, our first inquiry must be, What presumptions does the 
 light of nature afford as to the probable character and purport of 
 an immediate revelation from God, supposing one to be made ? 
 As the two schemes come from the same Author, the one being 
 revealed to us through the original^ constitution of our faculties, 
 and the other by subsequent and special communication, we must 
 expect that they will be coincident in design, or that they will 
 work to the same end by the use of similar means. The law 
 which is directly promulgated cannot contradict, disprove, or 
 supersede the law wjnch is written on the heart and indicated by 
 the course of nature ; since the purposes of the Almighty can- 
 
 54 
 
426 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 not change. It may enlarge the scope of the natural law, con- 
 firm its claims, and strengthen it by additional sanctions and mo- 
 tives to obedience. It may continue and complete, but cannot 
 abrogate, the system which is founded on human nature itself, and 
 guarded by so many wise arrangements in the outward universe. 
 
 Taking Christianity as the type of revelation, inasmuch as its 
 claims are confessedly paramount to all others, we find that all 
 these conditions are fulfilled. Its object is the same, the 
 moral and religious education of man, the progress of the indi- 
 vidual soul, self-attained, in purity and holiness. It reaffirms the 
 moral law, which we have seen embodied in Natural Religion, in 
 its whole extent, and sanctions the severity and absoluteness of 
 its demands. Its precepts have regard not so much to outward 
 acts, as to the disposition of mind from which such acts proceed, 
 and to the secret purposes of the heart. It declares that the 
 great purpose of creation is a moral one, that all physical 
 arrangements and events, as we are accustomed to call them, 
 have for their leading object to promote the growth of the relig- 
 ious element in man, and to introduce the reign of justice, purity, 
 and love, of truth and righteousness, upon earth. It distinctly 
 teaches the doctrine of God in nature, and of an ever-watchful 
 Providence, referring all events, even the fall of a sparrow and 
 the clothing of the lilies of the field, to the direct exertion of 
 Almighty power. And lest man, in the infirmity of his vision or 
 the extent of his prejudices, should fail to recognize the high 
 moral purpose to which such events are subservient, their or- 
 dinary sequence is interrupted for his instruction. The winds 
 and the sea, the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, the 
 very issues of life and death, are made immediately obedient to 
 the voice of the great Teacher and Exemplar of mercy, holiness, 
 and truth. A miracle, then, is not so much a suspension of the 
 laws of nature, as a more distinct announcement of the object for 
 which those laws are observed. It does not evince a change of 
 purpose on the part of their Author, but makes that original pur- 
 pose more directly evident to man, through a momentary but 
 striking change in the mode of operation. It is a condescension 
 
NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 427 
 
 to human infirmity, an opening of the eyes of the blind, not an 
 alteration in the laws of sight, or in the purposes of God. 
 
 This is the only idea that we can form of Revealed Religion, the 
 only conception of it that is possible, since revelation is itself a 
 miracle. It is the teaching of Providence, not altered in its pur- 
 port, but rendered more distinct and obvious to human percep- 
 tion ; the law proclaimed on Sinai is but an additional announce- 
 ment of the law within the breast, though made more clear and 
 impressive, and so more likely to obtain obedience. Knowing 
 the weakness of human nature and the goodness of God, a reve- 
 lation, a miracle, was precisely what man had reason to expect ; 
 and this would be true, though the revealed doctrine neither 
 made any addition to the list of our duties, nor communicated 
 any fact of such priceless value as that of an existence after 
 death. Man had become so hardened, his passions had ob- 
 tained so much the mastery over him, sluggishness and ignorance 
 had so imbruted his being, that the Divine marks upon his soul 
 were nearly effaced. The law of God, though knowable, was 
 not known by him. What he needed, then, was not the an- 
 nouncement of a new truth, or the promulgation of an additional 
 law, but some startling event to remind him of his origin, the 
 purpose of his being, and his duty. The old law needed to be 
 written in characters of flame, dazzling his outward vision, before 
 it could sufficiently command his attention and subdue his selfish- 
 ness. Knowledge was not difficult to be had, or unattainable, 
 but obedience was not easy ; ignorance and habit had confirmed 
 the dominion of sin. 
 
 But it is true only in one sense, and that not the most obvious 
 one, that Revelation has added but little to the doctrines and pre- 
 cepts of Natural Religion, save the great truth of the immortality 
 of the soul. We are accustomed to speak of Natural Religion as 
 if it were a distinct system of faith, which actually existed and 
 was recognized by men before Christianity was born, while it is 
 still believed and practised by many who do not admit the evi- 
 dence of any supernatural revelation. But it is not so. What 
 we call Natural Religion, and what I have endeavoured to exhibit 
 
428 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 as such in these Lectures, never did exist before the promulga- 
 tion of Christianity, or without the aid of a previous revelation, 
 not even a faint semblance of it ; it extends vastly beyond the 
 farthest point which the unassisted intellect of those early ages, 
 or of any subsequent age, ever attained. What we call Natural 
 Religion never obtained as a distinct system of belief, generally 
 avowed and acted upon by large bodies of men, in any country 
 or in any age. It is not, and it never was, a rival of Christianity, 
 or something which will enable mankind to do without Chris- 
 tianity ; there is no such thing as a half-way house to heaven. 
 What goes by the name of Natural Religion is nearly as much the 
 direct gift of revelation to man, as the knowledge of a future life 
 itself. Instead of seeking to eliminate the supernatural element 
 in religion, and to merge Revelation in the natural system, truth 
 requires us to merge the natural system in the revealed, and to 
 look upon the whole as the fruit of immediate communication 
 from heaven. At the time of our Saviour's appearance upon 
 earth, the question for his hearers was not between the doctrine 
 that he taught and natural religion, but between that doctrine and 
 Judaism, or polytheism, or some other of the myriad forms of 
 positive religion, or the so-called philosophical unbelief. Just so, 
 at the present day, we have to choose, not between Christianity 
 and Natural Religion, for it is impossible to rest there, but 
 between Christianity and utter skepticism, or Mohammedanism, 
 or gross and vulgar idolatry. This is the case so far as opinion, 
 or belief, is concerned ; and the conduct of men is a practical 
 confirmation of this view. None but avowed skeptics as to all 
 religion openly reject Christianity, because they cannot resist the 
 testimony in its favor ; but they fall back upon an avowal of it in 
 word, and a denial of it in deed. So it must always be. 
 
 But these assertions need explanation and proof, and I pro- 
 ceed to give them. I understand by Natural Religion, according 
 to the view taken in these Lectures, a compliance with the moral 
 law in its full extent and purity, because it is God's command, 
 or through veneration for the Divine character, together with a 
 recognition of his presence and constant agency in the universe, 
 
NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 429 
 
 and of his immediate government of all events, both physical 
 and moral, with a view to the moral and religious improvement 
 of mankind. Now what is knowable is to be clearly distinguished 
 from what is actually known. The discovery of a truth is not the 
 same thing with finding the evidence of that truth after the dis- 
 covery has been made ; the latter is always much the easier task 
 of the two ; it is the work of an inferior understanding. Strictly 
 speaking, all science, both that which is actually possessed by 
 civilized nations in their present state of culture, and all that is 
 attainable by their future efforts, is natural to man ; it was origi- 
 nally placed within reach of the human faculties, and was de- 
 signed to reward study and investigation. What is called Natural 
 Religion is natural to man in no other sense than as a full knowl- 
 edge of the Principia of Newton is natural to the understanding 
 of every child ; that is, when the propositions are placed before 
 him with their evidence, and brought within his comprehension, 
 he immediately recognizes their truth and sufficiency. Could 
 he, therefore, have discovered them for himself, without the aid 
 of a teacher ? The Saviour came to make known the will of 
 his Father, and to guide us into all truth ; shall we say that his 
 coming and his instructions were unnecessary, because the truth, 
 when once revealed by him, shines by its own light, and needs 
 not the aid of a miracle for its confirmation ? 
 
 These considerations are applicable, not only to the first truths 
 of religion, in the proper sense of that term, but to the first 
 principles of ethics, when viewed abstractly, or without refer- 
 ence to the fact that they are enforced by the Divine command. 
 Because moral laws, when first presented to the reason, are 
 immediately recognized as necessary and absolute truths, binding 
 upon us from their own nature, of intrinsic obligation, and prov- 
 ing themselves, it does not follow that the unassisted reason 
 would have evolved them in our consciousness in all their dis- 
 tinctness and purity. A necessary truth is not necessarily an 
 axiomatic truth, perceived, recognized, and acted upon from the 
 dawn of our intellectual being, before our instruction by others 
 begins. For consider the parallel case of pure mathematics. 
 
430 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 The whole of mathematical science is necessary truth ; all the 
 propositions of the geometer and the algebraist can be reduced, 
 in form at least, to a proposition of identity, or an equation, 
 to the assertion that a=a. Do we say, then, that the child 
 needs no instruction in this branch of knowledge, that he 
 may be left to complete the task, which even Pascal only com- 
 menced, of making all the discoveries of Euclid over again, and 
 working out the whole of a Mecanique Celeste by himself, with- 
 out instruction or guidance ? No ; he is abandoned to his own 
 efforts only when he has reached the term of other men's knowl- 
 edge. And so it is in morals. The human race, in this respect, 
 was a dull and fro ward child, stumbling at the very threshold, 
 spelling out with difficulty the first elements of knowledge, till a 
 Teacher appeared who unclasped the book containing the whole 
 science, and held up the ideal of virtue and holiness to the as- 
 tonished gaze of the world ; the ideal, do I say ? rather the 
 living example, embodied holiness, purity, and truth. But the 
 lesson was too much for the comprehension of that age ; and 
 though the civilized world has been studying it ever since, it 
 has not yet climbed to the height of that great argument. " The 
 light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." 
 What is called Natural Religion is rather the natural evidence, 
 or the proof from the light of nature, of the greater part of Re- 
 vealed Religion. It did not exist before Revelation, nor has it 
 ever existed since, as a separate system of belief. Instead of 
 evincing, by the largeness of its scope and the excellence of its 
 doctrine, that a revelation was unnecessary, it rather shows the 
 breadth and solidity of the foundation on which Christianity rests, 
 in that so large a portion of it, when once revealed, that is, dis- 
 covered, or made known, is found to be in harmony with the 
 other works of God, and so demonstrable by external or internal 
 evidence, without reference to the extraordinary proofs that at- 
 tended its promulgation. We may admit, then, with Bishop But- 
 ler, that " it is certain no revelation would have been given, had 
 the light of nature been sufficient in such a sense as to render one 
 not wanting and useless. But no man, in seriousness and simplicity 
 
NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 431 
 
 of mind, can possibly think it so, who considers the state of re- 
 ligion in the heathen world before Revelation, and its present state 
 in those places which have borrowed no light from it ; particu- 
 larly the doubtfulness of some of the greatest men concerning 
 things of the utmost importance, as well as the natural inattention 
 and ignorance of mankind in general. It is impossible to say 
 who would have been able to reason out that whole system, 
 which we call Natural Religion, in its genuine simplicity, clear of 
 superstition ; but there is certainly no ground to affirm that the 
 generality could. If they could, there is no sort of probability 
 that they would. Admitting there were, they would highly want 
 a standing admonition to remind them of it and inculcate it upon 
 them." 
 
 In arguing, that, in point of fact, we are indebted to Chris- 
 tianity for nearly all that is excellent in Natural Religion, it is not 
 necessary to maintain that the human understanding could not, by 
 any possibility, in any future time, work out a natural system of 
 religious belief as clear and satisfactory as this. It is enough to 
 urge, that the power to recognize and demonstrate a truth, after 
 it has once been made known to us, is wholly different from, and 
 usually much inferior to, the capacity of first discovering that 
 truth ; and then to notice the fact, that the great truths of Natural 
 Religion were not known and acknowledged at the time of the 
 coming of the Saviour. A tyro in chemistry can test by ex- 
 periment the law of definite proportions ; but the discovery of 
 that law, which had so long escaped the researches of the ana- 
 lyst, was due to the sagacity and penetration of one of the most 
 philosophical minds of the age. The systems with which Chris- 
 tianity had to contend at its origin, and most of those which have 
 opposed its progress since, were not rationalistic or philosophical 
 in character, cold and meagre schemes of pure theism and rigid 
 morality ; they were positive, complex, and ceremonial institu- 
 tions of polytheism and mythology for the multitude, and vague 
 speculation or blank skepticism for the thinking few. Pure doc- 
 trine on isolated pomts of morality and religious belief can be 
 gleaned from the writings of the ancient philosophers ; but we 
 
432 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 find no traces of a system or general theory upon the subject, 
 which does not combine with such doctrine a large proportion of 
 what is puerile, inconsistent, and untrue in opinion, as well as 
 immoral and degrading in practice. Christianity has had scarcely 
 less influence upon the opinions of its avowed opponents than of 
 its friends. Within a century or two after its origin, a striking 
 change became apparent in the tone of pagan speculation in 
 those countries where the new religion had been preached ; the 
 breadth and purity of its doctrine had affected, as it were, the 
 moral atmosphere, and many inhaled some measure of its clear- 
 ness and truth, who were perhaps ignorant of the source whence 
 they came. It is hardly too much to say, that traces of this 
 silent and indirect influence may be discerned even in the writ- 
 ings of Plutarch and Seneca, who were very nearly contempo- 
 rary with the founder of Christianity, though they may never 
 have heard his name. Three centuries later, in the works, as 
 well as the character and conduct, of Julian, the apostate empe- 
 ror, the irresistible directing power of that religion which he 
 repudiated is strikingly manifest. He could not wholly put off 
 the virtues or discard the ideas which he had learned from Chris- 
 tianity, even when his fickle and vainglorious spirit had carried 
 him back to the idolatrous belief of his ancestors. His clemency 
 and moderation, no less than the manner in which he modified 
 and explained away the more extravagant points in the old pagan 
 mythology, showed the effects of the faith which he rejected. 
 
 Christianity was not a mere republication of Natural Religion, 
 but an early publication of truths which are so far natural to man, 
 that though he could gain but very imperfect glimpses of them 
 without the aid of a teacher, yet, when taught, they appear both 
 evident and familiar, so that we can hardly persuade ourselves that 
 they did not form part of the original furniture of the soul. What 
 doctrine, for instance, appears more evident to reason, or better 
 suited to form the groundwork of a religious system, than that of 
 the paternal character of God ? It seems an immediate infer- 
 ence from the belief that he created all things, and that he gov- 
 erns all with constant care and never-failing love. Yet in what 
 
NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 433 
 
 religion, or what scheme of philosophical belief, that existed pre- 
 viously to Christianity, always excepting Judaism, which, for 
 the purposes of this argument, may be considered as merely in- 
 troductory or preparatory to Christianity, was the Deity ever 
 distinctly represented under this most intimate and engaging rela- 
 tion ? I do not say that the epithet of Father was never applied 
 to any of the deities in the complex scheme of Grecian mythol- 
 ogy ; Jupiter was called " the father of men and gods." But this 
 was merely one mode of indicating his supremacy, just as a mod- 
 ern prince is called the father of his people ; the idea was never 
 made the basis of the worship of Olympian Jove, who was him- 
 self represented as the son of Saturn, and as born and nursed in 
 Crete. If ever the lame speculations of a few philosophical 
 minds struggled up to some faint and imperfect conception of the 
 Infinite One, the Creator and Ruler of the heavens and the earth, 
 they dared not add the belief that he watched over his offspring 
 even as an earthly parent careth for his children. The most 
 sublime conception of him which they obtained was the Epicu- 
 rean one, according to which he sits apart from creation, eternal, 
 supremely happy, and totally indifferent to the concerns of earth ; 
 he was to be worshipped, if at all, on account of the excellence 
 of his nature, and not because he did either good or harm to 
 men. Compare this with the Jewish idea of Jehovah, or with the 
 Christian conception of Our Father in heaven. 
 
 In examining the relation of Natural to Revealed Religion, we 
 must distinguish between what has been called the logical and 
 the chronological order of our ideas. Of course, we cannot be 
 convinced of the truth of a revelation until we have proof of the 
 existence of that Being from whom alone a revelation can pro- 
 ceed. We must know, also, that he possesses such attributes as 
 are reconcilable with the idea of his manifestation of himself to 
 men. But this is the order of reason, not of time. Historically 
 speaking, whatever worthy conceptions men possess of the na- 
 ture of the Supreme Being, and the character of his government, 
 were derived from Delation alone. The word of God first 
 makes known the doctrine, which we then verify from the light 
 
 55 
 
434 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 of nature. We have already seen that polytheism is the natural 
 commencement of man's religious faith, just as infancy is neces- 
 sarily antecedent to manhood. It is the natural product of the 
 religious sentiment, when not guided by revelation nor disciplined 
 by mental culture, seeking everywhere for a Deity, and finding 
 one in every forest, stream, or star, or in the unknown cause of 
 every stupendous event in the physical universe. 
 
 " In proportion," says Hume, " as any man's course of life 
 is governed by accident, we always find that he increases in 
 superstition, as may particularly be observed of gamesters and 
 sailors, who, though of all mankind the least capable of serious 
 reflection, abound most in frivolous and superstitious apprehen- 
 sions. All human life, especially before the institution of order 
 and good government, being subject to fortuitous accidents, it is 
 natural that superstition should prevail everywhere in barbarous 
 ages, and put men on the most earnest inquiry concerning those 
 invisible powers who dispose of their happiness or misery. Igno- 
 rant of astronomy and the anatomy of plants and animals, and too 
 little curious to observe the admirable adjustment of final causes, 
 they remain still unacquainted with a First and Supreme Creator, 
 and with that infinitely Perfect Spirit, who alone, by his almighty 
 will, bestowed order on the whole frame of nature. Such a 
 magnificent idea is too big for their narrow conceptions, which 
 can neither observe the beauty of the work, nor comprehend the 
 grandeur of its Author. They suppose their deities, however 
 potent and invisible, to be nothing but a species of human crea- 
 tures, perhaps raised from among mankind, and retaining all 
 human passions and appetites, together with corporeal limbs and 
 organs." 
 
 Accordingly, throughout the night of ages that preceded mod- 
 ern civilization, polytheism was the prevailing faith of mankind, 
 as it is still of those tribes and races upon whom the light of 
 Christianity has not dawned. The classic nations of antiquity 
 erected altars and temples to that crowd of vindictive and ob- 
 scene gods and goddesses, whom all the glories of Grecian poet- 
 ry and art could not ennoble, nor all the refinements of modem 
 
NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 435 
 
 speculation allegorize into decency. Egypt bowed down before 
 its deified dogs, cats, and bulls. The Magians worshipped fire, 
 or divided their homage between Oromasdes and Arimanius, 
 which are but synonymes for the Good Spirit and the Evil One. 
 In India, the dreamy and meditative spirit of the people forged 
 monstrous and incoherent schemes of theology and cosmogony, 
 which can be fitly characterized only in the language of Hume, 
 as u the playful whimsies of monkeys in human shape." In this 
 long and dreary night, one race alone and that by no means 
 the one most distinguished for refinement, learning, or acuteness, 
 upheld the torch of a spiritual faith and a belief in the one true 
 God. The Hebrew theology appears in those remote ages, 
 amid the otherwise universal prevalence of the grossest idolatry, 
 as a miraculous light " streaking the darkness radiantly." I do 
 not need here to insist upon any thing in the literature or the his- 
 tory of this wonderful people which has been called into doubt 
 by the refinements of modern skepticism. I throw overboard 
 for the present to the infidel the book of Genesis, and all the con- 
 tested points in the history of the Jews. I look only to the 
 Psalms, which, as products of the Hebrew mind, of a very high 
 antiquity, whether written by David or not, no unbeliever has 
 ever thought of questioning. Contrast their pure and sublime 
 monotheism with the theogony of Homer and Hesiod, with the 
 popular gods of Egypt and India ; and account for it, if you can, 
 consistently with the laws of the human mind and the history of 
 human progress in civilization, philosophy, and religion, without 
 the aid of immediate inspiration or an antecedent revelation. 
 We may consider the appearance of these sacred poems in 
 order to take nothing for granted which is liable to dispute as 
 a phenomenon in history, with a date as unsettled, if you will, as 
 that of the Iliad and Odyssey, but certainly not more so, and 
 surely of an antiquity not much inferior to that of these two re- 
 nowned products of the Greek intellect. Their genuineness, 
 that is, their exclusively Hebrew origin and character, is as un- 
 questionable as the Greek origin of the two epics that record the 
 wrath of Achilles and the wanderings of Ulysses. To make the 
 
436 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 comparison more particular, take only the nineteenth Psalm, from 
 its sublime exordium, " The heavens declare the glory of God, 
 and the firmament showeth his handy work," down to the pure 
 and refined morality of its close, "Cleanse thou me from se- 
 cret faults ; keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins, 
 let them have no dominion over me ; but let the words of my 
 mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, 
 O Lord, my strength and my redeemer." Compare such con- 
 ceptions of the nature of the Supreme Being, and of the conduct 
 which he requires of his creatures, with the purest and loftiest 
 ideas upon the subject which all pagan antiquity can offer ; and 
 then say if the doctrine of the Psalms can be referred to the un- 
 aided intellect of the Jews at that early period. 
 
 All that we know of the history and character of this strange 
 people is calculated to increase our wonder at the phenomenon. 
 Their intellect was not comparable with that of the Greeks 
 for quickness, sagacity, and refinement ; other Oriental nations 
 equalled, if they did not surpass, them in depth and seriousness 
 of thought. They were feeble in war, and not distinguished in 
 commerce or the arts of peace ; they were ignorant and per- 
 verse, restless and wandering in their inclinations, and prone to 
 idolatry. Whence came their sacred books, their psalmists and 
 their prophets ? Their existence, unless we admit the reality of 
 a special revelation, the fruits of which were for a time confined 
 to this people, is the most inexplicable problem in history. 
 
 It is certain, then, that the earliest profession upon earth of 
 pure doctrine in religion was not the fruit of human speculation and 
 research in the department of what is called Natural Theology. 
 Neither at the period to which their sacred writings belong, nor 
 at any other, was the Jewish intellect capable of proving, frpm 
 the light of nature alone, the dogmas which it held and taught. 
 There are no traces preserved of any attempts made by them in 
 this direction. Theirs was not an active, curious, and investi- 
 gating spirit, for ever pondering over the problems presented by 
 God, man, and the universe. They were mere children in mat- 
 ters of speculation, the holders of a doctrine which they always 
 
NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 437 
 
 very imperfectly comprehended, but which they held with an 
 implicit and unreasoning faith, or cast aside under the force of 
 temptation, but not from a skeptical turn of mind. The tone 
 adopted by their prophets and religious teachers was mandatory 
 and authoritative, not argumentative or philosophical. They as- 
 serted, commanded, or threatened ; they did not stop to prove, 
 for the people were incapable of understanding. The refine- 
 ments of speculation and the subtilties of logic were for a differ- 
 ent race or a subsequent age. The Jews appear throughout 
 their history in a condition of tutelage ; they were led by the 
 hand like children, and never aspired to take the lead for them- 
 selves. They were not an enterprising, not a conquering or a 
 proselyting people ; though impatient of foreign dominion, they 
 did not seek to impose their yoke upon others. Who ever 
 heard of a Jew attempting to make converts to Judaism, or 
 even to give a reason for the faith that was in him, other than 
 that it was the patrimony of his nation, and that it came down 
 from heaven ? With all their stubbornness and perversity, 
 the law and the doctrine which they professed during so many 
 ages modified their whole being and moulded their national 
 character. The religion formed the people, the people were 
 incapable of forming the religion ; it was imparted to them, for 
 they could not create it. Hence the fine remark of Pascal : 
 " I find no reason to doubt the truth of the Hebrew Scripture ; 
 for there is a great difference between a book which an individual 
 makes and throws among a people, and a book which of itself 
 makes a people. We must acknowledge that the book is at least 
 as old as the nation." And again, " This race is remarkable 
 not only for its antiquity ; it is singular also for its duration, for 
 it has come down even to the present day. While the nations 
 of Greece and Italy, Sparta, Athens, and Rome, which began 
 long afterwards, ended long ago, these alone continue to exist ; 
 and in spite of the efforts of so many powerful monarchs, who 
 have a hundred times undertaken to destroy them, as history 
 testifies, and as it is easy to believe from the natural course of 
 events, they have be*fen preserved, a separate and peculiar people, 
 
438 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 through the long lapse of ages ; coming down from the earliest 
 period to the latest, their history comprises within itself all other 
 histories." 
 
 I have dwelt thus long upon the characteristics of this re- 
 markable race, because we find in them the single instance which 
 human history affords of a people professedly formed and guided 
 from its origin by special revelation, while all the other nations 
 of the earth have attempted to find their way by the light of na- 
 ture. Their history, also, is specially interesting to us ; for, as 
 Christians, we are the spiritual offspring of the Jews, though 
 Christian nations have been sorely reluctant to acknowledge the 
 fact. Ours, also, are Moses and the prophets, ours are Samuel 
 and David, Isaiah and Ezekiel. The light in the midst of which 
 we live is but a rekindling and revivifying of that which appeared 
 to the great Hebrew lawgiver in the burning bush, and which 
 shone from the top of Sinai ; and though the brightness of the 
 former is lost in the glory of the latter dispensation, our conduct 
 is still regulated by the decalogue which formed the heart of the 
 Hebrew law. This is striking evidence of the original purity and 
 excellence of that law ; it has stood the test of three thousand 
 years. Skepticism and wickedness, the rivalry of false religions 
 and the refinements of a vain philosophy, have v not prevailed 
 against it. Of what other scheme of ethical and religious doc- 
 trine, having its origin either in Egypt, India, Greece, or Rome, 
 can the like be said, with the addition that it can stand the scru- 
 tiny of this skeptical and curious age with all its advantages of 
 learning and civilization ? What other system of popular belief, 
 held and practised for centuries by a whole nation, and thus 
 clearly distinguishable from the speculations of an individual, and 
 even from the dogmas of a sect, has lived so long and triumphs 
 still ? 
 
 We have the Jews among us yet, a distinct race, though they 
 are no longer a separate nation ; for the last few centuries of their 
 history, they have been the money-changers and the peddlers of 
 the civilized world. How has the glory departed from Zion, 
 and the sceptre from Judah ! But they are the same people 
 
NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 439 
 
 still, alike restless in temperament and obstinate in opinion, as of 
 old. We can see in them all the leading characteristics of their 
 ancestors, a stiff-necked race, who murmured even when the 
 heavens were opened to them, and worshipped the golden calf, 
 even at the foot of the mount whence the God of their fathers 
 was speaking to them in thunder. We can judge how likely it 
 is that such a people should have invented, or discovered by the 
 exercise of their own reason, the purest system of morality and 
 religion that the world had ever known before the promulgation 
 of Christianity, and have held to it for centuries, amid national 
 distress and subjugation, and the sufferings of exile, while around 
 them the most enlightened nations of the earth were sunk in the 
 grossest idolatry. To the mere student of social and political 
 science, who looks at history without reference to its bearing 
 upon the great topic of God's moral government of mankind, the 
 Jews are a mysterious race, and their fortunes are inexplicable. 
 Their history is the strangest of any in the annals of the world. 
 
 I have said that the Jews received like children a faith which 
 they imperfectly comprehended, and to which, consequently, in 
 the earlier period, they often faltered in their allegiance. A 
 light from heaven shone about them, and they walked in the 
 midst of it, the figures of their lawgivers and prophets appear- 
 ing glorified in that supernatural splendor; but the light which 
 should have been in them was darkness. They could not 
 have discovered, they could not prove, they could hardly un- 
 derstand, the pure and lofty doctrines which they professed. 
 We are too apt to forget that far the greater part of mankind, 
 including the bulk even of civilized nations, receive their relig- 
 ious system in the same manner. Even at the present day, in 
 enlightened and Christian countries, where curiosity is eager 
 and speculation is rife, men do not study out their religion from 
 the light of nature ; they are taught it ; they receive it from 
 their fathers' hands, and at their mothers' knees. So it must 
 always be with^a system of faith that prevails among a whole 
 people, as distinguished from the speculative dogmas or pecu- 
 liarities of opinion which are the property of a few studious and 
 
440 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 inquiring minds. If we except the instances of conversion in 
 mature years from one faith to another, which are so few in num- 
 ber as to be insignificant, it may be said that religious belief is 
 always received as a revelation, a traditional or historical one, 
 it is true, but never as a natural science. Observe, however, 
 that I am now speaking only of those broad features which dis- 
 tinguish one religion from another, and not of the minor points of 
 doctrine which divide sects and individuals ; I refer to Chris- 
 tianity as distinguished from Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or 
 gross idolatry. 
 
 The faith which is thus originally implanted in the soul may be 
 modified, enlarged, confirmed, or shaken off by the fruits of sub- 
 sequent inquiry and reflection. But these later studies never 
 begin at the original starting-point of human investigation ; we 
 never come to them without bias ; we cannot wholly discharge 
 from our minds the results of early instruction. We do not pro- 
 ceed from Natural Religion to Revealed, from deism to Chris- 
 tianity, though this is the order of reason and logic in the ab- 
 stract consideration of the subject ; but in the order of time, or 
 the natural succession, we proceed from Christianity to the study 
 of Natural Religion ; that is, after the spirit of curiosity, and 
 perhaps of doubt, is excited, we endeavour to find what evidence 
 the light of nature affords as to the truth of those doctrines in 
 which we have been instructed from the beginning, u even as 
 they delivered them unto us which from the beginning were eye- 
 witnesses and ministers of the word." This evidence, for the 
 whole of the doctrine to which such a test can be applied, is 
 found to be abundant and satisfactory ; the light from God's 
 word, and that which comes from his works and ways in the 
 material and moral universe, are found to harmonize and mingle 
 into one. So sure is the testimony from the latter source, that 
 these doctrines are seen to be capable of standing by themselves, 
 and need not to be corroborated by revelation. The deist sub- 
 sequently unites them into what is called the religion of nature, 
 and then pretends that revelation cannot be true because it was 
 not needed, since these doctrines are sufficient for life and prac- 
 
NATURAL BELIGION AND REVELATION. 441 
 
 tice ; in his language, all that is essential in Christianity is as old 
 as the creation. It may be demonstrated, he affirms, by human 
 reason ; what need, therefore, is there of a miracle to support it ? 
 Just as reasonably might he pretend, because a school-boy can 
 now demonstrate a proposition which it cost a Newton years of 
 anxious and patient thought to discover, that the author of the 
 Principia did nothing for the advancement of science, or to in- 
 crease our knowledge of the mechanism of the universe. He 
 finds religion in nature only because Christianity has taught him 
 where to look for it. The proof of this is, that the greatest phi- 
 losophers and the best men of heathen antiquity anxiously strove 
 to discover these truths, which now seem to us so familiar and so 
 cogent, but were not able. " For I tell you, that many prophets 
 and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and 
 have not seen them ; and to hear those things which ye hear, and 
 have not heard them." 
 
 It is just as true, then, that Revelation depends upon Natural 
 Religion, as it is that Natural Religion depends upon Revelation ; 
 for in its full breadth, purity, and excellence, it never has existed 
 without a Revelation, and we have no good reason to believe that 
 it ever would have arisen independently of such aid, notwith- 
 standing the clearness of its proofs, as they shine to our eyes 
 under the reflected light of Christianity. The one is not so 
 much a complement of the other, or a substitute for it, as a proof 
 and a corroboration of that other. They are not so much parts 
 of one whole, as different modes of looking at the same truth, 
 though from one point of view we see more than from the other. 
 Call it sunlight or moonlight, the illumination still comes orig- 
 inally from the same fountain of light in the heavens. The doc- 
 trine, that all things are moved directly by the finger of God, who 
 governs all events, both in the material and the moral universe, 
 with a mora^ purpose, rests, as we have seen, upon sufficient 
 evidence, when examined by the light of nature alone ; but will 
 any one say, that your minds were not prepared for the recep- 
 tion of this truth by your previously acquired belief, that the pow- 
 ers and agencies of nature, as they are termed, were subject to 
 
 56 
 
442 NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 
 
 the voice of Jesus of Nazareth ? And conversely, does not his 
 repeated declaration, that the care of his Father in heaven ex- 
 tends even to the minutest objects and events, for " the very 
 hairs of your head are all numbered," render the natural proofs 
 of this doctrine more cogent and acceptable ? Natural and Re- 
 vealed Religion, then, mutually depend upon and strengthen each 
 other. 
 
 But the latter adds something to our knowledge ; besides 
 clearing up the prospect, it widens the view. It dissipates the 
 darkness which the natural eye cannot penetrate ; for it opens the 
 portals of the tomb, and exposes to mortal vision the endless life 
 that lies beyond. Two things are necessary for right conduct, 
 to know what our duty is, and to be persuaded to act in con- 
 formity to it. The former is fully provided for by the present 
 constitution of things. The law is written upon the heart in 
 characters that we cannot mistake, and its authority is proclaimed 
 in the depths of our consciousness by a voice to which we must 
 listen. Still, obedience is voluntary, temptations abound, and 
 the appetites which stir this mortal frame, with the passions that 
 keep the spirit in activity, wage a fearful war with the requisitions 
 of conscience. We need helps to obedience ; the inducements 
 to right conduct must be strengthened by a fuller view of the 
 consequences of sin. Transgression, indeed, brings its own bit- 
 ter fruits along with it even in this world ; but our existence here 
 is but a span, and the soul which has disregarded the authority of 
 the law may be indifferent also to its terrors, if our life is to ter- 
 minate at the grave. But open the view beyond it, and let sin 
 be seen bearing its own burden through an endless futurity, and 
 even the most frivolous and the most perverse will be induced to 
 pause and reflect. Nothing is revealed in this respect for the 
 mere gratification of a vain curiosity. We know not how we 
 shall be employed, with what bodies we shall be clothed, or how 
 far the relations in which we stand to each other in this life will 
 be preserved. But we do know, since we have received assur- 
 ance of it from Him who spake as never man spake, that the 
 same righteous God presides over both states of being, and will 
 
NATURAL RELIGION AND REVELATION. 443 
 
 administer that which is to come upon the same principles of 
 justice, mercy, and love, which appear in his government of this 
 world's affairs. Then, to our eyes, the scheme of his provi- 
 dence, which is but imperfectly seen and understood here, shall 
 be visible as a whole, and we shall know even as we are 
 known. 
 
LECTURE XII. 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE OF A REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 THE relation of Natural to Revealed Religion was the subject 
 of my last Lecture. I endeavoured to show, that the latter was 
 not a mere republication of the former ; for, besides adding to it 
 the certain knowledge of a future life, a fact of greater interest 
 to human beings than any other truth whatever, the being of a 
 God alone excepted, it first announced those great doctrines 
 which are now included under the title of Natural Religion, and 
 which human reason is competent to prove, though it was not 
 competent Jo discover. What now seems to us both obvious 
 
 * and demonstrable has often baffled the ingenuity and research of 
 enlightened nations for centuries, before it was first made known 
 , or generally recognized as a principle in science or a rule in con- 
 duct. Natural Religion coincides, as far as it goes, with the 
 doctrines of Revelation ; it comprises that portion far the lar- 
 ger portion of these doctrines which is susceptible of proof 
 from the light of reason and nature, without appealing to the au- 
 
 > thority of the Author of the revelation. Instead of Natural Re- 
 ligion, then, it ought to be called the natural evidence, or proof 
 from the light of nature, of the greater part of Revealed Religion. 
 The instance of mathematical science is enough to show, that 
 truths of great comprehensiveness and importance, which are 
 necessary or demonstrable, which, in fact, are reducible to iden- 
 tical propositions, may still be so recondite and difficult of dis- 
 covery, that the finest minds may be successively employed for 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 445 
 
 ages in laborious study before they can be ascertained and estab- 
 lished. And even now, these truths are taught to the learner ; 
 that is, they are revealed to him as antecedent discoveries, and 
 he is not left slowly to grope his own way towards them in the 
 painful path of original investigation. When once revealed, the 
 school-boy can demonstrate them. 
 
 Applying these general remarks to our particular subject, I 
 remarked that polytheism is natural religion ; that is, polytheism 
 is the first and natural product of the religious sentiment and the 
 unenlightened intellect. Reason shows that this is the probable 
 result ; history proves that it was the actual result. The doctrine 
 of the existence of one God, the Creator and righteous Governor 
 of heaven and earth, first had place in the religious system of the 
 Jews, a people so peculiar in character, so inferior in intellectual 
 power and cultivation to the nations which surrounded them, and 
 which were sunk in polytheism and idolatry, that their belief in 
 monotheism is inexplicable, unless we admit the truth of their his- 
 tory, which declares that it was the fruit of revelation. The 
 contrast between the Decalogue and the Psalms, on the one 
 hand, and the poems of Homer and Hesiod, with the sculptured - 
 gods of Egypt and India, on the other, is so glaring and marvel- 
 lous, that no hypothesis but that of a special interposition of God ' 
 in the affairs of the Jews will solve the mystery. The Jews 
 were emphatically a God-guided people ; their character, their ^ 
 opinions, their history, their present condition, are inexplicable 
 facts, when not viewed in their religious aspect, and with the eye^ 
 of faith. They are, in some sort, the living witnesses of the 
 miracles that are recorded of their nation. They were always * 
 children in matters of faith, wayward and stubborn children,' 
 too, slow to learn and quick to forget. They discovered 
 nothing for themselves ; they were not given to speculation, 
 either in philosophy, theology] or ethics. But the vital features 
 of their religion have stood the test of three thousand years ; and 
 they triumph still, for they belong to Christianity. And the bulk 
 of mankind are still, what the Jews were, children in matters of 
 faith. They are not capable of working out for themselves a 
 
446 THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 
 
 scheme of Natural Religion ; with them, the choice lies between 
 Revealed Religion, skepticism, and idolatry. 
 
 There is no antecedent presumption against Christianity, then, 
 on the ground that a revelation is not needed. Reasoning upon 
 the nature of the case shows, what is also demonstrated by the 
 history of mankind, that without miraculous interposition and 
 special instruction, the human race, even under the most favor- 
 able circumstances, gives itself up to false doctrines, false gods, 
 corrupt morals, and a sinful and unhappy life. The antecedent 
 presumption, therefore, runs the other way ; it is in favor of a 
 revelation. If the Deity is infinitely benevolent, we must expect 
 that he will interpose to rescue man from degradation and sin, 
 to put him upon the right path, and then leave him to follow it or 
 not, at his own good pleasure. It is no more incredible, that 
 what are called the laws of nature should be interrupted for the 
 instruction of man, than that they should be first established and 
 generally maintained for his instruction. The latter we have 
 proved to be the case by irrefragable arguments drawn from the 
 light of nature ; we look, then, with equal confidence, for the 
 former supposition to be realized. If the Deity is always pres- 
 ent in the material universe, vivifying, guiding, and moving all, 
 we look also for his constant presence in his moral creation, to 
 warn, to teach, and to govern mankind. And as the history of 
 the brute earth, through its geological epochs, shows that the 
 preserving agency, though uniform, is not mechanical or blind in 
 its operation, but that one mode of action is, after long intervals, 
 substituted for another, the continuance of animal and vege- 
 table species in the natural way being interrupted after a given 
 time, the old species destroyed, and new races, new orders of 
 being, introduced, so we must expect that the history of man, 
 or the annals of the moral universe, will show similar periodic 
 exertions of Divine power and wisdom, the old mode of action, 
 after a certain period, giving place to a new one, and the ancient 
 dispensation being replaced by another, which, for this later time 
 and for the altered circumstances of the case, is a more perfect 
 manifestation of Divine holiness and love. 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 447 
 
 The creation of man himself, his first establishment upon the 
 earth, forms one of these transition epochs, from which dates a 
 new era in the history of God's providence. There is hardly a 
 single fact in all natural science now more conclusively proved 
 than the comparatively recent introduction of human beings upon 
 this globe, anciently tenanted only by plants and brutes, as it was 
 at a still earlier day by plants alone ; the old skeptical objection 
 upon this head, that the human race, for aught we know, has 
 been perpetuated through an endless series of generations, has 
 been entirely refuted by the recent discoveries of geologists. 
 What a signal and momentous interruption was here of the 
 former course of nature and the old dominion of physical law ! 
 What miracle of later times equals in importance that through 
 which the reign of moral law began, and this world, till then 
 a theatre for the display only of the natural attributes, was fitted 
 to mirror also the moral perfections of the Infinite One ? 
 
 From the contemplation of this grand event we pass, by a 
 natural and easy transition, to the first recorded intervention of 
 the Deity in the affairs of men, or rather to the first striking 
 change in his providence, made for the purpose of showing that 
 he is always with them, to the revelation to the Jews. In one 
 sense, then, it is no strange and inexplicable occurrence when 
 our eyes are first greeted by that mysterious light which we 
 have traced shining in the midst of surrounding darkness ; we 
 were prepared for it by the antecedent history of the world, and 
 by our ideas of the manner in which God governs the universe 
 that he has made. The law given to Moses is but another step 
 in the series in which were previously recorded the successive 
 introductions of vegetable, animal, and human life. Vast inter- 
 vals of time, according to our conceptions, separate these grand 
 epochs from each other ; but these are as nothing with Him in 
 whose sight a thousand years are but as one day. During these 
 intervals, what we call the laws of nature hold without break ; 
 but if they are rightly considered in the light in which I have at- 
 tempted to present them, as the constant effects of the Deity's 
 immediate action, these laws themselves prepare our minds for 
 
448 THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 
 
 their own interruption whenever an emergency may arise ; be- 
 cause they are subservient to the same purpose which such an 
 interruption is designed for, namely, the education and the 
 moral improvement of the human race. 
 
 With this very brief view of the antecedent probability of a 
 revelation, I pass to the only remaining topic, the nature of 
 the evidence to be required in its support. First, then, neither 
 to the contemporaries of the revelation, nor to those who come 
 after it, must the evidence in its favor be of that direct and over- 
 powering character which would compel assent and enforce obe- 
 dience. This rule results from the very nature of moral govern- 
 ment, which excludes the idea of compulsion. If the heavens 
 should be rolled together like a scroll, and the earth should give 
 up its dead, all in direct attestation of a call to repentance, and 
 an eternity of reward or punishment should be revealed as the im- 
 mediate consequence of compliance or neglect, then there would 
 be no merit in obedience, and the whole object of the revelation, 
 the moral improvement of man, would be frustrated. Even the 
 near and certain prospect of a future life, it has been well ob- 
 served, would so far deprive this stage of existence of all value 
 in our eyes, that we should rather be unfitted for its duties than 
 better prepared to meet them. God does not thus deal with his 
 creatures. If an earthly sovereign or master, indeed, should 
 issue commands to his servants, he would take care that their 
 meaning should be obvious, and that the source whence they 
 came should be well known, so that obedience would be sure. 
 But the object in this case, as Butler well observes, is merely 
 to have the thing done, as such a master does not trouble himself 
 about the motive or principle upon which it is done. But in re- 
 ligion, the external act is of no importance whatever, while the 
 motive for doing it, or the frame of mind in which it is per- 
 formed, is the great end in view. The improvement of charac- 
 ter, or the perfection of our moral nature, affords the only reason 
 why a revelation should be made ; and in reference to this end, 
 it is plain that the obedience which is rendered only from awe, 
 fear, or selfishnesss, is no obedience at all. 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 449 
 
 " The first Christians had higher evidence of the miracles 
 wrought in attestation of Christianity than what we have now." 
 Of course they had ; but then they were without that strong 
 testimony in its favor which we now possess, arising from its 
 conformity with our preexisting views of morality and the light of 
 nature. It was a hard thing for them to accept the evidences of 
 a spiritual religion, of one which aimed only at the conversion of 
 the heart and the life, instead of a grand ceremonial law backed 
 by earthly pomp and power. The Jews, for instance, were 
 very reluctant to take a kingdom in heaven in exchange for that 
 kingdom upon the earth which they had expected their Messiah 
 to establish, together with the temporal rule and sovereignty of 
 their own nation over all others. The Sermon on the Mount 
 seemed to them to contain strange, if not incredible, doctrine ; 
 for it was at variance with all their preconceived opinions ; while 
 to the modern skeptic it appears the most obvious and natural 
 doctrine in the world. It is all self-evident, he says, or prov- 
 able from conscience and the light of nature ; there is no need 
 of a revelation to teach us that. But was not a revelation 
 necessary to teach such doctrine eighteen hundred years ago ? 
 
 The first converts to Christianity had the evidence of their 
 senses as to the reality of the miracles, while we have only 
 historical testimony of their occurrence. We do not expect 
 that a revelation would renew or repeat itself through a con- 
 tinued series of miraculous occurrences, so that there should be 
 direct evidence through all time of its truthfulness. Such an 
 arrangement would defeat its own end, inasmuch as the marvel 
 that is constantly repeated ceases to be a marvel, and the miracle 
 which is frequently renewed becomes to our eyes a law of nature, 
 or an ordinary event. A revelation is a fact in the history of 
 mankind, just as much as the rise or fall of an empire, or the 
 peopling of a newly discovered continent. We can have such 
 proof only that it actually took place, as we have of the reality 
 of all past events. There is a record of it, or there are traces 
 of its occurrence ; and we form an opinion of the genuineness 
 and authenticity of that record, we seek to interpret those traces, 
 
 57 
 
450 THE PROOF OP REVELATION. 
 
 according to the ordinary rules by which we investigate historical 
 testimony. We do not expect that the validity of such testimony 
 will be enhanced in the eyes of each successive generation by a 
 fresh interruption of the ordinary course of God's providence. 
 No one undertakes to impeach all history ; no one pretends that 
 we can be certain of nothing but that of which we have direct 
 sensible evidence. If it were so, human knowledge would in- 
 deed be limited to a span. My point is, that the history of a 
 revelation is to be judged precisely like any other history. In 
 the first place, we have to consider the intrinsic credibility of the 
 events narrated ; and in the next, to weigh the positive testimony 
 of their actual occurrence. 
 
 If the principles which I have sought to establish in these 
 Lectures are well founded, a revelation is intrinsically probable ; 
 the way was prepared for it by the antecedent dealings of God 
 with men ; mankind had reason to expect one. We come, then, 
 to an examination of the external testimony in relation to it, pre- 
 cisely as ( if it related to an ordinary fact in profane history. 
 Skepticism seldom assails the latter to much purpose, even 
 when it records events that were contemporaneous with those 
 mentioned in the Gospels, or long anterior to them. We ask, 
 therefore, what principle justifies us in rejecting the truth of the 
 Gospels, regarded merely as records of events, which will not 
 also require us to consider the annals of the world as one uni- 
 versal blank, down, at least, to the reign of Tiberius ? If we 
 will not believe Matthew and Luke, how can we trust Thucydi- 
 des and Tacitus ? No one will dare to say that these historians 
 show more of honesty, candor, and an apparent disposition to 
 tell the truth, than must be ascribed on the best internal evi- 
 dence to the four Evangelists. Then why is the narrative of 
 the deeds and crucifixion of our Saviour unworthy of credit, if 
 the story of the exploits and the assassination of Julius Caesar 
 be not also fabulous ? The Christian may fearlessly invite the 
 comparison of external testimony that is here indicated ; he may 
 challenge the skeptic to separate, if he can, the history of the 
 origin of Christianity from that of the destruction of the Roman 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 451 
 
 republic, or to show sufficient difference in the historical evi- 
 dence to be a valid reason for rejecting the one and accepting 
 the other. 
 
 Let us look for a moment at the relative weight of proof in the 
 two cases, confining our attention to a few centuries immediately 
 preceding and following the commencement of the Christian era. 
 How many events in the profane history of this period are now 
 universally admitted on the testimony of a single historian, though 
 he could not have been an eye-witness of a thousandth part of 
 them ; while, in the case of the Gospel narrative, we find dis- 
 tinct and harmonious records by four individuals, each marked 
 by striking peculiarities of style and manner, and agreeing as to 
 all essential points, two of the writers appearing to have been 
 direct observers of the facts which they narrate, and the writing 
 and publication of the testimony of all four being brought by 
 irrefragable evidence within a few years, at the utmost, of the 
 time when these events occurred ! Is it said that incidental al- 
 lusions in the contemporaneous literature of the period confirm 
 most of the facts mentioned by the profane historians ? But the 
 narratives of the Evangelists have also a great amount of col- 
 lateral testimony, in the shape of numerous epistles, written at 
 the same period, addressed both to individuals and to large so- 
 cieties, making frequent allusions to these facts, even placing 
 particular stress upon them, and betokening throughout a state of 
 things which is totally inexplicable, unless these facts did really 
 occur. 
 
 But it may be urged in favor of profane history, that as it re- 
 lates to kings, nations, armies, and governments, the facts re- 
 corded in it were of universal notoriety, and of such magnitude 
 and importance, that they left a deep imprint, as it were, on the 
 annals of the world, and shaped and colored all subsequent 
 events in the records of nations, so that to question their re- 
 ality would be an act of silly affectation. Very well ; how stands 
 it with the history of our religion in this particular ? The estab- 
 lishment of Christianity, viewed merely in the extent and mo- 
 mentous character of its external results, is the great fact in the 
 
452 THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 
 
 history of the world, and from the time of Tiberius to the pres- 
 ent day this history is an inexplicable enigma without it. Let it 
 not be said, that the world is still far behind the glorious stage of 
 progress which the establishment of our religion seemed to prom- 
 ise for it, if that religion had been Divine. Christianity has no 
 more been a failure than the primitive creation of the race. Sin, 
 indeed, has continued to stalk the earth, and human misery to 
 track its footsteps, ever since the expulsion from Eden, and even 
 since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But if we compare pa- 
 gan Babylon, and Athens, and Rome, in their imperial magnifi- 
 cence and their moral squalor and wretchedness, with the present 
 condition of the civilized and Christian world, with schools in 
 every hamlet, with institutions of beneficence in every city, and 
 with churches on a thousand hills, and still more with the glorious 
 promise of the future, we may well say that the founding of our 
 religion viewed not only in the purity of its doctrine and its 
 ethics, but in the compass and grandeur of its outward conse- 
 quences is a work as worthy of Omnipotence as the first estab- 
 lishment of man upon the earth. The religion itself, with its 
 lessons of redemption and peace, its inculcation of love to God 
 and man, and its revelation of a life beyond the grave, is worthy 
 of " that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles," by which 
 it was heralded and accompanied. 
 
 I borrow an eloquent illustration from Julius Hare. " Let us 
 cast our thoughts backward. Of all the works of all the men 
 who were living eighteen hundred years ago, what is remaining 
 now ? One man was then lord of half the known earth. In 
 power none could vie with him ; in the wisdom of this world, 
 few. He had sagacious ministers and able generals. Of all his 
 works, of all theirs, of all the works of the other princes and 
 rulers in those ages, what is left now ? Here and there a name, 
 and here and there a ruin. Of the works of those who wielded 
 a mightier weapon than the sword, a weapon that the rust can- 
 not eat away so rapidly, a weapon drawn from the armory of 
 thought, some still live and act, and are cherished and revered 
 by the learned. The range of their influence, however, is nar- 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 453 
 
 row ; it is confined to few, and, even in them, mostly to a few of 
 their meditative, not of their active hours. But at the same time 
 there issued from a nation, among the most despised of the earth, 
 twelve poor men, with no sword in their hands, scantily supplied 
 with the stores of human learning or thought. They went forth 
 east, and west, and north, and south, into all quarters of the 
 world. They were reviled ; they were spit upon ; they were 
 trampled under foot ; every engine of torture, every mode of 
 death, was employed to crush them. And where is their work 
 now ? It is set as a diadem on the brows of the nations. Their 
 voice sounds at this day in all parts of the earth. High and low 
 hear it ; kings on their thrones bow down to it ; senates acknowl- 
 edge it as their law ; the poor and afflicted rejoice in it ; and as 
 it has triumphed over all those powers which destroy the works 
 of man, as, instead of falling before them, it has gone on, age 
 after age, increasing in power and in glory, so is it the only 
 voice which can triumph over Death, and turn the King of Ter- 
 rors into an angel of light." * 
 
 We possess in great completeness the history of the early dif- 
 fusion of the Christian faith, and can show the marvellous and 
 in all but one view unaccountable rapidity of its progress, till 
 it became established and coextensive with the Roman dominion. 
 Within the lifetime of the contemporaries of its founder, it had 
 become extensively known throughout the fairest and most civil- 
 ized provinces of Rome. Besides the incidental evidence of this 
 fact derived from the travels and writings of Paul and the other 
 apostles, we have the distinct testimony of two of the most trust- 
 worthy Roman historians, Pliny and Tacitus, both belonging to 
 the first century, and neither of them being a convert to the new 
 faith, that in their times men called Christians were imprisoned 
 and put to death on account of the obstinacy with which they 
 adhered to their religious belief ; and this sect was so numerous, 
 that the former writer, in his capacity of governor of a great 
 province, applied to the emperor himself for advice as to the 
 
 * Guesses at Truth, First Series, 3d ed., pp. 123, 124. 
 
454 THE PKOOF OF REVELATION. 
 
 manner in which they should be treated. Of course, many of 
 the persons thus punished had probably received the facts of the 
 Gospel history directly from the apostles, and it is not unlikely 
 that some of the apostles themselves were among their number. 
 In the next century, the new religion had spread so widely, that 
 the acts and writings of its adherents and opposers occupy a con- 
 spicuous place in the history and literature of the age. But little 
 more than three hundred years after the birth of its founder, the 
 first Christian emperor swayed the sceptre over most of the civ- 
 ilized world. 
 
 How closely the history of this progress of the Church is 
 connected with the truth of the personal incidents related of our 
 Saviour appears from the institution of the Eucharist, mention of 
 which is found everywhere in the annals of our religion ever since 
 its birth. We have a vague account of it even from Pliny, 
 such as we suppose might come by rumor to the ears of a 
 haughty Roman magistrate. Thus a slight and to a mere 
 worldly view very insignificant event in the life of Christ, his 
 supping together with his disciples on the night on which he was 
 betrayed, may claim as great an amount of evidence of its au- 
 thenticity as can be awarded to any event in Greek or Roman 
 history. The fact, that a few poor Jews met together one night 
 at table, in a provincial city, more than eighteen hundred years 
 ago, appears on the page of history in a broader blaze of light 
 than surrounds any one incident in the life of an emperor of the 
 Roman world. 
 
 The sufficiency of this mass of evidence, especially when 
 compared with the historical proofs of other events that are 
 admitted without question, will be more apparent, if we con- 
 sider the general character and degree of civilization of the 
 period when the facts to which it relates are supposed to have 
 taken place. Heroic legends and fables belong only to the in- 
 fancy of society. A system of mythology, properly so called, 
 embodying the religious ideas of a people, can be created only 
 in the faint morning twilight of civilization, and many centuries 
 must elapse before it can acquire form and distinctness. It must 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 455 
 
 be anterior even to the art of writing ; for its only source is in the 
 imaginations of bards and minstrels, in songs and ballads preserv- 
 ed only in the memory, liable to frequent changes and additions, 
 and sung at lofty banquets, or, while wandering about the coun- 
 try > by a class of persons devoted to this profession alone. 
 Men are exalted into heroes and demigods only when there is 
 not light enough to see their true proportions. Hercules and 
 Theseus, Numa and Egeria, Odin and Thor, are proper myth- 
 ical personages, gigantic forms seen only in the mist of igno- 
 rance, fancy, and superstition, when the songs of wandering 
 bards are the highest intellectual entertainment of a barbarous 
 people. When the art of writing is invented or introduced, this 
 process of formation ceases ; written copies can be compared 
 with each other, and the additions to the poem or legend by the 
 ever-teeming fancy of the minstrels are detected and thrown out 
 as spurious, not having the sacred stamp of antiquity. The for- 
 merly fluid elements of mythology curdle into shape, crystallize 
 into rigid forms, and the religion of the people becomes fixed, 
 though their poetry, recognized as such, may continue to ad- 
 vance. Even Homer and Hesiod did not invent their theogony ; 
 the work in great measure was done to their hands. Written 
 copies of their poems contributed to stay the progress of inven- 
 tion in the national religion, and to check and control the imag- 
 inations of the bards who came after them. The mythology of 
 the Greeks and Scandinavians, the legendary history of Rome 
 under the kings, may be faintly traced back towards their poeti- 
 cal birthplaces by the light of the traditions embodied in them ; 
 but with the appearance of the first written record, authentic his- 
 tory begins. 
 
 But when did the Christian religion have its origin ? Just at 
 the close of the Augustan age of Roman literature, when the civ- 
 ilization and refinement of the classic ages, in fact, had passed 
 their culminating point, and were already beginning to decline. 
 The fine arts had begun to give place to the more useful ; labo- 
 rious and faithful annalists were taking the place of the more ele- 
 gant, but perhaps less trustworthy, historians ; diligent observers 
 
456 THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 
 
 of nature, like the elder Pliny, critics, like Quinctilian, ethical phi- 
 losophers and dramatic poets combined, like Seneca, writers on 
 law, antiquities, husbandry, military tactics and strategy, showed 
 that an age of analytic and minute labor was succeeding to one of 
 inventive genius and original and daring speculation. It was not 
 a credulous, but a skeptical period. Law had become a com- 
 plex science, and its practice was a distinct and honorable pro- 
 fession. Trials were held and facts investigated by shrewd and 
 wary advocates, in a manner not unlike the sharp practice of our 
 modern courts. The rude sounds of war were heard only on the 
 distant frontiers ; for the might of the Roman arms had long been 
 peacefully acknowledged in the provinces and tributary kingdoms 
 near the great heart of the empire. The arts, luxuries, and 
 refinement of Rome were rapidly diffused in Judea, especially 
 by the influence of Herod the Great, and were mingled with the 
 indigenous elements of civilization and learning. The priesthood 
 and the scribes were bodies of learned and intelligent men ; the 
 luxurious and skeptical sect of the Sadducees alone opposed a 
 strong barrier to the propagation of marvellous and unfounded 
 stories, or the rise of new superstitions. The people were fanat- 
 ically attached to their ancient faith, were instructed from infancy 
 in the Hebrew Scriptures, and looked for the august coming of 
 their Messiah, under whom the renewed splendors of a theocratic 
 government should far surpass the majesty even of hated Rome. 
 This was no period, Jerusalem was no place, for the invention 
 of a new scheme of religion, founded upon fable and imposture, 
 upon deceptions that must have been practised, if at all, be- 
 fore the eyes of acute and jealous magistrates, both Roman and 
 Jewish, and of watchful and hostile religious sects. 
 
 In reference, then, to the transmission to our own day of the 
 doctrines and the facts of the Christian revelation, in its purity 
 and completeness, we have all the evidence that the nature of 
 the case admits, all that can be required without claiming a 
 continued series of miraculous occurrences, which would enforce 
 conviction only by stunning the intellect, shaking our confidence 
 in the laws of nature, and thereby unfitting us for the duties of 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 457 
 
 this life. The history of Christianity cannot be impugned with- 
 out giving up the credibility 'of all history, and maintaining that 
 we can have no satisfactory assurance of the reality of any events 
 but those of which we are eye or ear witnesses, a degree of 
 skepticism so monstrous, that, although it may be avowed from 
 caprice, it cannot be entertained as a sober judgment, or be 
 allowed to influence our conduct. 
 
 As the mere externJl evidence, then, vastly preponderates in 
 favor of the sacred record when compared with the profane, it 
 cannot be rejected for an assumed deficiency in this respect, and 
 the only reason which is left for questioning its truthfulness is the 
 extraordinary character of the events narrated in it. We are 
 obliged to accept the four Gospels as faithful records of what 
 actually occurred, unless we are prepared to maintain this propo- 
 sition : that a narrative of miraculous occurrences, properly so 
 called, under all circumstances, or whatever may be the weight 
 of testimony in its favor, is intrinsically incredible. This is the 
 position of Hume, and it is one which every skeptic must assume 
 before he can deny the truth of Christianity. Hume's celebrated 
 argument is intended to show, not that a miracle in itself is im- 
 possible, a doctrine which, as he knew, cannot be maintained 
 for a moment, but only that we cannot believe in one, that an 
 account or record of a miracle is essentially incredible ; and on 
 this point the believer joins issue with him. 
 
 Before taking up the general subject, a preliminary remark is 
 necessary as to the effect which accounts of miraculous events 
 even supposing that these are impossible to be believed 
 should have on the general credibility of the narrator. If these 
 accounts are interspersed in a record of other occurrences, 
 which in themselves are thoroughly probable, are perfectly con- 
 sistent with each other, and are supported to a reasonable extent 
 by collateral testimony, and if the reputation of the narrator for 
 veracity in all other respects is free from stain, then we affirm 
 that his reputation is not destroyed by these accounts ; this is the 
 almost unanimous judgment of historical critics. There is hardly 
 one of the old Greek and Roman historians who does not occa- 
 
 58 
 
458 THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 
 
 sionally introduce stories which are wholly incredible, so that no 
 person hesitates for a moment in rejecting them. Yet he never 
 thinks of rejecting the whole work along with them ; he throws 
 out the part of the narrative which he believes to be fabulous, 
 and retains the rest ; and it is from such reservations that nearly 
 our whole knowledge of ancient history is derived. 
 
 But I go much farther. If all the conditions just mentioned 
 are fulfilled, and if the account of the rifiraculous occurrence is 
 by an eye-witness, his narrative of this very event must also be 
 accepted, even if we admit that miracles are inexplicable. The 
 occurrence is complex, embracing several facts. The witness 
 testifies only to the outward facts, to what he heard and saw ; 
 and these facts are not impossible. The miracle consists in the 
 connection of cause and effect between these facts, and this con- 
 nection is not a matter cognizable by the senses, but is an infer- 
 ence of the understanding. It may be the narrator's inference, 
 that is, he may declare his belief in the miracle ; but this belief 
 forms no proper part of his testimony as to the outward facts, 
 and therefore must not cause the rejection of that testimony. 
 The inference may even appear to all reasonable persons to be 
 quite irresistible, that is, they cannot see how such events 
 should happen, unless they were related to each other as cause 
 and effect ; but they can easily believe that the mere events 
 themselves did happen. 
 
 A few illustrations may make this doctrine clearer. If you 
 tell me, for instance, that you cannot see how a word, uttered 
 even by Divine power, should open the eyes of the blind, per- 
 haps I may agree with you ; but if, when many credible persons 
 seriously declare that a man blind at one moment had good use 
 of his eyes at the next, and that they were present at the time 
 and saw the change, you say, further, that you will not believe 
 them, I shall have no great respect for the soundness of your 
 judgment. Take another case ; it is perfectly credible that a 
 violent storm at sea should be suddenly followed by an entire 
 calm, and that one of the passengers on board a ship should be 
 speaking just at the time when the wind lulled. If one of the 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 459 
 
 other passengers, a sober and truthful person, seriously informs 
 us that this actually happened, we admit the possibility of it, and 
 believe him without hesitation. After we have made this admis- 
 sion, he informs us, for the first time, that the words spoken at 
 the critical moment were these : " Peace ! be still." Is our 
 knowledge of this additional particular to destroy our belief of 
 the other events, which we have just declared to be perfectly 
 credible ? and is it not just as possible, in the nature of things, 
 that the passenger should have uttered these words as any other ? 
 My point is, that the testimony of the witnesses relates only 
 to the outward facts, to what was visible or audible, and is al- 
 ways admitted to be sufficient when it satisfies the ordinary con- 
 ditions under which evidence is received in a court of justice, or 
 in investigating points of history, whatever may be the inference 
 of the understanding as to the relation of cause and effect which 
 subsists between these facts. I have somewhere read a narra- 
 tive, attested by several officers of the highest respectability in 
 the British army, of the feats accomplished by a band of jugglers 
 in India. One of the company, much muffled up, was suspended 
 in the air, a few feet above the ground, seemingly without any 
 support either from above or beneath. The officers were al- 
 lowed to pass on each side of this person, close to him, and 
 to cut the air both above and below him with their swords, so as 
 to satisfy themselves that no cord or wire, however slender, sup- 
 ported the weight. Now if the witnesses on this occasion, highly 
 respectable men, should appear before you and vouch the cor- 
 rectness of this account in every particular, there is not one 
 among you who would ,be inclined to reject their testimony, and 
 to set down the whole statement as a falsehood. You would ac- 
 cept the whole ; you would admit the facts to be as they stated 
 them ; and you would then exert your judgment and ingenuity in 
 order to determine whether the law of gravitation was suspended 
 in this case by a miracle, or whether some combination of this 
 law with other principles of mechanics would allow such an effect 
 to be produced without supposing that gravity ceased to operate, 
 or whether some very artful deception was practised, which 
 
460 THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 
 
 eluded the watchfulness of the spectators. Whichever of these 
 conclusions you might adopt, it would be an inference from the 
 facts as stated to you, not a denial of those facts, nor an im- 
 peachment of the veracity of the witnesses. Suppose you could 
 not rest satisfactorily in either of these conclusions, that neither 
 your mechanical skill, nor your acquaintance with the arts and 
 shifts of jugglers, would enable you to devise any rational expla- 
 nation of the phenomenon ; still, you would believe in that phe- 
 nomenon, you would trust the veracity of those who told the 
 story. 
 
 So it will be in every other case. In one instance, the facts, 
 the external circumstances of the case, considered in all their 
 breadth and variety, may lead me to the conclusion that a mir- 
 acle was wrought ; in another, I infer with equal positiveness 
 that the event was a mere piece of jugglery. You may attack 
 the soundness of my judgment in either case, if you will ; you 
 may say that my conclusion is drawn from insufficient premises ; 
 but this is not impeaching the credit of the witnesses who fur- 
 nish the accounts on which both my reasoning and your own arc 
 founded. To try to limit the confidence reposed in reputable 
 witnesses, or to deny the credibility in certain cases of any 
 amount of testimony, not merely from our narrow views of what 
 is possible, but from our power of devising a satisfactory ex- 
 planation of the modus operandi, or of showing how the thing 
 was done, is a foolish and groundless assumption. 
 
 I believe that Jesus " cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come 
 forth ! And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot 
 with grave-clothes ; and his face was bound about with a napkin." 
 It is for you to decide, in view of all the circumstances of the 
 case, of the character and doctrines of Jesus, the life that he led, 
 the men that he had about him, and the enemies who were watch- 
 ing to destroy him, whether this was a miracle or a piece of jug- 
 glery. Whichever way you may decide, the fidelity of the 
 narrative, the truth of the account, remains unshaken ; for it 
 would be monstrous to say, that you would accept the strangest, 
 the most marvellous statements, when there was even a suspicion 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 461 
 
 that there was jugglery in the case, but would reject them, if the 
 attendant circumstances made it probable that a miracle was 
 wrought. Neither Hume's argument, then, nor any other argu- 
 ment, disproves the authenticity of the Gospels on the ground of 
 the marvellous occurrences that are recorded in them ; at the ut- 
 most, it affects only our interpretation of these facts, or the doc- 
 trines which we seek to establish as inferences from them. His 
 argument, if it be worth any thing, is not a rule of evidence, but 
 a principle of interpretation. 
 
 It is important to mark the breadth of the conclusion at which 
 we have now arrived. The truth of the Gospel narrative, being 
 tried by all the tests which are applicable to the history of past 
 events, and being found to answer all the conditions under which 
 we admit the testimony of others as to the reality of occurrences 
 which we have not ourselves witnessed, must be considered as 
 established. The facts that are recorded respecting the origin 
 of our religion the inquirer must believe ; he may put what in- 
 terpretation upon them he chooses. We are to reason upon 
 these facts, therefore, precisely as if they were events of yester- 
 day, which had taken place under our own observation. Jesus 
 of Nazareth lived and taught, as is related ; he set forth the doc- 
 trines and the claims which are imputed to him. At his com- 
 mand, the blind received their sight, the lame walked, the lepers 
 were cleansed, the deaf heard, the dead were raised up, and the 
 poor had the Gospel preached to them. That he did these 
 works was the answer which he returned to John in prison, who 
 had sent to him to inquire whether he was the promised messen- 
 ger from God. He appealed to these works in proof of his 
 special commission and Divine authority, and we are to decide, 
 as John did, whether this proof is sufficient, whether these 
 deeds were truly miraculous ; and, if so, whether they afforded 
 sufficient evidence that the doctrines which Jesus taught were a 
 revelation from Heaven, that the words which he spake were 
 not his, but his Father's who sent him. 
 
 And here we might fairly leave the subject, having carried the 
 inquiry quite as far as the legitimate boundaries of the human 
 
462 THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 
 
 understanding will permit. There is a blindness of the heart, as 
 well as of the intellect ; reasoning may cure the latter, but it will 
 have no more effect on the former than on the nether millstone. 
 Any one who can believe that the writings of the four Evan- 
 gelists constitute a faithful and true history in all their parts, and 
 still deny the Divine origin of the Christian religion on the 
 ground of mystical speculations and metaphysical subtilties, la- 
 bors under an incurable disease in his moral condition and sym- 
 pathies, and is beyond the reach of argument. But as waiving 
 the discussion of miracles in the abstract might seem like an im- 
 plied admission that there was an insuperable difficulty in the 
 case, and this might affect the convictions even of those who did 
 not know what the difficulty was, I have attempted to prove 
 generally in these Lectures, not only that there is no valid pre- 
 sumption against the occurrence of miracles, but, when the 
 proper conditions are fulfilled, that there is a strong antecedent 
 probability in their favor. 
 
 Practically, the objection to them consists altogether in a 
 shortsighted reference to the assumed invariability of the laws 
 of nature. The improbability of a violation of law, of a break 
 in the continuity of events, is gauged entirely by what would be 
 the measure of one's own surprise, if, on the speck of earth 
 which he calls his home, in his personal experience, which is but 
 a dot in the history of the universe, there should suddenly be a 
 wholly arbitrary and purposeless suspension of the usual sequence 
 of cause and effect, if the sun should cease to warm, the fire 
 to burn him, or the water to slake his thirst, if he should lose 
 his eyesight without a cause, and acquire it again without a rem- 
 edy. A man's sanity would very properly be suspected, who 
 should now actually look for, or fear, such a meaningless subver- 
 sion of the order of nature and Providence. His expectation 
 would be akin to the folly of a child, who hopes that without 
 industry or thrift some lucky accident will suddenly make him 
 very rich, or some blind chance throw down the huge obstacle 
 that now lies between him and the accomplishment of his wishes. 
 But the silly longings of that child are hardly less philosophical 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 463 
 
 than the narrow self-conceit of the man who errs in the opposite 
 extreme, and would fain weigh the great epochs in the history of 
 a universe in the narrow scales of his own infinitesimal experi- 
 ence. Events are strange or marvellous, not in themselves con- 
 sidered, but in relation to the means by which they are accom- 
 plished, or to the purpose that calls them forth. If men had 
 talked a century ago of transporting themselves a hundred miles 
 within the hour, or of sending a message in the twinkling of an 
 eye to a place a thousand miles off, the bystanders would have 
 supposed that they were quoting from the Arabian Tales ; but 
 railroads and steam have accomplished the one, and the mag- 
 netic telegraph has effected the other. And men do not stupidly 
 sit still and marvel that these things are so. The means are seen 
 to be proportioned to the end ; the purpose and the want have 
 created or founded the sufficient power. 
 
 In case of an alleged miracle, it is the part of reason to in- 
 quire, first, whether the circumstances are such as to render it 
 probable that the Deity would interpose, or alter the usual char- 
 acter of his dealings with men ; and secondly, whether the effect 
 to be accomplished by it, supposing it to be real, would be com- 
 mensurate in dignity and importance with the means employed. 
 We cannot believe that the usual course of God's providence 
 would be changed, except for some grave purpose, or on some 
 striking emergency. Hence we reject almost without hesitation 
 the marvellous stories in which the credulous often seek an ex- 
 cuse for their superstition ; while on occasions of so vast moment 
 to all mankind as the giving of the law at Sinai, or the resurrec- 
 tion of our Lord, to confirm the waning faith of his disciples, a 
 miracle seems not only probable, but almost natural. It is be- 
 cause the purposes of the Almighty are unchangeable, that we 
 believe a law may be suspended for the same object which has 
 hitherto kept it in operation, namely, the moral improvement 
 and guidance of mankind. In the vast extent and beneficial 
 character of the results produced by the Jewish and the Chris- 
 tian revelations results which are matter of unquestioned his- 
 tory or immediate experience I find a strong presumption that 
 
464 THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 
 
 these revelations were miraculous, or that they came from God ; 
 and in the usual character and steadfast purpose of the Divine 
 government, as it appears to the eye of reason alone, in watch- 
 ing the ordinary current of this world's affairs, I find what changes 
 this presumption almost to certainty, even before examining the 
 direct evidence in the case. Before we hear the witnesses, or 
 read the record, we have stronger reason to suspect that there 
 must have been miraculous interposition in founding these relig- 
 ions, than that there was deception in the case, to which I have 
 alluded, of Indian jugglery. 
 
 For look to the antecedent history of this earth, as it is chron- 
 icled in the very stones upon which we tread, and ask if the 
 creation of a reptile, an insect, a worm, is a fit occasion for the 
 special exercise of almighty power, and not the redemption of all 
 mankind from sin ? Remember that upon the lowest theory 
 respecting physical causation, the institution, the first establish- 
 ment, of a new race or species of beings upon the earth cannot 
 be accounted for by the ordinary operation of the laws of nature, 
 but we are compelled by it to bring in the action of a supernatu- 
 ral cause. Did Omnipotence, then, become weary only after 
 God had created man in his own image, the noblest of his crea- 
 tures, when unintelligent tribes or a desert earth through count- 
 less ages had been visited with frequently recurring tokens of 
 oversight and protection, of a care which never slept ? 
 
 Ask, again, as a means of estimating the benefits produced by 
 these assumed miraculous displays of infinite goodness, what the 
 situation of the world would probably have been, if neither of 
 them had been made. Suppose that the law had not been given 
 to Moses, and that grace and truth had not come by Jesus 
 Christ, so that neither the Jewish nor the Christian religion 
 could be counted among the elements which affect the condition 
 and the hopes of mankind. How different would be the aspect 
 of modern civilization, how faint the light afforded by human rea- 
 son alone for the pursuit of truth, and how feeble the motives for 
 urging men to the practice of all the virtues ! Imagine the human 
 race still hesitating between skepticism and polytheism, the doc- 
 
THE PROOF OF REVELATION. 465 
 
 trine of the one true God being still, as it was in the days 
 of Plato and Aristotle, a mere speculation of the philosopher 
 in his closet, and the great truth of a future existence and an 
 endless retribution being, as it was then, a vague dream, a blank 
 hypothesis which can neither be proved nor disproved, like the 
 supposition that the other planets are tenanted by animated be- 
 ings. Suppose that an oath had no sanction, that the Sabbath 
 had never existed, that there was no known object of prayer, 
 that the practice of morality was not enforced by a Divine com- 
 mand, and that neither the hopes of the innocent nor the remorse 
 of the guilty were quickened by an assured belief that the justice 
 and goodness of the Deity would be amply vindicated beyond 
 the grave. We are accustomed, perhaps, to think of the change 
 that would thus be produced in our own feelings ; but let us 
 widen the prospect, and ask how the lot of the whole human 
 race would probably be affected, what the record of history must 
 have been, if these appalling suppositions were realized. If the 
 consequences would be afflicting in the highest degree, were 
 men to give up the faith which they now possess, and which has 
 already wrought its good work for eighteen hundred years, what 
 would they have been, if this faith had never been established 
 upon the earth ? Carry this reflection along with us, and we 
 cannot hesitate to admit that a miracle was highly probable for 
 the establishment of Christianity. We shall open the record of 
 its origin with a full expectation of finding that it was attended by 
 signs and wonders, such as befitted the magnitude of the occa- 
 sion, and its inestimable importance to the human family. Hav- 
 ing vouchsafed a miraculous attestation of it at the beginning, we 
 can believe that the Deity " committed its future progress to the 
 natural means of human communication, and to the influence of 
 those causes by which human conduct and human affairs are 
 governed." 
 
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