Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092288046 DATE DUE Jl^i - ' , 1 1 ] GAVLORD PRINT EQ IN U S A 1 046 COPrKIGHT, 1882, 1383, 188T By CHABLE9 aGRIBNBR'S SONS TBOWfl PWINTIMQ AND DOOKGIWOIW) OOMPAtIT, MEW YORK. CONTENTS. FAGI! GENERAL INTEODUCTION— WHAT AS AMERICAN PHILOS- OPHY SHOULD BE 1 I. CRITERIA OF DIVERS KINDS OF TRUTH. Introduction 29 FAUT FinST.— CRITERIA OP TRVTHS TO BE ASSUMED. Section I. First and E^ndamental Truths 33 Section n. Eeasoned Truths 43 Section lU. The Joint Dogmatic and Deductive Method 47 PART SEOOSD.— CRITERIA OF INDIVIDUAL FACTS AND TBEIR LAWS. Section IV. Individual Facts 60 Section V. Induction 58 Section VI. The Joint Inductive and Deductive Method 71 Section VII. Chance 77 Section VHI. Psychology 80 Section IX. Natural Theology ; . . 83 Section X. The Supernatural 87 Section XI. Conclusion — Limits to Human Knowledge 89 iv CONTENTS. II. ENERGY ; EFFICIENT AND FINAL CAUSE. PAGE Introduction 95 Section I. Physical Causation 97 Section 11. Psychical Causation 113 Section HI. Causation Subjective 125 Section IV. Various Sorts of Causes 129 Section V. Final Cause 139 in. DEVELOPMENT ; WHAT IT CAN DO AND WHAT IT CAN- NOT DO. Section I. Development is an Organized Causation 155 Section II. Development is Causation ■working in an Envi- ronment 158 Section III. Eegular Eesults from Combined Causation and Environment 160 Section IV. Evolution in Inanimate Nature 164 Section V. Development in Organic Nature 169 Section VI. What Development cannot do 176 Section VII. New Powers appearing in the Ages 180 Section VIII. The New Powers working with the Old 188 Section IX. Spiritual Powers 191 Section S. Oversights in Spencer's Evolution 199 IV. CERTITUDE, PROVIDENCE, AND PRAYER. Introduction 205 Section I. Eealism and Certainty 207 CONTENTS. V PAGE Section II. Evolution and Certitude 214 Section III. Evolution and Morality 218 Section IV. Providence 220 Section V. Prayer 227 Section VI. What is our World 240 GENERAL mTRODUCTION. WHAT AN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY SHOULD BE. America has arrived ab a stage at which there is a body of men and women who have leisure and taste to cultivate the liberal arts and advance the higher forms of civiliza- tion. She does not claim to have accomplished in a cen- tury or two what Europe has done in twice that time. It would not be just to require her, as one country, to be do- ing as much as all the countries of the Old "World are doing. StUl, she now ranks with any other one nation in litera- ture, science, and art. She has a literature which prom- ises to rival that of England. Her historians, in respect both of research and style, are equal to those of Europe. She has not yet produced a poem of the highest class, such as the Iliad, ^neid, the Inferno, or Paradise Lost, or Faust ; but some of her poets in this past age may be placed on the same level as any of their contemporaries. She can show statues and paintings (in landscape, for example) full of vigor and freshness. She has humorists, not perhaps of the highest order — they are too much given to startle by exaggeration — but with a manner of their own. Frank- lin, Thompson (Count Eumford), and Joseph Henry have led the way in original scientific research, and there are 2 GBNEKAL INTEODUOTION. professors in our colleges pursuing the most advanced science. In "practical inventions," called forth by the necessities of the wide country, she is in advance of all other people. But all enlightened nations have also had a philosophy bent on inquiring into the reasons of things and settling the foundations of knowledge. India and Persia had it in very ancient times in the form of a theosophy. Greece, followed at a distance by Home, sought to establish the reality and penetrate into the nature of things. France has had a philosophy ever since the days of Descartes, in the seventeenth century, and so has Germany since the time of Leibnitz in the following age. The English have had a most influential mental science since the time of Locke, and Scotland has since the days of Keid. Italy, at this present time, has a promising school.' How does America stand ? She has had a considerable number of able philosophic thinkers. It may be doubted whether any country has had a more acute metaphysician than Jonathan Edwards, whose views were restricted, and who was kept from doing more, simply by his want of bopks, and of collision with other thinkers. The theologians of America have made constant use of philosophic principles in defending their doctrinal positions; but the thinking people have not formed a separate school, as the French, the English, the ' See an account of this school, by Luigi Perri, in Princeton Review, (55th year). Mamiani, who had so flue a Platonic spirit, is now dead, but it is hoped that La Filosofia della Scuole Italiane, of which M. Ferri is now sole editor, will take a lead in this school. I may men- tion that his book, written in French, La Psychologic de I'Assooiation, shows historically and critically that Association of Ideas cannot account for our high intellectual and moral ideas. It is the ablest work on this subject. GENEBAL INTEODtrCTIOlSr. 3 Scotch, and the Germans have. In the last century and the earlier part of this, they followed Locke or Keid, one or both, always making an independent use of what they adopted — as a rule they took from Locke only what was good, and carefully separated themselves from his sensa- tional tendencies. Li this past age our thinking youth have been strongly attracted by Kant and his school, some of them being caught in the toils of Hegel. In the pres- ent age a number are following John S. Mill, Eain, and Herbert Spencer. All this, while we never have had a distinctive Anierican philosophy. The time has come, I believe, for America to declare her independence in philosophy. She will not be disposed to set up a new monarchy, but she may establish a repub- lic confederated like the United States. Certainly she should not shut herself out from intercourse with other countries ; on the contrary, she should be open to accessions from all quarters. But she should do with them as with the emigrants who land on her shores, in regard to whom she insists that they speak her language and conform to her laws; so she should require that her philosophy have a character of its own. She had better not engage in con- structing new theories of the universe spun out of the brain. The world has got sick of such. Even in Ger- many, where they summarize, expound, and critically ex- amine all forms of speculative thought, they will not listen to any new philosophical systems, and the consequence is that none is now offered — the latest being pessimism, which startled young thinkers by its extravagance, and by its containing an element of truth in bringing into promi- nence the existence and prevalence of evil which the phi- losophy of last century had very much overlooked. But what is to be the nature of the new philosophic re- public formed of united states? All national philosophies 4 GENERAL INTKODUCTIO]Sr. have to partake of the character of their nation. The philosophy of the East was sultry and dreamy — like the Indian summer. The Greeks used a dialectic, sharp as a knife, and separated things by analysis and combined them by intellectual synthesis. The French thinking excels all others in its mathematical clearness imposed upon it by Descartes. The English philosophy, like Locke, is char- acterized by profound sense. The Scotch is searching, anxiously careful and resolute in adhering to observation. The German has a most engaging Sohwdrmerei, and is ever mounting into the empyrean, its native sphere, in which it is seeking by criticism to construct boundaries. If a genuine American philosophy arises, it must reflect the genius of the people. Now, Yankees are distinguished from most others by their practical observation and inven- tion. They have a pretty clear notion of what a thing is, and, if it is of value, they take steps to secure it. It follows that, if there is to be an American philoso- phy, it must be Eealistic. I suspect they will never pro- duce an Idealistic philosophy like that of Plato in ancient times, or speculative systems like those of Spinoza, Leib- nitz, and Hegel in modem times. The circumstance that Emerson is an American may seem to contradict this, but then Emerson, while he opens interesting glimpses of truth, is not a philosopher ; his thoughts are like strung pearls, without system and without connection. On the other hand, the Americans believe that there are things to be known, to be prized and secured, and will never therefore look approvingly on an agnosticism which de- clares that knowledge is unattainable. The American philosophy will therefore be a Eealism, opposed to Ideal- ism on the one hand and to Agnosticism on the other. GENEKAL INTEODUCTIOSr. 5 Realism. It holds that there are real things, and that man can so far know them. Bnt if there are things and we know them, we must have a capacity to know them directly, of course having also the power of adding indirectly to our direct knowledge. We cannot by legitimate reasoning infer the existence of mind or matter from a datum or premise which does not contain the existence of mind or matter — the addition or multiplication of can never give us anything but 0. We shall see that Hume made us start with mere impressions or ideas, and thereby, of pur- pose, landed us in scepticism or what would now be called agnosticism ; and that Kant started with phenomena, in the sense of appearances, aud tried from these to reach things, but utterly failed to extract reality from what had no reality. If we are ever to get hold of reality, we must seize it at once. Realism holds that the mind perceives matter. In sense-perception we know things ; we know them as ex- ternal to the perceiving self — as extended and exercising resisting power. We have no need to resort to such theo- ries as those of intermediate ideas or occasional causes coming between the perceiving mind and the perceived object. All of these were brought in to remove supposed difficulties which do not exist, and have only introduced real difficulties. While we adhere resolutely to the doctrine of natural realism, namely, that the mind knows matter directly, there is room and reason for doubt as to what is the thing perceived directly by the senses generally and by each of the senses. The mature man is apt to think that he knows by directly looking at it the distance of that moun- tain, and yet it has been shown that all that he knows im- 6 GENERAL INTKODUCTION. mediately by the eye is a colored surface, and that he knows the distance of objects by a process of reasoning proceeding on a gathered observation. There is still need to inquire what is the matter we originally perceive, wliether it is our bodily frames or objects beyond them. It seems to me that our early perceptions are mainly of our organism ; say by taste of our palate, by smell of our nostrils, and by touch proper of our extended frame. I think it probable, however, that by the muscular sense and by the sight of eye, as higher senses, we know objects as external to our body but affecting our body. But there is need of farther experimenting to determine what matter each sense perceives, how far out of or how far in the or- ganism. On this subject, which is a very important one, the experiments and observations of certain German phy- siologists, such as Lotze, Helmholtz, Wundt, Fechner, also Professor Stanley Hall and Doctor Starr, will throw light. Meanwhile, we must resolutely hold that in the farthest resort the mind perceives matter, whether in the body or out of the body, as external to the mind, extended and resisting energy. We should hold still more resolutely that we have an immediate knowledge of self in a particular state. By this I do not mean that we know Self apart from a mode of self : the self is under a certain sensation, or is remem- bering, or thinking, or deciding, is in joy or in sorrow. Certainly we do not know the self aloof from the sensa- tion or some other affection, but just as little do we know the sensation except as a sensation of self ; nor a sensation without a sensitive object, nor a sensation in general, nor a sensation of another, but a sensation of our own. Realism farther maintains that in Memory we know things as having been before us in time past, and do thus know Time as mixed up with the event in time from GENERAL INTKODTJCTION. 7 which it can be separated by an easy process of abstraction. In this we know Time to be as real as the event in time. In contemplating Space and Time we are led to look on them as without bounds, and thus rise to such an idea as the mind can form of Infinity'. In knowing objects we perceive that in the very nature of the things there are relations involved such as that of Personal Identity, of Substance and Quality. We have still higher knowledge. We know certain voluntary acts as being Morally Good or Evil, say as being just or unjust, benevolent or cruel, candid or deceitful. Not that this moral good discerned by us is the same kind of thing as body or mind, or has the same kind of reality. Still it is perceived as a reality in voluntary acts known in consciousness. I am inclined to argue that by the con- science the mind perceives voluntary acts to be free. Philosophy should not attempt to prove this by a process of mediate reasoning. Mind perceives matter at once; but it also perceives benevolence, and perceives it to be good, as clearly as the eye perceives objects to be extended. It is the business of philosophy not to set aside these real- ities, but to assume them and justify the assumption ; and to endeavor — what is often a difficult work — to determine and express their exact nature. In doing this, philosophy proceeds by observation and according to the method of induction, the observation being made by the consciousness or internal sense. It should decline to proceed in the old Greek method of analysis and synthesis, or of deduction and reasoning. It should refuse with equal decision to proceed in the method of Kant by a criticism, liable itself to be criticised by a farther criticism carried on without end, without a foun- dation of facts to settle the questions stirred. It is the office of metaphysics to find out what the facts immedi- 8 GENERAL INTKODUCTION. atelj perceived are and enunciate them as first and fun- damental truths. Not that it is our observation or induc- tion of them that makes them realities or truths ; the correct statement is that philosophy observes them be- cause they are realities. Obvious objections present themselves to this mode and style of thinking. These can be answered, and they should be answered. First, it should be noticed that our observation does not make the propositions true ; we per- ceive them because they are true. Secondly, we have to call attention to the important distinction between our original and acquired perceptions, and be ready to defend the original ones if assailed ; but we are not bound to stand up for all the additions by human thinking. Our intuitive convictions carry with them their own evidence and authority, the others may be examined and criticised, may be proved or disproved. Thirdly, a distinction should be drawn between our sensations proper and our percep- tions proper, the former being mere feelings of the organ- ism, which may be misunderstood and misrepresented, the latter only being the cognitions of realities. Fourthly, there is the distinction, often very loosely drawn, between the primary and secondary qualities of matter. The former are energy and extension perceived directly and in all matter, the latter a mere organic feeling or sensation, such as heat as felt, implying an external cause, which is shown to be a molecular motion. Fifthly, there is a dis- tinction between different kinds of realities. There is a certain kind of reality involved in our perception of body as extended and impenetrable. There is also a reality, but of a different kind, in the perceiving of self in a cer- tain mode, say as thinking or willing. The one reality is as certain and definite as the other, but it is of a different kind and is perceived by a different organ, by self-con- GENERAL INTEODTJCTION. 9 sciousness and not the external senses. There is a third kind of reality in the object perceived by onr conscience or moral perception. It is quite as certain that hypocrisy is evil and that truthfulness is a virtue as that body exists or mind exists ; but the one is a separate thing known, whereas the other is a quality, a quality of mind, quite as certainly existing as mind itself. These distinctions are not difficult to comprehend. They are very generally known and acknowledged. But they need to be carefully applied to our cognitions in order to defend first truths and a thorough-going realism. It will be found that in proceeding on this method we meet with far fewer difficulties than on any other. There is a mode of discovering and testing truth often resorted to, and this successfully in the present day, which I am willing to use in the case before us. Let us begin, it is said, with adopting the doctrine we are seeking to estab- lish as a working hypothesis, and inquire whether it ex- plains all the facts ; and if it does, we may regard it as an established law. Let us then adopt realism as a work- ing hypothesis, and inquire how it works, and we shall find that it unravels many perplexities and is encompassed with fewer difficulties than any other doctrine ; that by it the real difficulties which present themselves may all, or nearly all, be met and removed, and that realism is con- sistent with all other truths and throws light upon them. Adopt any other theory, say idealism, and make the mind add to things as it perceives them, or phenomenalism, which makes us know mere appearances, or agnosticism, which makes things unknown, and we shall find ourselves ever knocking against obstacles which cannot be removed, against intuitive convictions which insist on our listening and submitting to them, or against obstinate facts facing us as rocks. Adopt realism, and we shall discover that 10 GENERAL INTEODTJCTION. we have a clear way to walk in. But in order to this our doctrine must be thorough-going. If we resort to com- promises, or make weak admissions, we are entangled in difficulties from which we cannot extricate ourselves. If, for instance, we take the position that some of our intui- tions or natural perceptions look to realities while others are deceptive or contain only partial truth, our inconsistencies will greatly trouble and weaken us. The sceptic will ask, if one of our primitive perceptions may deceive us, why not all, and we can answer this only on principles which will undermine them all, and leave us in bottomless agnosticism. It can be shown that the inquiries of the Greek philos- opher were after realities ; not for the absolute, which is the search of the modern German philosophies of the higher type, but for to 6v or to elvai, phrases which should not, as they often are, be translated absolute. The Greeks saw that there wei-e appearances without realities, and that appearances were often deceptive. Some of them, such as the Eleatics, came to adopt the maxim that the senses deceive, and appealed from them to the reason, forgetting that the reason has to proceed on the matter given it, and if this is erroneous the reason which rests on it may give erroneous decisions. Aristotle was the first to establish the grand truth that the senses do not de- ceive, and that the errors arise from the wrong interpre- tation of the information given by the senses. By the help of the distinctions drawn by him, and since his time by the Scottish school and others, we can stand up for the trustworthiness of the senses, and do not require to call in to our help " ideas " with Locke, or " impressions " with Hume, or "phenomena " with Kant ; and we may follow our natural convictions implicitly, and regard the mind as perceiving things immediately, and run no risk of deceptions or contradictions. GENERAL INTKODtrCTION. 11 Idealism. Idealism in thought and in literature is altogether of an ennobling character. But we are to speak of it here as appearing in speculative inquiry. As a philosophic sys- tem it holds that the mind out of its own stores always adds to our apprehension of things. It may be a thorough-going idealism, such as that of Berkeley, who maintained that by the senses we perceive not material things extended and made up of particles but ideas created by the Divine Mind, and that things exist only as they are perceived. Fichte went to a greater ex- treme, and held that things are the projections of mind, of the individual mind, or rather of that incomprehensible fiction of the philosopher's brain, the universal ego or consciousness. But by far the greater number of the sys- tems of idealism have been partial and one-sided. Locke was practically a decided realist, believing both in mind and matter ; but he holds that mind perceives bodies, not directly, but merely by ideas supposed to be representa- tives of bodies. Kant speaks of the mind beginning with phenomena, in the sense of appearances, and then tries illogically, I think, to argue the existence of things, which however, he (followed by Herbert Spencer) represents as unknown. Berkeley, coming after Locke, urged that if we can perceive only ideas, we cannot from these argue the existence of material things, the ideas being themselves the things and sufficient. Fichte, coming after Kant, de- fied any one to prove from mere appearances the existence of a reality beyond, as this would be putting in the con- clusion more than is in the premises. Ever since, the German metaphysicians of the higher sort have been pur- suing realities, and in thinking that they have caught them have only embraced a cloud. If we do not start with 12 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. realities, both in the object perceived and the perceiving mind, we can never reach them by any legitimate logical process. The half-and-half systems, the ideal-real as they are called, held by so many in the present day in Germany, are in the position of a professedly neutral person between two hostile armies, exposed to the fire of both. On the one hand it is argued that if one part of our native and original perceptions be ideal, why may not the other parts, why may not the whole be so ? If the balloon without any weights attached be let loose, it will move as the winds carry it, and cannot be brought down to the solid earth except by a collapse. On the other hand it is ar- gued by the agnostic that if all or so much be created by the imagination we have no warrant for asserting that there is any reality, and we must sink into the slough of nescience and nihilism, which are the same nonentities viewed under different aspects ; the one asserting that man has no capacity to know, and the other that there is noth- ing to know, and both culminating in the absolute blank of agnosticism, which is darkness which cannot be seen, for there is no eye to see it — the darkness of the sepul- chre, in which death ends all. But are we in the narrow- ness of our realism to exclude the ideal ? This would be like depriving the flower of its perfume. The imagination is one of the loftiest powers with which our Maker has endowed us. The child with the aid of its doll and other toys weaves its tales of weal or woe and takes a part in them. The mature man has his day-dreams as well as his night-dreams, and in the midst of the hard struggle of life pictures better days to come. The Christian dies gazing into the invisible world as if it were visible. Take away the ideal, and literature would be stripped of half of its charms. Even science cannot do vdthout it. " The GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 13 truth is," says D'Alembert, " to the geometer who invents, imagination is not less essential than to the poet who creates." In the mind of Newton gravitation was a hy- pothesis before it became an established law. Philosophy without the ideal would be shorn of the halo which it has in Plato and Leibnitz, and could not mount to heaven, which is its sphere. All our higher thought goes out into infinity. The real without the ideal would be like the earth without its air and sky. Idealism has a wide sphere lawfully allowed it, but it must not be permitted to break out of its orbit. We give it a place, a high place, but we keep it in its place, and we should not allow it to evaporate into nonentity. By all means let us have fancies in our spontaneous think- ing. But we are here speaking of philosophy, which is reflective thinking. It is one of the most important offices of philosophy to announce to us the grounds on which we believe in what is in opposition to what is not, and in doing this it has to define what field the ideal has as distinguished from the real ; it has to show us how fan- cies differ from facts. It will not discourage the soaring into the imaginary, but it requires that all the while we know and acknowledge it to be imaginary. The man who believes in the existence of unreal objects is a mad- man ; the speculation, wild as a romance, but not so at- tractive, which makes the ideal real is equally lunatic. Idealism is in itself a noble product. God has clothed the world with beauty of form and color, with loveliness and grandeur. He has farther given us the power of dis- tributing these in an infinite variety of ways on objects that are without them. This is the rich field which poetry and art hold as their own possession. But surely no one would give ideality a place in science as science. Newton discovered gravitation, which is in itself a bene- 14 GENERAL INTEOBTJCTION. ficial law, but he did not seek to add to its bountifulness by imparting to it qualities devised by his own constructive imagination. Mayer established the doctrine of the con- servation of energy, which keeps the world in stability, but he did not try to embellish it or make it stronger than it is. Idealism has no place in philosophy any more than it has in science. Philosophy will never be properly estab- lished till this is acknowledged. Its business is to discover, determine and settle fundamental principles without add- ing to them or subtracting from them. When science and philosophy have unfolded the true wonders of nature, imagination may construct out of them a lofty ideal system. It has been shown that all our imaginations are simply reproductions, in new forms, of our experiences. A giant is a man enlarged. A dwarf is a man diminished. The consequence is that the larger our knowledge the wider the circumambient region of fancy in which we may fly. In modern times, with our larger knowledge, historical and scientific, we have a more varied field for the fancy, if we would use it, than the ancients. The atmosphere is an essential part of our earthly abode, and what diversified action does it show as it I'aves in the storm and soothes us in the gentle breeze, as it displays such clearness in the morning and such a glow in the evening ! But, after all, it is held in its place by gravity, as the solid earth is ; so our very highest flights of the mind are ruled by law. The flower needs its stalk, and the leaf its branch. The bird with its wings can fly, as I have seen, a thousand miles across the ocean ; but it starts from solid ground, and lands at last on a ship or island. The mists are beau- tiful when and only when they form a veil to the moun- tains whose grandeur they at once reveal and conceal, showing us so much, and tempting the curiosity to look into what is hid beyond. general intkodttction. 15 Agnosticism. Ejrtremes meet, as the east and west do in lines on our globe. Idealism leads logically and historically to Agnos- ticism, for, if portions of our original knowledge be ideal, that is imaginary, why may not all be ? And if all be 'SO, we are down to Nihilism. Locke's philosophy, partly idealistic, became wholly so in Berkeley, and sunk into nescience in Hume, and continued so in John S. Mill and his school. Kant's phenomenal theory of knowledge, and his forms imposed by the mind on things, are the places of refuge to which Agnosticism retreats when it is pressed. It should be noticed of Agnosticism that it is seldom or never consistently carried out. Its supporters maintain that we cannot have a knowledge of reality. But they act and speak and write as if there are things. They be- lieve in the existence of some things — they commonly believe in the existence of meat and money. They are convinced of the reality of things that are seen ; they begin to doubt and deny only when we press spiritual truth upon them, when we show them that there is an im- mutable morality, that there is a God, and that this God will call them to account. Tlie common way of meeting Agnosticism is by show- ing that it contradicts itself. It is obviously a contradic- tion to assert that we know that we can know nothing. But when we have proved this, we have only strengthened the opinion we are opposing. One of Hume's strongest sceptical arguments is that our vaunted knowledge is in- consistent, that reason lands us in contradictions. The most effective way of leading us to abandon our assurance of reality is to demonstrate that in pursuing different lines of thought we reach opposite and inconsistent conclusions. The only satisfactory and conclusive way of meeting Ag- 16 GENEEAIi INTEODUCTION. nosticism is to follow the realistic method we are recom- mending in this paper, and to show that we have a primi- tive knowledge which we spontaneously proceed upon, and which we ought to assume in philosophy. In the present day the Americans are still depending on the Europeans, and borrowing from them. The more earnest students go to Deutschland, and are ploughing, as Ulrici used to say, with the German heifer. Others, who are more addicted to the observations of sense and the methods of physical science, are taking what philosophy they have from Professor Bain and Mr. Spencer, and may be called the Modern English School. The German School. The American youth of the present day who wishes to carry on research goes for a year or more to a German university. In particular, those of a metaphysical taste do not feel that they have enough to satisfy them at home, and they betake themselves to Berlin or Leipsic to get a full supply of the food for which they crave. On enter- ing the lecture-rooms there they find certain formidable distinctions proceeded on without being explained — such as those between object and subject ; a priori and a pos- teriori ; rational and empirical ; real and ideal ; phenom- enon and noumenon — all of which may involve a con- cealed error with the truth which they convey, namely, making objective truth subjective, or the creation of the mind. As they go on they find themselves in a labyrinth, with no clew to bring them out into the open air and light. All these distinctions have had the mark of Kant branded upon them. That powerful thinker has taken possession of the philosophic thought of Germany more GENERAL INTEODrCTION. 17 effectively than Plato did that of Greece, or Aristotle that of the Middle Ages, or Locke did that of England, or Eeid and Hamilton did that of Scotland — he rules over the minds of the Germans as determinedly as Bismarck does over their political action. Some, such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, have been carrying out certain of his principles to greater heights of idealism. Younger men, feeling dizzy on the elevations to which they have been carried, insist on being carried lower down, and have raised the cry, " Back to Kant," thinking that they may stop in the descent where he stopped, but find that by the weight upon them they can get no resting-place short of the bogs of agnosticism. All are alike entangled, even Helmholtz and the physicists, in the nets of the critical philosophy from which they cannot extricate themselves. We have come to a crisis when of all things it is neces- sary to criticise the critical philosophy. I have been taking exception to certain of the positions of the great German metaphysician. I have all along maintained what Dr. Sterling seems now to be establishing, that Kant did not satisfactorily meet Hume, the sceptic. On the contrary, he yielded to him certain grounds on which he erected a scepticism as deadly as that of the cold Scotch- man, but much more alluring. First, he proceeded in a wrong method — in the Critical — which has started a series of criticisms with no ultimate ground of fact to rest on, instead of the Inductive, which, it should be understood, does not give cogency to first truths, but simply discovers them. Secondly, he started not with facts, but with phe- nomena, in the sense of appearances, and from these could never logically rise to realities. Hume began with im- pressions and ideas from which no one could ever draw things ; and for these Kant substituted unknown presen- tations, from which we cannot extract realities any more Vol. I.— 3 18 GENERAL INTEODUOTIOH". than we can extract light from cucumbers. He has built a formidable castle in the air, to which agnosticism re- treats when it is attacked. Thirdly, he maintains that the mind perceives objects under forms which are not in the things, and has thus created an ideal world, to which poets such as Goethe and Schiller delighted to mount, but which affords no secure abode to those who insist on hav- ing on earth a solid domicile in which to dwell. In the last century Locke was the most influential of all philosophers. It has taken a long time to separate the error from the truth in his system. In order to this it needed the profound examination of Leibnitz in the last century, and the brilliant criticism of Cousin in this ; it has required, further, the practical sense of Keid and the Scot- tish school to expose his ideal theory, and the glow of Cole- ridge to attract the eyes of men to something higher than sensations. Locke's error in supposing that the mind per- ceives ideas and not things, and in deriving all truth from a limited experience, are clearly seen, and we need now only to accept the great body of truth which he has estab- lished forever. Kant holds in the nineteenth century the place which Locke did in the eighteenth. We need now to have him examined as searchingly as Locke has been. The wave which carried Kant's philosophy to its greatest height crested at his centennial in 1881, and will now fall down to its proper level. His system will be stripped of its fictitious features, that we may receive and welcome the great body of truths which he presents. For myself, I can scarcely regret the exclusive author- ity which Aristotle exercised for a thousand years, for he has thereby, through the mediaeval logic, modelled mod- ern notions into their present shape — even as the ocean by its agitations has moulded the pebbles and sands which GENERAL INTEODrCTION. 19 bound it. But it was necessary for the advancement of thought that the Stagirite should be dethroned from his too exclusive power by such original thinkers as Bacon and Descartes. In like manner the influence of Locke has been for good, but we rejoice that Eeid exposed his theory of ideas, and showed that he had overlooked truths of primary reason. So, while we do not grudge to Kant his reign for a hnndred years, we may earnestly wish that his whole philosophy be now subjected to a kindly but rigid criticism, in which the true and the good are re- tained, namely, first truths prior to experience, while the false and evil are cast off, na;mely, all that is inconsistent with a thorough-going realism. The Modekn English School. It consists of writers who have drawn their philosophy from Locke through Hume. The most eminent repre- sentatives of the School are, first, Mr. J. S. Mill, then Mr. Lewes^ who brought in an element from Comte, the posi- tivist, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has called in the de- velopment power, and Professor Bain, who has sought to combine physiology with psychology. The American philosophy must be ready to accept from all these men valuable observations made by them both as to psychical and nerve action — we may borrow from these Egyptians the materials wherewith to build our tabernacle ; but we must superadd higher and spiritual truth to give it a form and meaning. The whole school is guilty of great oversights which require to be supplied. They commonly state correctly the physiological facts as made known by the senses and the microscope, but they overlook a great many of the psychological facts quite as clearly revealed by the internal sense or consciousness. They give us the 20 GEWEEAL INTEODUCTIOIT. husks, but do not open to us the kernel. "We may specify some of their defects, leaving others to carry on the work. 1. There are oversights in their view of the exercises of the Senses ; not of the bodily organs, but of the mind or intelligence as operating in perception by the senses. They have not seen, or acknowledged that in sense-percep- tion there is knowledge, in fact, our primary knowledge ; our knowledge of things as extended, and as having resist- ing power — the beginning of the idea of power. They have commonly been satisfied with representing the mind as starting with impressions (that vaguest of terms) or sen- sations from which they can never get the knowledge of things. 2. They have not seen that in Consciousness, meaning Self -consciousness, they have a knowledge of self in some particular act, say perceiving, remembering, judging, or resolving, all of which we know as acts of ourselves and not of another. The school speak of the mind as itself unknown, the qualities only being known, whereas the qualities are abstractions from a thing known, knovni as exercising the qualities. The knowledge of self as con- scious, along with the knowledge of a not self as external and extended, is the beginning of all our knowledge. All our other cognition presupposes this and proceeds upon it. This knowledge is of real things, and all knowledge legiti- mately built upon it is also of realities. 3. The whole school give a defective account of what is involved in the Memory. They make it a mere reproduc- tion of the past. There is, first, they say, a perception of an object, say a mountain, and then a reproduction of this perception. But this is not all that is involved in mem- ory. In remembrance there is not only the image of the object, but a recognition of it as having been before the GENEEAL INTEODUCTION. 21 mind in time past. This implies a Faith element and the idea or knowledge of Time which metaphysicians have had such trouble in dealing with. 4. They do not acknowledge or see what lofty exer- cises are involved in the Imagination, which creates the ideal out of the real, and ever tends toward what it may never be able to reach, the Infinite. In these operations the mind rises above the senses into a higher sphere, where the philosophers of the senses do not choose to fol- low it. 5. They commit a great and fatal error in making the mind perceive only the relations of Resemblance and Dif- ference, whereas it has the capacity, as Locke and Hume and Brown maintain, of discovering a variety of other re- lations which penetrate deeply into the nature of things, such as those of Space and Time, of Quantity and Active Property, all of which the mind can perceive. 6. In particular, they do not take sufficiently deep views of such relations as those of Personal Identity and Cau- sation. In not noticing the knowledge of self in the original perceptions of consciousness, they do not expose to view what is involved in the identity of self in its succes- sive states, which as perceiving we are prepared to believe in its immortality. Again, they represent causation merely as invariable antecedence which may not hold in all times and in all space, whereas it consists in a power in the agents acting as the cause and producing the invari- ableness, and constraining us to rise from real effects to a real cause supreme in God. 7. Their grand error consists in overlooking what is in- volved in morality, in our Moral Perceptions, which dis- cern the good as distinctly as extension is seen by the eye. In not noticing these facts they are missing the very high- est qualities in our moral and spiritual nature. 22 GEKEEAL INTEODUOTION. 8. Their account of the Feelings or Emotions is meagre. They are apt to identify them with mere sensations, which again they identify with nervous affections. Her- bert Spencer does this. They do not fully apprehend that in all emotion there is an appetence or spring of action, say the love of pleasure, or the love of power, or the love of good, and an idea of the object which calls forth the emotion, as fitted to gratify or disappoint the appe- tence. 9. They deny that man has Free Will ; they make him tlie mere evolution and creature of circumstances. The realistic philosophy will require carefully to unfold the nature of free choice as an inalienable prerogative of man. In all these and in other ways the modern English School is degrading our nature, and witli it all high philosophy — leaving us little but shallows in a waste of weary sand. We are obliged to them for showing wherein man agrees with the brutes, but we must have others to show us wherein man is above the brutes. It must be one of the highest offices of the realistic philosophy to expose the errors and supply the deficiencies of this school. But it will be urged, that if philosophy is kept within such rigid fences it will lose much of its attractiveness, and metaphysical and dialectic youths will complain — as bitterly as the Indians do when they say they have no room for hunting in these enclosed fields where they must be contented to plough and sow. As the result, there will be no room for speculation such as was indulged in by Plato, by Leibnitz and the higher German philosophers. To this I reply that there will still be a rich possession left to philosophy to cultivate, and one as much more fer- tile and profitable — above mere guesses — as agriculture instead of hunting will turn out to be to the Indian. By GENERAL KSTTEODUCTION. 23 imposing judicious restrictions we do not deny to philoso- phy any of its prerogatives ; we merely prevent it from becoming an arena in which one system lives to fight against another. It will still be allowed to inquire into the opinions of the thinkers of all ages and countries, as Cudworth did in England and Hamilton did in Scotland, and as German scholars are still doing Not only so, these opinions may be analyzed and criticised, always on the condition that the ultimate test of truth be the facts in our nature. Historical criticism will have a boundless field in determining what were the precise opinions of the eminent thinkers of antiquity, and in settling what truth there is in Plato's ideal theory, in Aristotle's analytic of thought, and in the Stoic and Epicurean discussions as to the relative places of virtue and pleasure. The gold will have to be gathered from the sand in the desert of the Middle Ages. Coming down to modern times it will have to settle what are the limits to the method of induc- tion as expounded by Bacon, and to what fields the com- bined dogmatic and deductive methods of Descartes and Spinoza are to be confined. It will have to weed out all the idealism and sensationalism in Locke's Essay, and so explain the great truths regarding experience which he has expounded so as to keep them from issuing logically in Humism. It will have to take special pains to'keep thinking youth from embracing the errors along with the truths of Kant. "While standing up resolutely for a priori truths such as causation, it will show that these are not forms in the mind imposed on things but realties in the nature of things. It will have to acknowledge that there is such a process as evolution, but it will also prove that this cannot account for the origin or beneficent order of things. I am inclined to go a step farther, and allow full freedom to guesses, queries, speculations, theories, care 24 GENEKAL USTTBODTTCTION. being taken to represent them as mere hypotheses till they are established as facts by facts. Is not the world open to our view as it was to that of our forefathers ? I am sure that it is as full of wonders as it ever was. The physical investigator does not com- plain that those who lived in the past have drawn all its wealth from the universe. It is the very fact that so many real discoveries have been made that makes him expect more without limit and without end. The ground that has been so enriched with the deposited vegetation of the past' will yield larger and richer vegetation and fruit in the future. I believe that there are as many unexplored regions in the mental as in the physical world. I am sure that all the laws and properties of mind have not yet been discovered. It has secrets alluring us to seek to discover them, and sure to reward us for the labor we devote to the search after them. If the modern cannot go so far and mount as high as the ancient it must be because his mental capacities are not so great, and this he will scarcely be prepared to admit. The world as we look upon it is as boundless as it ever was, and human nature is as full and fresh and inexhaiistible as it was seen to be in ages past. A new region has been opened to the modern. A keen interest within the last age has gathered round the relation of brain and nerves to the operations of the mind, or what is called Physiological Psychology. It is a difficult subject, but this only makes it more attractive to the adventurous explorer. It is full of the promise of discovery, and youth will rush into it as to a newly discovered mine. We know much now of the laws of the mind, we know something of the physiology of the brain— careful experiments are being performed by competent men in various countries. "We seem to have come to a position at which we may GENEEAL INTEODTJCTIOK. 25 unite the two lines of inquiry, and they will be found to throw light on each other. The physiologist in his depart- ment will insist on proceeding only in the method of ob- servation ; let the psychologist do the same. Let each re- quire of the other that he restrain premature hypotheses. As the result, we shall have an immense accumulation of empirical facts, rising, according to Bacon's recommenda- tion, to " minor, middle, and major axioms," promising in the end to reach some grand laws which, while insisting that mind and matter are different substances, will realize the sublime conception of Leibnitz by uniting them in a pre-established harmony. They who start this Kealism are proclaiming a rebellion against all modern schools, a posteriori and a priori, and if they persevere and succeed ai-e effecting a revolution. In doing so they are not overturning but settling fundamental truth on a surer foundation — as the Reformers in the six- teenth century did not destroy religion, but presented it in a purer form. Fertility will be produced by this new up- turning of the soil. This attempt, if it is noticed at all, will be assailed by the modern systems of Europe. The monarchies of the old world will look with doubt, perhaps with scorn, upon these republics of the new world which acknowledge no king. The Hegelians will not deign to look at us, because we do not proceed by dialectics and put the world into trinities. The materialists will represent us as following illusions, because we claim to be able by internal observation to dis- cover high moral and spiritual truth. But in spite of all efforts to keep it down, realism, which is the obvious and the naturalistic philosophy, will ever, will again and again, come up and assert its claims. Meanwhile we keep our place ; we mean to carry on and consolidate our work, and we may in the end secure attention and recognition. Act- 26 GENEEAL INTRODTJCTrOW. ing on the Monroe principle, permitting no foreign inter- ference, and allowing the old systems to fight their battles with each other, we hold our position and may come to command respect, as the United States have done, after being long contemned by European countries ; and they may be induced to seek our established truths — as they do the corn and cattle reared in our virgin territory. CRITERIA OF DIVERS KINDS OF TRUTH INTB OD UCTION. The age may be characterized as one of unsettled opin- ion. Our ambitious youth are not satisfied with the past, its opinions and practices. Authority is not worshipped by them ; they have no partiality for creeds and confes- sions. They do not accept, without first doubting, the truths supposed to be long established. In searching into the foundation of the old temples, they have raised a cloud of dust and left lying a heap of rubbish. It is an age out of which good and evil, either or both, may come according as it is guided. We may entertain fears, for it is dancing on the edge of a precipice down which it may fall. We may cherish hope, for it is an inquiring age. Every form and phase of opinion seeks to have a phi- losophy, in which it may embody and express itself and by which it may be defended. Agnostics is the shape or figure which the doubting and hesitating spirit takes. It is not a new heresy.. It has been held by a few in every age ; it is now espoused by many, provisionally, till some- thing more solid or showy is propounded. It used to be called Nescience, which maintains that nothing can be known, and Nihilism, which holds that there is nothing to be known. It is of little use trying to argue with it, for it allows us no premises as a gi'ound on which to start, and has no body or substance that we can attack. It is easy to show that it is suicidal. It is an evident contra- diction to affirm that we can know that we know nothing. 30 INTEODUCTION. But when we have demonstrated this we have not destroyed it any more than we have killed a spectre by thrusting a spear into it ; for its defence is, that all truth is contra- dictory. The best way of dealing with it is to allow it to dance as it may, like the shadows of the clouds, and, meanwhile, to found and build np truth and set it up be- fore the mind, that it may be seen in its own light. It is well known that when we see a solid object through and beyond a spectre, the spectre melts away and disappears. So it will be with agnosticism — it will vanish when we fix our eyes upon the truth. This is what is attempted in No. I. of the treatise. The work is expository, and, for the reasons just hinted at, is not controversial. It is meant for those who wish, for their own satisfaction, to know the foundations on which the truth which they are required to believe rests. It is also hoped that, it being a treatise on what Kant calls Applied Logic — which may be made quite as useful as Primary or Formal Logic — it may be used as a text-book. We have truth when our ideas are conformed to things. The aim of this woi-k is to show that there is truth, that truth can be found, and that there are tests by which we may determine when we have found it. We do not propose to guide inquirers in any particular de- partment of investigation ; this can best be done in in- troductions to the books and lectures treating of the sev- eral branches of knowledge. Kant and the German metaphysicians have shown again and again that there is no one absolute criterion to settle all truth for us ; that will determine, for example, at one and the same time, whether there is a fourth dimension of space ; whether the planet Jupiter is inhabited ; where the soul goes at death, and what kind of crops we are to INTKODUCTION, 31 have next year. But it can be shown that there are truths which may be ascertained, and that there are criteria whicli prove when they are so, and these cleai-, sure, and capable of being definitely expressed. But the test which settles one truth for us does not necessarily settle all others, or any others. It is necessary to distinguish be- tween different sorts of truth, and we should be satisfied when we find a test of each kind. The aim of the criteria, it should be noticed, is not so much to help us to discover truth, as to determine when we have found it. The work is divided into two Parts : one in which we seek to find the Criteria of First Principles, and in the other the Criteria of Individual Facts and their Laws. PART FIRST. CEITEEIA OP TRUTHS TO BE ASSUMED. SECTION I. FIEST AND FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS. The mind must start witli something. There are things which it knows at once. I know pleasure and pain. I do more : I know myself as feeling pleasure and pain. I know that I am surrounded with material objects extended and exercising properties. I know by barely contemplat- ing them that these two straight lines cannot contain a space. These are called first truths. There must be first truths before there can be secondary ones ; original before there can be derivative ones. Can we discover and enun- ciate these ? 1 believe we can. We are not at liberty, indeed, to appeal to a first prin- ciple when we please, or because it suits our purpose. When we are left without evidence, we are not therefore allowed to allege that we need no evidence. When we are defeated in argument, we are not to be permitted to escape by falling back on what is improved and unprova- ble. It is true that we cannot prove everything, for this would imply an infinite chain of proofs every Hnk of which would hang on another, while the whole would hang on nothing — that is, be incapable of proof. We cannot prove everything by mediate evidence, but we can show that 34 OEITEKIA OF TRUTH. we are justified in assuming certain things. We cannot prove that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, but we can show that we are justified in saying so. We can do so by the application of certain tests. SELF-EvmEisrcE is the primary test of that kind of truth which we are entitled to assume without mediate proof. We perceive the object to exist by simply looking at it. The truth shines in its own light, and in order to see we do not require light to shine upon it from any other quarter. We are conscious directly of seK as anderstand- ing, as thinking, or as feeling, and we need no indirect evidence. Thus, too, w(? perceive by the eye a colored surface, and by the muscular touch a resisting object, and by the moral sense the evil of hypocrisy. The proof is seen by the contemplative mind in the things themselves. We are convinced that we need no other proof. A prof- fered probation from any other quarter would not add to the strength of our conviction. We do not seek any ex- ternal proof, and if any were pressed upon us we would feel it to be unnecessary — nay, to be an encumbrance, and almost an insult to our understanding. But let us properly understand the nature of this self- evidence. It has constantly been misunderstood and mis- represented. It is not a mere feeling or an emotion be- longing to the sensitive part of our nature. It is not a blind instinct or a belief in what we cannot see. It is not above reason or below reason ; it is an exercise of primary reason prior, in the nature of things, to any derivative exercises. It is not, as Kant represents it, of the nature of a form in the mind imposed on objects contemplated and giving them a shape and color. It is a perception, it is an intuition of the object. We inspect these two straight lines, and perceive them to be such in their nature that they cannot enclose a space. If two straight FIRST AKD FUNDAMENTAL TEUTHS. 35 lines go on for an inch, without coming nearer each other, we are sure they will be no nearer if lengthened millions of miles as straight lines. On contemplating deceit we perceive the act to be wrong in its very nature. It is not a mere sentiment, such as we feel on the contem- plation of pleasure and pain ; it is a knowledge of an object. It is not the mind imposing or superindiicing on the thing what is not in the thing ; it is simply the mind perceiving what is in the thing. It is not merely subjec- tive, it is also objective—to use phrases very liable to be misunderstood ; or, to speak clearly, the perceiving mind (subject) perceives the thing (object). This is the most satisfactory of all evidence ; and this because in it we are immediately cognizant of the thing. There is no evidence so ready to carry conviction. We cannot so much as con- ceive or imagine any evidence stronger. Necessity is a secondary criterion. It has been repre- sented by Leibnitz and many metaphysicians as the first and the essential test. This I regard as a mistake. Self- evidence comes first, and the other follows and is derived from it. We perceive an object before us and we know so much of its nature ; and we cannot be made to believe that there is no such object, or that it is not what we know it to be. I demur to the idea so often pressed upon us that we are to believe a certain proposition because we are necessitated to believe in it. This sounds too much like fatality to be agreeable to the free spirit of man. It is because we are conscious of self that we cannot be made to believe that we do not exist. The account given of the principle by Herbert Spencer is a perverted and a vague one : all propositions are to be accepted as unquestionable whose negative is inconceivable. This does not give us a direct criterion, as self-evidence does, and the word incon- ceivable is very ambiguous. But necessity, while it is not 36 CEITEEIA OF TKTJTH. the primary, is a potent secondary test. The self -evidence convinces us ; the necessity prevents us from holding any different conviction. Univeesality is the tertiary test. By this is meant that it is believed by all men. It is the argument from catholicity, or common consent — the sensus comTTVunis. All men are found to assent to the particular truth when it is fairly laid before them, as, for instance, that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It would not be wise nor safe to make this the primary test, as some of the ancients did. For, in the complexity of thought, in the constant actual mixing up of experiential with immediate evidence, it is difficult to determine what all men believe. It is even conceivable that all men might be deceived by reason of the deceitf ulness of the faculties and the illusive nature of things. But this tertiary comes in to corroborate the primary test, or rather to show that the proposition can stand the primary test which proceeds on the observation of the very thing, in which it is satis- factory to find that all men are agreed. Combine these and we have a perfect means of deter- mining what are first truths. The first gives us a personal assurance of which we can never be deprived ; the second secures that we cannot conquer it ; the third that we can appeal to all men as having the same conviction. The first makes known realities ; the second restrains us from breaking off from them ; the third shows that we are sur- rounded with a commimity of beings to whom we can ad- dress ourselves in the assxirance of meeting with a re' spouse. But in order to be able to apply these criteria properly we must carry along with us certain explanations and limi- tations. 1. It should be noticed of intuitive truths that they are, FIRST AND FUNDAMENTAL TKUTHS. 37 in tlie first instance, indmidual or singular, and that ■we need to generalize the single perceptions in order to reach general maxims. In them we begin with contemplating a single object, say an external object, and know it to be ex- tended and solid, or an act of benevolence and know it to be good, or an act of cruelty and proclaim it to be o^il. But we can generalize the individual perceptions, and then we have general m.axims or axioms, which we can apply to an infinite number of cases. We perceive that these two parallel lines will never meet ; and we are sure that we should afiirm the same of every other set of parallel lines, and hence we reach the general maxim that parallel lines will never meet. We perceive, on the bare contem- plation of this deed of deceit, that it is base, but we would feel the same of every other deed of deceit, and hence the maxim deceit is evil. But it should be observed that in the formation of these general principles there is a discursive act, in the shape of a generalizing process, involved. It is here that there may creep in error, which is not in the intui- tive biit in the discursive process ; for we may form a par- tial, a one-sided, or exaggerated generalization. Thus, on discovering a particular effect we at once judge or decide that it has a cause. Bnt when we would make the principle uni- versal we may fall into a mistake, and declare that " every- thing has a cause," which would require an infinite series of causes and make it necessary to hold that God himself has a cause. In such a case our generalization is VfTong. But let the maxim take the form that " everything which begins to be has a cause," and we perceive that on a thing present- ing itself to us as beginning we should proclaim it to have had a producing power. We thus see that there may be both tiTith and error in our metaphysical or moral maxims: truth in the primitive perception at the basis of the whole, while there may be hastiness leading to mutilation in the ex- 38 CEITEEIA OF TRUTH. pression. Hence tlie wrangling in metaphysics. Thus, everybody acknowledges that two parallel lines can never meet, but there may be disputes as to the fit form in which to put the axiom. So, in regard to the generalized prin- ciples that every effect has a cause, that every quality im- plies a substance, that virtue is commendable, there may be a difficulty in expressing exactly what is meant by cause and effect, what by substance and quality, and what by virtue and moral good ; and we may find that when we would make the expressions definite we fall into gi'ievous mistakes, and this while we are certain that there is a self- evident, necessary, and universal truth if only we can seize it. 2. First truths are of various kinds, which we shall en- deavor to classify. Some of them are PriTnitime Cognitions. In these the object is now be- fore us, and is perceived by us. "We perceive that this body has three dimensions in space, and cannot be made to believe otherwise. We decide that this thing, material or mental, cannot be and not be at the same time ; that these two tilings, being each equal to the same thing, are equal to one another. In these cases the object is perceived at once and immediately. But there are others in which the object is not present, and the convictions may be re- garded as Prvmitive Beliefs. Here there is still an object. It is not present, but still it is contemplated. "VVe have knovra the object somehow, and on conceiving it beliefs become attached to it. Thus, we know time in the concrete, and in regarding it we believe that time is continuous, that time past has run into time present, and that time present will run mto time to come. A number of such faiths gather round our primitive cognitions and widen them indefinitely. We see two points in space ; we are sure that there is FIKST AND FUNDAMEBTTAL TEUTH8. 39 space between, and that the shortest line between the two is a straight line. We can rise to still higher faiths. We believe of certain objects, say space and time, and God — when we come to know him — that they are infinite, that is, that they are always beyond our widest image or con- cept and such that nothing can be added to or taken from them. The senses cannot give us these beliefs, nor can the understanding construct them out of the materials supplied by the senses. Some of them, such as the idea of the in- finite, the perfect, lift tjs above our immediate experience into a higher sphere. We begin in all such cases with realities perceived or apprehended ; and we are sure, if we proceed ligitimately, that we end with realities. It should be remarked that in order to our having these cognitions and beliefs it is not necessary to express them or even put them in the shape of propositions. It is necessary first to have cognitions or beliefs regarding them before we form comparisons of them or affirm that they exist or possess certain properties. But out of these we can form Primitvoe Judgments, in which we predicate — that is, make affirmations or denials — or discover certain properties or relations, as when we say space and time are with- out bounds and exist independent of the contemplative mind. In order that these judgments may be primitive they must be pronounced as to objects which have been perceived by intuition. I ought here to add that the mind is capable of perceiv- ing at once certain moral qualities, and we have Moral Cognitions, Beliefs, amd Judgments. On con- templating an act of self-sacrifice done for a friend or a good cause we know it at once to be good, or an act of self- ishness we perceive it to be evil. When these acts are done by our neighbors we cannot notice them directly, but we are sure that they are good or evil ; and these may be 40 CBITERIA OF TRUTH. regarded as beliefs. "When we put them in propositions we exercise judgment, as when we declare that sin dc serves punishment. But it will be asked, do we perceive the good and evil to be a reality, to be in the very thing. It might be allowed, it is urged, that intuitively we perceive matter to be ex- tended and that two straight lines cannot enclose a space ; for the matter, and the straight lines are befoi-e us. But moral excellence and depravity have no such reality, they ex- ist only in our conceptions. To all this I reply that wc have the acts before us in the one case as in the other ; we have before us every day a deed and an implied affection of be- nevolence or of cruelty, and in it we perceive the morally good or the morally evil. The benevolence in this act of charity has a reality quite as much as the hand that be- stows the alms or the alms bestowed. The malevolence in this calumny is a reality, quite as much as the tongue that uttered it or the newspaper that published it. The reality is of a different kind, no doubt, but it is of a kind wliich all acknowledge when they approve of the charity and disapprove of the scandal, and perhaps impose a pen- alty upon the person who has been guilty of it. It is of vast moment, to ourselves and to the community, that we and all others should acknowledge, theoretically and practically, that there are other realities besides those of sense, ajid these higher and more enduring. It is the worst influence of the prevailing agnosticism that while it can have little power to keep us from believing in the things tliat are seen, it may have a mighty influence in keeping us from believing in and realizing the things that are spiritual, and therefore unseen, but eternal. The idealist errs when he denies the reality of a material world which, though temporal, is real. But the sensualist errs far more egregiously when he denies the existence of » spiritual FIRST AND FtrWDAMENTAL TRUTHS. 41 world, which is real and eternal. It should be the aim of the highest philosophy to carry us up, as Plato endeavored to do, to this high and pure region which has as high an existence as the heavens, which are its special dwelling- place. "We should train ourselves, and especially train the young, to retreat from time to time into the higher world, that they may there hold communion with all that is gi-eat and good and elevating. 3. The complexity of our mental states places difficul- ties in the way of our applying the criteria. There are opinions which have been acquired by a lengthened and constant observation, which association has wrought into our very nature, so that we feel as if they are native and necessary ; and yet some of them may be mere hereditary or popular prejudices which have no warrant in reason. In particular, experiential truths or even fancies and pre- judices may so mingle with oiu* intuitions that it seems im- possible to separate them and determine which is the self evident principle in the complex notion. These circum- stances, it should be admitted, do throw difficulties in the way of the application of our criteria. But these are not greater, after all, than the application of tests in any other department of knowledge, as, for example, chemical tests to determine the existence of poisons in very complex mixtures, and generally the verification of scientific discoveries of every description. But, in spite of these difficulties, the tests can be applied if only pains be taken to distinguish the things that differ and to lay aside the things that are irrelevant. It is possible, by a careful discrimination, to separate the associated from the primitive judgment, and thus seize the conviction that is native and necessary and apply the tests to it. 4. In many instances it is essential to apply the tests to alleged intuitive truths before we put trust in them. Id 42 CEITBEIA OF TKUTH. some cases, indeed, the spontaneous belief is so clear and assured that we may follow it without instituting any re- flex examination. But in other cases the supposed neces- sary truth may be mixed with extraneous matter which adulterates it. Every one acknowledges that for the pur- poses of accurate science it is of importance to have the axioms of mathematics and niechanics so enunciated that no empirical element has entered. In morals and jurispru- dence evil consequences might arise from mixing up doubtful principles with true ones, from assuming, for in- stance, that the promotion of happiness is the sole and es- sential quality of virtue. "Without a sifting we might often be tempted by indolence or prejudice to assume as true what ought to be proven, or what, in fact, can- not be proven. It is of special importance to applj' these tests to all those higher faiths which perform so important a part in mystic philosophy and theology. In these there is commonly a real intuition, and this, pos- sibly, of an elevating, inspiring order as a nucleus ; but around this there may gather a halo consisting merely of mist irradiated by the light in the centre. All high minds have felt the influence of these faiths, and some have been transported by them. But earthly ingredients are apt to mingle with the ethereal and heavenward aspira- tions, and claim all the authority which these have. The gilding gold is made to give currency to the coin. Truth and error thus come to be hopelessly intermixed, and vi- sions of fancy come to be regarded as revelations of hea- ven. The sceptic detects this, and in pulling up the tares he uproots the wheat ; to vary our illustration, in tearing down the creepers he pulls asunder the wall on which they grow. These results are to be avoided by a reflex exam- ination of the whole mental exercise. The idea of Plato, the ecstacy of the Alexandrians, the perfect of Descartes,' EEASONED TETJTHS. 43 Malebranche's vision of all things in God, the absolute of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, the supposed inspirations of poets and the revelations to prophets who utter grand truths — all these point to and imply high realities; but they are liable to run into fancies and extravagances, into follies and deceptions, which mislead and delude those who believe in them, pervert their judgments, and render them ridiculous in the view of the world. There is gold in the mine, and all we have to do is, by crucial tests, to separ- ate it from the di'oss that we may have the true metal. SECTION 11. EEASONED TRUTHS. When we have got truth by self-evidence or by ob- servation, we may add indefinitely to it by inference, in which we proceed from something given or allowed to something else derived from it by the mind contemplating it. If we have truth and reality in what we start with, and if we reason properly, we have also truth and reality in what we I'eacli. Of course if what we assume be ficti- tious, what we arrive at may be the same. These infer- ences may be of three kinds, each of which has its tests. Immediate Infeeences, or what I am disposed to call viTvplied jvdgm)ents. Here we have a judgment given, and we derive other judgments merely from contemplating the two notions compared. All general concepts, as logicians know, have both extension and comprehension. The ex- tension has reference to the objects in the class ; the com- prehension to the qualities which combine them. Now, on the bare contemplation of the extension of the concepts we can draw certain inferences, as when it is granted that 44 OBITERIA OF TEtJTH. " all men have a conscience " we infer that " this man has a eonscieuce," even though he be a liar. From the same proposition we can draw the inference in comprehension that the. possession of a conscience is an attribute of man. The canon is that whatever is involved in the extension and comprehension of a notion may be legitimately in- ferred." Mediate Reasoning. — Here we do not discover the re- lation of two notions, or, as we call them when ex- pressed in language, terms, by directly comparing them, but we can do so by means of a third term which has a connection with both. Eeasoning thus consists in compar- ing two notions by means of a third. The canon of reason- ing in its most general form is, " ITotions which agree with one and the same notion agree with one another," witli a 'From the proposition "men are responsible " tlie following may te drawn : In Mciension. Every man is in the Class Responsible ; This man is responsible ; Some men are responsible ; Every tribe of mankind is responsible ; It Is not true that some men are not responsible, etc., etc. In Comprehension. Man exists ; Responsibility is a real attribute ; Responsibility is an attribute of every man ; Responsibility is an attribute of this man ; Responsibility is an attribute of every tribe of men ; Responsibility is an attribute of some men ; Irresponsibility may be denied of all men ; No man is irresponsible ; Irresponsible beings are not men ; Men of wealth are responsible with their wealth ; To punish men is to punish responsible men. See "The Laws of Discursive Thought : being a Text-book of Formal Logic," by James MoCosh, LL.D. BEASONED TRUTHS. 45 corresponding dictum foi* negative reasoning. But the word " agree " is vague, and it is necessary to state the na- ture of the agreement. This is done by two formulae, which act as the criteria of reasoning. TTie DiebuTrh of Aristotle.— ^q have before us a croco- dile, and wish to know how it brings forth its young. Our two terms are " crocodiles " and " bringing forth their young." We find that it has been ascertained by science that the crocodile is a reptile, and that reptiles bring forth their young by eggs. We are now prepared to reason : " The crocodile, being a reptile, must bring forth its young by eggs." Here we have three terms : two called the extremes, the original ones which we wish to compare, " crocodiles " and " bringing forth their young by eggs," and a middle " reptile," by which we compare them. The process when expanded takes the form of two propositions, called the premises, and the conclusion drawn from them. All reptiles tring forth their young by eggs ; The crocodile is a reptile ; Therefore it brings forth its young by eggs. The conclusion is reached by the bare contemplation of the premises. The premises being true, the conclusion is true. But this reasoning proceeds on a principle which it is de- sirable to have expressed and announced when it becomes the test of this kind of reasoning. It is, "Whatever is true of a class is true of all the members of the class." What is true of reptiles generally is true of the reptiles called crocodiles, and of every individual crocodile. If we have not something that can be predicated — -that is, affirmed or denied — of a class to constitute a premise, no conclusion can be drawn. Thus, if only some reptiles are oviparous, if only the greater number are so, we are not entitled to conclude that the crocodiles must be so. We have thus a very decisive and easily applicable test of reasoning. 46 CEITEEIA or TKUTH. In formal logic this governing principle is spread out in various forms, so as to enable ns to apply the test to every case of ratiocination. First, the syllogism is found to be the universal form of mediate reasoning. Tlien logicians divide reasoning according to the position of the middle term, which is the nexus of the argument, and this gives four figures. I do not mean to unfold these ; they are to be found in eveiy treatise on elementally logic. All that I have to do is to show that thereby we have a criterion of ratiocination. All this was established by Aristotle in his "Prior Analytics." A number of attempts have been made since his day to set aside his analysis or to improve upon it. 'None of these have met with anything more than a tem- porary success. But I am not convinced that the dictum of Aristotle is the regulating principle of all reasoning ; it regu- lates only that reasoning which involves a general notion — that is, a class notion. It can be shown, I think, that there is a ratiocination which does not proceed on the principle of classes, but of identity or equivalence. Thus, we find that the stick A is equal to the stick B, and the stick B is equal to the stick C, and we conclude that the stick A is equal to the stick C. Here we have no classes or members of a class. The canon is, " Notions which are equivalent to one and the same third notion are equivalent to one another." In ratiocination of this description the subject of the propositions may be made the predicate, and the predicate the subject : Shakespeare wrote " Hamlet; " The writer of " Hamlet " is the greatest English poet ; Shakespeare was the greatest English poet. All reasoning, in order to be valid, must fall under one or other of these rules, which are therefore the criteria of legitimate inference. When a professed argument cannot THE JOINT BOGMATIO AND DEDUCTIVE METHOD. 47 be brought under either of them, it is a proof that it is not reasoning. When, on endeavoring to bring it under them, we find that it is not in accordance with them, we may conchide that the inference is not valid. Reasoning may take several forms, which are legitimate provided they are in conformity with the dictum of Aris- totle or the principle of equivalents. The natural form in ordinary circumstances is the categorical, in which we lay down a general principle and bring a particular under it ; as when we say, " Consumption is a fatal disease, and as this man has consumption he has a fatal disease ; " or, not being sure of the fact, we say, " If this man has consump- tion he has a fatal disease." This reasoning is hypotheti- cal, and is quite as valid as the categorical. Or the rea- soning may take the disjunctive form : " This disease is either a severe cold or consumption. It is not a severe cold ; therefore it is consumption." The greater portion of the reasoning in mathematics is regulated not by the dictum of Aristotle relating to classes, but the dictum of equivalence or equipollence. SECTION in. THE JOINT DOGMATIC AND DEDUCTIVE METHOD. Here we begin with assuming something because it is self- evident, needing no farther proof ; and then proceed to infer other truths involved. The best example is found in geometry, where there are laid down at the opening definitions of such things as triangles, circles, squares, and also axioms, or self-evident truths ; and from these, and as involved in them, we get farther truths by deductive reasoning. We have also examples in Formal Logic, as 48 CKITEKIA OF TEITTH. when the dictum of Aristotle is assumed, that whatever i^ true of a class is true of the members of the class, and from this get the modes and figures of reasoning, and in- numerable inferences. The truths thus drawn are called apodictic by Aristotle and demonstrative by the modems. In all such cases we have the tests of the assumed truths in self -evidence, necessity, and universality, and of the reasoned truth in the syllogism. This method is powerful when we have the means of Using it— that is, self-evident truths. But the field in which we have these is a very contracted one. In all in- vestigations which deal with scattered facts the method is not available. " A clever man," says Sir John Herschel ("Nat. Phil.," § 67), "shut up alone and allowed unlimited time, might reason out for himself all the truths of math-' ematics by proceeding from those simple notions of space and number of which he cannot divest himself without ceasing to think. But he could never tell, by any effoi't of reasoning, what would become of a lump of sugar if im- mersed in water, or what impression would be left on his eye by mixing the colors of yellow and blue." The method has often been applied illegitimately — that is, to departments which have lo deal with scattered facts. In the sixteenth century, when mathematics were making such progress, there were attempts to carry the geometrical method into all branches of science. It was used by Des- cartes and his extensively ramified school in philosophy and also theology. Assuming the existence of thought, of cogito, as a truth which cannot be doubted, he thence proves his own existence, which it would have been wiser in him to assume, and then from the idea of the infinite and the perfect in himself, he argued there must be a per- fect being existing whose veracity guarantees our idea of matter. Spinoza, in his Ethics, begins with a formidable THE JOINT DOGMATIC AND DEDUCTIVE METHOD. 49 array of definitions, axioms, and postulates, whence he draws out a system ia which God is at once extension and thought, and being the All is the morally evil in the world as well as the good. Samuel Clarke, finding that man could not get rid of the idea of space and time, argued that since all things must either be substances or modes, and as space and time are not substances, they must be modes of a substance, which is God, which by other considerations he clothed with benevolence. In these connected systems doubtful defini- tions were carried out, often by right reasoning, to very doubtful results. In all cases in which we have to use facts, and in which we seek to rise to facts, such as the existence and character of God, there is another method, that of induction, with it, it may be, deduction, which we may and ought to employ. PART SECOND. CRITERIA OF BSfDIVIDUAIi FACTS AJSTD THEIR LAWS. SECTION rv. INDrVIDUAL FACTS. An eminent man is reported as saying that there are more false facts than false theories. There is truth in this. Facts are apt to have adjuncts to them in the reports given by others, and even in our own apprehensions of them, or they are so mutilated that they take an entirely distorted form. "We all know how in story-telling additions and subtractions are apt to be made even by honest nar- rators, so as to make it more attractive and picturesque. The individual facts are primarily made known by the senses, external and internal. In these there may be very numerous and complicated details, and any of these if left out may so far distort our apprehensions and the account we give of them. Besides, sensations, feelings, fancies, in- ferences, attachments, and repugnances may mingle with our pure perception of sense and east a glow or a gloom around them. In these sections I am showing that we have to guard against these temptations, and that when we do so we can arrive at positive truth. Observation Proper and Experiment. — These are the two ways in which we obtain facts. In the former we INDIVIDUAL FACTS. 51 view objects simply as they present themselves ; in the latter we put them in new positions. The advantage of Experi- ment over Observation Proper (which may be so designated as Experiment, is, after all, a kind of Observation) is that it enables us to perceive the proper action of the several agen- cies joined in nature. We wish to know whether bodies, whatever be their weight, fall to the ground in equal times. Common observation seems to show that they do not, as we see the gold nugget and the leaf falling at very different times. But we put the gold and the leaf into the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, and find them fall the same instant. What we should do in all observation is to note precisely what has occurred, and to report it accurately without any additions, subtractions, or coloring ; we must be especially on our guard against torturing the facts in order to make them give a certain kind of testimony. The Senses. — The older Greek philosophers adopted the common opinion that the senses deceive. The sceptics took advantage of the doctrine and argued that if the senses deceive there is nothing we can trust in. The sounder philosophers met them by calling in reason, which corrected the illusions of the senses and conducted to truth. Aristotle corrected both these forms of error, and showed that the supposed deception arises not from the senses themselves, but from the use that is made of their intimations. To save the senses it is necessary to draw certain dis- tinctions. In particular, we should distinguish between our original and derived perceptions. The former are in- tuitive, without any process of inference, having the sanc- tion of the author of our constitution, and never deceiving us. The latter imply inferences from the revelations of sense perception, and there may be errors in them. 1 believe we can approximately determine what are the 52 ORITEKIA OP TRUTH. original perceptions of the various senses. By several of the senses we seem to perceive merely the bodily organs as affected. This is the case with taste and with smell, in which we discern simply the palate and the nostrils with a certain sensitive expression of the palate and the nostrils. It is the same also, I believe, with hearing and with touch proper or feeling, in which we know simply an affection of the ear and the periphery of the body. I rather think that by the muscular senses and the eye we discern more ; a body resisting our organism and a colored sm-face affecting us. In all these intuitive perctptions there is no ratiocina- tion, and there ai-e and can be no mistakes. But in all be- yond there are inferences, and in these there may be less or more of error. A person tells us that he had mutton to dinner, whereas all he knew was that there was a certain taste in his mouth which he argued was that of mut- ton, lie further lets us know that he felt the smell of roses in a certain garden, where he also heard a flute play- ing, whereas immediately he felt only an odor in his nos- trils and a sound in his ear. He is sure that he was struck in the dark with a man's hand, whereas the blow was from a stick. lie depones that he saw a man strike his wife, while all he saw was an action of one figure upon another, and it turns out that the woman was not the man's wife. Hence arise some of the mistakes in witness-bearing ; they are not lies of the senses, biit errors in the inferences we draw from them. In all such cases we form a general rule out of certain experiences, and in hasty thinking we illegitimately apply it. "We regard sound as coming to our ear in a straight line from the sounding body, but the undulations have been reflected from a wall, and we place the bell from which they have come in that wall, whereas the belfry is actually in a different direction. It is on this principle INDIVIDUAL FACTS. 53 that the ventriloquist proceeds when he makes a human voice come from a post or an animal. Having laid down the rule that when there are few observable things between us and an object, it must be near, we look on that island seen across the sea as much closer to us than it is. Some other distinctions must be attended to. Sensa- tions and feelings, of pleasure and pain, of beauty and Tigliness, associate themselves with all our perceptions, and are apt to give a color and even a shape to the actual things. We remember more particulars about the objects that excite us, whether joyously or grievously, than those that are dull and commonplace, and we give these a large, often an undue place in our narrative, and thus distort them and give them a different meaning. The rapid inferences from the intimations of the senses may at times serve a good purpose. They may prepare us to meet and avoid danger when cool and correct argument would not be quick enough. A fire-bell, the jolt of a car- riage in which we are riding, a stumble in walking, the fog- whistle at sea, may at times raise up an unnecessary alarm, but the calm reflection which succeeds will soon dissipate this, and at other times they save us from danger. We have abundant means of correcting the hasty judg- ments. "We have other senses at hand to correct the ap- parent deceptions of one sense. We imagine the figures raised optically by magicians to be real, but we can dissi- pate the illusion by thrusting our hand into the spectre. We may mistake beef for mutton as we eat it, but it is easy to apply to the person who prepared the food to set us right. A diseased eye may present objects double, but the touch will correct the mistake. In all cases we can secure that what is told us by the senses is true by judi- ciously using the means of correction at our disposal. Self Consciousness. — Metaphysicians commonly main- 54 CKITEEIA OF TEUTH. tain that the revelations of consciousness are always to be trusted ; that they settle everything in the last resort, and are, in fact, ultimate and infallible. But there are physiol- ogists, and of a late date even metaphysicians, who assert that the acts of consciousness are variable and often deceit- ful. They show us that people often misapprehend what their real feelings are, and give a wrong account of them. It is alleged that there are persons who say that they be- lieve certain tenets while they do not, only imagining that they do. There are cases of persons with a " double con- sciousness," as it is called, remembering, in the one state, their experience of that state, but without any remem- brance of it in the other. But in all such cases we attribute to consciousness what it is not responsible for. In regard to the inner, as in re- gard to external sense, we have to draw distinctions if we would determine its precise testimony. It is acknowledged by all psychologists that, properly speaking, we are con- scious of self only in its present state. In that state there are various affections : there are sensations and feelings and inferences along with the pure consciousness, and we are apt to mix them up with each other, and thereby breed conf nsion in our apprehensions and in the account we give of what is in our mind. When we review our conscious- ness we are dependent on our memory, and we majj^ omit some aspects of our experience and add associated affec- tions. Here, as in regard to the bodily senses, distance is apt to lend enchantment to the view. The hypochondriac magnifies his sorrows, and the gay youth his pleasures in the past. People are apt to think tiieir youth was happier than it really was ; they remember their joys and forget the little disappointments which were then felt to be so great and now appear so little. What is so called is not really " double consciousness." INDIVIDUAL FACTS. 55 It arises from a diseased state of the brain hindering psychi- cal action. The person is unable to recall what has been laid up in the past, and he lives in the present and lays up a new experience, which he uses in his new state, but which he may lose in a later condition of his brain. The man is not imder a double consciousness, but in two states, in each of which the consciousness may be correct. It thus appears that man may trust in what his con- sciousness really reveals. It makes known to us self in its present state. It should be noticed that it does not know merely a quality of self, such as thinking or feeling ; it knows self as thinking or feeling. This is of the nature of a first truth or an intuition ; we perceive the very thing. This self constitutes what we call personality — that is, we know ourselves as persons. On comparing the self as pres- ently known with the past self as then known, we declare ourselves to be the same. This is personal identity, which is a self-evident, necessary, and universal truth. Memokt. — The vulgar opinion is that the memory may deceive. But it does so only as the senses deceive. The mistakes are not in the memory proper, but in the associ- ated affections and the inferences drawn from them. We ask a man how long it is since he visited us. His recollec- tion is dim, and lie makes the time longer than it is, six years instead of five. It is not possible for him to remem- ber his continued existence during these years, any more than it is possible for the eye to see every point in space between us and objects five or six miles off. In both cases he has to avail himself of intervening objects. The event, he remembers, took place after his marriage, seven years ago, for his wife was with him ; and before his mother's death, four years ago, for he remembers we made inquiries about her health. But he does not recollect at what precise date between these two occurrences the visit 56 CRITERIA OF TRUTH. was paid. The reminiscence is dim and he concludes that the event is more distant than it really is. Our memories in regard to time aU need such mile-stones, or rather time- marks, to enable us to measure the distances. Now, in all these processes there may be mistakes. It is much the 'same with our recollections of the other circumstances con- nected with events, such as the shape and color of objects, their position in relation to other things, their surroundings, their antecedents and consequents. The vision is obscure and we have to fill it up, and we do so by fancies of our own, which so far modify the scene, perhaps pervert it. We are apt to join causes and consequences with the bare occurrences. Tliis is especially apt to be the case with con- versations, with the sentences uttered by ourselves or by others. "We recollect how we felt, what we meant to say, what effect was produced on us by what others said, and we confound these with what was actually uttered. Hence the misunderstandings, the perversions which are so apt to appear in the reports of conversations. In the complicated scenes through which we have to pass we remember those parts that have been most vivid — these, I suppose, have im- pressed themselves most deeply on our organism, and the others are feebler. The consequence is that the record has faded in some places, and we make additions in order to complete it. In this way we clothe our bare memories with dresses, which may make them look sadder or more joyful than the events really were at the time. But it is always possible to distinguish between our orig- inal and proper recollection and our superadded and fic- titious ones. Tliose who are conscientious will be careful not to add out of their own stores to their memories. When the reminiscence is dim they will at once confess it, especially in witness-bearing, and when the character of a fellow-man may be affected. In all scenes which we wish INDIVIDUAL TACTS. 57 to remember accurately, we will take pains to note the exact incidents at tlie time they occurred. There are events of which we may be, and are certain, that they have happened. Testimony. — It is not necessary to suppose, with some of the Scottish metaphysicians, in their answei's to Hume's argument against miracles, that there is an original in- stinct or principle of common sense leading us to trust in testimony. I believe, indeed, that there is a social af- fection in all of us inclining us to have an affection for, and trust in, those we meet with, especially in father and mother, brothers and sisters, and leading us to believe in what they say. But the belief in testimony is the result of experience, and is modified by experience ; we trust in certain testimonies, but not in others. There is a con- science in every man which disposes him, if he does not resist it, to speak tnily ; even selfishness prompts him not to lose the confidence of his fellow-men by deceiving them. Hence, the great body of mankind speak the truth when they are not led to act otherwise by a desire to excuse themselves, or by malignity toward their neighbor, or some other like motive. "We can reach truth by means of testi- mony. It was in his haste that David said " All men are liars." The testimony of one man is often sufficient, because of his character known otherwise; and because he has no motive to deceive. "We lay down rules for our guidance in judging of testimony, as that it is a good sign if the statements are direct and unartificial. In most cases we seek to have the testimony of one man confirmed by an- other, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established, it being shown that there has been no collusion or conspiracy. There are commonly circumstances which corroborate or detract from the testi- 58 CEITEEIA OF TETJTH. mony. Circumstantial evidence is at times sufficient to prove that a prisoner has been guilty, when there is no direct evidence of the act. In witness-bearing, books of law and judges on the bench lay down rules which may guide the jury in the verdict which they bring in. HisTOET. — Here the evidence is mainly that of written testimony, which, however, may be confirmed by original historical documents, such as monuments, inscriptions, coins, and ancient charters. Laplace, misled by a false analogy derived from the diminution of light when re- flected successively from a number of surfaces, declares that the value of testimony may be weakened by transmis- sion, and at length altogether lost (^Essay on Prob.). This is true of tradition, that is, of oral testimony transmitted from mouth to mouth, or from age to age ; but Sir G. C. Lewis {Meth. Obs. and Heas.) has shown that, " when the testimony of the original witness has once been obtained and recorded, either by himself or others, in an authentic form, it is perpetuated so long as the written memorial of it is preserved in the original, or in a faithful transcript, and may at any time be used for historical purposes." SECTION V. nsTDircTioN. This consists essentially in gathering facts in order to ascertain the order that they follow, which will be found to consist in laws which they obey. It was known to Aris- totle that the mind starts with the singular {to eKaoTov) before it rises to the universal (t6 kuOoXov), which, as he expresses it, may be first in the order of nature, while the singulars are first in the order of time. He practised the method in his natural history, very specially by the coUec- INDUCTION. 59 tions which were supplied by his pupil, Alexander the Great. But he cannot be said to have systematically ex- pounded induction as a method of discovering truth. This was reserved for Francis Bacon, who enjoined that in ob- servational science, the mind should begin with particulars, which are to be collected and collated, and then rise to minor, middle, and major axioms, and thence finally to causes and forms. AU this was to be done not per saltum, but by gradual steps. The method has since been made more definite by Sir John Herschel, in his " ISTatural Phi- losophy ; " by Dr. Whewell, in his various works on " The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences ; " by John S. Mil], in his " Logic," and by others. The method will become more perfected as science advances with its observations and experiments, with its instruments and its critical ex- aminations. That method has a Means and an End. The Means are observation with analysis. The End is the dis- covery of laws. Analysis amd Synthesis. — By the former we separate a concrete or complex object into its parts. In chemistry there is an actual separation of one element from another, say the oxygen from the hydrogen with which it is combined in water. But in most investigations, the separation is in thought. Thus in all bodies we find both extension and energy, which cannot be separated in fact. Thus logicians analyze discursive thought into simple apprehension, judg- ment, and reasoning, or in the expression of these into the term, the proposition and argument. The process is per- formed by abstraction, in which we contemplate in thought a part of a whole presenting itself, more particularly an at- tribute of an object, say gravitation. In analysis we sep- arate the whole into its several parts. Abstraction can be performed on every object, as every object has more than one quality, and we can fix on any one of these. Analysis 6C CRITERIA OF TRUTH. can be performed only when we have such an acquaintance with an object as to know all its parts. The exercise of abstraction, and when it is available of analysis, is requii-ed in every kind of investigation. Bacoi' speaks of induction, commencing with " the necessary re- jections and exclusions," that is, the separating of the mat- ter to be investigated from the extraneous objects with which it may be associated in nature. "Whately says (" Logic ") that in teaching a science, the analytical mode is the more interesting, easy, and natural kind of introduc- tion, as being the form in which the first invention or dis- covery of any kind of system must originally have taken place. "Whewell gives an apt name to the procedure, which he recommends as the " Decomposition of Facts." It serves not only to separate objects from others, but to break them down, so that we may obtain a better acquaint- ance with them, with their internal structure and their several qualities. It is a process to be employed throughout in all investigations of nature, which in every department is full of complexities. Analysis can scarcely be described as discovering truth. It is rather a means or instrument toward this end. At the same time, it should be noticed that when we abstract a part, say a quality, from an object, the part, the quality, has a reality as well as the whole. If the concrete be real, the abstract is also real. The abstract may not have an independent reality ; thus gravitation has no reality except in body, but it has a reality in body. The criterion here is that the part be really a part of the actual whole, that the quality be a real attribute of a real thing. Analysis is a sharp and may become a dangerous instru- ment. It may be over subtle and dissect and kill what should be kept alive and entire. It is fulfilling its end only when, to use an illustration of Plato's, it is dividing the INDUCTION. 61 carcass as the bntclier does, according to the joints. Among the ancient Greek philosophers the analytic was the method commonly employed. Down to this last age the analytic and the synthetic were represented as methods of discovering truth, and had large fields allotted to them. Kant's great woik, the " Critick of Pure Eeason," is divided into the analytic and synthetic parts. In synthesis the parts are put together to show that they make up the whole. Thus Whately decomposes discursive thought into the term proposition and argument, and then shows synthetically that these make up the whole process. Sir John Hersehel, in his "Astronomy," begins with taking up the sevei'al departments of the heavens, and then ex- pounds the whole science. The two, analysis and synthe- sis, must continue to be used as instruments, but they now do so in the methods of induction and deduction. Ceiteeia of Laws. — Hitherto we have had to do with individual facts, which tell us nothing beyond themselves. We have not as yet any means of anticipating the future from the past, or gathering wisdom from experience. In particular, we have no science, which consists, not of scat' tered and isolated facts, but of systematized knowledge. In the construction of science we must co-ordinate the facts. In doing so we discover the laws and find that all mun- dane affairs are regulated by laws. Eut the question arises. How do we from individual facts reach a law ? Or, more specifically for our present purpose, When are we entitled to conclude and be satisfied that we have found a law which may be regarded as gen- eral or universal? The answer of those who have not thought specially on the subject would be, When we have observed all the facts. But a moment's reflection shows that in most cases, I believe in all, we cannot find out all the facts. We assert that crows are black, but we cannot 62 CEITEEIA OF TEUTH. go the round of the world and ascertain that it is so. "We may have examined millions of cases and found all crows black, but how do we know that a traveller may not I'eport that he has found a white crow in some distant island ? In science we say that all mammals are warm-blooded, or that all matter attracts other matter inversely according to the square of the distance; but no one has searched the uni- verse and noticed every mammal and every particle of matter so as to be able to say that no mammal is cold- blooded, and no particle of matter without the power of attraction. But from a limited number of observations we can rise to a law which seems to be universal. How is it so ? Mr. Mill maintains that he who can answer this ques- tion is wiser than the ancients. Eacon describes the method of observation by " perfect innumeration " of cases as puerile and incapable of yielding any fruitful results. In induction we have to rise from the unknown to the known. "We argue from a limited number of cases in the past to a universal law which we hold to be true in the future, not only so, but in all unknown cases, past and present. The father of inductive philosophy was aware of the difficulty of the problem, and he sought to solve it by bringing in Prerogative Instances {Prerogativm Instantiarunh) which could determine what is true of all in- stances. To give only one example, that of Instantia Cruds, the metaphor being taken from the notice put up where two roads meet to tell which to take. It was dis- puted whether light consists of material particles or of vibrations in an ether. To settle this it was maintained by Fresnel that instances can be artificially produced which are inconsistent with the material, but not with the undula- tory theory. But we have now better tests in the Canons of Induction. In all such investigations we must take along with us INDUCTION, 63 two grand principles. One of these is the principle of Cause and Effect. I believe this to be an intuitive princi- ple, standing the tests above enunciated. I believe that when we discover anything beginning to be, we look for an antecedent producing it — a substance with power. But without entering at this place on this disputed metaphysical subject, I may take it for granted that the principle of causation is sanctioned by a universal experience, and will not be denied by any one. Many, indeed, feel that the principle may require to be enunciated anew and put in a better form since the discovery of the law of the Conserva- tion of Energy, or the Persistence of Force, as Herbert Spencer calls it. But whatever be the best shape in which to put it, we assume in all induction that causes produce their proper effect, and that every new product or change in an old thing has a cause. One of the aims of inductive science is to discover what has caused a given phenomenon, what has produced it in the past and will produce it again. But we have need to assume more than this. The second is the principle of the Uniformity of I^ature, as it is loosely called. The principle of causation might have reigned in all nature and yet there have been no uniformity. All action in nature might have as its sole cause the fiat of God. The connection of all things would. In this case, be with God, but not with one another. The spring, with its buds and blossoms, would be produced by God, but this would give no security that the fruits of autumn were to follow. Or, again, there might be constant interferences by God with the operation of natural agents ; or causal agents might work, and yet there be no such thing as the general laws, such as the seasons, which we observe and trust in. "We find, instead, that the agents of nature are so disposed or arranged that they produce uniformities, not the result of any one cause, but of a com- 64 CKITERIA OF TKUTH. bination and harmony of causes, such as the periodicity ol the heavenly bodies, the flow of the tides, the regular re- turn of the seasons, the plant rising from a seed and pro- ducing a seed, the descent of the animal from a parent, its growth and its death. All these imply causation, but they require more — an adjusted causation. But it is necessary to settle more definitely what is im- plied in the uniformity of nature which lies at the basis of all induction. It implies first that there is a certain number of agents acting in natiu-e — it is not necessary for us to settle how many. Secondly, that these are so collocated or arranged — I believe, adjusted — as to produce general results called laws, which we observe and act upon and can scientifically express. Thirdly, these agents constitute nature, and there is no introduction of new agents and no interference with them in ordinary circumstances. This statement does not prechide miracles on rare occasions, these miracles not being contrary to the law of causation, for they have the power of God as a cause, but they are simply an exception to the uniformities of natiu-e. We thus see that there are two kinds of laws sought after in induction. The one, the primary and the funda mental, are the laws of causation. In the inquiry into these, we seek to settle the precise nature of the causes acting — what is the precise nature of the power which keeps the moon in her sphere and makes the apple fall to the ground. Or, having discovered the cause and its nature, we try to find what will be its influence and effect in certain circumstances — how, for instance, gravity will produce tides in the ocean. Canons of Induction. — There seem to be three grand ends which men of science have in view in their investi- gations. One is to discover the composition of the objects around us ; the second is to discover natural classes ; the INDUCTIOK. 65 third is to discover causes. There ai's canons which guide and guard us in each of these investigations. I. Canons of Decomposition. — Almost all the objects we meet with in the world, whether material or mental, are composite. It is the aim of many departments of science, in particular of chemistry and psychology, to ana- lyze them. This can, so far, be effectively done. There are certain rules to guide us, and these may be made more and more specific as the analytic sciences advance. A. We must separate the object we wish to decompose from all other objects. If we wish to analyze water, we must have pure water separate from all other ingredients. If we wish to analyze intuition or reasoning, we must separate it from all associated observations and fancies. B. When we have found the composition of any piece or portion of a substance, we have determined the compo- sition of every other part, and, indeed, of the whole. When we have ascertained that a pint of water is formed of hydrogen and oxygen, we have settled that water every- where is composed of the same elements. This arises from the circumstance that every substance in nature has its properties which it retains. Having detected these properties in one case, we have found what they are in all. O. The elements reached are to be regarded as being so only provisionally. We are not sure that in any cases we have found the ultimate elements of bodies. At present it is supposed that there are sixty-four elements, but we are not sure of any one of these that it will never be resolved into simpler substances. Meanwhile the chemical analysis is correct so far as it goes. It will always hold true that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, though it is possible that oxygen or hydrogen, one or both, may be resolved into something simpler. Comons of Nabural Classes. — There are certain sciences 66 CRITERIA OF TRUTH. which are called by Whewell classifieatory. They are such as botany, zoology, and mineralogy. We may have two ends in view in classifying ; one may be simply to aid the memory by having the innumerable objects of nature put into a convenient number of groups. For this purpose we fix on certain obvious and convenient characteristics and put all the objects possessing them into one class. It was thus that Linnseus put under one head all plants pos- sessing the same number of stamens and pistils. This ar- rangement, though it does not come up to the requisitions of a perfect classification, is found to be very convenient. Second, our object may be to increase om* knowledge by so arranging objects that one characteristic may be a sign of others. In natural classification we should always aim at securing both these ends. There are canons which may assist lis in determining when we have reached natural classes. A. We must have observed the resemblance in many and varied cases, say in different countries and at different times. £. We must be in a position to say that if there had been exceptions, we must have met them. These two rules guard against forming a law from a limited class of facts. C. There are classes in nature called Kinds, in which the possession of one quality is a mark of a number of others. All classes entitled to be called natural are more or less of this description. Thus, mammals are so desig- nated because they suckle their young; but this charac- teristic is a mark of a number of others — that the animals are warm-blooded, and have four compartments in their liearts. Eeptiles are recognized as producing their young by eggs, but they are also marked as having three com- partments in the heart, and being cold-blooded. INDUCTIOK. 67 These canons guarantee truth. When we are able to place objects in a class, we know that they possess the properties of the class. Ccunons of Causes. — The most lucid and, upon the whole, the clearest and most satisfactory exposition of these methods is by Mr. John S. Mill in his " Logic." It should be noticed that his methods relate to causes, and we have not had from him an exposition of the canons of decomposition and classes as given above. He mentions four or five methods. A. The Method of Agreement. — In the spring season we see innumerable buds, leaves, and blossoms appearing upon the plants, and we find the common cause to be the heat of the sun shining more directly upon the earth. The canon is, " If two or more effects have only one ante- cedent in common, that antecedent is the cause, or, at least, part of the cause." That canon is too loose to admit of a universal application, as we may not be sure that the point of agreement we have fixed on is the only one. B. The Metliod of Difference. — In the very middle of the day I find the scene around me on the earth suddenly darkened. There must be a cause. I find that the moon has come between us and the sun, and this seems the only difference between the two states^the one in which every- tliing was bright, and the other in which it is in gloom. The canon is, " If in comparing one case in which the ef- fect takes place and another in which it does not take place, we find the latter to have every antecedent in com- mon with the former except one, that one circumstance is the cause of the former, or, at least, part of the cause." This method is the one employed in cases in which ex- periment, with its separating power, is available. It is the most decisive of aU tests when the circumstances ad- mit of its application. There are cases in which this 68 CRITEEIA OF TKUTH. metliod is not applicable, when a sort of intermediate one may come to our aid. C. The Indirect Method of Difference, or the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference. — The canon is, " If two or more cases in which the phenomenon occurs have only one antecedent in common, while two or more instances in which it does not occur have nothing in com- mon but the absence of that antecedent, the circumstance in which alone the two sets of cases differ is the cause, or part of the cause, of the phenomenon." The illustration given by Mr. Mill is : " All animals which have a well- developed respiratory system, and therefore aerate the blood, perfectly agree in being warm-blooded, while those whose respiratory system is imperfect do not maintain a temperature much exceeding that of the surrounding me- dium ; we may argue from the two-fold experience that the change which takes place in the blood by respiration is the cause of animal heat." D. The Method of Cooicomitant Vat'iations. — We want to know the cause of the rise of water in a pump or of mercury in a barometsr. The ancients accounted for this by nature's horror of a vacuum, which is inconsistent with the fact that water will not rise above a certain num- ber of feet in the pump. Torricelli and Pascal gave a better explanation when they referred the rising of the water or mercury to the weight of the incumbent atmos- phere, which Pascal proved by ascending a mountain with a barometer, and finding that, as he rose higher and higher, the mercury fell lower and lower in the tube. Here we have the effect varying with its alleged cause, which is an evidence that the alleged cause is the true one. The canon is, " Whenever an effect varies according as its alleged cause varies, that alleged cause may be regarded as the true cause; or, at least, as proceeding from the true cause." INDUOTIOH". 69 E. The Method of Residues. — A farmer knows how much grain a particular field has yielded in the past. He mixes manure with the earth on the field, and finds he has a larger crop, and he ascribes the increase to the manure. He knows what the previously existing antecedents will produce, and after subtracting this, he ascribes the residue to the new antecedent. The canon is, " Subtract from an effect what- ever is known to proceed from certain antecedents, and the residue must be the effect of the remaining antecedents." I do not need here to give anything more than the above general account of these canons, which are fully un- folded by Mr. Mill. I mention them simply to show that when they are applied they settle for us what is truth. Reasoning m Induction. — The question is started, Is there reasoning in induction ? I am sure that there is. From what has been ascertained by observation taken in a wide sense we infer something else — that there is a law which enables us to predict results. How is it that the countryman is enabled to predict a coming storm ? His father has told him, or lie himself has observed that when the wind is in the East, and the clouds are thick and black, there will probably be rain or wind. Here there is evidently inference which can be stated syllogistically by the logician, the general observation being the major premise, the particular state of the wind and sky the minor, and the conclusion that there will be a storm. Every class of men, in fact all men, do thus rea- son on premises implied, though possibly not expressed. The laborer argues, in his own way, that there should be a rise of wages; the merchant purchases because he con- cludes there will be a demand for his goods. Before there were any precise rules laid down on the subject, scientific men drew true and important conclusions from common- sense principles in their own mind. The canons of in- 70 CKITERIA OP TRUTH. duction now expressed definitely enable us to put the reasoning in a more systematic form, which is a great ad- vantage. We can now use the canons of induction (which, I believe, will become more definite and better expressed) as our majors in the syllogism of induction. Major. When two or more effects have only one ante- cedent in common, that antecedent is the cause. Minor. But the budding of innumerable plants in spring has only one common antecedent — the return of the sun to a higher altitude. Conclusion, this one antecedent is the cause. This is the method of agreement. Let us take a case from method of concomitant variations. Major. Where an effect varies with its supposed cause, this is the true cause. Minor. But the rising and falling of the mercury in the barometer varies with the less or greater weight of the superincumbent atmosphere. ConoVusion, the weight of the atmosphere is therefore the cause of the rise or fall of the barometer. It should be observed that the canons, with their implied reasoning, do not guarantee to us absolute certainty, what is called apodictive truth or demonstration. None of these are certified, as first truths are, by the law of necessity ; we can easily conceive any one of the ordinary physical laws not to be true universally, and we might believe so provided we have evidence. The evidence, after all, is merely a probability of a lower or higher degree, but may rise to a certainty only a little short of being absolute, and quite sufficient to justify us to put trust in it and act upon it in ordinary, indeed in all, circumstances. Such, for instance, is the proof which we have in favor of the law of gravitation. It is not demonstrative like a mathematical truth, but it satisfies the mind and is verified by constant observation. JOINT INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE METHOD. 71 SECTION "VI. THE JOINT INDTJCTIVB AND DEDTTCTrVTE METHOD, J. S. Mill argues that more progress will now be made even in observational sciences by deduction than by induc- tion. This may be doubted. It seems to me that obser- vation and experiment must always be the surest way of advancing research. But deduction may be joined to induction. When this is done the method may be called the Joint Inductive and Deductive. This is, in fact, the method represented by Mr. Mill as conducting to such fruitful results. In this method the inquirer begins in the inductive method, that is, he observes facts with care and with the view of discovering a law. As he proceeds he will ever be asking whether the law is so and so, that is, devising an hypothesis. In order to determine whether this is a true law of nature, he has to examine further facts, it may be, facts of a different kind. As he acts thus, he may find he can apply deduction. He inquires what effects follow from the law in his mind, and he then compares these with the facts. If he finds these to correspond, he has a Verification of his Hypothesis. It is by combining the two in this way that the greater number of the established laws of nature have been discovered. In some cases there have been long processes, both of induction and deduction, before the law has been ascertained and adjusted. When the laws of nature are quantitative, as they commonly are, mathematics may be applied to them, and it becomes the instrument of the deduction, and often a far-reaching one, showing very distant consequences which can be compared with facts. In the sciences of observation sometimes the inductive T2 CRITKEIA OP TEUTH. element and sometimes the deductive method is the more prominent ; in all cases the inductive, as I reckon, is the essential. In Galileo's researches experiment was the main instrument, but he also used mathematics. Kepler's fertile mind was always devising hypotheses, but he accepted them only as they were confirmed by observations. It would be wrong to say that Newton's method was mere induction. He had before him the observations of Galileo and Kep- ler, and also a measurement of the distance of the earth's surface from the centre, and he applied a powerful mathe- matics, created by himself, to these facts. It is a circum- stance greatly to his credit that when, on having a wrong measurement of the distance of the earth's circumference fi-om its centre, he found his theory that the moon was held in her sphere by the same power as draws an apple to the ground not in accordance with facts, he gave it up for a time, and only resumed it when it was found, on the proper distance of the earth's distance being ascertained, that the facts corresponded. In all departments of phys- ics or natural philosophy the deductive mingles with the inductive. In optics, in thermotics, in theoretical astro- nomy, in mechanics, the deductive or mathematical ele- ment has a conspicuous place ; but in all these sciences we have always to start with observed facts. In ethics we carry out indefinitely the laws of our moral nature ; but these have been ascertained by a previous observation of that nature. In like manner, in logic we deduce conse- quences from the laws of discursive thouglit, which we have found by observing how they act in the mind. In all the social sciences there is a mixture of the two ele- ments, sometimes the one and sometimes the other being the more predominant. Jurisprudence is forever appealing to fundamental principles, and inquiring how they apply to a given case. The science of national wealth must be JOINT INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE METHOD. 73 constructed mainly by the observation and collection of facts, in statistical and other forms ; but there are imiver- sally operating principles ever called in. Thus it is sup- posed that men are usually swayed by a desire to promote their interest so far as they know it. This is certainly a powerful motive. But there are others, such as the desire for fame, for power, for society, for the beautiful, for the promoting education and religion, all actuating individuals, and the influence may be traced in the progress of nations. In chemistiy the laws have to be ascertained by observa- tion, particularly by experiment; but when pi-inciples have been discovered, such as that of affinity, they may be carried out indefinitely. Psychology, as a science, is con- structed mainly by the observations of consciousness ; but having ascertained certain laws, such as those of the asso- ciation of ideas, we can explain how they affect our beliefs and feelings. In pedagogics, or the science of teaching, we must carefully observe the ways of children ; but, in do- ing so, we discover their actuating motives, such as the love of knowledge, the love of play, the love of approbation, which have to be taken into account in constructing our methods of instruction and discipline. lu aesthetics there are ascertained laws of taste which must be taken along with us in the construction of the science. In all depart- ments of natural history, observation must play the most important part ; but there are laws of life and of form to guide biologists in all their investigations. The principles from which we deduce conclusions are of two kinds. Some are self-evident or demonstrative. Such are moral laws and maxims. These are assumed, and are applied extensively and constantly in history and in all the social sciences, in all sciences which deal with motives and character. Of this description is the maxim that men are likely to be happy and comfortable when 74 CEITEKIA OP TRUTH. they are moral. To this same class belong all mathemati- cal propositions founded on axioms. These self-evident truths are seldom formally enunciated, they are simply as- sumed and applied. So far as science uses them, it is very much employing the joint Dogmatic and Deductive method. But there is a second kind of principles used in deduction even more extensively ; these are acknowledged truths and wise saws established by a large induction. For example, any one may now assume the law of gravitation. In optics it is allowed that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidents, and fi-om this a great many particular truths may be drawn. In chemistry it is taken for granted that the elements combine in certain proportions, and from this a multitude of consequences follow. In this joint method the induction is tested by the can- ons of induction and the deduction by the rules of reason- ing. Hypotheses akd Yeeification. Consilience of Induc- tions. — " Hypotheses non fingo," said Newton, meaning, perhaps, that he introduced no fictitious agency, but merely vercB causae, such as existed in nature ; or, more probably, that he accepted no truth till it was established. Since New- ton's time, especially within the last age, hypotheses have played a very important part in all departments in which the laws have not been settled, as, for example, in electri- city and biology. The investigator is bent on knowing what laws certain phenomena follow. But in nature divers agents are mixed up with one another, and we can- not determine what they are by a loose inspection. As he observes tentatively, he makes a supposition suggested by the facts as to what the law should be. When he notices the descent of plants and animals, he says to himself, Let us suppose the law to be that of development or heredity. He has now a specific end to work for, and he observes JOINT INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVJi; METHOD. 75 and collects facts, and inquires whether they agree with the hypothesis he has formed. If he finds that many of them do so, he has a probability, and is encouraged to pro- ceed ; and if the hypothesis explains a large body of events it rises to the rank of a theory. "VYhen it takes in all the facts bearing on the particular case, and no exceptions can be discovered, it is regarded as a law of nature, which, however, may require to be modified and adjusted before it suits all the facts, and so becomes the true law. This process is called The Yerijication of Hypotheses. — "When first suggested the supposition may have little to support it, and there may seem to be facts opposed to it. Bnt if it is the cor- rect one, there will come confirmations from a variety of quarters, difiiculties will disappear, and the seeming excep- tions may corroborate it. The hypothesis started is that light consists in vibrations, not a very probable supposi- tion beforehand, but then it is found to explain one set of phenomena after another, till at last it seems to account for everything, and is counted as an established law. Or the hypothesis is that of the conservation of energy, or that the amount of energy in the world, real and poten- tial, cannot be increased or diminished. On the first con- sideration of this view, obvious objections will present themselves. We strike with a hammer upon a piece of iron till our strength is exhausted, and it looks as if force had been expended and lost. But, on further inquiry, we detect the energy that had gone out of the body to be con- served in the molecular motion or heat of the metal. Hj^potheses, I rather think, must be resorted to in the early stages of the investigation of every sort of phenomena. They are simply tentatives, and most of them may have to be abandoned. They may or they may not be an- nounced: they may, in the first instance, be simply to CEITEEIA OP TRUTH. guesses, and only a few or one of them prosecuted to any gi-eat extent. The law of gravitation was for a time only an hypothesis, taking the erroneous form that matter at- tracts other matter, not according to the square of the dis- tance, which is the true law, but according to the distance. Hypotheses are necessary, but are to be carefully watched and limited. First. — The hypothesis miist be suggested by the facts and not be feigned by the mind ; this may be the meaning of ITewton. Second. — It must be regarded as a mere hypothesis till it is established by the criteria applicable to the depart- ment. We are much troubled in the present day by hypotheses being represented as established laws. Third. — The hypothesis is to be abandoned when it is found that there are facts inconsistent with it. It requires much courage to abandon an hypothesis which has long been cherished and perhaps published to the world. Fourth. — It is established as a law when it explains all the phenomena bearing on the subject and is not contra- dicted by any known fact. It is a powerful confii-mation of an hypothesis when it enables us to predict occurrences. If the alleged law be the true one, ths facts will correspond to it in the future as in the past, and as they fall out will tend to prove that the hypothesis is a sound one. Dr. "Whewell has shown that the evidence in favor of our induction is of a much higher and more forcible character when it enables us to explain and determine cases of a kind difFerent from those which were contemplated in the formation of our hypothesis. " Thus it was found by Newton that the doctrine of the attraction of the sun, varying according to the inverse square of the distance, which explained Kepler's third law of the proportionality of the cubes of the distances to the CHAN-CE. 77 squares of the periodic times of the planets, explained, also, his first and second laws of the elliptical motion of each planet, although no connection of these laws had been visible before. Again, it appeared that the force of uni- versal gravitation, which had been inferred from the per- turbations of the moon and planets, by the sun, and by each other, also accounted for the fact, apparently alto- gether dissimilar and remote, of the precession of the equinoxes." He designates this process as the Consilience of Inductions. He declares : " ISTo example can be pointed out in the whole history of science, so far as I am aware, in which this consilience of inductions has given testimony in favor of an hypothesis afterward discovered to be false." SECTION vn. CHANCE. In one sense there is and can be no such thing as chance, that is, an event without a cause or without a pur- pose. Every occurrence has a cause in God. J^ot only so, but in the ordinary affairs of this world it has a mundane cause. Further, it falls out according to the uniformity of nature. But there are senses in which there is a chance in our world. The oldest definition of chance {-rvxv) was by Anaxagoras, who makes it an event whose cause cannot be discerned by human reason (\oryia-fia>). This account needs only to be a little expanded and made more definite. There are occurrences of which the cause or the law is un- known, and, in consequence, we cannot anticipate their oc- currence. This may arise from the cause being utterly unknown to us. More frequently it arises from the com 78 CKITEEIA OF TRUTn. plexity of nature, from there being a number of agents working, or from the nature of their operation. We may know all the agencies at work, but we cannot tell how they are working. In all cases the events do not recur with such regularity as to constitute a law. There was a time when eclipses were regarded as coming according to no law, and men, following the law of causality, referred them to a deity. When these causes were discovered they were found to have periods, and astronomers could predict their recurrence, and they were viewed in a different light. Till lately meteors were supposed to appear capriciously, but now showers of them are expected at certain seasons of the year, and nobody ascribes them to chance. When we shake a die in a dice-box, we are acquainted with the me- chanical law which it obeys in its movements, but we can- not say which side will cast up. We know, in a general way, what physiological agencies produce death, but we cannot predict at what precise time any man will die. Still, even in such cases a certain kind and amount of truth may be had, and this from the circiunstance that the event proceeds, after all, from causes which operate regu- larly and from there being a limited number of causes. We find that, given a sufficient number of trials, each side of the die will come up the same number of times ; if any side comes up more frequently than another, we argue that the dice have been loaded. We do not know when any one man will die, but we can ascertain what number of people will die in a given time in a community. In such cases we can strike an average, and we can fore- tell average results and estimate the probability of a given event. When we speak of the probability of an occur- rence, we are not to understand this as implying the un- certainty of the occun-ence considered in itself. The event, say the death of a person on a certain day, may be abso- CHANCE. 79 lutely sure, owing to causes operating. "We can conceive that there are higher intelligences to whom it would not be uncertain. "We are sure that it would not be so to the view of the Omniscient. It is so to us because of the limited nature of our faculties and of our knowledge of the causes operating. "Were we cognizant of all the ante- cedent circumstances we might in many cases be able to predict the result. It is because of our ignorance that the event is uncertain to us. The probability or improba- bility is not in the event which we have for expecting it ; it is subjective and not objective. In all cases we must have certain data gained by obser- vation and yielding a general average. In some depart- ments we can express numerically the probability or im- probability of the particular occurrence. An event reck- oned impossible may be represented by 0, an event certain to happen by 1. All degrees of probability may be de- noted by the fractions representing value from zero to unity. The probability of an uncertain event is represented by the number of chances favorable and unfavorable. Thus the casting up of a head or a tail being 1, and the chances against it being 2, the proper chance is one-half. The tables that have been prepared for life insurance com- panies have been very elaborate, but need not here be given. There is another sense in which it may be said that there is such a thing as chance. There cannot be an oc- currence without a purpose on the part of God, who has ordered the causes producing it. But there may be a concur- rence without a design. It is by chance that certain rocks take the form of the face of Napoleon or "Wellington. I do not know that there was any purpose designed or effected by so many men of genius being born in the year 1759, or by Cervantes dying on the same day as Shakespeare 80 CEITEEIA OF TRUTH. died. There are certain minds that take the keenest in> terest in observing such coincidences and discover a deep meaning in vsrhat is in itseK meaningless ; for example, con- necting a calamity with the spilling of salt at a table, or from thirteen persons meeting at that table. On the other hand, when there is an immense congregation of agents that are independent, to produce an evident benevolent end, for instance, of vibrations of light of coats, and hu- mors, of rods and cones, to enable us to see through the eye, there is evidence of design, the chances being all against such a concurrence. SECTION vm. PSYCHOLOGY. Here, as well as in all the physical sciences, we have to begin with the observation of facts. There is, however, an important difference between the two departments. The facts in physical science are obtained by the senses ; whereas, in mental science, the observing agent is self -con- sciousness. It is only thus we can find out what any psy- chical act is. An examination of the nerves and brain may show how a mental state arises, but can give no idea of the mental act itself, say of a sensation, a recollection, an imagination, of moral approbation, of emotion or wish. But in making consciousness our witness we have to allot to it a large province. We must include in it not only immediate introspection, but also the observation of the mental acts of others, as disclosed in their words, their writings, and their deeds. We cannot, indeed, look directly into the bosoms of our fellow-men so as to ascertain what is passing within, but we can gather what this is by the PSYCHOLOGY. 81 expression of it, which, be it observed, we can understand because we are conscious of our own acts. History, biog- raphy, travels, plays, novels, newspapers, and especially conversation and familiar letters, may all show us human nature quite as much as they do external incidents. With- out these supplements we should have a very contracted view of the mind by inspection of our own souls. The individual facts are made known in this way. The criterion of consciousness is in itself, it is self -evidencing. As we observe the facts we distinguish between those that differ and co-ordinate them into laws. The criteria of the laws are much the same as those of physical science. Psychology proceeds on the same two fundamental prin- ciples as physics. It is seeking for causes. Without determining the question of the freedom of the will, we may confidently affirm that causation, that the persistence of force, rules in the mind as it does in the body. Certain antecedents are sure to be followed by certain conse- quences. The orator urges the considerations which may persuade those whom he is addressing and lead them to action. The poet raises up images that please and elevate the mind. The father and the teacher inculcate principles which may guide the young in aU their future lives. In- vestigators in this department have been seeking to dis- cover faculties and the rule and mode of their operation. The early Greeks found sensation, the discursive power, and reason. Aristotle had in the soul the nutritive power sensation, memory, phantasy, and above these, the reason, active and passive. In all ages there has been a grand distiaction drawn, in a loose form, between the intellect and the will, the cognitive and the motive powers. Every- body talks of the memory, the judgment, of reasoning, and of sentiment and feeling, of the power of abstracting, gen- eralizing, distinguishing, of loving and of hating. 82 CRITERIA OF TRUTH. There seem, also, to be laws of uniformity in miud. It does not appear that in the association of ideas one idea is the cause of that which succeeds ; that when height sug- gests hollow, and the dwarf suggests the giant, and prosper- ity, adversity, and a portrait the original ; that when we coimt up from one to one hundred, there is a causal con- nection between the ideas— they are the joint effect of a number of causes. In the science of psj'^chology we seek to discover these laws, such as the law of habit, the connec- tion between the idea and the feeling raised by it, the kind of acts which conscience approves of. Now, there may be criteria of these laws, both of causa- tion and uniformity. These have not been so carefully enunciated as those of physical science. I believe that, Tmitatis mutcmdis, they may be considered as very much the same. TJie Method of Agreement. — Washington is named, and we find the mind following a certain train. We think of his education, his training, the revolution, his battles, his character, all of which have been previously in the mind together, and we reach the law of contiguity, that when ideas have been in the mind at the same time, when one comes up the others are apt to follow. The Method of Difference. — "We see a portrait of Wash- ington for the first time. The two, the portrait and Washington, were never before in the mind together, yet the portrait calls up Washington, and the law is, things that are related, especially things that are like, recall each other. The Joint Method of Agreement amd Difference. — There are days in which we find that we can easily recall the things we would remember, other days in which they will not come up. The difference is in the time : that in the first few days our brain was in perfect health ; in the NATURAL THEOLOGY. 83 other we had a headache, and we discover that the state of the brain affects our associations. Method of Concomita/nt Ya/riations.f-^\LQVL we are in- terested in an event known to ns, we are apt to think of it more frequently, and we conclude that feeling, as a secondary law, influences our associations, and according to the feeling with which it is accompanied, so do ideas come up. Method of Residues. — On contemplating kind actions, we feel a pleasure which can be explained by our social feelings ; but we find that on contemplating some of these we have a feeling of moral approbation. This cannot be explained by the mere social feeling, and we have to call in a moral principle. SECTION IX. NATURAL THEOLOGY. Attempts have been made to conduct this science on the joint dogmatic and deductive method, but, ia my opinion, without much success. It has to deal with facts, the ex- istence of God and the immortality of the individual soul, and therefore must have an inductive or observational ele- ment. I have my doubts whether, from a mere idea or principle in the mind, we can argue the existence of the living God. It should proceed, I reckon, mainly in the joint inductive and deductive method. It looks at God's works within and without us, and, discovering wondei-f ul mutual fittings, means and end, traces of love and just gov- ernment, it rises to the belief in a being of power, wisdom, benevolence, and justice. The inductions are collected in such works as Eay's " Wisdom of God," in Paley's 84 CEITEEIA OF TEUTH. " JS'atural Theology," in the Bridgewater treatises, and the ordinary works of natural religion. But there are deductive processes involved. The prem- ises here are supplied mainly by d jpriori principles or by intuition, all to be justified by the criteria of First Truths. In the mind of man there are high and deep truths in the germ, all capable of being developed and actually work- ing in the mature man, being called forth by the circum- stances in which he is placed. There is the principle of causation, requiring us, on a new thing or a change ap- pearing, to seek for a cause. This can stand the tests of intuition, being self-evident, necessary, universal, in om- very nature and constitution, and it leads us to believe that where there are traces of design there must be a designer. There is a moral power within us, with its law and its obligations, implying a law-giver. "We have not an ade- quate idea of infinity, bu.t we believe that there is some- thing beyond our widest idea or concept, something to which nothing can be added, and we are led to apply it to the powerful, the good and holy One. We are entitled, we are required, to trust and follow these principles. They are elements and the highest ele- ments of the reason with which we are endowed. "We be- gin with trusting the senses, and find, as we do so, constant confirmations in our daily experience ; what appeared at first to be realities we discover to be more real as we bring one sense after another to bear upon them, and find that meat nourishes ns and pure air refreshes us, and the due nse of the good things of this world pro- longs life. We should confide in the same way in our higher ideas and beliefs, and as we do so we find them expanding and elevating the mind, opening grand vistas which look beyond the seen and temporal into the unseen and eternal. If we do not follow our lower instincts, if NATFEAL THEOLOGY. 85 we do not eat and drink, our bodies will become feeble and die ; and i£ we deny our higher reason, our souls will lose their freshness, vigor, and aspirations. But when we would construct the argument, indeed, in all scientific investigations and in all true philosophy we must be careful to ascertain the exact nature of the intui- tions or intuitive reason we call in, and only use them ac- cordingly. Those who neglect this are sui-e to present them in an extravagant form or make a perverted use of them. This has been done by the mystics of the East and of mediaeval times, indeed, of all ages. Almost al- ways they have got a glimpse of a reality, but they have seen it only under partial aspects, and they have shown it to us through a cloud, or irradiated it with reflected light, and have represented it to us as vision, inspiration, and ecstacy, whereas it is only one of the higher elevations of our nature. All our profound thinkers have seen these truths, but have not always properly represented them. We may hold with Plato that there is a grand, indeed, a Divine idea ; but I wish that idea, as in the mind, carefully ex- amined, and its forms or law exactly determined, and it is for inductive science, and not speculation, to tell us what are the types which represent it in nature. I hold with Aristotle that there are formal and final as well as mate- rial and efficient causes in natm-e ; but it is for a careful induction to determine the nature of these and to show how matter and force are made to work for order and for ends. I am as sure as Descartes, and as Augustine and Anselm were before him, that there is in the mind a germ of the idea of the infinite and perfect ; but we must show what is the precise nature of the idea, so as to secure that we draw only legitimate inferences from it. I discover, as Leibnitz did, a pre-established harmony in nature, but it 86 CEITEEIA OP TRUTH. consists mainly, not in things acting independently of each other, but in the harmony produced by things acting on each other. I attach as much importance to experience as Locke did, but I maintain that observation discovers that the intuition (which he acknowledged) looks at principles in the mind prior to all experience. I allow to Kant his forms, his categories, and his ideas, but their nature is to be discovered, not by criticism, but by induction, when they will be found not to superinduce qualities on things, but simply to enable us to perceive what is in things. I believe with Sclielling in intuition (Anschauung), but it is an intuition viewing i-ealities. I hold with Hegel that there is an Absolute, but I believe that our knowledge, after all, is finite, implying an infinite, and that the doctrine can be enunciated so as not to issue in pantheism. I turn away with scornful aversion from the pessimism of Scho- penliauer and Yon Hartmann, but I believe they have done good by calling attention to the existence of evil, to remove which is an end worthy of the labors and suffer- ings of the Son of God. I believe with Herbert Spencer in a vast unknown above, beneath, and around us, but I rejoice in a light shining in the darkness and revealing the known. I believe in the gems so rich and varied which the higher poets have left us as a rich inheritance ; but before they can enter into philosophy they must be cut and set, and it will require a skilful hand to adjust them, and when they are cut it must be as skilfully as diamonds arc, and this only to show more fully their form and beauty. THE SUPEENATUEAL. 87 SECTION X. THE STJPEENATUEAL. We have to posit the Supernatural as the origin of the natural. This we do on the principle of cause and effect. We discover in nature evidences of its being an effect. It has, as Sir John Herschel says, the appearance of " a man- ufactured article." This is seen particularly in the adap- tation of one thing to another all throughout nature. We argue a cause above and beyond nature, and this is Super- natural. Miracles. — It is asserted that in the very midst of the natural occurrences there are events which cannot be accounted for by natural agents. These are called mira- cles. Of most of these, when we examine them, we find that they cannot stand our criteria ; they are the products of superstitious fears and of credulity. But there are events recorded in the Old and New Testaments which are worthy of having the tests of truth applied to them. These are not to be regarded as occurring without a cause. They are not inconsistent with the intuitive con- viction of causation. They have a sufficient cause in that power in which nature originated. We are only follow- ing out the principle of causation in arguing thus. We rise to a supernatural cause because there is no agent in nature adequate to produce such occurrences as the resur- rection of Lazarus or Jesus. I would not describe miracles with Hume, as " viola- tions of the laws of nature ;" but they cannot be account- ed for by these laws. They do not fall in with that gen- eral fact that every event has not only a cause in God but a cause in a physical agent. As physical agents cannot produce them, we argue that they are effect- ed by the immediate power of God. Further, they are 88 CBITEKI^ OF TEUTH. not in accordance with tlie uniformity of nature. It is not in conformity with this that fishermen and me- chanics of Galilee should produce our Lord's discourses. They accomplish their ends, in guaranteeing revealed truth, because they are above the causes and laws of nature. The evidences of Christianity are of two kinds : one in- ternal and the other external. The external are facts attested by witnesses, whose depositions are to be tested by the criteria of testimony. The others are those de- rived from the suitableness of the truth revealed to our nature, moral and spiritual, to our sinful state and our wants. Take the Sermon on the Mount as so conforma- ble to our moral nature. Take the life and character of Jesus, so perfect, so full of love in a world of sin and self- ishness. Take his sufferings and his death, so fitted to accomplish their avowed end, that is, make atonement for sin. There is proof of a uniformity of laws in nature, not from intuition, but the combined result of the experience of all times and countries. But it can be shown that there is a like uniformity in revelation, in its types, its prophecies, its doctrines. Its miracles are of a certain kind. Those of our Lord were mostly the healing of diseases, the cure of evils. Each one is part of a system ; each part bear- ing up the others and the whole. By the one uniformity we are sure that every event is according to law. By the other we find a conformity in a whole supernatural system. LIMITS TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 89 SECTION XI. CONCLtrSION LIMITS TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. The aim of this treatise has been to show that the hu- man mind is capable of reaching knowledge, and that it has tests to determine when it has done so. I have faced the agnostic, but have not entered into a wrestling with him, which would be endless, because he refuses to take a form by which I may lay hold of him. I have pursued a more eflFectual method. I have shown objects where he assures us that there is nothing. It is in this way we can command assent and gain assurance. I have proceeded on the idea that there is a difference in the certitude of truths. Some I have shown are self- evident, necessary, and universally held, and therefore cer- tain beyond doubt or dispute ; others are only probable, some with only a slight balance in their favor, others ris- ing to certainty. This is not so much a difference in the truths as a difference in the evidence to us. To God and to higher beings, the one kind may be as certain as the other. We cannot tell whether there will or will not be a good harvest next year. But to Omniscience it may be as certain that there is to be a good harvest as that all the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. It is of vast moment that we should know what kind of evi- dence we have, and what the validity of the evidence which we have in favor of any proposition we are required ' to believe, whether it is demonstrative or merely probable, and if only probable, what the degree of probability. It is also of moment that we should note what kind of truth admits of apodictic and what of only probable proof. It is vain to seek for demonstration in every kind of investi- gation. We can have such, as I reckon, only when we have 90 CEITEKIA OF TKUTH. self-evident truth. But, then, it can be shown that induc- tive truth can rise to certainty. I doubt much whether we have immediate evidence of the existence of God as we have of the existence of ourselves. But we have quite as valid proof of the existence of God as we have of the exist- ence of our fellow-men ; in both we have a fact, the acts done, and we rise up by the principle of causation to a cause. The criteria of truth which I have been furnish- ing should assist us in all such investigations. Man's knowledge is increasing and must continue to increase. His generalizations widen as his knowledge increases and take in more and more objects. He is con- stantly gaining more premises which lead to farther con- clusions. One discovery leads on to another ; one chamber opened shows us the door which opens into a second. Davy proved the correlation of electric and magnetic forces, Oersted of electric and magnetic, and at last the grand doctrine disclosed itself to a number of investiga- tors, particularly to Mayer, that all the physical forces are correlated. But man's power of discovering truth is and ever must be limited. First, there are limits to his mental powers. He has only iive original inlets of knowledge into the ma- terial world. Had he fifty senses instead of five he might know vastly more. Then, his power of working on the materials required by sense and consciousness, his memoiy and his understanding, are also limited. Some men can discover more truth than others, and it is conceivable that there may be higher intelligences who see farther into the nature of things than the most far-sighted of men. Sec- ondly, every man's individual experience is limited, and the same may be said of the experience of the race — it is confined within very stringent bounds. Man can discover a vast amount of truth, speculative LIMITS TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 91 and practical. We have enough revealed to exercise our faculties, to expand and elevate the mind, and to serve for all the purposes of the duty we owe to God, to ourselves, and our fellow-men. Every truth known leads, however, into the unknown. But this is to tempt us to penetrate into the unknown region that we may know it. As we do so we shall find that there are things beyond our ken in a region beyond, above, or beneath us, and we must be content to allow them to lie there. We know as much as to know that there are truths which we cannot know. We see the objects within our proper range of vision, but we also see the darkness that encompasses them. " We know in part." Yes, we know, but we know only in part. We who dwell in a world " where day and night alter- nate ; " we who go everywhere accompanied by our own shadow — a shadow produced by our dark body, but pro- duced because there is light — cannot expect to be abso- lutely delivered from the darkness. Man's faculties, ex- quisitely adapted to the sphere in which he moves, were never intended to enable him to comprehend all truth. The mind is in this respect like the eye. The eye is so constituted as to perceive things within a certain range, but as objects are removed farther and farther from us they become more indistinct, and at length are lost sight of altogether. It is the same with the intellect of man. It can penetrate a certain distance and understand certain subjects, but as they stretch away farther they look more and more confused, and at length they disappear from the view. And if the human spirit attempts to mount higher than its limited range, it will find all its flights fruitless. The dove, to use a well-known illustration of Kant's, may mount to a certain height in the heavens ; but as she rises the air becomes lighter, and at length she finds that she 92 CKITEEIA OF TRUTH. can no longer float upon its bosom, and should she at- tempt to soar higher her pinions flutter in emptiness, and she falters and falls. So it is with the spirit of man : it can wing its way a very considerable distance into the ex- panse above it, but there is a boundary which if it at- tempts to pass, it will find all its conceptions void and its ratiocinations unconnected. Placed as we are in the centre of boundless space and in the middle of eternal ages, we can see only a few ob- jects immediately around us, and all others fade in outline as they are removed from us by distance, till at length they lie altogether beyond our lasion. And this remark holds tme not only of the more ignorant, of those whose eye can penetrate the least distance ; it is true also of the learned ; it is perhaps true of all created beings that there is a bounding sphere of darkness surrounding the space rendered clear by the torch of science, l^ay, it almost looks as if tlie wider the boundaries of science are pushed, and the greater the space illuminated by it, the greater in proportion the bounding sphere of darkness into which no rays penetrate, just as (to use a very old comparison) when we strike up a light in the midst of darkness, in very pro- portion as the light becomes stronger so does also that sur- face dark and black which is rendered visible. 11 ENERGY; EFFICIENT AND FINAL CAUSE ENERGY. EFFICIENT AND FINAL CAUSE. BSTTRODUCTIOlSr. The principle of cause and effect is involved in most of the processes by which we discover truth. True, there are verities which are perceived by intuition, that is, in looking upon the objects, such as that I exist and that material things exist. But it is only a small portion of our knowl- edge that is obtained by primary and direct inspection. In the case of other and derivative truths causation is im- plied, if not in the whole, at least in the greater number of them. The principle has a place in the great body of our con- victions as to the past. I do not see that it has any part in memory which is instinctive, but it has in all those which we reach by a process. Thus, we believe that there has been a battle at a certain place,'a flood at a particular spot on a river, a fire in a dwelling, because we discover effects, which we argue imply a cause. Thus, we argue that certain strata in the earth's surface are the deposits of an ancient ocean, and that other portions have been thrown up by a volcano. Even in regard to events which we be- lieve on human testimony, we assume that the actors have been swayed by the same motives as men now are. It will be allowed more readily that our reasonable ex- 96 INTEODTJCTIOlsr. pectations as to the future depend so far on this principle. We ai'gue, whether we are conscious of it or not, that the causes now operating in physical nature and in men's minds will act in the future as in the past ; that these col- leges and schools will (jontinue to produce a high mental cultivation ; that these improved modes of agriculture will produce a richer crop, and that the abuses in certain old countries will, in the end, produce a revolution like those of France and America. The principle is involved in the common arguments for the existence of God. True, those who believe with Schleiermacher that God is perceived by direct intuition do not need this premise. But the proofs commonly urged, for example, that from the adaptation of one thing to another to accomplish a good end, and that from the high ideas in the mind of the infinite the perfect proceed, as has been shown by Kant, on the principle of causation ; these collocations and aspirations imply a designing mind to produce them. Causation is thus one of the bonds which connect the present with the past and the future, and the whole with God as the Great First Cause. If this be so, it is surely de- sirable, it is indeed of vast importance, to have the nature of cause and our belief in it accurately unfolded, and brought into consistency with modern science. David Hume, in establishing his philosophical scepticism, labored with all his might to loosen the causal connection. In the defence of truth this principle comes next in order to that of the Criteria of Truth. SECTION I. » PHTSICAL CATJSATIOK. The subject will be made clearer by carefully distinguish- ing Causation Objective and Subjective: that is causation in itself whether we observe it or no (a spark will kindle gunpowder without our taking notice of it), and the princi- ple in the mind which leads us believe in it. I am not singular in holding that the whole subject of Cause has become confused in the minds of men, especially educated men, and that the time has come for reconsidering it in the light which recent investigation furnishes. In our day two or three doctrines have been propounded and, I believe, demonstrated, which require us to review and re- vise the doctrine of causation, more especially in its rela- tion to Force, Energy, and Power. Theee is a duality oe plurality in Causation, that is, there are two or more acting bodies in all physical causes. There were thinkers who had a glimpse of that doctrine from an old date. Aristotle spoke of a a-vvainov which Sir W. Hamilton translates Concause.' But this truth was first clearly enunciated by Mr. J. S. Mill {Logic, Book rV., Chap. Y.). " The statement of the cause is in- complete unless in some shape or other we introduce all the conditions. A man takes mercury, goes out of doors, ' Sextus Empiricns gpeaks, III. 15, of avvair lov, avvepy6i/, TweKTixa, all pointing to joint action. 98 PHYSICAL CAtrSATION. and catches cold. We say, perhaps, that the cause of his taking cold was the exposure to the air. It is clear, how- ever, that his having taken mercury may have been a necessary condition of his catching cold ; and though it might consist with usage to say that the cause of his attack was exposure to the air, to be accurate we ought to say that the cause was exposure to the air while under "the ef- fect of mercury." The doctrine had occurred to me before I read Mr. Mill's " Logic ; " but as he published it first, I do not claim any credit in it. As approaching it, however, from a somewhat different direction, I believe I can make it more explicit and comprehensive. In all physical action there are two or more bodies, molecular or molar ; at the present stage of science I ought to add that the body may be the ether in which the undulations of light take place. Now the cause — by which I mean that which invariably has produced the effect, and will invariably produce it — con- sists in the mutual action of two or more bodies ; that is, their action on each other. Thus, in the case adduced by Mr. Mill, the true cause of the effect, the cold, was not the air alone or the body alone, but the air and the body un- der mercury. "Without the concurrence, or rather the joint action of the two, the effect would not have been produced. It is the same in all other cases. A ball at rest is struck by a ball in motion ; the one ball is made to move, the other has its motion stayed ; the cause consists of the two balls in a certain state, and the effect the balls in another state. A picture-frame falls from a wall and breaks a jar standing on a table below ; we say that the frame, or rather the fall of the frame, was the cause of the fracture of the jar. But the true cause, that which forever will produce the same effect, is the frame falling with a certain momentum and the brittleness of the jar. PLURALITY IN CAUSE AND EFFECT. 99 Had the frame come down with less violence, or the jar been stronger, there might have been no breakage. In most cases of action a considerable number, in some a vast number and variety of agents combine to produce the result. Take the sprouting of a flower in spring : in the cause there are the increased heat and light of the sun, the state of the plant in the earth, and the state of the soil. Without the concurrence of all these the effect would not be produced. n. Secondly, there is a duality or plurality m the EFFECT. This is a further truth which Mr. MiU has not expounded, but which occurred to me as I was thinking out the doctrine which Mr. Mill preceded me iu unfolding. It follows from Mr. Mill's doctrine when it is properly un- derstood, and seems to me to be quite as certain, and it is fully more important and of wider range iu its applications. Thus, in Mr. MUl's illustration the cause was the state of the atmosphere and the body as affected by mercury ; the effect was the same atmosphere insensibly changed in temperature, and the body under a cold. In the second case the true cause consisted of the two balls, one in mo- tion striking the other at rest ; the effect (which would be forever produced by the same cause) the ball which was at rest moving and the ball which was in motion at rest. In the third case the cause was the picture-frame with a certain momentum striking a jar of a certain structure ; the effect was the frame losing part of its momentum and the jar broken. In the case of the plant germinating there must have been in the effect changes — it may be in- capable of measurement — in all the agents acting as the causes in the sun's heat and light absorbed in the earth and in the plant sprouting. 100 PHYSICAL CAUSATION. Taking these views with us, it may be of great use to have appropriate and definite phrases to express them. The word Cause, that which invariably produces the effect, should be reserved for the combination of agencies pro- ducing the result. The cause of the man's taking cold is not merely the cold atmosphere or his frame being affected by mercury, but in the two acting on each other. The word Effect should in like manner be applied to the com- bined result, and comprises the change in the air as well as the colded affection of the body. In the other illustra- tive cases it implies the movement of the one ball and the staying of the other ; the loss of momentum in the picture- frame as well as the breaking of the jar ; and the change in the rays of heat and light coming from the sun as well as the germinating of the plant. As causes are dual or plural, it is proper to have phrases to express the parts. The law is often stated that the same cause always produces the same effect in the same circumstances. But in order to clearness and acciiracy it is essential to specify what are the circumstances ; it is in fact necessary to put them into the cause, as without them the effect would not follow. In order to the germinating of the flower there is not only the state of the plant and soil, but the additional heat of the sun. All the acting parts may be called agents or agencies, without specifying Avhat they are. They are bodies in a certain state acting on other bodies. Very often one of these agents is more important in it- self, or. in our estimation, or for our present purpose, than the others ; this is designated pre-eminently the cause, and little or no evU may arise from this provided always that it be understood that this agent needs one or more co- operating agents which are parts of the full cause. If it be said that the cold air was the cause of the man being CAUSE AND CONDITION. 101 colded, it was because his body was disposed toward such an issue by mercury. It is not easy, or perhaps even pos- sible, to lay down a rule as to which of the agents should be called the special, the main, or the prominent cause, for the cause consists in the mutual action of the whole. When man is working he often calls in one agent to pro- duce an intended effect. If he wishes to kindle a heap of straw, the agent he attends to is the fire he applies ; if he wishes a good crop from his ground, he looks to the manure ; if he wishes to be cured of a disease, he selects his medi- cine ; though in all such cases there is need of co-operation in the state of the straw, or of the ground, or of his bodily frame. In nature there is often one agent that is particu- larly potent. When a tree is struck by lightning it is the electricity that is specially noticed, though the structure of the tree .had also to do with the effect produced. Fixing on the agent that is most prominent in itself or in our eyes as the cause or special force, then the co-opera- ting agent may be called the Occasion. This phrase is specially applied to circumstances which cast up to call forth a power into exercise, or to work along with causes steadily operating. Thus, that ill-constructed house fell on the oc- casion of a storm arising. I was prompted to write a letter to a friend by my affection ; but the occasion was his suffer- ing a severe loss ; the two actually called forth the letter. Malebranehe was the philosopher who brought the phrase " occasional cause " into general use. He represented the will of God as the true cause of all creative action, but the volition of man might be the occasion of the forthputting of the Divine Power. Thus, when I move my arm the true cause is the Divine Will, but my purpose is the occa- sional cause. In such a case we inay allowably give a prominence to the Divine Power, but it should be noticed that while one of the agents is the important one, the 102 PHYSICAL CATJSATIOH". other or others, the action of the brain and nerves, are necessary to the production of the precise consequence, which -will not follow without the co-operation. "We are thus enabled to give a philosophical explanation of what is meant, or rather what should be meant, by Con- dition, a phrase so often used vaguely and illegitimately in the present day in its application to physical operation. In order to be rid of an agent or to drive it into a corner, it is said that it is simply a condition. In order to the pro- duction of a given effect, a certain agent is fixed on as pro- ducing an end, the other or others are represented as simply conditions. As proving design we show that animals with a stomach for digesting flesh have also claws and strong muscles to catch and hold their prey. But an attempt is made to do away with the force of the argument by urging that these adjuncts are merely the conditions of the ma- chine working. But properly understood the argument lies in the circumstance that the co-operating conditions have met. The presence of strings in a hai-p is a condition of it producing music, but the evidence of design is in the presence and combination of the necessary strings. We may legitimately and conveniently use such phrases provided we understand them ourselves and let our readers or hearers understand what we mean by them. But it should be distinctly explained that all the agents acting, whether circumstances, occasions, or conditions, constitute the cause without which the effect would not follow. It is needful to make like explanations and come to the same understanding as to the Effect. In all cases of physi- cal action the effect is also dual or plural ; it consists of two or more agents changed — I hope to show the same agents as are in the cause. These constitute what has been, and what will always be, produced by the cause. But it often happens that a special end is contemplated CONDITIONS AND INCIDENTS. 103 when we set an agent or agencies aworking ; and wlien this is effected it is regarded as the proper or the onlj effect. But there may be other consequences which we did not consider or look for, or which we regard as minor or irrelevant ones. We wish for a shower to refresh the ground ; as it falls it accomplishes that end, but it may also so swell a stream that it works destruction as it overflows its banks. A new machine is invented which produces a greater amount of work, but it throws a number of people, who followed the old methods, out of employment. It is desirable to have a phrase to denote these secondary effects, as they are regarded ; and they may be described as Gon- comitcmts, or more expressly as Incidents or Incidentals. Perhaps some would call them Accidents, and they may be so called as they were not intended, as when one fires an overcharged gun and is wounded by its striking back- Avard. But these accidents are quite as much caused by the agents as the others that were expected. In all cases the effect properly understood consists of the whole of the agents that have been acting put in a new state. Any one who sets new agencies agoing, say starting a new trade or passing a new law, is bound to look not merely to one but all the consequences that must follow. III. The Conseevation of Eneegt. — It has long been known and acknowledged that the sum of matter in the cosmos is always one and the same. "We burn a piece of paper and it disappears from our view, but it is not annihilated. One portion of the matter has gone down in ashes, the other has gone up in smoke, and it is conceivable we might bring the scattered particles together, and they would be- come the original paper. > 104 PHYSICAL CAUSATION. Imperious Cesar dead and turned to clay Might atop a hole to keep the wind away. It has been proven in om* day that the same is ti-iie of the energy of matter. This doctrine was anticipated by several philosophic physicists,' but was established in our day by Mayer, by Joule, by Grove, and others. Accord- ing to it, the sum of energy potential and actual capable of being' brought into operation or in operation, is always one and the same. It cannot be increased and it cannot be diminished by any human, indeed, any mundane agency. The doctrine is thus stated by Clerk Maxwell : " The total energy of any body or system of bodies can neither be in- creased nor diminished by any mutual action of these bodies, though it may be transformed into any one of the forms of which energy is susceptible." The amount of energy is constant if unaffected by any agent external to itseK. If acted on from without the energy wiU be in- creased by what has been communicated. If it acts on bodies without, the energy will be diminished by the work done. "When any portion leaves one body it passes into another. If two balls strike each other, they have the same amount of energy before they strike and after they strike, though the energy may be decreased in one and increased to the same extent in the other. When the energy dis- ' It has been shown (Thomson and Tail's Natural Philosophy, § 269) that Newton had seized the principle which leads to the doctrine, " Work done on any system of bodies has its equivalent in the form of work done against friction, molecular forces or gravity if there be no accelera- tion ; but if there be acceleration pai-t of the work is expended in over- coming resistance to acceleration, and the additional kinetic energy de- veloped is equivalent to the work so spent." It can be shown, I think, that Leibnitz also approached the doctrine from another side. In his letters to M. L'Hospital he speaks of "I'egalite de la cause et de I'ef- fect," and says, "la force se conserve toujours." This points to tho principle. Mayer, who did as much as any other man to establish the doctrine, also speaks of the effect being equal to the cause. COBRELATION OP POECES. 105 appears in one form, say in meclianical force moving a mass, it appears in another, say in heat, which is molecu- lar motion. It is an integrant part of this doctrine that the physical forces are all correlated, a truth beautifully expounded by Grove in his " Correlation of the Physical Forces." The energy may take various forms — say the purely mechanical, the chemical, the electric, the magnetic — perhaps also the gravitative, which may be a somewhat weak form of the correlated forces. These forms are capable of being trans- mitted into each other, and this in deiinite quantity : so much mechanical force into so much chemical force, which chemical force may be reconverted into the mechanical. This shows the whole physical forces of our world to be correlated and capable of being exchanged for one another, the sum of energy remaining the same. It may not be easy to show the full ■ relation between these three doctrines, which I hold to be severally estab- lished. But there is no inconsistency between them. Perhaps the full doctrine may be so stated as to embrace all the three and make them aspects of one grand truth. Our world may, as the Pythagoreans supposed, be like a closed globe with an incalculably large but definite number of bodies in it. These act and react upon each other, pro- ducing all the activity, all the movement in our world. The bodies act on each other, and form a cause. In doing so they modify each other and the result is the effect. Meanwhile the sum of matter and the sum of energy in the bodies continue one and the same, and both are inca- pable of increase or diminution. This is at least an in- telligible doctrine, and embraces the three truths which have been separately stated, and seems in perfect consist- ency with all that has been established in regard botli to the persistence of matter and the persistence of energy. 106 PHYSICAL CAUSATIOW. I am prepared to stand by and defend the statement now made. But when I inqnke more particularly into the nature of things involved in causation, I feel that I am treading darkly and have to guard my steps. Important questions are pressed upon me, and I have to speak with- out dogmatism. What is the relation of energy to causation ? Energy is now the favorite phrase employed to express the activity of matter. Energy produces changes. But the change must be in something. Physical energy is in the system of bodies. By it one body acts on another. There must be energy of some sort in every system of bodies at all times. But the body acts only when another body is present. When two or more bodies act on each other we have cause. Cause is that which will ever produce the same effects. Energy and cause must be realities quite as much as matter is. Indeed, energy and causation seem to be in the very nature of matter. Energy is the power that acts in matter. Matter, when it acts, acts causally. The energy in the two or more bodies acting as the cause is the power in causation. Energy is said to be potential and actual or kinetic. Wlien energy is merely potential the bodies are not in evi- dent action of any kind. The energy becomes real or ac- tual when a body comes into a relation of mutual action with another body. There is now causation. Some would get rid of energy in physics by affirming that the whole phenomenon consists in motion. But there is energy, potential energy, when there is no seen motion. There is energy in that fragment of marble on my table, and this when the body is not moving. Energy is that which produces motion. The energy is measured by the work it does, that is, by the motion it produces. ENERGY. 107 The ball A, as it moves by its energy, strikes the ball B, loses its energy, and rests. "What is the difference be- tween A moving and A at rest ? The answer is that it has an energy in the former case, which it has not in the latter. It will not regain its energy and be able to move till it gets it from some other body. It has to be added that the body without the energy has the capacity {Bvva/Mi<;) of receiving it." " Energy," says Clerk Maxwell, " cannot exist except in connection with matter" (Matter and Motion, p. 165). We have a like statement by the authors of " The Unseen Universe " (p. 106). "Energy is never found separate from matter, so that we might define matter as the seat or vehicle of energy — that which is essential to the existence of the known forms of energy, without which, therefore, there could be no transformation of energy and therefore no life such as we now know it." It is commonly said that the energy is in the body. Sometimes the body has more and sometimes less of this energy. The stone taken to the top of a tower has energy which it loses when it falls to the foot. The spring has more energy because of en- ergy expended in bending it. But the body has the ca- pacity all the while to receive energy. Amid all changes the body continues with its capacity. Let us now look at bodies acting according to the prin- ciples laid down. Without attempting to explain their ' Phyaioista have taken their phraseology from Aristotle, but have changed it. I am not sure whether it would not have been better had they adhered to it more closely. He has a SimuL?, a capacity, and an fvepyeia, or a power in actual exercise. This is very much the modem distinction between potential and actual energy. Between these two he had enT^Xexeia, or readiness for action, a phrase which his commen- tators have had a diflSculty in comprehending. It might have an ap- propriate meaning if applied to the two bodies brought into such a re- lation that they are ready to act. 108 PHYSICAL CAUSATION. exact nature or to enumerate them, let us designate the physical agencies operating in our world by the letters of the alphabet, and view them acting. A ball at rest ia struck by a ball in motion. Let us call the ball at rest A and the ball in motion B. The two constitute the cause which is. The cause AB. As they act the effect follows : A moves while B's motion is stayed, and as the effect we have bodies changed. The effect A'B'. But in its motion A strikes C, and B is struck by D, and we have Two Causes A'C and B'D, and the Double effect A'C and B'D". But these agents come to act on other agents, E, F, G, H, and we have a Complex result, A=E, C'F, B^G, D'H. On the supposition that these agencies are in a closed ball and act on each other and on nothing else, the sum of energy would be one and the same, while each body might be gaining or losing energy, one or both. In the first action of A B, A gains energy from B and moves, while B loses what energy it gives and is stayed. But A going through the air and over a surface loses the energy it gained, imparting it to the air and surface, and comes to rest ; and B is struck by D and gets the energy it has lost and moves. There is thus a contimual action kept up among the bodies. The energy in each body varies, it may be fi'om moment to moment, but the amount among all the bodies continues the same. Certain impor- tant consequences follow. 1. We see that the effects come to act as causes. Thus if we represent the cause as A B and the effect as A' B', GENERAL RESULTS. 109 we see that each of the agencies A' and B' is ready to act always when combined with some other agency, such as C and D. These last acting as causes become effects which may again become causes in combination with other or the same things. The conservation of energy thus keeps the world the same through ages, while these constant changes give it its activity ; the one as it were constituting an un- changing ocean, the other the tides that agitate it. It is thus, as the Eleatics held, that everything is fixed and im- mutable, but equally true, as Heraelitus and the ^iKoao^oi, peovTe<; taught, that everything is becoming. 2. We see what is the inertia of body. Newton's First Law of Motion follows from the principles we have laid down. A body at rest will continue at rest forever unless it is acted on by some other body ; a body in motion will continue in motion in the same straight line unless stayed or deflected by some other body. All this is a corollary from the principle that causal action is the action of two or more bodies, and that a body will not act unless acted on by some other body. 3. "We see the nature of the law of action and reaction. A body will not act unless there is some other body acting on it. Under this view matter is passive. It acts only so far as it is acted on.' In another sense it is active. One body acts on another body ; thus two bodies are A and B, and A and B are both changed. A at rest moves and B is stayed. What B loses in being stayed A gains and moves. This gives us Newton's Third Law of Motion, that Action is always equal to and the opposite of Reaction. B gives what it loses to A, but the sum of energy of the two is the same after action as before action. It follows that the energy given to A is equal to that lost by B. 4. It has been disputed whether the cause and its effect are contemporaneous or successive. The difference of 110 PHYSICAL CAUSATION. opinion springs from confused notions as to the nature of causation. In all causes there are at least two bodies and mutual action, both action and reaction, and these take place at the same time. When one ball strikes another, when oxygen combines with hydrogen, the action on the part of both bodies is simultaneous. But in causation proper the effect comes after the cause ; it is the produc- tion of the cause. The gain of energy by the one ball and the loss of it by the other is the consequence of the simul- taneous action. The water is the product of the chemical union of the two elements. 5. It is sometimes stated that the same effect may be produced by different cairses. This is not true, or it is true, according as we understand it. A jar may be broken by a picture falling on it, but it may also be broken by a stone flung at it. The breaking of the jar may thus be produced by two different processes. But in both cases the breaking of the jar is only part of the eifect. The full effect in the one case was the jar broken and the picture stayed ; in the other, the jar broken with the stone stayed. 6. It is often said that great effects follow from small causes. A cow kicks a kerosene-lamp, and first the shed is ignited and then the half of a great city is burned. The British Government denies Colonial America a compara- tively small claim ; and a revolution breaks forth which separates Great Britain and the United States forever. But it is not quite correct, it is not the full truth, to say that one cause did all this. In all such cases there is a co-operation and succession of various causes. The fire is carried on by there being all around infiammable materials to propagate it, and the separation of the countries was really produced by a widespread discontent. In like man- ner a mighty agency may often issue in a very insignifi- cant effect, because there are no conspiring powers. Three GENERAL EESULTS. Ill very important pliilosopliical doctrines seem to be thi:s established. 7. In physical nature (and I speak at present of no other) the effect consists of the bodies which have combined to form the cause being put in a new state. "When the cause is A B, the effect is A' B'. The cause may be more complex, A, B, C, D, E, F, and all the bodies are modiiied and appear in this modified form in the effect, A' B' C D' E' F'. Thus all action is a kind of evolution or development, a favorite doctrine of the theosophists of the East, who draw all mun- dane things out of other mundane things, and in the last resort all things from God. This doctrine is commonly ap- prehended in a mystical way which favors pantheism, but it contains important truth, which can and should be separated from the error with which it has been associated. It is not that the effect emanates or grows out from the canse, but it is that the effect consists in the bodies con- stituting the cause being put in a new state or form. 8. It is wrong to represent, with Hume, the relation of cause and effect as being mainly or essentially that of in- variable antecedence and consequence. Most people have felt this doctrine to be meagre and unsatisfactory, without being able to correct it by supplying the felt deficiency. It is not the invariable sequence which constitutes causation; there must be something in causation which produces the invariable succession, otherwise, why should the sequence be so invariable ? The certainty in the succession is pro- duced by the power acting in the causes. Causation ia thus seen to be in the very nature of the bodies acting as the causes. 9. We see and can explain what is meant by the con- tinuity of nature which was noticed by observers from an early date, and which has been speculated on by many profound thinkers such as Leibnitz. When we look care- 112 PHYSICAL CAtrSATIOK. fully into the operation of tlie material world we discover that there is no break in its successive actings. True, there is often no causal connection between one state of things and another going immediately before, between, for ex- ample, night and day, which do not produce each other while they are invariable antecedents and consequents. But when we go behind the more obvious appearauces, we find that each is produced by antecedent causes ; the day by the shining of the sun and the night by his withdraM^al. If we trace any occurrence backward we iind it preceded by a series of 'antecedents, and if we go on with it we have connected consequents. Causation is a bundle of twisted chains each of which follows its own course, but which are all joined in a connected machine. This it is which at the bottom produces the continuity of nature, which, however, is always gathering adjuncts to enable it to proceed. 10. Among these scattering forces there is need of a regulating power to produce order and beneficence. With- out this the powers might work irregularly and injuriously, and bring forth only evil agents, such as flaming meteors and burning worlds, pestiferous creatures devouring one another, as gnats, serpents, wild beasts, arresting all forms of beaiity and means of happiness, and yet incapable of annihilation. We find instead millions of agencies com- bining to accomplish good and benign ends. Take the ear. A sister utters a word, a vibration is started, it reaches our ear, is collected by the outer surface and knocks on the tympanum, is propagated into the middle ear, whence it sets in motion the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup, thence it penetrates into the inner ear, where it vibrates through a liquid, affects the thousand and more organs of corti, is sent round the semicircular canals into the cochlea, and along the auditory nerve into the brain ; the silence ia broken, and we are cheered by a voice of love. SECTION n. PSYCHICAL CAUSATION. I HAVE spoken of causation in physical nature. I am now to speak of it in psychical action. The conservation of energy may be regarded as an es- tablished doctrine. Savans do indeed continue to assert that some of the most eminent among themselves do not understand it, or have not expressed it properly, or have illegitimately applied it. But it is universally admitted that the doctrine is a true and all-important one. But let us properly understand and explain it, and keep it within its proper limits. It will be admitted by all at once that we are not entitled to aflBrm that the law extends beyond our cosmos or knowable universe. For anything we know there may be other worlds beyond ours, and we have no right to say that in these worlds there is only a definite amount of energy which cannot be increased or diminished. God may, or may not, be creating suns or earths or living beings beyond our ken, and altogether be- yond our science. The doctrine of the conservation of en- ergy, as I understand, holds only on the supposition that our cosmos is like a closed globe. It is conceivable that our world may not be so closed in ; that the dissipated heat which is passing into space may travel into other worlds and influence them without our being able to notice it. This restriction of the doctrine is so obvious that it is scarcely worth noticing it. But there are other limitations which it is of vast moment to bring into prominence, as they are being overlooked by some of our scientific men. There is clear evidence that there are other potences oJ 114 PSYCHICAL CAUSATION. powers in nature besides the meclianical or physical forces. It is not proven that the doctrine of the conservation of energy applies to these. Take Life. So far as I understand him, Herbert Spen- cer seems inclined to hold that the doctrine applies to all the powers in the world, even to the vital and mental ; in- deed, he seems incapable of distinguishing between nerve force and mental force. But he brings no proof that phy- sical force and psychical force can be transmuted into each other. The language of most of our scientiiic speculators is hesitating. Huxley and Tyndall resolutely maintain that there is no proof that living beings can proceed from non-living. Darwin calls in three or four live germs, which he ascribes to God, before he can account for the development of vegetable and animal life. I have ob- served that those who reject a separate life or vital force are obliged to bring it in under another form. Thus Dar- win calls in a pangenesis pervading organic nature, and Spencer has physiological units which play an important part in generation and heredity, and these are certainly vital forces. Then the arguments and experiments of Beale have to be met, and they have not yet been met by those who would deny the existence of a vital potency of some kind different from mechanical force. But there are other agents in our world more clearly distinguished from the physical forces than the vital pow- ers are. I refer to the psychical or mental ; to those of which we are conscious, which in fact we know immedi- ately; such as our sense perceptions, our memories, our judgments, our reasonings, our desires, our emotions, our resolves. These we know as directly and clearly as we know the aifections of body, such as extension and resist- ance, and we have quite as good evidence of the existence of the one as of the other. Are these mental powers to b« DIFFERENT FROM PHYSICAL. 116 included in the physical forces which can neither be in- creased nor diminished ? Can the physical forces be trans- muted into the mental, say the mechanical, or the chemical into thoughts, inclinations, and volitions? Nearly every scientific man in the present day admits, nay, maintains, that there is no proof of this. Many affirm that they cannot even conceive it to be so. Tyndall, no doubt, in his Belfast address hastened on to a high vaporous gen- eralization, and declared that it looked as if all things could be brought imder the potency of matter; in the mean time declaring, however, that he could not conceive how matter could affect mind, or mind matter. Mr. Fiske talks of our now needing to assume only one universal as- sumption, " the principle of continuity, the uniformity of nature, the persistence of force, or the law of causation ;" but then he is obliged to add that " in no scientific sense is thought the product of molecular movement, and that the progress of modern discovery (correlation), so far from bridging over the chasm between mind and matter, tends rather to exhibit the distinction between them as abso- lute." The contradiction is here evident, and has been pointed out by scientific men ; but I need not dwell upon it, my object being simply to show that thoughts and men- tal affections have not yet been reduced to physical forces. ]S"o doubt mind and body do so far affect each other. If a person is told that his dearest friend has died sud- denly, his pulse will be apt to rise. Prof. Barker attaches a great importance to an experiment of a person first read- ing easy English, when his pulse was not affected, then reading Greek, when it rose several degrees. Such cases, and they might be multiplied indefinitely, show that men- tal thoughts and feelings do affect the brain-action, but they do not show that they add to or diminish the physical forces in the brain, or that the mental feeling or thought 116 PSYCHICAL CAUSATION-. has been transmuted into a movement of the pulse. A man standing by a stream pushes a big stone in the water aside and the stream flows a little more rapidly for a minute or two; but he has not thereby added to the quantity of water. Just as little does mental action, reasoning or feel- ing, add to or diminish the amount of physical force in the cerebro-spinal mass. There is no evidence, but the very opposite, that our mental actions are identical or correlative with bodily mo- tions or activities of any kind. Take as example, the dis- coveries of science, the reasonings of mathematicians, the visions of poets, the penetration of such philosophers as Aristotle, the ardor of the patriot, the beatific vision of the Christian, the sacrifices made by the poor for honor and honesty's sake. What savant will estimate for us in quan- titative expressions of physics or chemistry, the depth of affection in the mother's bosom when she incurs death her- self to save her son, or the height of genius reached by Shakespeare when he conceived Hamlet or Lady Macbeth ? There is no one proper quality of matter, such as the oc- cupation of space, or resistance, or elasticity, that can be predicated of thoughts or affections. There is no one quality of mind, such as perception, thought, reasoning, or love, that can be applied to this table or that chair. The instrument has not yet been invented that can weigh or measure our intellectual or voluntary operations. "When a . tree dies it carries into the ground not only the particles of matter which composed it, but the forces in the tree to add to the forces in the ground. It is the same -with the body of brute or of man when it is buried, it carries with it into the grave all the physical forces ; but were there any new physical forces added to the earth when Plato, Milton, Bacon, or Newton died ? It thus appears that in the very midst of the physical CAtlSE AND EFFECT IN MIND. 117 forces and tlioii' correlations there may be other operations, mental or spiritual, and against this science has and can have nothing to say. I mean to refer to these farther on in the paper. It is generally believed and acknowledged that there is cause and effect in mind as well as in body. In the one as in the other, we expect the same antecedents to be fol- lowed by the same consequents. When we wish to secure in ourselves or others, say in the young, a certain disposition or habit of patience and perseverance, we set agoing a train- ing or discipline fitted to produce the result. When we are anxious to gain the good will of our neighbors, we ad- dress the motives most likely to sway them. The orator seeks to convince and move to action by arguments and considerations likely to influence his audience. In knowing a man's propensities, we can at times predict the part he will take in certain circumstances, and so far as we cannot do this fully, or accurately, it is simply because we are not fully acquainted with all the elements in his character ; j nst as in physical nature we often cannot foresee the events that are to occur, because the powers operating are so numerous and complicated. There are some men of whom we are sure that they will not do a mean act. In many cases we can determine what a man's springs of action are by his acts ; we are sure he is swayed by passion or malig- nity, by honor or by charity. It is clear that there is Power in the mind — I use the word power, leaving the phrase energy to be applied by the physicists to the action of body. All writers who have had occasion to refer to the operations of the mind, have spoken of its powers or faculties, classifying them in va- rious ways, as into the Gnoctic or Gnostic and the Orec- tive with Aristotle, translated into Latin the Cognitive or Motive, or the Understanding and the Will, the Intellect 118 PSYCHICAL CAUSATION. and the Feelings ; and they have spoken severally of the Senses, the Memory, the Imagination, the Reason, the Conscience, the Emotions, and Volitions. They have re- garded all of these as having an influence, and capable of producing an effect. It is not easy to determine precisely the nature of men- tal effectuation. We are not able to measure psychical as we do physical energy, in foot pounds. It might indeed be argued that, as being immediately conscious of it, vce do, in fact, know as much in a general way of mental as we do of bodily production ; bnt we are not able to put it in quantitative form. This power manifests itself in two ways. There is the power of the Mind over the Body, with the corresponding capacity of the Body to produce an impression on the Mind. For upwards of 2,000 years, philosophers held, generally, by the principle of Empedocles, the Sicilian philosopher, that like can only influence like, and they denied that mind could influence body, or body mind, and this opinion still lingers among metaphysicians. I deny the principle that like can only sway like, and I can see no difficulty in allowing that psychical action may pro- duce physical action, say action of the nerves, and vice versa. It certainly seems to do so. I will to move my arm, and there is action in the gray cellular matter of the pe- riphery of the brain, which proceeds down the transmis- sive white matter to a basal nerve which moves the mus- cles and the bones, and the intended effect is produced. There seems to be a causal action throughout this process ; an action of the mind on the brain, and of the brain on the nerves. There is a like phenomenon in the feelings producing an effect on the organism, as when a ludicrous idea leads to laughter, and grief bursts out in tears, and a sense of kindness received covers the face with smiles. MUTUAL ACTION OF MIND AND BODY. 119 Even intellectual exercises seem to have an effect on tlie brain, as exhaustion is felt when they are prolonged. There is also an influence of the body on the mind, as when the bodily senses produce a mental perception, say of a form or a color, and a healthy organism raises up pleasant feelings, or a diseased stomach or liver raises up gloomy thoughts. In all these eases there is a power pro- ducing certain defined effects. It may be argued that the effects follow not directly, but by some agency commonly supposed to be unknown. There is a constant inquiry into the how in the relation between mind and body, usually followed by the acknowledgment that it is a mystery. At this point it may at once be allowed that in the mutual ac- tion of mind and body there are processes unknown to us. No one will maintain that the physiologist can as yet spe- cify all the steps involved in the process by which an ex- ternal object reaches the perceiving mind. But suppose he is able to do so, it does not appear to me that the mys- tery would thereby be diminished. In tracing back the nervous and the cerebral action, we come at last to a point or line where the body acts on the mind. The only way of avoiding this conclusion is by calling in some sort of ter- tium quid in the shape say of a plastic medium, which com- municates between mind and body. The difficulty is not thereby removed, it is not even lessened ; for, if it is of the nature of either body or mind, we have still to show how it acts on mind if it is body, and how it acts on body if it is mind. If it is of the nature, neither of body nor mind, it is an unwarranted hypothesis, explaining nothing, and multiplying the difficulties, for we have now to explain how in one case body acts on the medium, and the medium on mind, and how in the other case mind acts on the medium and the medium on body. The simplest, and on the whole the most reasonable supposition, is that mind has a potency 120 PSYCHICAL CAUSATION. wliereby it acts on body, and body a potency whereby it acts on mind. This is far more likely than the Male- branche's hj'pothesis of occasional cause, or that of pre-es- tablished harmony by Leibnitz. Sooner or later, we may be able to determine precisely the nature of the action, that is, in what circumstances it acts, how far it extends, and how it is limited. This is all we can know about any law of nature, and when this is accomplished there is no more mystery than in the law of the mutual attraction of mat- ter, or in that of chemical affinity. But very nice questions are here started, and to these we can give little more than negative answers, fitted to re- move erroneous impressions. Is there any such relation in the mutual action of psychical and physical action as is im- plied in the conservation of material energy ? When the body acts on mind, does the energy in matter go into mind, and appear in a new form ? Or when mind acts on body, is there new energy entering matter? I answer unhesita- tingly that there is no proof of this whatever. On the contrary, every thing goes on in the body according to the laws or properties of body, and every thing in the mind according to the nature of mind. Our volitions and other mental acts may give a new direction to the forces in the bodies, but they do not add to them or increase them. Our will moves the arm which was before at rest, but it only calls into activity the potential energy already there, and that energy acts according to its nature. The senses make knovm an object to us, but it does not add any new mental power, and the object being there, or rather being known there, calls forth ideas or feelings according to the mental laws of association. In the body every thing proceeds ac- cording to physiological laws ; and in the mind according to psychical laws. In all such causation there is at least a duality in the POWERS IN THE MIKD. 121 cause, both a physiological and a psychical : these together constitute the cause without which the effect would not follow. There is a like duplicity iu the effects, both body and mind are changed. Secondly, there is causation operating in the mind itself. By the will and other psychical acts we can influence not only the body, but the state of the mind. We can detain the present idea, and bring up thereby a succession of as- sociations pleasant or unpleasant : profitable, as when we contemplate a high exemplar, or cherish a good resolution ; or noxious, as we cherish revenge or lust. There are cer- tain states of mind which follow necessarily from certain others. The idea of a friend in distress raises grief, of an acceptable gift raises gladness. I am not sure that we can express accurately the nature of psychical causation, yet we can say much about it. We know so far the limits of the several faculties. We know much of the power of sense perception, as that it reveals objects external to us ; that we do not know distance di- rectly by the eye, that we cannot have any idea of a color or odor that has not been made known by a special inlet, — the man born blind has no conception of color. We have ascer- tained as to memory, that it remembers whatever was vivid in the original impression. The imagination can bring up in new forms and dispositions only what we have previously experienced. We can reason only when we use a middle term to combine the two terms whose relation we do not know. Emotion springs up only when we have an appre- hension of something good or evil. Conscience approves of certain acts, and condemns others. We cannot express these powers quantitatively, as we do those of gravity and chemical affinity. We cannot number or measure them as we do the physical forces. Still we can notice their extent and their boundaries. Psychology is doing its proper work 122 PSYCHICAL CAUSATION-. when, with consciousness as its agent of observation, it is finding out the powers of the mind and their functions. In inquiring more specifically into the nature of psychi- cal causation we find that, while in one sense it is simple, in another sense it is complex. We have seen that there is a duality or plurality in all physical production, both in the cause and in the effect. We have seen that there is duality or plurality in the action of mind on body and body on mind. There is a like complexity or plurality in purely psychical action, both in the cause and in the effect. What is the cause of this reproach of conscience which we feel after committing an evil deed ? An essential part of it is no doubt the immediately state, the idea of the deed. But this is not all. Acting with this there is a native moral power, a power of conscience. It is only when there is joint action that the deed is condemned. The mere image or conception of the deed will not call forth the reproach ; nor, on the other hand, will the moral power act unless there be an apprehension of the deed : the effect is pro- duced by the union of the two. So it is in all cases. When the mother grieves over the death of her son, there is more than the conception of the event ; there is the deep affection which she cherished towards him. We have seen, that in physical caus.ation, there is always something abiding. Aristotle had a material, as well as an efficient cause. It is the same mutatis mutandis in psy- chical action. In all material action there is a body as a siibstance, and in all mental action there is mind as a substance ; both being permanent. This is a truth never seen or acknowledged by Mr. John S. Mill, who defined mind as " a series of feelings aware of itself," whereas it is an abiding existence with a series of feelings. He de- fined body as "a permanent possibility of sensations," whereas it is a permanent thing, ever ready to produce sensations within our jninds. The present state of the IMPLIES THE SOTIL ACTING. 123 soul is always the necessary effect of the immediately pre- ceding one. But in that preceding state, and I may add in the present one, there is the mind itself with its capaci- ties abiding. The cause of every given thought and feeling is thus a complex one, made up of some previous thought or feeling, but also of the mind thinking and feeling. The portrait suggests the original. Is the portrait, or tlie perception of it, the cause of the thought of the per- son painted ? I do not regard this as a full account of the cause. The portrait may be seen by one whe never saw the original, and to him there is no such suggestion. The true cause embraces the sight of the portrait, but there is also involved in it the mind with its knowledge of the per- son painted, and also the principle that like suggests like. When two premises are before the mind, they necessitate a conclusion, as when we have it allowed that " all men have a conscience," and that " the Indian is a man," we conclude that " he has a conscience." Are the two pre- mises the cause of the conclusion ? I believe they are not to be so regarded. The act taken by itself is to be regarded as one of judgment, and not causation. In the cause thei-e are not only the premises, but the laws of the mind, or rather the mind with its laws, that is, the laws of rea- soning, especially the dictum of Aristotle, that whatever is true of a class is time of all the members of the class. Every thought, every feeling, I may add every resolution, is thus the result of the state of the mind with its proper- ties, and of the immediately preceding thought or feeling, which might be called the occasion. It thus appears that the web of causation is quite as complicated in psychical as in physical nature. I am unwilling, in this paper, to enter into the con- flict of ages as to whether there is causation in acts of the will. I am prepared to argue that there is. On the other hand, I hold resolutely that there is a sense in which the 124 PSTCHICAL CATJSATIOSr. will is free. Holding by both these truths, as I reckon them, I am obliged to add that I cannot remove all the diifieulties in which I am thns involved. It is asked, how can there be free will, which I resolutely hold, if our vo- litions are after determined by something out of them- selves, and above tliemselves ? I do not profess to be able thoroughly to clear up this subject ; but the view of causa- tion which has been set forth in this treatise is fitted, I reckon, to lessen, if not to remove, some of the difficulties. We have seen that there may be different kinds of causa- tion. The causes that act on the will are certainly not mechanical or physical, like those which compel a body to move in a particular way. A man's volitions are not swayed altogether, or even mainly, by the same circum- stances ; for two men will act differently in like circum- stances, and this evidently owing to the difference of their character. "We have seen that there are causes operating within the mind itself. Those that finally sway and de- termine the will lie within. If we properly understand the language, I believe we may admit that in every particular act the mind is swayed by motives, but the motives are to be found, not out of the mind, but in the mind, nay, largely in the will itself. The causes which sway the will are mainly in our nature and character, in our dispositions and habits which our own wills have been forming. It is certain that this man will yield to the temptation, and be guilty of excessive drinking in a particular company, but it is because of habits which he has indulged in for years. It is certain that this other man will act honorably in a cer- tain trying position, but then it is because he is guided by right principles, and by an upright character. I do not say that this doctrine delivers us from all difficulties, but it helps to relieve us from the oppression which we feel when we are told that our whole acts are under a law of ftem necessity which allows no liberty. SECTION ni. CAUSATION SUBJECTIVE. The above is all I am able to say as to the nature of cause. I do not claim to have removed all difficulties. 1 am satisfied if I have corrected some erroneous notions and shed some light on important points. I am now to turn to the other side of my subject, to the mental process involved in our conviction as to the relation between cause and effect. Even as causation objective pervades all nature, so causation subjective runs as a binding power through the great body of our mental exercises. We may allow physicists to use the word energy for the activities of matter. But there is activity in mind as well as matter and it is needful to have a word to express both. The word Power may be used for "this purpose. There are two special ways in which we come to know power. The one is by the muscular sense. We move a muscle, and we find it resisted by the objects it meets with. We experience this in the first exercise of our muscular activity and in every succeeding one. There is resistance offered not only by that table, but by the air as the arm passes through it. Science finds it necessary to maintain that the very ether has been offering resistance to the pas- sage through it of the comet of Encke. The other is by the exercise of our voluntary power. Our volitions pro- duce changes directly or indirectly over our bodies of whiclj we are sensible. We will to move the arm, and it moves. Our will also produces changes on the states of our mind. 12G CAUSATIOK SUBJECTIVE. We Vill to detain a present thought, and it keeps with us as long as we will, thereby resisting the ordinary flow of association. I believe that both these potencies have a wider exten- sion than is commonly supposed. I have at times thought that thei'e may be power discerned, as it is certainly in- volved, in the exercise of all the senses. In the vibrations which enter the ear, in the rays of light that fall upoji the eye, in the odors that reach the nostrils, in the liquid which affect the palate, there is a mutual action dully felt of the touching bodies and of the organism. It might be argued, I think, that in all these ways we get an apprehension of bodies as having power, just as it is now generally ack- nowledged we have a knowledge by all the senses of bodies as having extension. We know our nostrils and palate as having a certain direction which must be in space, so we seem to know these same nostrils as affected, which implies power. I am farther sure that volitions are constantly mingling with our mental operations. A sensation is agreeable and we detain it, or it is disagreeable and we banish it or escape from it, and in all such processes we use causation. There is an exercise of will implied in the regulation of our thoughts, otherwise they would run wild as in our dreams. In making ourselves acquainted with any subject we have to attend to it, and attention is an act of the will. In read- ing a book and in listening to a discourse we have to keep our thoughts from wandering, which they would be sure to do if they were allowed to follow merely the laws of in- voluntary association. We have to order om* thoughts when we are conversing with our fellow men, and when we are writing intelligently. The orator has to give his thoughts a direction all toward a point, when he is seeking to arouse and persuade. The mathematician, and indeed, INVOLVED IN KNOWLEDGE OP THINGS. 127 every one who reasons closety, has to restrain and guide his ideas and his judgments. Some have supposed that one difference between our waking thoughts and our dreams lies in the will having lost its control in the latter, mainly owing, it may be, to the weariness of the organism, indis- posing us to farther exertion till the pool which had run out is again filled. Causation has thus a place in the greater number of our thinking operations. We exercise power in every volition, but volition is constantly interpos- ing to direct our thoughts. Causation has a place in the very steps by which we ob- tain our knowledge of things. It is involved in the very means by which we acquire our knowledge of external objects. We know them as affecting us, that is, having power over us. It is much the same with all the knowl- edge acquired by us. The things have been made known by their having power over us, or some other thing, by which they are made known to us.' It is a common saying that we know things by their properties, but what are proper- ties but powers ? It is not by induction, that is, a gathered experience, that we know things as having power ; we know this in our primary experience, and in all subsequent ex- periences. Power is thus involved in things as known to us. We cannot think of them except as having powers. It will now be seen how I would settle the question which has been the leading philosophic one since the days of David Hume, as to whether our conviction as to cause and effect is a priori or a posteriori, to use the phraseology of Kant, or, to employ more unexceptionable terms, arises at once from our looking at things, or is the reasoned result of a gathered observation. It is certainly experiential, as all ' " We are obliged," says Herbert Spencer in his First Principles, "to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some Power by wkich we are acted upon." Let him follow out this. 128 CAtrSATION SUBJECTIVE. our knowledges and beliefs are in the consciousness of the mind, but it is not experiential in the sense of needing in- duction and reasoning. It is intuitive in that we perceive it to be in the very nature of the thing. It can stand the tests of intuition, as these have been enunciated in the paper on the Criteria of Truth. We perceive objects di- reetlj^ as having power and acting causally. It comes in consequence to be necessary ; we cannot believe it to be otherwise. We cannot be made to believe that there is an event without a cause, or a causal relation without a defi- nite action being ready to follow. It is, thirdl}-, universal in that all men have the conviction. Not that this is done without the competent and appropri- ate mental capacity, but this is neither less nor more than the faculty to perceive the thing, and what is in the thing. These perceptions may take several forms, such as primitive cognitions, faiths, and judgments: cognitions when we look directly on things, faiths when they are absent and yet we believe in them, and judgments when we compare the things known and believed in. Our perception of self and body having power is of the nature of a primitive cognition. Our conviction as to cause is more of the re- lation of a judgment in which we discover a relation. Ex- cept that I am not partial to the formidable nomenclature, I am willing to allow it to be called, with Kant, a synthetic judgment d jn^iori. But the two, cause and effect, are connected, not by a category or a form of any kind in the mind, as Kant held, but in the very nature of the things, in the action of things according to their nature, that is, the properties or powers by which they are endowed. SECTION rv. VAKIODS SORTS OF OATTSES. From the nature of causation, as I have endeavored to unfold it, there is a vast complexity in the activities of our world. There are two, or commonly more, agents in every cause, two or more in every effect. What a variety of powers at work in the great natural occurrences, say in the seasons, in the production of spring with its increased heat, its buds and blossoms and leaves. What a complication in the production of the great epochs of history : in the spread of Christianity, in the revival of learning in the fifteenth century, in the great Reformation of religion, in the English, the American, and French revolutions. There are innumerable agencies concurring and crossing in all the important events of our personal and family life. In this complexity a number of very marked operations, well worthy of consideration, come under our view. One of these is Development or Evolution. All physical cau- sation is in a sense evolution ; it is a body, or rather a com- bination of bodies in one state produced by a body or bodies in another state. The development as such may or may not be beneficent. It is conceivable that it might move on ruthlessly, working only confusion and misery to sentient beings. When it proceeds in an orderly manner, with beneficent laws, and means of promoting the comfort of aninjate beings, there is evidence of good arrangement. The subject of Development is so important as to require 130 VAEIOUS SORTS OF CAUSES. a separate paper, when it will be shown that it is an or- ganized causation. It will be necessary here to take np a subject on which I fear little light can be thrown at present. It is the na- ture of energy and causation in chemical action. Oxygen and hydrogen combine to form water ; what is the relation of the two elements ? Is it simply mechanical ? Or does it imply the existence and operation of a separate power which we may provisionally call the chemical ? To these questions no very satisfactory reply can be given at present. There are some presumptions in favor of its being shown in the end that the union is merely mechanical. On the other hand, there are phenomena which cannot be thus ex- plained at the stage which science has now reached. The most remarkable peculiarity of this chemical combination is that the compound exhibits properties of which no trace can be found in the separate elements. Water shows qualities which neither oxygen nor hydrogen seem to pos- sess. In consequence many questions arise which cannot at this present time be definitely and certainly answered. Were the powers now shown by the compound in the ele- ments in a potential, but not in a real state ? Have we in the union merely an example or the duality or plurality in all causation, the elements taking a new form or shape in the compound ? It is certain the bodies constituting the elements have not lost their identity. The water can be decomposed, by some other body acting on it, into the oxy- gen and hydrogen of which it is composed. The above are questions which we may expect to have settled sooner or later, as we come to know more of the constitution of matter. In the complexity of causal action we may notice the combination of a number of agencies necessary in order to the production of results which have an important place Aristotle's four causes. 131 in the economy of nature. These, in a loose sense, may be called causes. From the very commencement of re- flective inquiry men had to refer to causes. But for ages the views taken and the nomenclature used were vague and confused, though containing important elements of trutli which have been unfortunately omitted in the more pre- cise systems of modern times. In the theosophies of the East causation was represented as an emanation of one thing out of another, and of all things out of God. The ten- dency in this conception was toward pantheism. The Pythagoreans made numbers the cause of things, meaning that which makes things what they are. Aristotle blames Plato for neglecting efficient and final causes and giving exclusive attention to the matter out of which things are formed, and the form they are made to take. Aristotle was the first to draw distinction between the different kinds of cause. This he did in his Physics, ii. 3, and recapitulated in his Metaphysics, i. 3, with a farther reference in Post Anal., ii. 11. In these passages he uses the word (cause) in a wider, and it may be allowed in a looser, sense than we now do. The grand object of the First Philosophy is to discover causes. By cause he meant all that is necessary to accoimt for or explain a thing, all that is necessary in order to its heing as it is, and there- fore to our comprehending it and explaining it. In later times the word cause is commonly restricted to efficient cause, to productive cause, or as Hiime analyzed it, inva- riable antecedent. Aristotle included this, but also in- cluded other things necessary, as he thought, to mnaTce a thvng what it is / which is his definition of cause. He had four kinds of causes. He had first a matter and a subject {rrfv v\7]v Kai to viroKeifievov). He had secondly a cause, whence the beginning of motion (pdev f) apyrf Tr}<; KCvT^aeax;). Thirdly, he had a cause whicli was the substance — that in 132 VARIOUS SORTS OF CAUSES. .vhich a thing consisted {ttjv ovaiav kuI to rt rjv elvat). Fourthly, he had that on account of which a thing is {rh ov eveKo). More briefly, he had a vXtj, an (ip%^ Kivi^arem'}, an etSos, and a reXo^, whicli we translate a material, an efficient, a formal, and a final canse. He sought in every object for each of these. He did not regard the one as inconsistent with the other. He often found several of them in one and the same object (De Anim., ii. 8). In regard to the material cause, he represents the lonians as seeking for it and finding it in water, air, or fire. As to the efficient cause, he regarded it as that which produces motion or change. The formal cause corresponded to the Idea of Plato, only he represents it as being not above things, but in things. He does not use final cause to prove the divine existence ; he supposes the thing to have in itself (as immanent) an end after which it is striving — a view very much the same as that taken by Hegel. He blames Plato for neglecting the efficient and the final, and confining his attention to the material and the formal. These distinctions were not drawn bv the thinkers who preceded Aristotle. Socrates, without giving final cause a separate place, used the argument from final cause — the argument from intention or design, as seen for instance in the eyelids to protect the eyes. Plato argued more from the models or patterns in nature. Epicurus simplj' ignored final causes. The Stoics identified efficient and final, representing every thing as done in conformity with the decree (f atum) of God ; and so ordered that one thing is a prognostic of another thing. Cicero (De Nat. Deor. 115) and Augustine (Civ. Dei, xi. 4, 21) appeal, like Plato, to the order of the universe. The schoolmen did not use Aristotle's division of causes so frequently as they did his logical distinctions, but occasionally they proceeded upon it. Coming to modern times, Bacon adopted Aristotle's four- MATERIAL, EFFICIEKT, EOEMAL. AND EINAL. 133 fold division of causes. He gives material and formal causes to Physics, and formal and final to Metaphysics, which he regards as occupying a higher sphere than phy- sics. It is often said, by men who have never read Bacon's works and take his opinions at second-hand, that Bacon sets aside final cause. This is an entire mistake. He would exclude it from physics, but it is only to give it a higher place in metaphysics. He compares it to the vestal virgins, not productive indeed,, but dedicated to God. He erred, I think, in excluding final cause altogether from physics, where it may be used, if properly restricted, in the study of organisms,, where the means are ends and the ends means. While he was living, Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood by the principle of teleology, argu- ing that the valves which he saw opening in one direction and not in the opposite must be intended to let a fluid pass through — thus discovering the grand doctrine of the circulation of the blood. But Bacon was right in insisting so strongly that the discovery of final cause should not keep men from seeking the eflBeient cause. Bacon attached great importance to the discovery of forms, which lie represented as the supreme end of all science. The form of a thing is that which makes it what it is — thus, anticipating our latest science, he regards motion as the form of heat. Without fully seeing it, he came very near to Plato ; the aim of all science, according to both, being to discover ideas, forms, or patterns ; only, according to Plato, the ideas are to be discovered by calling forth the inward idea, while accord- ing to Bacon they are to be f oimd by a careful induction of facts. Bacon showed profound wisdom in making the discovery of forms the supreme end of all science ; and in placing the forms of nature at the very top of the pyramid and next unto God. Pescartes perceived God in every mechanical action, and 134 VAKIOUS SORTS OF CAUSES. could not believe that God was to be seen in one act more than in another ; and insists that we ought to be- ware lest, " in our presumption, we imagine that the ends which God proposed to Himself in the creation of the world are understood by us" (Princip. Philos., iii. 2). There is a misapprehension here of the kind of ends sup- posed to be discovered by final cause, and it is curious that his error is pointed out by Gassendi, an adherent of the Epicurean philosophy. " You say," he replies to Des- cartes, " that it does not seem to you that you could inves- tigate and undertake to discover without rashness the ends of God. But although that may be true if you mean to speak of ends that God has willed to be hidden, still it cannot be the case with those which He has, as it were, exposed to the view of the world, and which are discovered without much labor." The celebrated natural philosopher Robert Boyle also answered Descartes. Referring to a gnomonic instrument, " It would no doubt be great pre- sumption on the part of a peasant, ignorant alike of mathe- matical science and the intentions of the artist, to believe himself capable of discovering all the ends in view of which this machine so curiously wrought has been con- structed ; but when he remarks that it is furnished with an index with lines and horary numbers — in short, with all that constitutes a sun-dial, and sees successively the shadow of the index mark in succession the hour of the day, there would on his part be as little presumption as error in concluding that this instrument, whatever may be its other uses, is certainly a dial made to show the hours." Leibnitz, with his usual comprehensiveness of mind, would unite final and physical causes. " It is good," he says, " to conciliate those who hope to explain mechani- cally the formation of the first texture of an animal, and of the entire mechanism of the parts with those who give MATERIAL AjSTD EFFICIENT. 135 an account of the same structure by final causes. Both are good, and the authors who follow these different ways ought not to abuse each other." ' From this survey we gather that some of the profoundest thinkers that have appeared in oui* world have seen moie than mechanical cause in the course of nature, and that they have discovered no inconsistency between efficient and final cause. We are now to illustrate these two points. There is a foundation in nature for Aristotle's fourfold division of explanatory causes, though we may have to amend it somewhat to suit it to modern science. Material Cause. — Here we inquire into the nature of the substances, be they inanimate body, or living body or mind. It is the end pursued in chemistiy, and in all the sciences dependent on it, and so far also in psychology. No doubt the inquiries into the matter, and the forces in matter, may be mixed up with each other ; but they may be distinguished, and it is often desirable to separate them. We may or may not approve of calling the matter out of which a thing is formed a cause, but it certainly has a place, and this a deep one, in the economy of nature, and as such it should be acknowledged. It is allowed that there is never energy without body, and the body should be taken into account as well as the energy, in explaining what things are and how they act. Efficient, Cause. — This is the kind of cause whose nature I have been seeking to determine in the earlier part of this paper. It is the power element in what makes a thing to be what it is. This sort of cause is not inconsistent with the others. It is necessary in order to make the matter take a form and fulfil an end. ' The quotations from Gassendi, Boyle, and Leibnitz may be found in M. Janet's work on "Final Cause," translated by W. Affleck, pp. 184, 185, 119. 136 VAEIOCS SORTS OF CAUSES. Formal Cause — the idea of Plato, tlie etSo? of Aristotle, the law of modem science, and the type of naturalists. We have here mechanical causes, but co-ordinated so as to produce orderly results, as we see in what are called the laws of nature. The properties of bodies, such as attrac- tion, chemical aiSnity, etc., may be simple ; but they re- quire conditions, that is, co-operating agents, in order to their working. But the general laws of nature are always complex ; that is, imply the action of two or more agents operating and co-operating. We see this in the law of the succession of day and night, of the revolution of the seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter ; in the motion of the planets in their orbits. What a number and variety of agents conspiring in the reproduction of plants and animals ; in the seed, the blade, the fruit, the decay of the vegetable ; in the germ, the growth, the death of the animal ! What a complexity in order to the pro- duction of the mathematically exact forms and harmonious colors of the shell, the stalk and the flower of plants, and the bones of animals ! What a combination to produce those types according to which Ave classify the animate king- doms, and which make every living thing to grow after its kind ! What a complex complexity in that assortment of forces which produce development and heredity — processes of which we now talk so glibly and familiarly, but of the elements of which we know so little ! All these may be called the ideas or forma of nature. Much the same may be said of Formal as I have said of Material cause : we may or may not approve of the term cause being applied to it. But it is quite as clear that things are made to take a form as that they have a matter, and are produced out of that matter. It is one end aimed at in all science to discover what the form, or, as it is now more commonly called, the law is. Our view of nature is FORMAL AND FINAL CAUSE. 137 narrow and partial if we see only its composition and tlie mechanical po~wers acting in it. In that rich web we should notice not only the silk threads and the shuttle carrying them along, but also the pattern after which the whole is formed. Final Ca/use. — Here there is a concurrence of mechanical or efficient causes to produce an evident result. It is not an antecedent followed by an effect ; it is the consequent or issue of a number of conspiring antecedents. From the number of agents combining to effect an end m'O argue that there are intentions and purposes. I suppose a hundred agents so far independent must combine before I can see. I infer that there must have been a designed arrangement in order to their coming together to produce the obvioiis end. We discover these four causes in the works of man. That statue of Hercules had a material cause in the marble in the quarry ; an efficient cause in the chisel of the sculp- tor ; a formal cause in the shape given it ; and a final cause in its being set up in a temple. We can discover the same four causes in nature. In shells we have the matter, be it carbonate of lime, or whatever else ; the chemical forces operating ; the mathematical form taken — possibly a spiral ; and an end the protection of the animal. In the plant, say the apple-tree, we have the chemical elements ; we have the vital forces, whatever they be ; we have the shape taken by the tree and by its flower ; and a final cause in the fruit provided for the sustenance of living creatures. In the cereals there is matter in the composition of the plants, an efficient (not necessarily a mechanical) cause in the vital forces, a formal cause in the form taken, and a final cause in the food provided for the nourishment of man and living creatures. Take the two colors, blue-purple and orange-yellow, found in the flower of the forget-me- 138 VARIOUS SORTS OF CAUSES. not : they must have a composition produced in some way by the dividing of the beam ; they are found in all the plants of the species ; and they are suited to the eye, v?hich delights to look on complementary colors— that is, the colors that make up the beam. I believe that these four principles can be discovered in all animated objects. In dead matter it may be more difficult to detect all of them in every individual object. Yet in the higher forms we can discover several of them. Thus in crystals, the crystalline forms, which all bodily substances are capable of assuming, we have the matter, the forces, and also the forms ; but it might be difficult to discover a special final cause. Plato, in seeking to find his idea everywhere, was asked whether he could find it in the dust or sand of the ground, and acknowledged that he was in difficulties. Modern science could help him here, and show him by the microscope beautiful forms in the rudest matter. It might be impossible in such cases to detect a final cause; but just as we argue that there is efficient cause everywhere, though we may not be able to discover it in every occurrence, we may, on a like principle, infer that as we discover a purpose in so many parts of nature so there is purpose everywhere, if only we can discover it ; and thus reach the conclusion of Socrates, Plato, and Leib- nitz, that nature consists of physical causes working for ends. SECTION V. FINAL CAUSE. I AM sure that the course of nature cannot be compre- liended or explained except by taking into account more than efficient cause, except indeed by all of the principles we have been considering. The chemist will insist on knowing what is the elemental composition of the ci'ystal, the rose, or the crustacean. The naturalist will seek for the type that he may be able to arrange it. The merchant will wish to know its economical use that he may buy or sell it. We know not what is the number of elements in the material universe. The ancient Greeks supposed them to be four : air, water, fire, and earth. Modern chemistry has found sixty-four, which it cannot analyze into any thing simpler. Many chemists think that some of these can be resolved into others. It is certain that thei-e is in nature a certain number of elements, be it four or sixty- four, with their properties. "We may conclude that these are adapted to each other. "Were they not, they would not act upon each other, molecule on molecule, atom on atom, mass on mass, as they evidently do. The orderly results point to an instituted order. Being so adapted, if these elements were cast into a capacious vessel, they would produce regular results such as we see in a kaleido- scope, where we have a number of beads thrown into a constructed receptacle, and reflected by glass, and produc- ing regular figures. Here we have in the figures a material 140 FINAL CAtrSE. cause in the instrument, with its wood and glass and beads ; an efficient cause in the movements of the beads ; and a formal cause in the regular shapes and dispositions. It can scarcely be said that in the figures themselves there is a final cause, for no end is served by them, except indeed to give pleasure to the beholder. But there is certainly a formal cause. And I would have it noticed that this form is a result of arrangements made, and of mutual adaptations, arguing a purpose and design. So it is with the laws, as they are called, and types of nature. They are the result of a vast number of agents or eflScient causes combining and co-operating. "We thus see that the very order of nature is a manifestation and evidence, as Plato, Cicero, and Augustine argued, of plan and purpose, and therefore of intelligence. But Final Caiise furnishes another and a more special argiiment. It may be noticed of the figures of the kaleido- scope that they never show final cause, properly so called. They never show amidst their great varieties such utility as a lichen, a polype, a finger or a toe, much less a hand or an ear. Mathematicians tell us how many millions of chances there are against a handful of molecules ever pro- ducing an ear, and how many millions of millions against their producing in the same frame an eye, a nose, a tongue, skin, and muscle, and nerve, and brain. How many mil- liards of milliards of chances against the formation of all the senses and organs of all the creatures on the face of the earth. The meeting of these efficient causes in the frame of man and animal makes it as certain as mathe- matics can make it of their being an end contemplated and designed. The force of this argument is not to be avoided by say- ing that what we represent as final causes are merely con- ditions of existence. True they are conditions of existence ; KEVIEW OF PEOFEBSOB NEWCOMB. 141 but the proofs of design lie in the eonditions of existence ail meeting in the hundreds or thousands of coincidences all coming together to form the rose, or the deer. The strings of a harp are the conditions of its existence, and we argue that the harp has been made for a purpose, be- cause the strings are all there and yield music. At this place I think it proper to refer to the Course of Nature, an address delivered by Professor ITewcomb, as President of the American Association for the Promotion of Science. I do so because there is presented there, by a gen- tleman whom I profoundly respect, the views entertained by a great many scientific men in the present day. The Pro- fessor evidently labors under several very erroneous impres- sions in regard to final cause. " From the very earliest at which man began to think two modes of explaining the operations of nature have presented themselves to his at- tention. These modes are sometimes designated as the teleological and mechanical." He thinks that final cause is meant to give the same sort of explanation of a phenome- non as efiicient cause. But all enlightened defenders of final cause have asserted that the two principles or causes do not accomplish the same ends. Final causes or ends were never meant to account for the production of an event ; this is done by efficient cause. On the other hand, an effi- cient cause does not show how efficient causes or forces shoiild combine to produce an obviously intended beneficent result — ^the good, as Aristotle calls the final cause. The fact that the ear was meant to hear did not make the ear, though there are passages in Lamarck which seem to indi- cate that the wish of the fish to fly actually gave it wings. We bring in efficient cause to explain one thing, namely, production; and final cause to explain another thing, a combination to produce a useful end. Again, he argues that we are entitled to call in final cause only when physi- 142 FIKAL CAUSE. cal cause fails, thereby falling into the error of Kant and Laplace, both far-sighted but one-eyed men. But surely he sees both efficient and final cause in the telescope by which he scans the heavens so profitably : efficient cause in the formation of it by Clark, and final cause in the use to which he is able to turn it. Nor will it do to say that he uses the instrument because it is there ; it is there be- cause he or some other was meant to employ it. It is conceivable that there shovild be a like union of the two principles in the eye and in the works of nature generally. He is evidently under a farther impression that the two are inconsistent. He thus makes them rivals, and supposes that the one strives with and overcomes the other. But final cause, so far from being inconsistent with efficient cause, implies a combination of physical causes, which are blind in themselves, but which are led by a prearranging power to combine to accomplish an end. He insinuates that as mechanical cause comes to be seen everywhere final cause will have to hide itself. But viewed by a mind capable of seeing two truths alongside of each other, the belief in and the evidence of ends in nature are not vanish- ing, as the Professor expects. We have as clear and cer- tain proof that the eye was meant to see and the ear to hear as the first man had, and can now discover more fully the wonderful machinery by which the ends are effected. The Professor's argument against final cause is the most glaring example of the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion or of ignoratio elenchi, which I have seen for many a day. He would disprove the existence of final cause, and he merely attempts to prove the universal presence of mechani- cal cause. "With proper explanations we may admit all he claims as to mechanism and not feel thereby that teleology is weakened. Let us look at the principles at work when our astronomer gazes at a binary star with his telescope. EFFICIENT AWD FINAL CATTSE. 143 Rays go ont from the star, proceed in vibrations, first through millions of miles of ether, then through thousands of miles of air ; then into the telescope, where they are turned in a variety of ways ; then into the eye, into the cornea, which is transparent ; into convergent media, which unite the luminous rays, the three refracting media — the aqueous humor, crystalline lens, and vitreous humor — till they fall on the retina, where, according to the theory of Young, carried out by Helmholtz, there are twelve thou- sand or even twenty thousand cones, sensitive to various kinds of light, and they form there the image of two stars Avith perhaps complementary colors. The process is not ended till an action goes up through the optic nerve into the brain, and not till then does the astronomer see his star. The want or the failure of any one of these proces- ses, thousands in number, would prevent vision or make it imperfect.' In this long and complicated process there has been mechanical cause throughout. Professor Newcomb will not deny that there is final cause, in the part of it which goes on in the telescope ; but if there be an end manifested in the passage of the rays through the one in- strument, the telescope, there is like, but far stronger evi- dence of a purpose in the other instrument, the eye. In all such discussions a distinction of some kind is drawn as to the actual operations of the forces or laws of nature. ' M. Janet has shown that Helmholtz has answered his own objection derived from the imperfections in the eye. The great German physi- cist says : " The appropriateness of the eye to its end exists in the most perfect manner, and is revealed even in the limits given to its defects. A reasonable man wiU not take a razor to cleave blocks ; in like manner every useful refinement in the optical use of the eye would have ren- dered that organ more delicate and slower in its application." This is sufficient to defend final cause. But a full explanation may have to take into account the existence — the great mystery of our world — of disease and pain. 144 FINAL CAUSE. Paley in his " Natural Theology " indicates a distinction between the laws of nature and their construction, and speaks of an adjustment being necessary, and of "the laws being fixed" and "the construction being adapted to them" ("Nat. TheoL," iii.). Dr. Chalmers drew elaborately and illustrated at great length the distinction between the Laws of Matter and the Collocations or Dispositions of Matter. "We can imagine all the present and existing laws of matter to be in full operation, and yet, just for the want of a right local disposition of parts, the universe might be that wild undigested medley of things in which no one trace or character of a designing architect was at all discernible " (" Nat. TheoL," ii. 1). Mr. Mill has adopted this distinction, and sees that " collocations as well as laws are necessary to the operation of nature " (" Log.," iii. 12, 16). I have taken up the subject at this point and endeavored to give the distinction greater precision. I have shown that it is between, not the laws of matter and collocations, but between tlie properties of matter and adjustments necessary to their operation. I have shown that the laws of matter are not simple, but complex, and imply adjust- ments ; this is the case with the seasons, the typical forms of plants and animals ; all imply a number of agents or properties combined to produce a uniform result. Such laws are not mechanical foi'ces, but the results of mechani- cal forces adjusted ("Meth. Div. Gov.," ii. 1) and implying a purpose. Professor Newcomb seems to feel a difficulty in understanding how there should be anything else than mechanism necessary to explain the course of nature. And yet he has been obliged to draw this very distinction with- out seeing its meaning : " In this work we have to be con- cerned with two things — the general laws of nature, as they are familiarly called, and the facts or circumstances which determine the operation of these laws." MECHANICAL CAUSES AND ENDS. 145 The Professor imagines that final cause implies " inter- ference" and "miracles," and says: "We are not to call in a supernatural cause to account for a result which could have been produced by the action of the known laws of nature." But according to the view of the great body of the supporters of final cause, and according to the view now presented, we do not need to call in a " supernatural cause," for all may be performed by the known laws of nature. Nor do we need an interference to bring about the special designs of God, say to send blessings, when God so intends it, to reward the good ; or judgments when He means to arrest the evil, or to give an answer to prayer for things agreeable to His will. There is no inteif erenee with the machine in a factory when it lets off its cotton, or its linen thread, or its paper ; it was planned and ad- justed for this veiy purpose. The grain-reaper is all mechanical, and it has no conscious design ; but it throws off and binds its sheaves for an evident purpose. So in the far grander machinery of nature it is arranged that good is encouraged and evil so far restrained and punished. True, the mechanical forces work blindly ; they know not and do not care for the consequences ; but these were all foreseen by One who appointed them and arranged them for the accomplishment of grand purposes, and small ones — as we reckon them ; for the progress of the world in knowledge and civilization, to adorn that lily, to feed that raven, to secure that the sparrow cannot fall to the ground, and protect, in answer to prayer, the widow and the father- less. I could show, if the time allowed or the subject required, that there is a wonderful correspondence between the scientific doctrine of the uniformity of nature and the Scripture doctrine of foreordination. They are the same truths ; the one seen from below and from the earth, the 146 FINAL CAUSE. other seen from above and from heaven. Both imply that every thing is fixed ; bnt both also imply that every thing is arranged to accomplish special, and these beneficent, ends. Nature is uniform, and as we perceive it to be so, we proceed to use that very uniformity. Every thing is ordained, and believing that prayer is one of the ordained means, we use prayer to secure our ends — these ends being agreeable to His will. Because nature is uniform, we do not, therefore, on account of speculative difficulties, refuse to toil for our food. Just as little does the Christian, because of infidel objections, refuse to pray for blessings such as God is ready to give ; and he finds that the bless- ing has been ordained and comes at the proper time, and in answer to the prayer which has also been ordained, and this to secure its end. Professor Newcomb quotes, without naming me, my de- fence of Providence in my work on " The Method of the Divine Government," and objects to my statement that a rock may fall at a prearranged moment and Idll a person beneath it. He says "the moment is fixed entirely by antecedent circumstances, such as the solubility of the rock and the amount of water which percolates over it. At that very moment the rock begins to fall." Now I agree with all this. But he himself has admitted that there are " facts or circumstances which determine the operation of these laws." The question arises who arranged these " facts or circumstances," which are needed, however far we go back beyond the nature of the rock and the water, and which imply an arrangement from the beginning ? He acknowledges that if we had suificient capacity we could from a knowledge of the causes (including always their adaptations) predict all that would follow. But if this be so, may we not conceive of a Being who not only foresees but has arranged all that follows ? That Beins: mio-ht so JANET ON FINAL CAUSE. 147 arrange them that special ends are accomplished, and these such that they are obvious to every thinking mind. Nor are we, in discovering these ends, going into the region of speculation, to which the Professor allots every thing but mechanical cause. He talks of science, meaning mechanical, concerning itself "with phenomena and the relations which connect them." I am sure that the same intelligence which can discover the connections and relations in mechanical cause is all that is needed to discover the combination of causes which constitutes final cause. As M. Janet puts it, " The error of the scientists is in believ- ing that they have eliminated final causes from nature, when they have shown how certain effects result from certain given causes." " We must not say 'that the bird has wings in order to fly ; but that it flies because it has wings.' But wherein, I ask you, are these two propositions contradictory? In assuming that a bird has wings in order to fly, must not its flight result from the structure of these wings? Consequently, because the flight is a result, is it right to conclude that it is not at the same time an end ? Would it then be necessary, in order to recognize flnal causes, that you should see in nature effects without a cause or effects disproportioned to these causes ?" We are in danger at this present time of a whole swarm of young naturalists, following one or two leaders, attack- ing final cause without knowing what it means. We are happy, in these circumstances, to have a work by a French philosopher which rests the doctrine on the proper footing, and corrects the misapprehensions of objectors. It is not necessary to give an epitome of M. Janet's " Final Causes." Those interested in the subject will go directly to the work now so accessible. Any one perplexed may here have his thoughts cleared up. Those who would oppose final cause must attempt to answer it, and as they do so they may find 148 FINAL CAUSE. every objection to the doctrine effectively disposed of. He shows first as a matter of fact, and this independent of any theological bearing, that there is finality or teleology in nature. He founds " the existence of the final cause on this principle, that when a complex combination of hetero- geneous phenomena is found to agree with the possibility of a future act which was not contained beforehand in any of these phenomena in particular, this agreement can only be comprehended by the human mind by a kind of pre- existence in an ideal form of the future act itself, which transforms from a result into an end — that is to say, into a final cause." He shows, secondly, that this teleology implies an intelligent cause. He is particularly successful in showing that develop- ment, so far from superseding final cause, implies it throughout. Hugh Miller had said, in criticising the " Vestiges of Creation," that development does not affect the argument for the Divine existence. Professor Huxley- allows this fully. Professor Asa Gray discovers an order and design in development. But M. Janet has discussed the subject more fully. ISTo one wUl maintain that development is a simple mechanical law. It is the law of a most compli- cated correlation of forces, most of which are as yet un- known. When these are detected, by some Newton of physiology yet to appear, it will be seen that development, always kept within its proper sphere, more perhaps than any other process of nature involves a complexity of ad- justments all tending toward a point, the preservation, and I believe the gradual elevation, of plants and animals. Professor ISTewcomb's discourse is on the Course of Na- ture. But there is vastly more in that organized course than he and other scientists are noticing. I have endeav- ored to spread out that rich web, of which the forces which he has looked at are the mere threads. I have proceeded on VARIOUS CAUSES IN NATURE. 149 tlie fourfold explanation of nature by Aristotle, only modi- fying it somewhat to adapt it to modern science. All that I insist on is that nature cannot be understood, ex- cept by such principles as those I have been unfolding. I discover not only force which hurries on like a railway train, but rails to restrain it and intelligence guiding it. I find not only mechanism, but machines constructed for ends. The mechanical doctrine, if carried out exclusively, would strip nature of all that endears it to us— of all its sunshine, of all its beauty and beneficence, and leave nothing to call forth our admiration, our gratitude, our love. A skeleton is an interesting object to an anatomist, but I love to see it clothed with form and color and expression. I am in- terested in the restless activity of nature, capable of work- ing such effects for evil or for good ; but I do not feel assurance, and my soul is not elevated to adoration till I see the powers harmoniously joining to produce regular laws, and types after their kind, and intelligible species, and special ends of support and benignity. Pythagoras uttered a profound truth, and had doubtless glimpses of its meaning, when he said that if men's perceptions were sufficiently acute they would hear the music of the spheres, being, I may add, the voice of One boldly represented by an old prophet as " joying over His works with singing." Ill DEVELOPMENT; WHAT IT CAN DO, AND WHAT IT CANNOT DO DEVELOPMENT WHAT IT CAl^ DO AND WHAT IT CANNOT DO. The phrases Development and Evolution, so frequently used in the present day, have much the same meaning. Both point to one operation seen under somewhat different aspects. Development is the process going on, whereas evolution rather refers to the process as we look back upon it. We speak of the seed developing into the plant, and the plant being evolved from the seed. There is a constant employment of the phrases and a continued reference to the process. But there is an equally persistent avoidance of an explanation of its pre- cise natm-e. Instances, many rich and varied, are given, and inferences legitimate and illegitimate are drawn ; but there has not been a wise, judicious, and scientific attempt to explicate its components, to spread out its contents, and prescribe its boundary. The phrases are used to cover all sorts of meanings — " it is a great sheet let down by the four corners upon the earth, wherein are all manner of four-footed beasts and creeping things of the earth, and fowls of heaven." Evo- lution in itself is a great vehicle moving on from age to age, and from world to world, carrying with it all sorts of wares, precious and baser metals, suns and soils, flowers 154 BEVELOPMENT. and weeds. Scientific men discourse profoundly of the development of worlds and systems of worlds, of plants and animals, of individuals and of species, from the monad on to man. But we hear and read also of the develop- ment of the resources of a country, of its wealth, its mines, its gold and silver ; its crops and corn, its wheat and fruits ; of its sheep, cattle, and horses ; of its industry, its trade and commerce ; of its cities, their streets, houses, and harbors; of its education, its colleges and schools. They give you histories of the development of the sciences of astronomy, chemistry, and geology, of literature in prose and poetry ; of language from its simpler forms up to the higher, such as Greek, German, or English ; of the fine arts, as painting, sculpture, and architecture, from their ruder to their highest shapes ; and of the useful arts, as masonry, carpentry, and engine-making. They talk, too, of the evolution of things from a simpler to a more complex state ; of pottery, of wax-work, of metal-work, of vases, of dinner-sets, and tea-cups. It must surely be a compre- hensive phrase, or quite as possibly a loose and ambiguous one, which embraces all these things and a thousand more. In these circumstances it is surely of moment, when any one is talking of development, for or against, to insist on his telling us precisely what he means by it. " I am sick," says the man of common sense, who is not to be taken in with high-sounding phrases, " of this pretentious power ; I prefer the old way of speaking, when it was believed that all things came from God." But I ask this man, who is after all making large pretentions to uncom- mon sense, whether he is prepared to affirm that he was not developed from his good father and mother ; whether he, the man of forty, has not grown out of that boy whom he pleasantly remembers going to school at the age of six. But I am a religious man, he tells us, and I am sure that AMBIGUITY OF THE PHRASES. 155 God and not development guides the universe. But if lie will listen to me, I venture to ask him whether he has any right to dictate to Deity how he shall govern his own world ; whether by development or in some other way ; whether Grod may not have made this man himself to grow by development; and whether the same God has not evolved the Christian from the Jewish faith, and the Jew- ish from the patriarchal. When we lay down the rigid rule for ourselves, that we explain beforehand what we mean by the phrases we employ, we are in a better posi- tion to require the same on the part of our opponent, and to insist on knowing what he means by the evolution he is defending. An evolution out of nothing ? An evolu- tion without a God to set it agoing or to guide it ? An evolution of life from the lifeless ? Of mind from the mindless ? Of man from the monkey ? Of the monkey from the mollusc ? Of the mollusc from the monad ? Of all from the senseless molecule ? SECTION I. DEVELOPMENT IS AN OEGANIZBD CAUSATION. Developiient is evidently not a simple power in nature, like mechanical force, or chemical affinity, or gravitation. It is clear that there is a vast, an incalculable number and variety of agencies in the process, whether it be the de- velopment of a sun from star-dust, of the plant from its seed, of the bird from its egg, the horse from its dam, of the threshing-machine from the flail, of the reaping-ma- chine from the reaping-hook, of our present kitchen utensils from those used by our grandmother. The ques- tion arises : Is there any unity in " the thousand and one " 156 DEVELOPMENT IS AW OKGATSriZliD CAUSATION. things that act in the process ? I believe that there is. Let us inquire what it is, and this will settle for us what truth and what error there is in the common expositions, that is development of developments. The one common quality in the process as denoted by the phrases is, that one thing is developed into another thing, and that one thing is evolved from another. But it is universally regarded as settled that when one thing produces another, or is produced out of another, it is by causation. It follows that there must be causation in de- velopment. Causation necessitates development. This fol- lows from the nature of cause and effect as it is commonly apprehended. It follows more particularly from the view which I have given of Energy in the paper on the subject in this series. I have shown that in physical action the cause always consists in two or more bodies which act on each other, and that the effect consists of the same bodies modified ; that the ball A striking the ball B constitutes the cause, and that the effect consists of the ball B gaining the energy which A loses. But I need not insist on this here, as whatever be our theory of causation, the cause must be regarded as developing the effect, and the effect as evolved from the cause. It has been generally admitted for the last two or three centuries (it was anticipated in a vague way fi-om the com- mencement of reflection) that causation works through all nature, not only divine causation but physical causation, that is, that the ordinary occurrences of nature are pro- duced by agents acting causally. In other words, fire burns, light shines, and the earth spins round its axis and rotates around the sun, and as the issue we have heat and light, and the beneficent seasons. Men of enlarged minds do now acknowledge that in the doctrine of universal causa- tion, of God acting everywhere through second causes, CAUSATION LEADS TO DEVELOPMENT. 157 there is nothing irreligious. On tlie contrary, the circum- stance that God proceeds in a regular manner which can be anticipated, is evidently for the benefit of intelligent beings who can thus so far foresee the future and prepare for it and act upon it. But causation leads to develop- ment. If there be nothing irreligious in causation, as lit- tle is there impiety in the development which issues from it. It will be shown that development by causation is the plan by which God carries on his works, thus connecting the past with the present, and the present with the future. It was my privilege in my earliest published work to jus- tify God's method of procedure by natural cause and natu- ral law, as specially adapted to man's constitution.' I reckon it as a like privilege in my declining life to be able to defend God's way of acting by development, which gives a consecutive unity to all nature, and as a stream from the throne of God flows through all time, widening and deepening till it covers the earth, as the waters do the sea, with the riches it carries. But development, while it is carried on by causation, does not consist of a single chain with successive causes and effects as its links. The causes as they operate com- bine and the effects are joint, and we have a great reticu- lated machine. Development is essentially a combination of causes. It is a corporation of causes for mutual action, an organized causation for ends. The past has developed into the present, which will develop into the future. The configuration of the earth, its hills and dales, its rivers and seas, which determine the abodes and industries of men, and the bounds of their habitation have been produced by agencies which have been working for millions of years. The present is the fruit of the past and contains the seed ' Method of Divine GoTernment, Pliysioal and Moral. 158 CAUSATIOK "VVOKKING IN AN ENVIEONMENT. of the future. The plants now on the earth are the de- scendants of those created by God, and the ancestors of those that are to appear in the ages to come. There is through all times, as in the year, a succession of seasons ; sowing and reaping, sowing in order to reap, and reaping what has been sown in order to its being sown again. Tliis gives a continuousness, a consistency, to na- ture amidst all the mutations of time. There is not only a contemporaneous order in nature, there is a successive order. The beginning leads to the end, and the end is the issue of the beginning. This grass and grain, and these forests that cover the ground, have seed in them which will continue in undefined ages to adorn and enrich the ground. These birds that sing among the branches, and these cattle upon a thousand hills, will build nests and rear young to furnish noimshment and delight to our children's children in millennial ages. Eveiy naturalist has seen a purpose gained by the nutriment laid up in the seed or pod to feed the young plant. I see a higher end accom- plished by the mother provided for the young animal. That infant is not cast forth into the cold world unpro- tected : it has a mother's arms to protect it and a mother's love to fondle it. Development is not in itself an irreli- gious process ; every one who has been reared under a father's care and a mother's love will bless God for it. SECTION II. DEVELOPMENT IS CAUSATION WOEKING m AN ENVIRONMENT. Science has not determined, and never may be able to determine, what are the original con stitnents of the universe. Some are fond of looking upon them as atoms, some repre- sent them as centres of force, others will allow them to be AGENTS FOEM CAUSES. 159 only centres of motion — with nothing to move ! Whatever they be, there must be millions of millions of them work- ing in the knowable world. It is by no means certain that we have been able to de- termine what is the number of elementary bodies in the world. The ancient Greek division into earth, water, air, and fire, merely pointed in a rude way to , a division of states — the solid, the fluid, the vaporous, and the ethereal. The number of elements is supposed for the present and provisionally to be sixty-five, but most chemists believe that some of these may be resolved into components. It would be wrong in us to afiirm dogmatically that we know what are the varied forces, or, as some would prefer expressing them, the powers of producing motion. One point, however, has been established in our day, that all the physical energies are in a sense one ; that they are all — be it the mechanical, chemical, vital, electric — correlated, and that their sum, real and potential, cannot be increased or diminished. What we have to do is to observe these entities, elements, or powers as working, and to notice in particular that they operate in the way of evolution. These existences, with their energies, combine to form causes, and these form combined or organized causes. All of them have afiinities with each other. Some of these are stronger than others in themselves, or from the relative position which they occupy. These combine in their action. We may represent the agencies at work by the letters of the alphabet. A, B, C, etc. A number of these, say A, D, P, S, may join and produce powerful individual occurrences — an earthquake, a volcano, a conflagration, a revolution. Or they may abide and produce general issues, continued for hours, or days, or years. Thus the winds combine and go in' currents, and we have the trade-winds.. Thus the 160 RESULTS TEOM CAUSATION AND ENVIKONMENT. waters of the ocean are made to flow in one direction, and we have the Gulf Stream, and the cold wave from Labrador. But these organized causal operations do not embrace, in at least an appreciable or calculable manner, all the powers or causes of the universe ; they comprise only a portion as in conspicuous operation. The causes that pro- duce a cyclone in the Indian Ocean, may have no percep- tible connection with those that produce a flood in the rivers of America. The moral agencies that produce a revolution in Paris, may have no visible relation with the discontent which leads tlie Indians to rise and murder their white neighbors in America. But there is no set of causes in our world so isolated that they have no connection with surrounding causes. Possibly A, D, P, S have some rela- tionship with B, E, Q, T. These other powers will so far act on the organized causation and modify it, it may be in the way of strengthening or weakening the tendency, or giving a special direction to the stream. While they do so, they will themselves be affected, perhaps bo absorbed or driven off. The winds and ocean currents ai-e all affect- ed by the nature of the land over which they travel. The tides are directed by the nature of the shore, and the sea- sons, by, it may be, various solar or lunar influences. Every combined mundane agency has a sphere, and this sphere nas an atmosphere, or an evironment as it is called, which it so far sways, and by which it may be swayed. SECTION ni. EEGULAE RESULTS FEOM COMBINED CAUSATION AND ENVIEON- MENT. The former is a stream receiving contributions as it flows on from the other, which constitutes its banks, that are watered by it, it may be formed by it. From the inter EEGULAE EESULTS. 161 action, specially from the unions and separations, there fol- low certain regularities which are worthy of notice. There are courses which go on for a time and then dis- appear. The wind arises from there being a comparative vacuum somewhere, into which it rushes, and then sinks because the inequality is so far filled. There is a high tide produced when the moon and sun are pulling in one way, but it ceases when the two are not acting in unison. There are epochs in which certain motives or impulses prevail — periods of war and conquest, periods of commercial enterprises, periods of the cultivation of the fine arts; these have public opinion for a time in their favor, and then give way before something else. In all such cases the combination of the causes producing the movement is loosened and new combinations are formed. There are results that abide the same from year to year, and from age to ago : that stream has for a thousand years risen in the same fountain, among the same hills, and fiowed through the same valleys into the same creek of the ocean. Thus there are plants and animals now living which have not been visibly changed since they appeared millions of years ago in the early geological ages. The Chinese have continued much the same in character, occupations, and mode of life, for thousands of years. In all such cases the same causes have contiimed to act and produce the same effects. In other cases there have been irruptions, convulsions, and wars which have produced new modes of life ; such, for instance, was the irruption of the hordes from the northeast upon the dc caying lioman empire. The most curious instances of regularities are those which are periodic. A certain combination of causes pro- duces certain issues, and is then dissolved, to be succeeded after a certain time by the formation of a like combina- 162 RESULTS PROM CAUSATION AND ENVIRONMENT. tion and the same issues following. It is thus that at certain seasons there are daily sea-breezes and daily land- breezes. As more marked and obvious we have the seasons. " While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Here we have sun and seed and soil concurring to produce an orderly series of events which run their course and are succeeded by a like series. Malarial influences are introduced into the system, which take a certain time to work and to be cast oif ; and we have diseases lasting four days or ten days or fourteen days. "We have such a periodic process in every plant springing from a seed, and every animal from a germ, having a growth and an average life and then dy- ing, but first producing a new life. We have such periods in the movements of the heavenly bodies, as in the preces- sion of the equinoxes. It is more to our present purpose to remark that in de- velopment there is usually progression. At times indeed there is degeneracy, as when plants do not thrive in a nig- gardly soil, and animals get weaker in a deleterious cli- mate. But, upon the whole, there has been an advance in our earth from age to age. The tendency of animal life is generally upward, from all fours to the upright position, from which men can look up to heaven. There are spe- cies of plants and animals which ha^-e become larger and more robust. Geological causes made our earth fit for the abode of man, who had cereals and cattle provided for him. Human beings have come to occupy places which in earlier ages were handed over to wild animals. There is now a larger amount of animal food than in any pre- vious age. As the ages roll on there is a greater fulness of sentient life, and a larger capacity of happiness. The average life of human beings in civilized countries is in- DIFFEEENTIATION AND INTEGKATION. 163 creasing. The intellectual powers have been made stronger and firmer, like the trunk of a tree, and the feelings, like the flowers, have been made by culture to take a fuller expansion and a richer color. Under this head may be placed those grand generaliza- tions which have been so magnified by Herbert Spencer in his " First Principles." He assumes a Persistence of Force in the universe, derived from an unknown and unknow- able power beneath it. This leads to a constant differentia- tion and integration ; in simpler terms, a separation of ele- ments, and again an aggregation. He shows that " any finite homogeneous aggregate must lose its homogeneity, through the unequal exposure of its parts to incident forces." Hence the instability of the homogeneous and the perpetual motion in the universe. This scattering issues in an integration. The result is to change an indefi- nite homogeneity into a definite heterogeneity, and then aggregates of all orders are evolved. Everywhere there is a change from a confused simplicity to a distinct complex- ity, from a diffusion to a concentration. But opposed there may be a more powerful attraction which separates and diffuses the aggregate : " Evolution and dissolution as to- gether making up the entire process through which things pass." " There is habitually a passage from homogeneity to heterogeneity, along with the passage from diffusion to concentration." This may be expressed in terms of Matter and Motion, "and if so, it must be a statement of the truth that the concentration of Matter implies the dissipa- tion of Motion, and that, conversely, the absorption of Motion implies the diffusion of Matter." In the end, to the vast aggregate, even to the earth ItseK, Dissolution must eventually arrive, and " universal Evolution will be followed by universal Dissolution." These generalizations are very wide, and the conclusions 164 EVOLUTION IN INANIMATE NATUKE. far reaching. Possibly there may be gaps in the processes The giant, in marching on with his seven-leagued boots, may have overlooked many agencies which modify his theories. He is wrong in declaring that the power under- neath the persistence of force is unknown and unknowable. According to his own account it is so far known, it is known to be a power, and a power persisting and working certain effects. It can be shown to be a power character- ized by wisdom and love. He omits certain powers which are as patent as those he notices. In particular he regards mind as consisting of nerves, and overlooks all its special properties — of intelligence, conscience, and will. When these are introduced they give a new, and, I venture to say, a juster and more attractive aspect to the whole of nature. I am not satisfied when I find myself and my friends represented as mere developments from homogene- ous matter, produced by differentiation. But I am willing to accept his generalizations so far as the physical powers of nature are concerned. SECTION IV. EVOLUTION m INAJ!nMATE NATURE. " Evolution," says Herbert Spencer, " is a change from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent homogeneity through a continuous differentiation and in- tegration." I am willing to take this doctrine, but I have to unfold it in my ovm way, which will be less technical, but fully as accordant with facts. In nature there is a very large, but still definite number of bodies, all acting causally. As they act a number are drawn into aggregates by their mutual attractions or af- PEOGEESSIOK ANB DESIGK. 165 finities, or their proximity. The action is of the nature of causation ; I call it a combined or organized causation. Thus, in our mundane system, we have the sun, planets, and moons, witli a certain shape — an oblate spheroid — ^with a rotation round their axes and round each other. These may be regarded as developments produced by differentia- tion. As a result of the collocation of the sun and the earth we have the seasons, with their regularities and their irregularities. We have also had the stratified structure of the earth, and mountains heaved up, and valleys between. All this has arisen very much from combined causation. In the aggregates produced there are internal changes go- ing on. Thus the earth is supposed in the geological ages to have become cooled and fitted for the abodes of ani- mated beings. But the combination of causes is in the centre of an immense number of other causes, which may be called its surroundings, or, more technically, an environ- ment. The aggregate and its environment act on each other and produce farther changes, it may be in accumu- lation, say in adding plant-fostering soil on the earth's sur- face, or washing away seas and increasing dry land. But there is a second characteristic of development ob- servable everywhere in nature, and that is a progression. There is an advance from a homogeneous to a more differ- entiated state in which new aggregates with their functions appear. This may be produced by accumulations of forces breaking out in convulsions, which change so far the face of the earth ; or more frequently by small increments, as the growth of soil by the decay of plants. In all this I discover order and design. I do not see that the constituents of the world, its atoms or molecules, necessarily produce beneficent results. If left to them- selves they might produce evil quite as easily and naturally as good, and might have been formed into destructive 166 EVOLUTION IK INANIMATE NATURE. machines and pestiferous creatures, into flaming meteors with burning worlds, into serpents and wild beasts devour- ing each other and arresting all forms of beauty and bene- ficence, and yet incapable of dying. But, instead of this, these million agencies combine to accomplish good and benign ends, so as to show that there has been a mind dis- posing them and an end in view. Let us notice, first, that the combination of elements acting as causes has produced general laws and beneficent order : in the seasons, in the growth of the plant — ^first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear — in the animal enjoying its time, and handing down its life to another generation. All tliis is not the action of simple properties acting fortuitously or fatally ; it is the result of the adjustment of numerous properties of matter — gravitating, mechanical, chemical, electric — all conspiring toward an end. Secondly, the combination accomplishes special ends, such as those so happily illustrated by Paley and other writers on natural theology. There are, for example, the joints of the bodily frame composed of bones that fit into each other for good ends, namely, easy and convenient movements ; the firm clasping of the hand, and the simple forward and backward motion of the fingers, and the ball and socket at the shoTilder admitting rotation all round. There are the bodily senses — the eje, the ear, and touch — so delicately adapted to the external world, with which they make us ac- quainted. There is the whole animal frame, made up of various parts, yet all combining into a living machine of exquisite structure. Not only is development, when properly understood, not inconsistent with religion, it will be found that the com- bination and adaptation in it clearly argue design. Sooner or later there will be written a work on natural theology, DESIGK IN DEVELOPMENT. 167 after the manner of Paley, showing that as there are plan and purpose in the well-fitted limbs and organs of animals, so there is also design, and this quite as evident and as wondrous in the way in which, by a process running through ages, the bones and muscles have been adjusted to each other to produce the horse we drive or ride on. There is a manifest beneficent end in the knittings of our frame, but there is quite as palpable a purpose in the way in which all the parts have been moulded in the geolo- gical ages, and handed down by heredity. I therefore see design in development. There is an ob- vious end and a means arranged to accomplish it. We notice purpose evident in the development which man is ever accomplishing. The farmer uses a series of agencies to secure a crop : he ploughs, he harrows, he sows seed, he weeds, and in the end he gathers in a crop. The teacher lays out a plan for developing the faculties of his pupils : he imparts knowledge, he corrects, he stimulates, and he reaches his aim, the improvement of the mind and a fitness for the duties of life. We are ever noticing cases in which there is need of co-operation to accomplish an end. A house is built and furnished because a number of persons have done each his part — the mason, the carpenter, the plumber, the slater, the glazier, the upholsterer. A city becomes rich because the merchants have been far- sighted, the manufacturers expert, and the tradesmen skil- ful and industrious. The country prospers because the master and the servant, the schoolmaster and the minister of religion, are all and each doing their part. But there are still more wondrous evidences of plan, as in the suc- cession of the seasons, of the grass and grain and trees, and in the living creatures advancing in fulness and strength, in activity and beauty. It is not in the single operation that we discover evidence of a purpose so much as in theil 168 GOD IN DEVELOPMENT. organization and orderly succession and development. De- velopment is a sort of corporation in vrhich each part, like the citizen, fulfils its office.' Evolution is not, any more than gravitation, chemical affinity, or any other power or law of nature, an irreligious process. Spencer accounts for all its operations by the per- sistence of force beneath, and behind which he feels him- self obliged to place an unknown power. I, too, am obliged to place such a power ; but to me it is so far a known power. There is more in the production than the persistence of force ; there is an arrangement of all the evolved and in- volved powers to work for an end, and in this I perceive design and intelligence. I do not stand up for a develop- ment any more than I do for a gravitation independent of God. I see God in the persistence of force, and in the beneficent way in which it works. I can see a good pur- pose worthy of God served by universal gravitation, in binding together all the parts of the universe, however widely sundered. But I can also discover it to be a benefi- cent arrangement, whereby by evolution the present is con- nected with the past and the future, and the most remote times are brought together. I do not say that God could not have accomplished these ends in some other way, but he has actually effected them by means of causation and evolution, and I bless him for it. 1 see God in development throughout, and from begin- ning to end. Because a rose, a dog, or horse is gendered by natural causes, it is not less the work of God. Our finest roses are derived from the common dog rose of Europe {Mosa ' I am not here constructing or defending the theistio argument. If it he ohjected that the existence of pain sets aside teleology, I simply say that I am not to enter on the suhject of the mystery of evil, hut I hold that there may he evidence of the existence hoth of suffering and of love in one and the same world. DEVELOPMENT IN ORGANIC NATURE. 169 eanina) : that rose with its simple beauty by the roadside is the divine workmanship ; but so is the rose with the fullest form and the gayest color in our gardens. God, who rewards us for opening our eyes upon his works, gives higher rewards to those who, in love to him, or to them, bestow labor and pains upon them. Dogs, it is said, have descended from some kind of wolf. This does not make the highly de- veloped shepherd or St. Bernard dog, with their won- drous instincts, not to be the divine workmanship. Just as little does the hypothesis that our living horse is de- scended from the pliohippos, and this from the miohippos, and this again from the small eohippos, which used to tread with its five toes on marshy ground, prove that the animal we ride on, so useful and so graceful, so agile, and so docile, is not the creature of the Creator who formed it and endowed it with the power of evolution. SECTION V. DEVELOPMENT IN ORGAJSTIO NATUEE. Theee is no difficulty presented to the religious man in development, so far as it relates to inanimate nature ; he may believe in evolution as a mode of divine operation. Doubts and difficulties arise when he is required to assent to its universal application to every form of organized be- ing. Eut surely if it exists and is prevalent in dead matter without being atheistic it may also be allowed in plants and animals. It is admitted on all hands to have a place and power in the individual plant and animal, both of which proceed from the seed or germ, take a typical form, and have a normal time to live and produce an offspring. There is a 170 DE\JEIiOPMENT IN INDIVIDUALS. sense in which the oak is in the acorn, the child is father of the man. Both grow partly by internal powers and arrangements, and partly by external nourishment and accretions from day to day, and from year to year. If any one regards this as taking place independent of God, he is so far an atheist. If he believes it to be accomplished by the power of God, he is thus far a true theist, and his heart may be filled with adoration and his mouth with praise. JSTot only is there development in the individual, but also in the succession of individuals. There is here a ro- tation, the egg from the living being developed into a new living being, producing a new egg. It is equally true that the bird is from the egg and the egg from the bird, and both by evolution. Ko one will speak against such an arrangement, as it provides children for the comfort of parents and parents to care for children. But disputes arise when development is carried farther. It is allowed that there is development in the individual, but may it also take place in the species ? In other words, can one species grow out of another ? To clear the ground for a fair discussion let us look at what is admitted. It is allowed, nay, maintained, that there is such a thing in nature as distinct species, genera, and orders. These, in ordinary circumstances, cannot be changed into each other. The lily cannot be transmuted into the rose, nor tiie sheep into the goat. In the common operations of nature every plant and animal is after its kind or species. Figs do not produce thistles, nor do thistles produce figs. It is also admitted by all that species develop varieties.' ' Prof. Asa Gray writes: "The facts, so far as I can judge, do not support the assumption of every sided and indifferent variations. The variations do not tend in many directions ; the variations seem to b« an internal response to external impressions." DEVELOPMEITT IW SPECIES. 171 I believe there is no one tree — oak or pine, elm or birch-^ precipely the same in the old world and in the new. What a variety of pigeons are there, all descended, it is supposed, from the rock pigeon. These varieties are produced inter- nally, largely by external circumstances, that is, by the en- vironment,. In a barren soil and a severe climate an oak will become dwarfed and its descendants will be the same. The dog can be trained to point at game, and a breed will be produced possessing this aptitude. It has to be added that these varieties tend to return, if the environment does not continue to prevent it, to the original type of the species. The cultivated plant, cast out of the garden, will be apt to go back to its wild state. It is usual also that when animals of different species have paired, the horse and the ass for instance, the offspring — the mule — is not prolific and dies out. We have approached the battlefield gradually, but now we are in the midst of the fight, and we may watch it, even though we do not take part with either side. Two grand questions are before us. One relates to the pro- duction of the species at the first. Were the species of amoeba, of molluscs, of insects, of fishes, of reptiles, of mammals (the consideration of man had best be deferred) created, very much as they now are, by the immediate fiat of God at the beginning, or as the ages rolled on ? Or were they evolved out of a previous material by internal laws of development and by constant increments from the en- vironment ? The second question is intimately connected with the first. In rare and extraordinary circumstancea can new species come forth out of the old, as varieties do, and these go down by heredity ? The opinions of the ancients on such a subject are of no value, as they have no scientific basis. Many deep think- ers believed in spontaneous generation, and supposed that 172 DEVELOPMENT IN ORGANIC NATURE. lower animated creatures came out of the sea or bubbled out of marshes, and they did not see anything irreligious in this, as they, or at least a number of them, believed it to be done by a divine power. In the earlier centuries of the modem era, naturalists were carefully observing the spe- cies, genera, and orders, with the view of classifying plants and animals, and they were fond of regarding kinds as fixed and immutable. Eeligious people were inclined to regard all natural species as created by God, and this re- quired, when they came to believe in geological succession, a perpetual creation down to the period at which man appeared. Since the days of Mallet and Geoffrey St. Hilaire there has been an ever-increasing body of natural- ists inclined to account for the origin of species by natural law. Wlio is to settle these questions, or rather this question, for it is one ? This can be done only by long and varied observation and discussion. I certainly feel as to myself that I cannot decide it. The tendency of modern specula- tion has all been toward the prevalence of development by natural causation. Yet there are phenomena of which it may be said that they cannot at this present time be ex- plained by any natural process. But there is one point on which I am quite as much entitled to speak as any other is : Does religion require us to insist that species and orders in natural science are all fixed forever ? that in no circumstances can a new species be produced by natural law ? It is certainly conceivable that the God who created all things should also have created by a direct act, without a medium or without a process, the first member of every one of the hundred thousands of plants and animals on the earth, and then allowed, or, rather, enabled, them to go down by an evolutionary heredity. But it is quite as pos- sible and equally conceivable that God may have organized HOW PEODTJCED. 173 the species out of the previously existing materials, even as he made man's body out of the dust of the ground. The essential elements of organisms are oxygen, nitrogen, hy- drogen, carbon, Avith sulphur and iron, and aqueous fluids. These are represented as being the least volatile of the elements and the most permanent in their combination, and because of these qualities they may have been brought and kept together in organisms. It is quite conceivable that out of the constituents of the universe God may have arranged that these shoiUd combine to form those aggre- gates, ■which we call plants and animals, and as the ages run on, to form new species in rare and exceptional cir- cumstances. It has to be added that these elements -will not of themselves form living beings v^ithout some in- herent or superadded hereditary vital power, a subject which will have to be considered separately. ITow, it is not for me to say beforehand which of these methods, immediate or mediate, God should adopt. The former of these might seem to bring in God more directly. It certainly makes him interfere more frequently with the works of nature ; but then, when he is thus interfering, he is interfering with his own works, which we may sup- pose to have been planned from the first in infinite wis- dom. If it be found in fact that he has chosen the latter method, we are just as much entitled in that case as in the other to discover the action of God, and we may without presumption discover evidences of beneficence. For God does thus secure not only a connection of his works with* himself, but a connection of them one with another ; and thus, on the one hand, there is a certain stability in natural classes, while, on the other hand, there is a sufficient amoimt of variety and progression to suit the organism to new positions and provide for the survival of the fittest, which is certainly a good provision. 174 THEOMES OF DEVELOPMENT. A number of theories have been devised to account foi the production of what seem to be new species. Darwin gives prominence to the principle of JS'atural Selection, with its accompaniment the Survival of the Fittest ; but acknowledges in his later editions that he had attached too much importance to it. The phrase is not a very happy one, as it seems to imply choice, which certainly has no place in the process. But it points to a fact that the weakest plants and animals are most apt to die early and leave no progeny, whereas the strong live and have a more powerful offspring. I do not purpose to give all the theories, or to examine them critically. They differ chiefly in this, that some attach more importance to the operation of the internal elements, others to the external circum- stances or environment. Some hold that there is an action producing change, variety, and progression in the com- ponents and structure of the organism, in the germ or in its growth. Among those who thus look for the cause of the development in the organs themselves may be men- tioned Lyell, Mivart, and Professor Owen, in England; Professor Gray, and Professor Cope in America ; and, in Germany, Braun, Gegenbaur, Heer, iNageli, Virchow, etc' Most of them seem to make the development pro- ceed by gradual steps, scarcely if at all observable ; others through a metamorphosis of germs and heterogenetic leaps. Perhaps we may have to take with us both the internal and external causes, in some cases the one, and in some the other being the stronger. The development of the individual certainly involves both an inward power of ' We have an admirable work on The Theories of Darwin, by Ru- dolph Schmid, excellently translated by G. A. Zimmermann (Jansen, M'Clurg & Co., Chicago). This work is at once philosophical and scien- tific, and being now so accessible, renders it unnecessary for me to state and criticize the theories of evolution. TIIEliE IS MORE THAN PHYSICAL ENEEGY. 175 growth, and also external support and nutriment ; both are necessary to produce the full form, and the seed which propagates the species. There may be the same principle in the production, in rare circumstances possibly only in the early geological ages, of new species. It is conceivable that in the earlier times aggregates might not have been so fixed as to render germs and species absolute- ly unchangeable. They seem now to be so determined that the species of animals and plants are comparatively permanent. It is always to be remembered that in vegetable and in animal development there is more than mechanical en- ergy. Mr. Spencer can scarcely be said to have perceived this ; certainly he has not given it its due place and prom- inence. There is evidently a chemical power in exercise, and this cannot be said to have yet been resolved into mechanism. Then there is a power, which without de- fining it, was simply called vital by our older naturalists, and which, however it may have been produced, and whatever may be its nature, is in actual operation higher than either the mechanical or chemical. Even Darwin is obliged to bring in a panzoism to account for the genesis and continuance of organisms. Mr. Spencer himself has to use physiological units to explain heredity. What are these but particular exhibitions of the old vital forces ? Perhaps the most remarkable example of this physio- logical development is to be seen in the progress of the embryo in the womb, as discovered by Yon Baer. The germ is apparently (it cannot be so really) much the same in all animals except the lowest ; but it becomes differen- tiated and takes the form of the polyps, the worms, the molluscs, and arthropods, and goes on to the fish, the amphibia, the reptiles, to birds and mammalia. Now this progression, as every one knows, is very much the same 176 WHAT DEVELOPMENT CANNOT DO. as that of the animal races in the geological ages. Thia does not imply, as I understand it, tha the germ of the mammal, in its ascending process, ever does become a bird or a reptUe. It means that there are combinations of agents in the germ and its surroundings, which proceed, that is, are developed after a certain manner, and that from a prearranged combination of matters and forces there has been a like or parallel progression in the v^hole animal kingdom. All this implies more than mere me- chanical energy or persistence of force. Powers are im- plied, which, in the present stage of science cannot be resolved into the mechanical. Yet in no human machine can we discover more clearly the evidence of a plan and purpose. With these new powers acting, there is now a higher manner and form of development, and we have one generation of intelligent and moral beings succeeding another. SECTION VI. WHAT DEVELOPMENT CANNOT DO. While it can do much, it may not be able to do every- thing. There is a tendency among eager and hasty thinkers to push every newly discovered truth to an extreme. I am as old as to remember the feeling kindled when Sir Hum- phry Davy made his brilliant discoveries as to electricity and chemical action. There were sciolists in our schools of popular science, book critics in our newspapers, and wandering lecturers who hastened to make electricity ac- count for everything, for even life and mind itself. This scientific fashion, never encouraged by the great discoverer himself, soon ran and ended its course, and died out in CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR ORIGIN. 177 the struggle for existence as other and equally powerful agents came into notice. Evolution is at present running a like course. The great scientific work of the past age has been to show what it can do ; that of the coming age is to lay a restraint upon its career, and to show what it cannot do. Like all creature action it will be found to have very stringent limitations. We may fix on some of these. . I. It cannot give an account of the origination of things. This is implied in its nature and its very name. Development takes place among materials already existing. Evolution is the derivation of one thing from another thing. But the mind does seek after an origin. This has been maintained by Aristotle, and by the profound thinkers of all ages. The principle of causation insists on going back from effect to cause, and from one cause to an- other, and is not satisfied till it rests in an originating sub- stance possessed of the power to produce all that follows. Evolution implies a set of acting substances. So far from accoimting for these, say body with its attractions and af- finities, and mind with its thoughts and feelings, it pre- supposes that these exist and that they are acting. The mind seems to demand an account of these ; development cannot furnish this, and has to call in a creator and organ- izer. Evolution simply shows a flowing and widening stream, implying a fountain, which, however, it conceals in mist. II. It does not originate the power which works in de- velopment. That process shows us objects acting causally, but takes and gives no account either of the objects or the forces in them. To account for them, Herbert Spencer calls in what he denominates the Persistence of Force — a phrase to which some object. But call it what you please, force or power or energy, or the persistence of force, or 178 WHAT DEVELOPMENT CANNOT DO. the conservation of energy, tliere is certainly such a thing, not imaginary or hypothetical but real. Spencer thereby accounts for all the action of nature. But he is philoso- pher enough to know that this implies something behind, beneath, or above it. He is obliged to do this by the nature and necessity of thought. He is constrained to believe this because it is impossible to conceive the oppo- site,, which, according to him, is the ultimate test and criterion of truth. I am not disposed to put the argument in this form, but I join him in holding that we are neces- sitated to believe that tliere is a something beyond the matter and force which we notice. "With him this is un- known and unknowable, and he kindly and condescendingly makes this the sphere of religion. Yet lie himself is obliged to acknowledge that he knows something about it. Indeed it is impossible for him or any one to speak about it, to make any predication of it, unless he so far knows it. He knows it to be a power and to have power ; and surely this is knowledge, and rather important knowledge. He every- where speaks of a necessary " belief in a power of which no limit in time or space can be conceived." This limitless- ness is surely a farther knowledge. He can tell a great deal about its working by differentiation and integration, pro- ducing happiness and virtue, causing an advance, and fin- ally dissolving all things in a universal conflagration. Such a thing is not absolutely unknown. I agree with him in thinking that there is, that there must be, such a power. But on the same ground as he argues that it ex- ists and is a power, I argue that we know it to be not only a power but a wise power, a benevolent, a righteous power. But evolution has not produced this power, it is the pro- duction of it. III. Evolution of itself cannot give us the beneficent laws and special ends we see in nature. There is in force, CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR OEDER. 179 considered in itself, neither good nor evil. It is as ready to work destruction as to promote the spread of happiness. The persistence of force might be a persistence in evU. The separate agencies being blind might as readily produce confusion as order. A railway train, without a head or hand to put it on the right track, might only work havoc. In order to operate beneficently the persisting never-dying force must have collocations, as Chalmers calls them, adaptations or adjustments, as I call them, to enable them to accomplish the good ends which are so visible. These are of two kinds. One is a general order, or what are called laws of nature, such as the seasons and the periods of animal life. I am inclined to see purposes in the very forms of animals and plants, and the manner in which they grow into their type, while the typo ever advances as if to realize an idea. I discover an end in the manner in which plants and animals are produced. Two arrange- ments are necessary to effect this. First, there is the ten- dency of every living thing to produce a seed or germ. The powers necessary to accomplish this are very numer- ous and very complex, but all conspiring toward this one end, as if it were one of the purposes for which the plant was created. Secondly, there is the growth of the plant or animal from its embryo. This, too, implies an immense combination of aiTanged elements and forces. It looks excessively like an end contemplated, an idea to be real- ized. It looks all the more like this when we notice that the seed or germ is after its kind, and produces a new life of the same type. I have endeavored to show in another work that in our world there is not only law and general government, but a particular providence accomplishing special ends.' The ' Method of Divine Government, Part II. 180 NEW POWEES APPEAEING IN THE AGES. laws produce general results, but they are also made to conspire and concur and cross each other, so as to produce individual events, which, as far as we know, follow no gen^ eral law. This is manifest in every part of God's govern- ment, but is specially seen in God's dealings toward his intelligent and sensitive creatures. "A sparrow cannot fall to the ground without him." Thoughtful minds have ever felt comforted by the thought that there is a God watching over them, and ordering their lot from beginning to end, sending health or disease at the proper season, gratifying their wishes or thwarting them, according as may be for their best good. All this may be done by the per- sistence of force, but it is by a force guided by intelli- gence and love. "When man accomplishes any end, it is by working on materials already prepared for him. But the God who created the materials has also arranged them for the accomplishment of his purposes. There is need of a power above evolution to account for the beneficence of evolution. SECTION vn. NEW POWEES APPEAEING IN THE AGES. I HAVE shown that in physical causation there is merely a changed state of the bodies acting as the causes. A and B act upon each other and constitute a cause, the effect being simply A' and B' in a new state with no new bodies, and no added energy, the energy in the two A and B being the same as in A' B', with a portion in the one transferred to the other. In all such causation there is no energy in the effect which was not in the cause. If there be a new power appearing it must be superadded. But new powers have appeared. EEVEALBD BY GEOLOGY. 181 For the purposes of my exposition, it is not necessary that I should determine what are the original bodies or powers in our world, what is their nature, and how many they are. They may be atoms, simple and indivisible, they may be molecules consisting of two or more atoms in union. These no doubt have all their powers by which they act. Geology clearly reveals that new products have appeared. There was a time when there was no organism and no life, no plant or animal. But at a set time organized matter appeared, say protoplasm. When there was no animated being I believe that there was no sensation, pleasant or painful, and it certainly cannot be proven that there was any feeling in the protoplasm or in the plant. As ages roll on we have creatures evidently feeling pleasure and liable to pain. Organisms both in the vegetable and ani- mal form rise higher and higher, and animals become possessed of impulses which prompt them to act in a cer- tain way. We have now powers higher than the mechan- ical, we have the vital, the sensitive, and the beginning of the psychical. Hackel divides the organic world into three kingdoms — the protista, the vegetable, and the ani- mal. He traces twenty-two stages in the rise from the protista on to man, eight of them belonging to the inver- tebrate and fourteen to the vertebrates. I am not dis- posed to sanction this pedigree and every stage of it. But it is clear that there is such an advance. In the animal kingdom there is first sensation, then instinctive impulse, then lower rising to higher forms of intelligence, distin- guishing things that diifer, conducting long processes of reasoning and induction, and giving us glimpses of spirit- ual and eternal truth. Finally, we have a moral nature discerning between good and evil, laying obligations upon us to promote the happiness, and as higher, the moral 182 NEW POWEKS APPEARING IN THE AGES. good of man, and pointing to a judgment-day. K^atural- ists may be tempted to overlook these last, tlie high ideas of which we are conscious ; but these are realities, are facts revealed to the inner sense quite as clearly and as certainly as the visible and tangible molecular and molar parts, the seed, the limbs, the joints, the nerves and brain, revealed to the external senses. Was there Life in the original atom, or molecule formed of the atoms ? If not, how did it come in when the first plant appeared ? "Was there sensation in the original mole* cule ? If not, what brought it in when the first animal had a feeling of pleasure or of pain ? Was there mind in the first molecule, say a power of perceiving an object out of itself ? Was there consciousness in the first molecule or monad — a consciousness of self ? Was there a power of comparing or judging, of discerning things, of noting their agreements or differences? Had it a power of reason- ing, of inferring the unseen from the seen, of the future from the past ? Were there emotions in these first exist- ences ? say a hope of continued life or a fear of approach- ing death ? Perhaps they had loving attachments to each other, perhaps they had some morality, say a sense of justice in keeping their own whirl, and allowing to others their rights and their place in this dance ! Had they will at the beginning, and a power of choosing between pleasure and pain, between the evil and the good ? Perhaps they had some piety, and paid worship of the silent sort to God! It is needless to say that there is not even the semblance of a proof of there being any such capacities in the original atoms or force-centres. If so, how did they come in? Take one human capacity: how did consciousness come in? Herbert Spencer, the mightiest of them, would liave us believe that he has answered the question, and yet he SENSATION. 183 has simply avoided it. In his " Psychology " ' he is speak- ing of nerves for hundreds of pages ; he shows that in their development there is a succession of a certain kind ; and adds simply that " there must arise a consciousness" ! This is all he condescends to say, bringing in no cause or link or connection. Thus does he slip over the gap — a practice not uncommon with this bold speculator. It is pertinent to ask, How did these things come in ? How did things without sensation come to have sensation ' things without instinct to have instinct ? creatures without memory to have memory ? beings without intelligence to have intelligence ? mere sentient existence to know the distinction between good and evil ? I am sure that when these things appear, tliere is something not previously in the atom or molecule. All sober thinkers of the day ad- mit that there is no evidence whatever in experience or in reason to show that matter can produce mind ; that me- chanical action can gender mental action ; that chemical action can manufacture consciousness ; that electric action can reason, or organic structure rise to the idea of the good and the holy. I argue according to reason and expei-i- enee that we must call in a power above the original physical forces to produce such phenomena. I may admit that a body may come out of another body by the powers with which the bodies are endowed ; but I say that a sensitive, intelli- gent, moral discerning soul cannot proceed from the ele- ments of matter. New powers have undoubtedly come in when consciousness and understanding and will begin to act. They may come according to laws not yet discovered, but they are the laws of the Supreme Lawgiver. It win be argued by some that there must have been all along in the atoms a latent life, sensation, consciousness. Psychology, Vol. I., Sec. 179. 184 NEW POWERS APPEARING IN THE AGES. and mind, with beneficence and capacity of clioice, ready to be developed in the seons, some in thousands and some in millions of years. Those who deny that any new pow- ers have appeared must resort to some such supposition. It may be allowed that this is a thing imaginable and pos- sible, but there is not the semblance of a proof in its favor. Certainly there is no evidence that sentient beings could have passed through the intolerable heat of the star-dust from which our former worlds are supposed to have come. Even if we should discover proof of this, we should, in the very fact, have proof of design in the way in which these latent powers have come forth at the appropriate times, and continued ever afterward to operate in organized plants, in sentient animals, and in intelligent man. We have to choose our horn. If all the endowments now in our world were in primary molecules ready to come forth at the fit time, it is clear that they must have been the creature of an intelligence of inconceivable power. If they were not there, it is necessary to call in a subsequent creation, or at least some forthputting of Omnipotence. Another supposition may be resorted to, somewhat more plausible, but still without any positive evidence. In water there are properties which do not appear in the ele- ments oxygen and hydrogen. In organized matter there are powers which cannot be discovered in the components. It may be argued that in like manner at the appearances of new products there were conjunctions which produced life and feeling, consciousness and memory, intelligence and love. It may be safely said that proof is as much wanting here as in the other supposition. A necessity of thought founded on experience does indeed imply that there must be some extraordinary power called in to ac- count for the extraordinary result which is bej'ond the potency of the common mundane agencies. But what this THE SCEIPTUEAL ACCOUNT. 185 power is we have really no means of knowing. It is cer- tain that the power which has provided intelligence and conscience cannot be the ordinary mechanical or the chemi- cal, or even the vital powers. These new powers imply, if not a creation, at least a providence. The objects we are now looking at lie on the horizon of om* vision and appear dim. "We are constrained to call in a power to produce the effects, but whether it is to be regarded as natural or supernatural, we may not be able to say. God is working, but whether without or with sec- ondary instrumentality we cannot determine. We may have come to a region where the difference between nat- ural and supernatural disappears. We may have remarked that the Scriptures never mention such a distinction ; they ascribe all to the will of God. The distinction may have an importance only in this lower and mxmdane sphere where we have worlds, but no experience of the creation of worlds. Faith and science may both be satisfied with our ascribing the whole process to a Divine Power, without dogmatizing as to how it has been acting. Have we not, after all, the most satisfactory account of the process in the opening of our Scriptures ? There is certainly a wonderful correspondence or parallehsm be- tween Genesis and geology, between the written record and the record in stone. We are to be on our guard in- deed against straining either one or other to bring them into accordance. The general agreement of the two is as obvious as it is wonderful. The only difference is that the one record is sensible, while the other is scientific. The one is the account of the scene as it would have appeared to a spectator then living ; the other is the conclusion drawn from careful exploration. That there is an accordance between the Scriptures and science has been shown by the three men on this continent 186 NEW POWERS APPEAEING IN THE AGES. who are most entitled to speak on the scientific question-. Professor Dana, of Yale ; Professor Dawson, of Montreal ; and Dr. Guyot, of Princeton. Both testimonies give the same general account of the progression and of the order in which the powers appear. " Howbeit that was not fii-st which is spiritual {irvev/xaTLKov), but that which is natural {■\lrvxii:ov), and afterward that which is spiritual." " And so it is written the first man was made a living soul ; the second Adam was made a quickening spirit " (1 Cor. xv. 44r- 46), where we may mark the advancement from the merely living soul {■^vj^rjv t,Q>aav) to the quickening spirit {irvevfia ^(HOTTOiOVV). More particularly the book of Genesis represents the work as proceeding by days, which in every part of Scrip- ture is employed to denote epochs ; thas in chap. ii. 4, it is said, " In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." Regarding the days as epochs, there is a very remarkable parallelism between the order in Genesis and the order in geology, quite as much so as that between the stages in embryology and that in paleontology pointed out by Von Baer.' In the beginning or origin (eV apxfi) God created the heavens and the earth, and gave the original constituents their potencies which began to act. The earth was at first without form and void, with only the materials, or star dust, as Laplace's theory requires, the homogeneous state of Spencer. "When the differentiation or evolution began there was in the first day light, as we might expect. In the second day came the expanse, that is, the sinking ' Mr. G. Romanes declares "that the order in which the flora and fauna are said by the Mosaic account to have appeared upon the earth corresponds with that which the theory of evolution requires and the evidence of geology proves " (Nature, August, 1881). Elsewhere he re- fers this to " traditional history." But there can be no traditional his- tory of the production of plants and animals. THE SCEIPTUEAL ACCOUNT. 187 o£ the more solid materials and the elevation o£ the more ethereal. On the third day there was the separation of land and water, and plants were produced. On the fourth day the sun and moon appeared as distinct bodies, in accordance with the theory of Laplace. On the fifth day animals are brought forth — the lower creatures, tannim or swarmers, then fishes and fowls. On the sixth day the higher animals, reptiles and cattle, and as the crown of the whole, man, with qualities higher than all the other creatures, making him like unto God. There are two accounts of the creation of man. One is in Genesis, chap. i. 26. There is council and decision : " Let us make man in our image." This applies to his soul or higher nature. The other account is in chap. ii. T : " And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man be- came a living soul." This is man's organic body. We have a supplement to this, Psalm cxxxix. 15, 16 : " My sub- stance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, being yet unperf ect ; and in thy book all my members were written, which in con- tinuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." This passage used to be quoted by Agassiz. This is my creed as to man's bodily organism. I so far under- stand what is said. Man is made of the earth. There is a curious preparatory process hinted at ; a process and a progression going on I know not how long, and all is the work of God, and written in God's book. I understand this, and yet I do not understand it. Socrates said of the philosophy of Heraclitus that what he understood was so good that he was sure the rest would also be good if he understood it. So I say of this passage. I so far under- stand it, and get glorious glimpses of a divinely ordained 188 THE NEW POWEES "WOEKIKG WITH THE OLP. process, and yet I do not understand it, for it cai-ries me into tlie secret things wliich belong unto the Lord our God. I affirm with confidence that there is not, in geological or biological science, any truth even apparently inconsistent with his statement. I cannot say how man's body was formed. But the Scriptures evidently speak truly when they declare that it was formed out of previously existing materials — out of the dust of the ground. They also declare that God " breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he be- came a living soul." As to his higher nature, it is said that he was made after the image of God. This must mean in knowledge of truth and in holiness. He cannot know all truth, but he knows of certaia propositions, scien- tific and practical, that they are and must be true. He knows and appreciates the good and distinguishes between good and evil. This he does by the conscience, an essen- tial part of his nature, represented by the tree of knowl- edge of good and evU. Both these qualities raise him high above the brutes, who have some discernment of things that differ, and a fear of pain and punishment, but have no idea of necessary truth or of the beauty of moral excellence. In all this there is a new power not produced by mechanical or animal agency. SECTION vm. THE NEW POWERS WOEEHSTG WIIH THE OLD. We have seen that in the ages new powers are intro- duced—powers of life, feeling, and intelligence — whether by natural or supernatural causes we may not be able to determine, because the operation takes place in a region INTERACTION OF POWERS. 189 ■where it is difficult to say what is creative and what ia creature action ; what is done by instruments and what without instruments — lilsie the original creation out of nothing. When these new powers come they act upon, and they act with, the previously existing powers. The seed of the plant falls into the soil already formed, and works in it and with it. The sentient power, when ani- mals appear, acts along with the mechanical energy in the bodily frame. It is the same when higher intelligence is introduced into animalism. The senses still work and supply information, which is received and formed into shape by the intellect. When the moral power begins to act it does not supersede the understanding, which tells us what things are, and upon this representation the conscience proceeds. These superadded powers seem to me to be all very much of the nature of seeds. They continue, and there is reciprocal action between them and their environ- ment. They have life in them and they germinate and grow, influencing their surroundings ; and being swayed by them we have joint results which could not have been produced by either agent, and a development with vastly more varied potencies and of a more marked charactei", the new powers mixing with the old in the offspring, as they do in the parents. When the plant appears there is an interaction of the organic and inorganic powers, and we have development, in which both are combined, the growth of the plant and in due time its decay and dissolution, but with a seed left behind. When animals with sensation and will come forth we have now a more complex aggre- gate, still terminating in death, but with a new life in the offspring. The organic as the higher uses the inorganic powers and turns them to its own uses. When mind in- terposes it acts harmoniously with matter, and the soul and body act and interact, only the mind as the higher 190 THE NEW POWERS WORKING WITH THE OLD. subordinates the other. There is like joint and reciprocal agency as the mental powers rise higher and higher. The memory proceeds on the information given by the senses, and the understanding with its judgments and reasonings, and the conscience with its moral discernment and senti- ments, presuppose and proceed upon both the senses and memory. The development now goes on under the new powers, but using all the old powers, and therefore with accumulated momentum. What is gained by any species goes down to the generation following.' As one of the issues the operations of nature are apt to go on in epochs, eras, or cycles. The organized causations pass through time like stage-coaches or omnibuses, which take in and give out passengers on to their journey's end. Thus, in animal life we have infancy, childhood, mature age, declining life, old age, and death. We have epochs in history, times in which there is a strong disposition to emigrate and form colonies, as when the Greeks, in the sixth century before Christ, spread themselves over many coimtries. We have seasons when the cry is for war among large bodies of people, ending perhaps in a demand for peace when the evils of war have been felt, and this continuing till it is needful to defend rights which are being trampled on. We have fashions not only in dress and in modes of social life, but in literature — the Byronic pe- ' Prof. Cope has remarked (American Naturalist, April, 1880) ttat the psychical powers modify and strengthen development. "In living things the powers display design, having direct reference to conscious- ness, to the satisfaction of pleasure and the avoidance of pains. Mind also controls structure : the evolution of mind has a corresponding effect on organism, a view which is confirmed by palaeontology. The mind producing struggles of animals has led to machines for grinding, cut- ting, seizing, digging ; for running, swimming, and flying. Man being de- fective as to these instruments, has been compelled to exercise cautior and reflection, and has become restricted to peculiar modes of life." SPIEITUAL POWERS. 191 riod or the Dickens period ; and in art — the Kaphaelites and pre-Eaphaelites ; in all of which, be it observed, there is a prevailing taste which continues for years. You could often tell at what age a book was written or an edi- fice built simply by inspecting its style and expression. While there is an occasional degradation by reason of the want of fitting in the environment to the new life, there is upon the whole a progression. This arises mainly from the continuance of the new and higher powers in- troduced — say life, or intelligence, or conscience. These abide and go down by heredity, and as they act draw in, influence, and use the surroundings to produce new or higher aggregates. There results an advance upon the whole in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, in the soil, and it may be the climate. The progression is especially seen in man, with his intelligence and moral nature, which in spite of errors and sins, leads on to the employment for ends of many and varied powers, and these of a higher order. These ends are specially secured by the founding of hospitals for the diseased and the weak, and, above all, by the founding of schools and colleges for the cultivation and refining of man's higher nature ; and the improve- ments go down by heredity from one age to another, when they raise up still nobler products. SECTION IX. SPIBITFAL POWERS. "We have seen that there is an advance in the powers working in our world from the inanimate on to the or- ganic, the sentient, the instinctive, the conscious, the intelligent, and the moral. I have sometimes thought that 192 SPIRITUAL POWERS. in nature itself I can discover anticipations (I would al- most call them predictions) of something higher to come Agassiz was fond of finding prophecies of man's noble form in the frames of the lower animals. He erred, so I think, in not allowing sufficient influence to development. Pro- fessor Owen, too, was disposed to believe that the forms of the lower creatures pointed on to man as the archetype. Some of the views of these great thinkers as well as great comparative anatomists, may be somewhat anti- quated, or at least reckoned so by our extreme evolution- ists. But evolution, properly understood, does not even tend to set aside those ideals which our greatest natural- ists have seen, and been elevated as they looked on them. But it may be doubted whether the natural man, the mere animal man, is the true ideal ; say the selfish man, the lustful man, the deceitful man, the vindictive man. Every man is in a sense a moral man ; he is possessed of a con- science discerning between good and evil, " accusing or else excusing." But our moral nature denounces much that we do, and claims to do so in the name and by the authority of God. Under this God we look for a rectifi- cation. This cannot be had in the conscience, which only condemns. Our moral nature points to a law of love, but shows no way of reaching it. In these circumstances we should not be indisposed to look round and inquire whether God, in following out his plan, may not super- add, as he has ever been superadding — some remediaJ measure, by which his own Idea (using the phrase in the Platonic sense) may be accomplished and realized. The Scriptures announce clearly and emphatically that there has been an interposition and addition, and this not inconsistent with the original plan, but rather carrying it out. There is a new dispensation going beyond the old and animal ones, beyond even the intellectual and the THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 193 moral into the spiritual. God, who created man in his own image, has a means of restoring that image when it was lost. We are privileged to live under the dispensa- tion of the Spirit. There were anticipations of his work under the Old Testament, in his working on individuals to convert and sanctify them. Still such operations were only partial and anticipatory. " For the Holy Ghost was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified." But Jesus when on earth spake of the Spirit, which they that be- lieve on him should receive. "When he had finished his work of atonement for sin, and was taken up into heaven, the disciples waited for the accomplishment of the prom- ise, which was fulfilled when the day of Pentecost was fully come, and the Spirit was poured out from on high. This Power continues to work in the church, and will extend its influence till the Spirit of the Lord is poured on all flesh. Development now goes on under two potencies, the natural and the spiritual. There are the old powers still working — those of sense and understanding, of reason and of conscience. These constitute the life which God breathed into man when he became a living soul. They compose the higher reason made after the likeness of God, which sin has defaced, but which is deep down in our nature be- neath the incrustations covering it from the sight, but which is capable of being restored. Upon these the new and spiritual powers work. Much that takes place is the joint result of the two. The inspiration of Moses, of the prophets and apostles, did not destroy their natural char- acter, it only sanctified and elevated them. The spirits of the prophets were subject unto them. Keligion does not eradicate the natural powers, it moulds and directs them to higher ends. The man's faculties and his temperament are not changed by his becoming pious ; if he was lively 194 SPIRITUAL POWERS. before he will be lively stiU, if lie was dull and solid lie will continue so. It should be noticed, however, that as the new powers come in there may be opposition offered by the old powers, and a contest ensues. Science tells us that in the animal ages there was " a struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest." There is a like struggle in the human period between the evil and the good. Some of our old the- ologians held that death was introduced among the lower animals by the sin of Adam. There is no such statement in the Scriptures, and geology shows that death has reigned aU along in the animal kingdom. But there is a \mitj in our world in this respect as in others, that there has been a contest in all ages. In this world the seed of the ser- pent contends with the seed of the woman, and in the heart " the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together until now," but in the hope that the higher will conquer the lower, and that " the creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. viii. 19). The development goes on in eras or epochs like the ages of geology, like the days of Genesis. The patriarchal dis- pensation grows out of the antediluvian, the Jewish out of the patriarchal, the Christian out of the Jewish. "We may discover marked epochs even in the Christian church : the time of the fathers — a time of establishing ; the med- ieeval church — ^preserving like the winter the seeds depos« ited ; the Reformation — bursting forth like the spring ; the denominational churches — discussing doctrines and settling creeds ; the missionary churches — carrying the truth to all lands, and about to expand into the millennial church. Upon the whole, there is progression in the spiritual as JOINED WITH THE NATURAL. 196 in the natural kingdom. Indeed many interesting corre- spondences may be traced between the two kingdoms. In both there are old powers and new working together and leading on to higher and higher products. The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, and which ferments there till the whole is leavened. It is a seed becoming a plant ; there is first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. .There is a development in the revelation of truth. First there is the shadow and then the substance, there are first types and then the archetype. There are promises and then performances, predictions and then fulfilments. "We know little of antediluvian times, but evidently there was then a light like that of the dawn. There were prefigur- ations in the Levitical institutions made after the pattern shown in the mount. There is higher ethical teaching in the New Testament than in the Old. The discourses of our Lord, who is the light of the world, shed a brighter light than had shone before, Greek or Jewish. There is the fullest revelation of doctrinal truth in the Epistles of Paul, of Peter, and of John. We may discover this conjunction of powers in the writ- ing of the Scriptures. Moses speaks, and David speaks, and Isaiah speaks, and Paul speaks, and John speaks ; and we discover the natural temperament of each, and the in- fluence of the age and circumstances in which they lived. But God too speaks : " Thus saith the Lord." All this is in analogy with God's mode of procedure. The " higher criticism," as it is called, may look at and search and even find fault with the human element, but let it beware of meddling with the Divine element. If it does so it will be seen in the end only to show its weakness and fallibility, by, it may be, castmg out, though the critic may not see it, 196 SPIEITUAL POWERS. something fitted to accomplisli a good end. " All Scrip, ture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, tbat tbe man of God may be perfect, tbor- oughly furnished unto all good works " (2 Tim. iii. 16). Under this double influence the Christian grows. He ■' adds to his faith virtue ; and to virtue knowledge ; and to knowledge temperance ; and to temperance patience ; and to patience godliness ; and to godliness brotherly kindness ; and to brotherly kindness charity." Not that he is every instant advancing, but he is, upon the whole, progressing. HLe may have his periods of declension, but he rises above them. He is like a man ascending a high mountain ; as he mounts up he may have to cross valleys deep and dark, but, upon the whole, he is rising higher and higher. The Christian dies like Samson, amid the glories of his strength, and slays in his death the last of his spiritual enemies. The church, too, extends. It is ever spreading into new countries, and it gives evidence that it will at last subdue all lands. Wherever it goes it carries with it innumerable blessings, in the lessening of human suffering, in improved legislation, in the promotion of education — lower and higher — and generally in the elevation of the race in knowledge and character. Here it is interesting to notice the unity of the devel- oped and developing history of our world. It does not take at first the form of a perfected world, but of a world going on toward perfection. It is not optimist, as Leibnitz painted it, but it is to become optimist. It has evil in it ; but it is not pessimist, as Schopenhauer and von Hartmann represent it, going to the other extreme. As it is now going on it is a scene of contests, with defeats and victor- ies through all its past history. It is a scene of contest from the beginning, of warring elements, of creatures suf- ACCESS TO GOD. 197 feringwho had not sinned " after the similitude of Adam's transgression." There is in it at this moment a contest between the evil and the good, like that between winter and spring, in which the spring, led on by the sun in the heavens, shall certainly prevail. It is the most blessed of our privileges in this dispensa- tion that every one who believes has access to God. There is a sense, indeed, in which God makes himself known to all his intelligent creatures, and " lighteth every man that Cometh into the world." He does so in his ordinary provi- dence, in which he brings events to pass according to causes which he has instituted, and in which he acts quite as cer- tainly as if he produced everything without subordinate agency. But earnest minds have never been satisfied with such distant views of God as are given by causation and consequent evolution. They aspire after and long for im- mediate intercourse with God. They pray in the belief that there is one to hear them, and they expect an answer. They will not allow themselves or others to think that God has so shut himself out from his own world that he cannot act in it and on it. They deny that our petitions ai'e so bound to the earth by gravity that they cannot mount upward and reach the ear and the heart of our Heavenly Father who is felt as pitying them. They believe that their spirits can hold communion with God, who is a spirit, quite as certainly as our earth can act on the sun, and the sun on the earth. They have faith that there are wider and closer unions than the attraction of matter to matter. They are sure that all holy intelligences throughout the universe are in union with the holy God. Sure as we speak to God in faith God hears us. He speaks if we will but hear. " Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." From this double power, natural and spiritual, arises the 198 SPIRITUAL POWERS. difference in Christian experience and character. People have different natural inclinations, and are beset by differ- ent sins and temptations, and he suits his manifestation to their diversities. JSTo Christian should insist that the work of God should be the same in the heart of every other as in his own. Nor should any one doubt of the reality of a spiritual work in himself because his experience is not the same as that of some others of whom he has read, or who may have opened up their feelings to him. Just as there is a diversity in the works of nature, in the color and form of plants and animals peopling the earth and ocean ; just as there is a variety in the shape and countenance of the bod- ily frames of men ; just as one star differeth from another, so Christians, while after one model, are made to take differ- ent types and hues of beauty on earth, and shall thus with their individualities be transplanted into heaven to adorn the paradise of God, and shine as stars in the firmament in heaven. In heaven the foundations of the wall of the city are garnished with all manner of precious stones, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden bears " twelve man- ner of fruits," so the saints will there have each his own character ; and the song which ascends will be a concert of diverse voices, each melodious, but each in its diversity join- ing with the others to make the harmony. Each in his own way will join in singing " the song of Moses and the Lamb." SECTION X. , OVEKSIGHTS IN SPENCEe'b EVOLUTION. It is of no use denying in our day the doctrine of evo« iution in the name of religion, or any other good cause. An age or two ago many religious people were afraid of geology. It can now be shown that it rather favors religion by its furnishing proofs of design, and by the wonderful parallelism between Genesis and geology. The time is at hand when all intelligent people, religious and irreligious, will perceive that there is nothing impious in development considered in itself ; though it may be carried to excess and turned to atheistic purposes. The business of inquirers now is to explain its nature. This is what I have endeavored to do, to the best of my ability, in this little work. In doing this I have given an account different from that of Herbert Spencer. My work is a small one compared with his elaborate volumes. I do not purpose at the close of it to review his theory. In another number of this Series I propose examining his philosophy as culminated in his Ethics. 1 am here merely to show that I have set forth some truths not noticed by that powerful speculator, who is as remarkable for what he has overlooked as for what he has looked at. I think I have helped somewhat to clear up the subject by representing evolution as an organized causation. This requires us always to look for an adequate cause of the new product attributed to evolution. Mr. Spencer, and his follower Mr. Fiske, refer the whole to the Persistence of Force, as if there were only one power, and this apparently only mechanical or biological. But 200 OVEESIGHTS IN SPENCEE's EVOLUTION. there are other powers, or at least manifestations of power, of which we have as distinct evidence as we have of these. In particular there is a mental power, of which we are con- iscious, but at the peculiarities of which he has never looked, and which cannot be produced bj any persistence of hie forces. It was charged against Locke by Liebnitz, and repeated by Cousin, that in constructing his theory — that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reiiection — he did not begin with a careful introspection of the ideas themselves, and that, in fact, he overlooked the peculiarities of some of our most important ideas, such as infinity and moral good. A like charge may be brought against Spencer. As might be expected of one trained as an engineer, he is well ac- quainted with mechanical power, and has acquired a large knowledge of biology, some of his theories in which, how- ever, as, for instance, his development of nervous forces, are not acknowledged by our highest authorities. But he seems to me to have never looked patiently, by the inner sense, at purely mental acts, such as consciousness, cogni- tion, moral discernment, and will. " I believe that the ex- periences of utility, organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition." Our moral intuitions are thus nervous modifications become hereditary. He speaks often, as even the materialist does, of psychical acts. lie thinks he has accounted for them by evolution. He has done so, simply overlooking their distinctive qual- ities as revealed by consciousness. He tries to evolve the conscious from the unconscious, thought from that which has no thought, and the moral from that which has no morality. He has thus in the effect what is not in the OVERLOOKS MENTAL ACTS. 201 cause. If we scrutinize his theory carefully, we shall find that what he accounts for is not properly psychical or men- tal operation, is not the consciousness of self, is not the feeling, the emotion, the reasoning, the resolution, the sen- timent disclosed to the internal sense. The mind being merely an aggregate of nerves (he seems incapable of con- ceiving it as anything else) he can so far account for it by evolution. But when we look on mind as nerceiving, judg- ing, discerning between good and evil, we discover that he has not explained its rise by his evolution ; he is not able to derive the rational from the irrational, or the good from that which has no moral perception. The fact is, his de- velopment is merely an evolution by the physical forces, not of the mental acts, but merely of their surroundings or the environment. These forces do have a poM'erful influ- ence on the internal or psychical powers, not in producing them, but in directing them in certain channels. He thus believes himself, and makes it appear to others, that he is evolving consciousness and conscience when he is merely developing their accompaniments, and has never looked at anything else. Thus with all his zeal for development, he has never noticed seriously the grand results produced when psychical, and especially moral power, is joined with phys- ical causation. I know full well that exclusive physicists will look down with contempt upon my insisting on giving the higher intellectual and moral powers a place in evolution. But I hold these to be realities quite as much as bodies, with their energies and the motion they produce. It is not encourag- ing to the highest thought to find how few of those who have produced such a revolution in biology of late years have ever been trained in colleges or otherwise to consider purely mental phenomena. I do not regard their disposition to set aside these as a proof of the comprehensiveness of their 202 OVEKSI&HTS IN SPENCEK'S EVOLUTION. minds, but ratlier of their narrowness. For myself I have carefully tried never to allow my devotion to mental science to tempt me to neglect physical and physiological facts. I claim that never in my teaching or in my writings have I set myself against any discovery in natural science which has turned out to be true. Our naturalists would be elevated if, in looking at material agencies, they did not overlook mental, moral, and spiritual powers. The full- orbed truth is discerned only by those who go round it and look at all its sides. Thus only can the mind be open to all knowledge, and become expanded in any measure corre- sponding to the width of the iiniverse disclosed to us. IV CERTITUDE, PROYIDENCE AND PRAYER CERTITUDE, PROYIDEICE AO PRAYER. INTEODUCTION. I AM accustomed to characterize the age as one of un- settled opinion ; certainly not one of strong faith, nor yet of avowed scepticism, but of restless creed. There is a wide-spread impression that the advance of thought, and especially of natural science, has undermined old and fun- damental truths both in philosophy and religion. I am endeavoring to show in this series of papers that it is not so. Some of these truths may have to be put in a new and more correct form ; the defence of them has to pro- ceed in a wiser way ; but the radical principle remains as deeply and firmly established as ever. The doubts and difficulties issue from four quarters of the heavens, or rather of the clouds. I. From philosophy or metaphysics. There is a grow- ing idea that all truth is drawn from experience, that in- nate ideas are dead and committed to the grave, from which it would be offensive to raise them, and that their heirs and successors, d priori principles, are waxing old and are ready to perish. If this be so, there is left to us no universal or even positive truth, certainly no eternal of absolute truth, as the experience of the individual and of the race must be limited ; it can give us only knowledge 206 INTKODTJCTION. produced by circumstances, and which may change with cir- cumstances and vary with the position. The issue of the uncertainty is agnosticism logically, and scepticism chrono- logically — that is, when the causes have time to work. I have met and faced this error in No. I. of this series, and mean to give point and application to my reply in this number. I do so by a more sober account than is usually given of first, or d priori truths. I have to defend my position by examining historically, in future numbers, the opinions of such influential thinkers as Locke, Berkeley, Plume, Kant, and Herbert Spencer, and endeavoring to find out what truth they held, and what the errors into which they fell. II. From natural science. It is alleged that all nature, physical and psychical, can be accounted for by cause and law and development, which are shown to prevail universally. The mistakes thus arising I have endeavored to expose in ISTo. II. of this series, where I have sought to clear up the subject of cause ; and in No. III., where I have shown that development is an organized causation having a wide field, but at the same time decided limits, and being simply a method by which God works. III. From ethics. There is an attempt made to de- velop conscience and morality from experience and from heredity. It is allowed that this makes good and evil de- pend on circumstances, and makes it possible that the good in one world may be evil in another, and the evil in one constitution of external things be good in a different state of things. It is to be met by showing that there is a morality which does not shift, but is in the very nature of things. This subject will be taken up in this number, and will be more fully discussed in the criticism of Her- bert Spencer's system as culminated in his " Ethics." lY. From cosmogony. As the result of all these dis- INTKOBUCTION". 207 cnssions there are doubts as to what is the nature of our world. Is it optimist or pessimist ? the best possible or the worst possible ? or neither ? This brings before us Providence and FrsLjer, and it will be shown that this world is not the best, for it lias evil, nor the worst, for it has plenteous good ; it is a world not perfect, but going on toward perfection. This topic is started in this num- ber, and will come up once and again for discussion and settlement. SECTION I. EEALISM AND CEETAINTT. Common people, and even thinking people, are not much inclined to speculate, or so much as to inquire, as to the actuality and certainty which they hold by. They assume certain obvious realities, and are sure that they know them, and they do not wish to be disturbed by tliinking on these points, say as to their own existence or that of their mother, and are rather irritated when doubts are raised or they are subjected to questionings. But when puzzling thoughts arise, and objections are urged, and they are compelled to reilect and to speculate, they have then to face the question, is there a reality and can we find it? The search of the Eleatics, the earliest Greek metaphy- sicians, was for reality — to ov and 70 elvat.' They saw that the popular apprehensions were often erroneous, and they ' The Greek phrase ri ov is often translated absolute in the German tistories of philosophy. But ahsolute is rather a modern idea, stirred up by the theological belief as to infinity, and metaphysical discus- sions as to conditions. Tbe Greek inquiry was after realities as distin- guished from appearances. 208 EEALISM AWr> OEETAINTY. labored to correct them by finding what things exactly are, and they came down to what is fixed and unchange- able. This was also the main aim of Plato, who sought by a subtle dialectic, and by bringing in an Idea, to recon- cile the opposing systems of his day, and the fixedness of things with their changing appearances. The search, openly or correctly, has a deep place in the whole Greek philosophy, even in that of Aristotle, who did more than any other to bring down philosophy to facts, while its own region is above facts. The fault of the subtle specu- lators was that they dived down to the bottom of the well to find the pure water which had risen to the surface, and in doing so they stirred up mud which troubled the whole. Modern metaphysicians have been disposed to make our conviction as to reality to be the result of a complex pro- cess, which they had to unfold. Descartes made the knowledge of self take the form, if not the reality, of reasoning : Gogito, ergo stim. Descartes and Locke both represent the mind as knowing and looking at an idea in the mind, or out of the mind, instead of matter itself. Berkeley, adopting this principle, showed that we have no proof of the existence of matter. Hume drove the philosophy of his day to its logical consequences, and beginning only with "impressions" and "ideas," with- out a thing to impress the mind, or a mind to impress, landed thinking in universal scepticism. Even Reid did not speak very decidedly about self-consciousness as per- ceiving self directly, and he talks of sensations " suggest- ing" the perception of an external world. In arguing with the sceptic Kant was unwilling to postulate too much, and he started with presentations unknown, or with phe- nomena in the sense of appearances, and not with things ; and he could reach reality only by a process which his greatest admirers regard as unsatisfactory, and which, it is "WE STAET WITH EXISTING THINGS. 209 now argued, issues logically in agnosticism. Hegel, to his credit, tried to bring back tlionglit to reality, but it is by a dialectic process, which, as it did not begin with reality, never could reach it by legitimate logical inference, or rise higher than the subjective process. It is time now to return to the natural method, and to avow it and justify it. In reflective as in spontaneous thought, in metaphysical philosophy as in natural think- ing and conviction, we should start with existing things. Let us commence with our own existence, that is, with self as existing, always along with something affecting it. There is no intellectual or moral impulse, no felt want or desideratum of any kind requiring us to prove our own existence. "We need not try to prove it. If we try, it will only be to find that we cannot ; for there is nothing simpler or more evident from which to infer it. We should at the same time begin with the existence of exter- nal and material objects as affecting us. It is conceivable indeed that this step is a derivative one. It is urged by some that, knowing self, we may by a process reach a some- thing out of self, and extended, that is, occupying space. But this process, if there be such, must be instinctive. We cannot by reasoning, or any legitimate discursive step, leap over the chasm between the self and the not self, any more than we can leap over our own shadow. We appre- hend body as extended, but there is nothing in an unex- tended seK to entitle us thence to infer an external and extended object. Just as little can this be done by a gathered experience, for when externality and extension are not in any one of the experiences we cannot find them in an accumulation of them. Altogether it is the most satisfactory hypothesis to assume the existence both of a self and an extended not self. No, it is not an hypothesis, it is a fact that we know both. 210 EEALISM AND CEBTAINTY. But it is objected, Do you hold, and justify yourself in holding, what cannot be proven ? To this I reply that there may be two kinds of evidence, one immediate and the other mediate. When I open my eyes on a letter I know that there is a colored surface before me ; I do not need evidence through anything else, for I have it in the thing itself ; it is self-evident. But when I argue that this is a letter from a friend, I need mediate evidence, say in the signature attached. The mind does- not insist on having indirect light, we may have dii-ect. It is sure that the direct evidence, when it can be had, is the more satisr factory. It demands immediate proof only when it has not the other. In all cases the mediate proof proceeds in the end on an immediate proof on which it depends. There is a primitive knowledge anterior to and above me- diate probation. It is so far a weakness in us that we are not able to know a thing directly, and to call in interme- diate steps. "We may believe that there are angelic beings who perceive things and truths at once, and without a pro- cess. We are not required to believe without evidence ; but the evidence may be in the thing itself, that is, be self- evident. But are we at liberty to appeal to assumed truths when we find it convenient, and thus render all probation and investigation unnecessary ? Those who have used first principles have commonly enunciated tests — often, I admit, loosely stated. The test of necessity used by Leibnitz and Kant is the one most commonly appealed to in the pres- ent day — and it is decisive. It is the only criterion avail- able to those who do not allow that we can perceive objects directly ; but it is felt to be somewhat harsh to insist on us believing a proposition simply because we must do so. Those of us who hold that we can perceive objects directly have a prior and more satisfactory test — that of Self-Evi- DISTINCTIONS TO BE DEAWN. 211 dence ; we know a thing, and are tlius sure that it exists. As knowing it we cannot be made to think otherwise, and thus the secondary test, Necessity. These are confirmed by the third test, that of Catholicity, .when we find the truth believed by all men. But, it is asked. If first truths be so certain, how is it that there is so much uncertainty in the metaphysics which treat of them ? In order to meet this question we have to draw two distinctions, which have been very much over- looked in speculative philosophy. First, we have to distinguish between first truths, prop- erly so called, and other things — impressions, inferences, experiences — mixed with them. "We can stand up confi- dently for the certainty of all original perceptions, but not for the rash reasonings upon them, or the feelings they gather around them. Our constitution, and the God who gave us our constitution, are not responsible for all the pretentious metaphysical principles which multitudes in- dulge in. But there is a more important distinction. These fii-st truths are all in the first instance singular. The child, the savage has certainly not before him general metaphysical principles, such as that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time. He simply knows that if a thing be here now, it cannot be elsewhere. He has not consciously before him the rule that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line ; but he actually takes the straight line when he has to walk from one place to another. He is not in the way of conceiving or enunciat- ing the law that every effect has a cause ; but on noticing a new thing, or a change on an old thing, he looks for a cause. It is only the mature man, only, in fact, the meta- physician, who is at pains to generalize or formulize the individual perceptions into a general law or axiom. 212 EEALISM AND CERTAINTY. In doing this he may commit a mistake. He may lay it down as an indisputable principle, that " it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," to find it contradicted by the fact that a .tree or a man exists now, and is gone in a short time after ; and so he has to add the clause, " at the same time." Some one lays down the maxim that every- thing has a cause, and he is immediately asked has God a cause, when he has to amend his statement, and make it everything that begins to be has a cause. The forming of the general rule out of the individual and often complex exercise of our primitive perceptions is one of the most difi&cult tasks in which the human intellect can be engaged, requiring the most careful observation and the sharpest sub- tlety to disentangle the primitive truths from its accretions. Confused statements, premature generalizations, and hasty inferences abound in speculative philosophy more than in any other branch of inquiry. Metaphysics is commonly be- lieved to be the most dubious and perplexed of all depart- ments of science. This is not because of any uncertainty in the principles in the mind, but because of the difficulty in apprehending and enunciating them. The remedy is to be found in insisting that those who use for any purpose a first truth, which they assume without proving, should put that tnith (as is done in mathematics) in proper form and show that it is in the mind. Upon the primitive cognitions are reared other first truths. In Primitive Cognitions the object is present. But we are quite as sure of the existence of other things not present, as, for example, our conviction of our existence in time past, and generally our convictions as to time, as that time is continuous, and that all events are in time. These constitute our Primitive Beliefs. Again, in compar- ing things known to us we discover at once that they agree or do not agree. These are Primitive Judgments. It is DEKIVATIVE TRUTHS. 213 tluis we decide that we are the same persons to-day that we were yesterday ; that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts ; that whatever is true of a class is true of each of the members of a class ; that two parallel lines cannot meet ; that time flows on ; that equals added to equals are equals ; that a property implies a substance, and an effect a cause. So much for first truths. But by far the greater num- ber of the truths which we are required to believe from day to day and from hour to hour are derivative. If we follow these sufficiently far down, we find they have a foundation firm and strong in first truths. But the de- rivative truths constitute a superstructure raised above them, and we have to see that all the parts be secure. We have now, I believe, convenient tests of these. There is truth gained by reasoning of which we have tests in the syllogism. There are general laws, reached by gathering facts, and we have now canons determining their validity. Some of them are certain, in fact, as certain as primitive truths, though not determined by the same kind of evi- dence. Others are only probable, but it may be so probable as to demand our assent, as that the sun will rise to-morrow ; others may be doubtful, as that the planets are inhabited. The tests we have given in Series No. I. should determine the degree of probability. I have shown that among these primitive perceptions we have that of power and cause and effect, the precise nature of the energy being deter- mined by experience (see No. 11.). I have shown that causation leads to development, and that the development in the world is an organized causation accomplishing ends (see No. III.). But has not evolution changed all this ? 214 EVOLUTION AND CEETITUDE. SECTION n. EVOLTJTION AUD CEETITUDB. It is certain that intelligence grows. The way in which it does is an instructive illustration of the nature of de- velopment. It is within ourselves, and we can see its workings in this department more readily than in any other. It is always to be presupposed that there is an intelli- gent mind with capacities; without this presupposition we cannot advance a step. It is of the nature of these capacities to work. As they do so they are acquiring, accumulating, and combining knowledge. The child gets information by dii-ect observation, and from parents, nurses, and teachers. As the boy advances in life he is ever noticing new facts, treasuring them up in the memory ; is ever reflecting on them, arranging them, and subjecting them to abstraction, generalization, and reasoning. The brain grows by the exercise of the mind; the cerebral hemispheres of the mature man are larger than those of the infant ; and those of civilized men, as a whole, weigh more than those of savages. It may be allowed, I think, that the mental capacities grow with the growth of the brain, that they both grow by mutual action, and that the mind itself is strengthened and enlarged by exercise, and by increase of knowledge. So much for the growtli of the individual. Now it will surely be allowed that this growth, or development if you choose to call it, does not destroy or set aside the primary intelligence; on the contrary, it enlarges it. The child WE INHERIT PEEOEPTIONS OP THINGS. 215 acquires knowledge, and is ever adding to it. The later knowledge surely does not disannul the early. The growth, in fact, consists mainly in an increase of capacity to attain higher knowledge. True, the boy may be led to entertain narrow, or even erroneous opinions, but the mature man may correct them. Herbert Spencer has been showing that not only is there a growth of the individual, but of the animal race. The attainments of one age go down by heredity to the suc- ceeding one. The power of hunting acquired by the dog goes down to its descendants. Mr. Spencer holds that intelligence does thus go down from father or mother to son or daughter. It may be so. The brain structure determined by the habits of a parent may, by inheritance, determine a certain disposition in the children. But all this does not destroy, or even lessen, the capacity for ac- quiring knowledge. I can conceive a heredity that would bear down and crush all independence of thought, and place all mankind in the position of lunatics. But the actual heredity makes, or rather finds us, sane men, and increases our power of judging for ourselves. I have in a previous number of this series endeavored to show that, if there be much that development can do, there is much that it cannot do. "We see clear and decisive traces of new powers coming in among the activities in our world — of sensation appearing where there was no sensation before, of life where there was no life, of mind where there was no mind, of moral law and obligation in the human epoch, and in Christian times of spiritual discernment and sentiment. These cannot have come from the previous powers acting naturally ; sensation can- not have come from that which is without feeling, con- sciousness from the unconscious, mind from the mind- less, the spiritual from the carnal. Among these new 216 EVOLUTION" AND CERTITUDE. powers I place the primitive perceptions, intellectual and moral, which are the deepest elements of our men- tal nature, and proclaim and guarantee necessary and uni- versal truth. In whatever way these are produced, naturally or super- naturally, they are our own. The boy is evolved from the father and mother, getting from them a great many of his general characteristics, and, it may be, many even of his eccentricities ; but they are now his property, or rather his nature. The eye is produced by heredity, always in the beginning by divine power ; but it sees actual things just as certainly as if it were the immediate product of that power. All our intuitions look at things with their qualities, and they do so, whatever be their heredity. We assume them, we are naturally led to do so, we are obliged to do so. They need no external proof ; they have their evi- dence in themselves. They need no indirect pi-oof ; they have direct proof. They are con-oborated every day. We may trust in them, we should trust in them, we must trust in them. Beginning to trust in them so far as our senses are con- cerned, we may and must trust in our intellectual percep- tions, and are sure that they discover truth. As I con- template these two parallel lines, I discover that if pro- longed as straight lines they can never meet. It is the same with our moral perceptions. As I discover that daughter toiling day and night for the sustenance and comfort of that mother, I know it to be good and com- mendable. When I see that son strike his father, I know it to be evil and condemnable. There is nothing atheistic in evolution considered in its own nature and action. It is a forgotten circumstance that when Newton made his great discovery there were WE INHERIT PEBCEPTIONS OE THINGS. 217 persons who maintained that he was ascribing the works of God to mere natural forces — as if natural forces were not the Divine power in operation ; and he had to be defended in an elaborate work by Maclaurin, the mathe- matician. In like manner, there are some in our day who are sensitively afraid that we must be taking from God whatever we ascribe to evolution — as if evolution were not a natural, and therefore a Divine process. We may look upon evolution as we do upon gravitation as a beneficent ordinance of God. Gravitation is a law of contemporaneous nature, binding the bodies in space. Evolution is a law of successive nature, binding events in time. The two are powerful instruments in giving a unity and consistency to the world, and in making it a system compacted and harmonious, admired by the con- templative intellect. We do not admit that evolution can generate or explain first or fundamental principles, which we perceive to be necessarily true on the bare con- templation of the objects, but it corroborates, confirms, and strengthens them, and as a preordained environment it helps their easy and spontaneous operation. The capacities which descend are perceptions of things. Heredity does not destroy human intelligence or render it untrustworthy. Every man has a power of knowing reali- ties, and of distinguishing between truth and error. IS'o matter how this power may have come, it may have been handed down by father or mother, or from grandfather and grandmother, or from a long line of ancestors, but it is the man's own ; he may trust in it, and he is respon- sible for the use of it. In whatever way the intelligence may have been produced he can trust in it when it declares, upon the evidence furnished, that such an object, say a friend, exists ; that such an event, say his marriage, has happened ; and that mathematical truths, such as that 218 EVOLUTION AND MOEALITT. all the angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles, are certain. I am sure that there was such a man as Julius Caesar ; that there is such a city as Rome, and that the sun attracts the moon ; and this, whether I did, or did not get the capacity to do so from my ancestors. A traveller sets out on a journey with a capacity to observe, and as he proceeds he is acquiring knowledge and increas- ing his acquisitions. The new ones do not set aside the old, they only add to them ; and the addition may often clear up diflBculties and correct wrong impressions, produced without evidence, as to the paths and boundaries of plain, bay, and forest. So it is with our capacities, hereditary or personal, they merely add to our powers of vision and enable us to discover further truth. SECTION m. EVOLUTION AND MOEALITT. Our moral power grows, just as intelligence does. Our ethical perceptions depend so far on our intelligence, as we must know what the deeds are, and what the motives of the actors, before we pronounce a sentence upon them, and this we have to do by our cognitive powers. Our moral powers thus grow with our powers of understanding. Not only so, but it may be allowed that the conscience grows by being properly exercised ; it gathers by accretion, and becomes quicker in discernment. It is strengthened by the resistance it offers to evil, waxes valiant in the fight, and is made more confident and courageous by the victories it gains. As it looks to God and his law — the law of love — its vision is purified, its views are enlarged, and the sphere of duty is widened. WE HAVE A PEBOEPTION OF THE GOOD. 219 According to a prevalent philosophy in the present day, the conscience is a growth — a growth produced by circum- stances. In other worlds our evil may be good and our good evil, or there may be no good and no evil. The idea of good thus becomes the product of position and events. This principle is implied covertly in utilitarianism. An action is good only so far as it produces pleasure, evil only so far as it leads to pain, and this depends on the sur- roimdings. But conscience is not the product of circum- stances any more than the intelligence is. Both are so far swayed by circumstances, but both have an indepen- dent power quite as much as the circumstances which sway them. I know that the opposite angles made by the in- tersection of two straight lines are equal to one another ; and I know that charity, and sacrifice in a good cause, and speaking the truth are good, and that lying and hypocrisy are evil and only evil. The idea of virtue being a product lies deepest down in the biological utilitarianism of Herbert Spencer. Virtue is the quality that produces pleasure, determined by a long succession of ages, and consolidated by heredity. Now it is true that our moral power grows, but it is growth from a germ. The faculty admits of improvement, but it is be- cause it exists as a faculty.. Love and justice are discerned as good in themselves — and not because of good conse- quences which follow from them because they are good — just as gold is seen to glitter. Ingratitude for favors and evil-speaking are seen to be evil in themselves — not because they lead to painful issues, which in fact follow because the deeds are evil — ^just as night is seen to be dark. Our conscience is of the nature of a perceptive power, looking at voluntary acts and perceiving them to be good or evil. We are as sure that mercy is a vu'tue as that the moon shines up there in the sky. We are as sure that 220 PEOVIDENCE. murder is an evil as that poison kills. It matters not whether my perceptions have descended from my father or mother ; they are now mine, quite as mxieh so as my ocular vision, which, in lilce manner, has come to me by inheritance. It thus appears that development cannot in- terfere with the certitude either of truth or moral good- ness.' SECTION IV. PEOVmENCE. I am afraid that there is a growing number of people, who, while they believe in the existence and in the good- ness of God, do not see him as they ought in the arrange- ments which he has made for the good of his creatures. This is one of the ways in which religion is losing its hold on the minds of thinking young men, who have been trained by science to discover causation and law in every part of nature. I fear there is not the same belief in providence' as our forefathers held and cherished. In the theosophiea of the East a divine power was seen and acknowledged in all the activity perceived in the universe ; I have to add, however, without God being separated from his works. In Greece and Rome the people saw their differ- ent gods in the varied departments of nature : Jupiter in the thunder, K^eptune in the waves, and Ceres in the crops. Our Christian forefathers delighted to discover God's hand in every event, which they believed to have a meaning which they diligently sought to ascertain. This was often done presumptuously and superstitiously. People argued a purpose and an end which the God who ordered the ' This subject will be more fully discussed in the paper on Herbert Spencer. THEEE IS A GENERAL PROVIDENCE. 221 occurrences never saw, and interpreted events with a favoritism toward tliemselves and as judgments upon others. There is now a reaction against this whole style of sentiment, and people go to the opposite extreme, and regard it as vain to seek for a meaning in any of the operations of nature. There is a temptation here, fostered by the scientific spirit of the age, which believes in law and believes in development. Those who yield to this prevalent feeling lose many valuable lessons which God is teaching, if people would but observe his ways. I believe as firmly as any man can in the universality of law, and in the prevalence of development ; but I regard them as pro- cesses by which God fulfils his purposes. There is a Gesteeai. Pkovidence. God has so consti- tuted his creatures that they have wants to be supplied, and he has made provision for supplying these. He sheds rain and sunshine upon the evil and the good. This is not ef- fected by the mere powers of matter. These, if undirected, might work only confusion and mischief. Gravitation will pull down an imperfectly supported building upon our heads, and electricity, in the form of lightning, may destroy us on the instant. The potencies of nature, its mechanical powers, its chemical attractions, and its vital agencies are so arranged as to produce beneficent ends. But they have been so arranged, by him who formed them and acts in them, that they produce general laws which his intelligent creatures may observe, and to which they may accommodate themselves. It is seen very clearly in the revolving seasons of the year and in the periods in the life of animated beings — in their germination, their growth, their decay, and dissolution. Man can come to know these laws, and is expected to suit himself to them and take advantage of them. Nature does not provide for all our necessities without our requiring to exert ourselves ; 222 PROVIDENCE. this would tend only to produce idleness and self -conse- quence, witli all their attendant evils. In order to get what he needs, man is obliged to be active and industrious, and being so he secures blessings, always by the providence which God has arranged so skilfully and beneficently. The great body of mankind, all indeed except atheists, are disposed to believe this, and are encouraged and com- forted as they discover that the good and wise God has planned it all. So much all people, with a few exceptions, will be in- clined to see and acknowledge, and as they do so a vague feeling of reverence and love will rise up in their bosoms. But there is a deeper meaning than this in the system of nature. There is a Special PKOvroENCE. The chief of a govern- ment, the general of an army, the head of a great mer- cantile house have to satisfy themselves with giving general orders which may be for the good of their de- pendents, but they cannot anticipate every incident or provide for the case of every individual. This is because of the limited nature of their capacities and of their knowledge. But no such weakness is laid on the Omni- present One, who is in every place ; on the Omniscient One, who knows all things ; and the Omnipotent, with whom nothing is impossible. Every thing that falls out is ap- pointed by him, nothing can occur unforeseen by him, and no opposing power can thwart his will. Every man's lot, and every incident in it, large or minute, prosperous or ad- verse, successful or disappointing, is ordained and secured. This is the doctrine of the greatest of all teachers, and is the only one consistent with an enlarged conception of God. "A sparrow cannot fall to the ground without him." " The very hairs of our head are all numbered." This was also taught by the wisest man of the most culti- THERE IS A SPECIAL PKOVIDEWCE. 223 vated people of the ancient world : Socrates delighted to see a purpose in every organ of our bodily frame, and divine power watching over him and directing him in every turn of his life. The Christian knows that his destiny throughout is ordered by One who sees the end from the beginning, and who cannot err or fall short in wisdom or goodness, and who now sends this trial to warn, arrest, and chastise, and anon bestows this gift for encourage- ment and comfort. We can see a way in which God can accomplish spe- cial ends, and this in entire accordance with the prevalence of law. In order to understand this it is necessary to re- fer to the distinction stated briefly by Paley in the open- ing of his Natural Theology, expounded by Chalmers and defended by Mr. J. S. Mill : it is the distinction between the laws of matter and the collocations of matter ; or, as I express it, between the powers and properties, on the one hand, and the dispositions and arrangements of matter on the other. Arrangements are evidently needed to make tlie properties of matter work orderly and beneficently. This is quite as certain as that there are laws or causes in nature. In the construction of a building a great many materials are brought together, and disposed according to a plan, and to enable the edifice to fulfil its end. So it is in that grand temple of nature which God has built. Its separate objects, with their properties, are so disposed that we have first a general order — a house with compartments fitted for all, constituting that general providence of which I have been speaking, such as the blessings secured by the seasons. But farther, these dispositions are so made that there is a place for each man, a provision for him, a guar- dianship over him, and a course for him to pursue. By this pre-arrangement God makes blind, mechanical, chemical, and vital laws fulfil his benevolent and righteous 224 PROVIDENCE. purposes. By this collocation rings inflexible in tliem- selves are made flexible, and the fabric fits into the frame, covers it as a disc, and protects it as a coat of mail. The two, the general and the special providence, do not oppose or contradict each ; they conspire and co-operate. There is no inconsistency, even in appearance, between God work- ing everywhere in nature and the prevalence of physical causes and laws. God accomplishes individual ends by causes, and according to laws which he has appointed. A stone will fall to the ground if unsupported, and this by a law which cannot be changed ; but when it is falling from a high elevation, and might kill the person beneath it, another individual wlio is standing by turns it aside, and no injury is done. We say, and I think very properly, that all this is done by the providence of God, who gave to the stone its properties and place, and to the bystander his generous impulse. But what are we to make of those dispensations which bring suffering and sorrow ? Are we to I'egard them sim- ply as casualties or fatalities ? Or are we not rather to look upon them as judgments and as punishments? In seeking to answer such questions there is need of much thought and much charity. We have warnings on this subject from very high autliority. One of the lessons taught bj"^ the grand dialogues in the Book of Job is that we are not to regard suffering as proving the existence of special sin. The Great Teacher warns us, " Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things ? I tell you nay ; but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt at Jerusalem ? 1 tell you nay ; but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." MEANING OF AFFLICTIONS. 225 There is a meaning in the afflictions which God sends, and -we should seek to find what it is. There are cases in which we should discover in them the judgments of heaven. 1. We may discover God's judgments when the evil comes as the direct consequence of sin. There is no want of charity or kindness involved when we think and de- clare that this weakness or disease has sprung from vice, say from intemperance or loose living. When we can prove that the sins have been committed, we may and ought to observe that cunning and deceit deprive those who are guilty of them of the confidence of their fellow- men. We cannot and should not help experiencing a feeling of satisfaction when the wicked are caught in the trap they have laid for others. In all such cases indigna- tion is a virtue, and the expression of it tends to purify the moral atmosphere in the community. There is a simper- ing charity which is a positive sin when it leads us to excuse or palliate known evil. God is speaking to us in all these judgments, and we should listen and stand in awe. This is all we are entitled to do when the judgment is seen descending on others. But when a trying dispensa- tion, say disease or disappointment, visits ourselves we may learn further and more special lessons. In such cases we may and always should inquire reverently what is its meaning to us. As we do so, we may not be able to dis- cover at the moment all the ends which it is intended to serve ; but still we may find out some of them. In all cases we should feel that we may profit by what God sends, and this whether we are able to decide for certain that God thus intended it ; the fact that God has sent it is a pre- sumption that he has a meaning in it. From our propin- quity and close access to ourselves we may find that the event has a special direction toward us which others are 226 PROVIDENCE. not able or entitled to notice. Even in regard to others we may quietly observe, exercising charity all the while, that a cross is sent at a particular time in order to cor- rect and restrain a weakness or an evil in the character. Thus a fi'iend of mine much engrossed with public be- nevolent work, with very little time left for his family, was laid aside from his labors by a malady which com- pelled him to live with his children, who were greatly benefited thereby, and I saw a providence in it. We are to be cautious in interpreting such occurrences in regai'd to others ; but we may often perceive the end to be ac- complished in regard to ourselves. We are not entitled, because events are all favoring us, to allow the impression to spring up in our minds, that therefore we are the favorites of heaven. Because a course followed by us is prospering, we are not therefore to conclude that it has the approval of God. It is not God's providence, as has often been remarked, but his law which is to be the guide of life. We must see beforehand that every step we take has the approval of God ; but having done so, we may notice as we advance that God is encouraging us by the aid he gives, by removing obstacles out of the way, and opening a path through difficulties and perplexities. In particular we may observe that a check is often laid upon us to keep us from entering on a path where we might be exposed to temptations which we are not able to resist. The good man, as he walks on, will see that his steps are ordered by the Lord. The aged man, in looking back on his past life may discover that God has led him in a wonderful way, such, it may be, as he did not wish, but which he now sees to be full of wisdom, turning him aside when he was entering upon a dangerous path, and opening a road for his relief when he was shut in ; restraining him when he was advancing too rapidly, and stimulating him when he was PKAYEE. 227 becoming slothful and discouraged. What ho knows not now he will know hereafter, if not sooner, in the light of heaven. I maintain that there is nothing in the most advanced discoveries of science to deprive any one of these consola- tions. The language of Bacon cannot be too frequently quoted : " It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's mind back to religion. For while the man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further ; but wheu it beholdeth the chain of their confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Provi- dence and Deity." SECTION V. PEAYEE. Here we presuppose that prayer is a duty, a duty to God and a duty to oui'selves. We are constantly receiv- ing gifts, and it is an obligation of common morality that we should thank the giver. We have his wondrous works spread out before us, and unless we sinfully restrain them our hearts will prompt to praise. We daily commit sins, and we should daily confess them. We are always de- pendent on him, and it is meet that we should feel and ac- knowledge it. That man fails in one of the very highest ends of his existence who does not rise to communion with the great and good God. Such considerations, founded on the relation in which we stand toward our creator, preserver, and governor should lead us to pray, and we should allow no objections or cavils to tempt us to neglect or give up prayer, which is as clear a duty as any other binding upon us. Prayer is, in fact, a natural im- 328 PKAYEE. pulse, prompted by internal conscience and the feeling of gratitude, and called forth by the circumstances in which ■we are placed ; and it is wrong in us, as some do, to resist it or seek to repress and crush it. But does God hear and answer prayer ? That he hears it we may argue from his omniscience. That he listens lovingly we may infer from his goodness and grace. But does he answer in the sense of granting our requests. Upon a Scotch minister. Dr. Leechman, publishing a ser- mon on the value of prayer as rendering the wishes it ex- presses more ardent and passionate, Hume remarked, " We can make use of no expression, or even thought, in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence." But there may be difficulties started as to the possibility of prayer being answered. I am not to enter into personal controversy, but the line of thought pursued in this part of my paper has reference through- out to an eminent physician in London, Sir John Richard- son, who a few years ago proposed a Prayer Test, and to the objections taken by Professor Galton in his recently published " Inquiries into the Human Faculties." The principal objection, the fundamental one, is that the laws of nature are fixed and unchangeable. The sun will rise at the appointed hour to-morrow, even though there be persons praying for certain ends of their own that he should not appear, or appear at a different hour. The tides will flow and ebb in order, even though those setting out on a voyage might wish, for their convenience and comfort, that they should not do so. I have answered this objection in treating of Provi- dence, of which the answer to prayer is an exemplification. God answers prayer by providence. God has arranged matter and its forces so that good purposes, small (as we reckon them) as well as great are accomplished ; virtue is TWO IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES. 229 encouraged, vice is restrained, and among other good ends an answer is provided to the prayer of the most obscure believer, who is thus made to feel that he has not been overlooked in the plan of the universe. From the very- beginning the prayer and its answer have been bound to- gether in the counsels of heaven and the decrees of God. To accomplish his ends and to answer prayer it is not necessary that God should change his laws, for his un- changing laws may bring what is prayed for. At this place I may call attention to two important principles fitted to stay and satisfy the mind. First, we have to take with us the doctrine of predestination, it be- ing always so understood as to be compatible in itself, which it is, with the essential freedom of the will and the accountability of man. Indeed the modern doctrine of the uniformity of nature is substantially the same as that of foreordination, only seen imder a somewhat different aspect — the one from below and the other from above, the one secular and the other spiritual, the latter being vastly the more comforting, as it brings in the will of a good God. In the ordination of nature, in the preordina- tion of God, the prayer and its answer are so connected that the one follows the other, and without the one there would not be the other. This is one of the providential laws perfectly consistent with phj^sical laws, and generally executed by physical laws. We must take along with us another pleasant and con- solatory truth, God acts in all the present actings of na- ture as really and truly as he acted in the beginning when he set nature agoing. God is as much present in his works as he ever was, and so when prayer is answered by natural agents it is answered by God quite as much as if answered by a visible hand or an audible voice, which are human rather than divine modes of communication 230 PRAYER. and when used by God are, after all, mere physical means. In order to explain all tins, some have argued that time has no place in the apprehension of God. Some of the mediaeval mystics spoke of God as an Eternal l!^ow, and of past and the future being before him as much as the pres- ent. There is, it appears to me, a profound truth meant to be expressed in this statement. But it must not be so expressed as to make it contradict our intuitive knovpl- edge of things. An eternal now, an eternal present, sounds very much like a contradiction. We perceive time to be a reality, that is, a thing existing. If it be so it must be known as a reality by God. But time may have quite a different relation to God to what it has to us. God is to be looked to and thought of as immediately present in his works when he made them, and now when they are acting. When man has constructed his machine he may leave it to itself to work, or rather he leaves it to God, who works in the natural agents. But God does not, and cannot from his nature, withdraw from the world and from acting in it when he has finished it. God is imma- nent in all his works in their iirst formation and in their continuance. We need not trouble ourselves with the difficulty about God not being able to answer prayer, as everything has been fixed from the beginning. The difficulty arises from our narrow and anthropomorphic views of God. We must not transfer our weakness to the omnipotence of Deity. We must rather, in our imperfect manner, raise our conceptions to so high a sphere that God would be separated from human infirmities. God sees every exist- ing thing at this instant. He does so every instant. Kot only so, but I think he may be held as seeing every past instant and every future instant ; in short, the whole past GOD IMMANENT IN HIS WORKS. 231 and future. Now this may be true, I believe it is so, of liis love as well as of his knowledge. His love goes forth at this instant to every one of his creatures, just as the sun's rays go forth to every point of surrounding space. All this may be inconceivable to us, as to its mode of opera- tion, but it is surely believable. But it may be that this love goes forth not only to all now existing ci-eatures, it may go forth to all the past of living creatures, I am inclined to think also to all the future. We have some imperfect means of conceiving it, in the experience of human love, in the love of a mother interested in the past events of her son's life, and as she follows him on to the future. But the strongest human affections are limited. Not so with the love of God. It is expressively said, " Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love." Of old, from everlasting, his delights have been with the children of men. I apply this to prayer. We are apt to feel when God is said to have ordained the answer in the past ages of eternity as if this were removing God to an awful distance. But when God planned the answer he did it lovingly, and having in view our need and the yearning of our hearts. When he act- ually sends the answer it is under a like influence, he does so lovingly. When he grants the petition it is not against his will, or because he is compelled by his own decrees, but in thorough consonance with his will, lovingly and tenderly, it may be in pity. ' To the objection, Why then need I pray, since the answer is ordained ? the reply is so stale that I am ashamed to be obliged to repeat it. It is an objection which may be taken to every form of activity. A man is in fever. He argues that, if it be predestined whether he is to recover, it is of no use sending for the physician. ' A considerable portion of tMs paper appeared in the Independent a few years ago when the Prayer Test was so discussed. 232 PRAYEE. The answer is known to evei-y tyro in moral science. If God has destined that the man recover, he may also have destined that he should send for the doctor. If he de- clines sending for the proper aid, he may find it destined that he is not to recover. So it is with the answer to prayer. If he prays, he may find that both the prayer and the answer are foreordained. If he neglect to pray, when in duty bound, he may find himself punished by being refused the blessing. In God's providence every- thing is carried on by means. There are means that produce their end by direct natu- ral agency. When a man sows, he may expect to reap. It does not need faith to show us this ; a very short sight will enable us to perceive it. But there may be other means which bring about their end by the prearrangement of God, and not by physical power. And this is discerned only by that higher vision which is called faith ; not that it is without reason, but because it is founded on a deeper insight into the character and ways of God. Dr. Tyndall tells us he is arguing against prayer as " a form of physi- cal energy " (p. 76i), as " a power in physical natm-e." I do not know what views may be taken of prayer in the scientific circles in which Dr. Tyndall moves, but I can say that I never met a religious man who claimed such a power for prayer. Ko one praying in the right spirit believes that prayer has an influence on the wind, the rain, or health. Its power is over God, who planned all things at first, and acts in the rain, the wind, and the human fi-ame. The God who prompts every grateful, every penitent heart to pray has connected the petition and the good it brings by ties as strong, though not so visible, as those which con- nect industry with its reward. The mother prays for her sick child, and it is in answer WHAT WE MAY PEAY FOB. 233 to her prayer that our physician comes in providentially with his remedy, suited to the constitution of the child, and the patient is relieved by physical laws, which are, however, subordinated to a higher provision, which the mother may believe in, but which the physician may not, even when he is made to accomplish the end designed. He who prays in faith is falling in with the grand ar- rangements or laws (if you will) of the universe quite as much as he who sows in the hope of reaping. It is true, as Luther (quoted by our author) says, that Idbordsse est ordsse, when it is labor for the glory of God and the good of man ; but it is equally true ordsse est labordsse in ful- filling the purposes of heaven. A second objection is urged. !Nobody believes that it is lawful to pray for every object — that it is lawful, for ex- ample, to pray that the earth should not move round the sun. " The phenomena of the universe are ranged by people who fully believe in the efficacy of petition in two categories ; a class which I shall call Number One, re- specting which it is quite useless, if not presumptuous, to pray, and a class, ]S''umber Two, of events, which are the legitimate objects of prayer. ITow, it is curious to observe that there is no agreement at all among religious people as to the principles on which such a classification should be made " (p. 774). But pious people have a very clear rule for deciding all such cases. They pray for things agree- able to God's will. When God's will is intimated to them, no matter how, they will not pray against it. They will still pray, but their prayer now is that the event may be for good, and they be enabled to submit to it. When the boy is sick the pious mother prays that he may recover, if it be the will of God. When he dies she prays that she may be enabled to bear the trial in meekness and patience. 234 PBATEK. He hints plainly that the class of objects for which we can pray will grow less and less, and those for which we cannot pray will become more and more numerous. " The professed believer must follow, drawn by in- exorable power, in the wake of advancing science, and after hard resistance, as always giving up one point after another, and resigning event after event, to be detached from the once great class of objects to be prayed for, and admitting their title of admission into the great class of settled and ordered events, not to be influenced by human interference, and capitulating with the best grace he may when forced to surrender." I admit that in a few, a very few, cases science may tell us what the will of God is be- fore common observation can discover it. But the only effect of this is to change the prayer, " Do this, if it be thy will," a little sooner into the prayer, " Thy will be done." And this tendency to lessen the number of objects to be prayed for is counteracted by another tendency brought into great prominence by modern science. Does not the latest science show that, as things advance, in time they become more and more complicated, and the issue is that wise men feel more their dependence on heaven ? Does not M. Comte's famous classification of the sciences proceed on the principle of the complication of phenomena, and on the circumstance that phenomena become more and more complicated as we approach nearer to man, and becoming most complicated of all in human society ? Has not physi- ology been showing that animals, as they rise in the scale, become more and more complex in their structure? Is not society, as it advances in knowledge and refinement, becoming more and more reticulated ? And the greater the complexity the more difficult to foresee events and to find out what God has fixed. The most dependent of men is WHAT WE MAT PEAT FOE. 235 the great merchant or the great statesman, who has become involved with the trade of distant nations or the caprices of millions of human beings. Science can tell us what is and must be the tendency of a given force ; but it cannot tell us what will be the result of an involved combination of forces. It can tell us where a satellite of Jupiter will be ten thousand years hence ; but it cannot say whether this child will be dead or alive a day hence. But after science has done its utmost, there will remain a vast and immeasurable domain in which, as God's will is not intimated, we may humbly make known our will, add- ing always, " Notwithstanding, not my will but thine be done." Dr. Tyndall treats us to a long account of religious men who have opposed science and been defeated — I may say justly defeated, as setting themselves against one way in which God makes known his will. But I could give a far longer list of men who have set themselves to oppose providence and prayer, only to find that, as Beza said, " God's word is an anvil which has worn out many a hammer." It is urged that facts go to show that there is not an answer to prayer. It is proven that those most prayed for do not live longer than others. Kings and governors have usually had constant and numerous petitions put up in their behalf, and yet their lives are not prolonged beyond the average. Missionaries are prayed for by multitudes that they may be safely carried by sea and land to their fields of labor, and that they may there be spared for usefulness, and yet it does not appear that their voyages are more pros- perous than those of others in the same circumstances or that they live to a greater age. Life insurances do not take a less premium from those who are specially prayed for than from those who are not. Looking to these things the physician proposed a Prayer Test. The patients on 236 PEATEE. one side of an hospital were to be prayed for and those on the other side were not ; and then it was to be determined whether tlie former recovered while the others did not. This seemed very dexterous. But surely God is not thus to be mocked, and his praying people were not so silly as to be taken in by so preposterous a proposal. It is astonishing to find how ignorant many of our savans, deep in the science of matter, are as to moral questions and the evidence by which they are settled drawn from mind and conscience and the obvious method of providence. It is not by such an experiment that the father has to settle how he has to train his son ; that the earnest youth has to determine how he should set out ou the journey of life ; that the statesman has to fix on measures for promoting the welfare of his country. The very purpose of God in governing the world by general laws is to secure that his intelligent creatures may from the past anticipate the future, which they could not do, were tJiere no regular law or if this was disturbed by constant interferences. We may be sure, then, that God will not interfere with laws or regulations which he himself has devised, so as to lessen foresight or disturb reasonable expectations. "We cannot conceive that God should so order events as to help or liinder insurance companies. In answering prayer God, humanly speaking, has to look to and to weigh a great many considerations — that is, facts and reasons which would have to be considered by man in like circumstances. He has to act as wise parents have to do in granting or refusing the request of their children. In the answer to be given to his prayers every one who knows himself will leave a discretion with God. It is surely a happy thing for God's creatures that he does not grant every one of their wishes. I do not know that those who pray for kings expect them to live longer than other ANSWER TO PEOPESSOE GALTON. 237 men. Christians cannot consent, while they pray for some men, to bind themselves not to pray for others. They will not petulantly conclude that God does not hear or answer prayer because he has not allowed them all that they de- manded. In the experience of years they will discover that God has been kind to them, even as their parents were in their childhood, in refusing them certain things which they earnestly wished to obtain. Professor Galton thinks that if it were known that God answers prayer, insurance companies might take a lower premium from those that did pray, or were much prayed for. But every man of sense sees that the infinitely wise God could not be expected to fall in with such a mode of procedure, as it would only promote religious hypocrisj'. There can be no doubt that good moral men live longer than others, but life insurance offices do not lessen their charges to suit the supposed character of the applicants; if they tried to do so they would fall into favoritism and perpetual mistakes ; — they have to satisfy themselves by excluding those whose known vices might injure their health and shorten their days. We can conceive of the wise God, who sends rain to the evil as well as to the good, acting on a like principle, or rather in a sovereign way of his own, so as to prevent the evils that would arise from the indiscriminate granting of petitions. I assume that God is all-powerful, that he is all-wise, and that he is good. I hold by these truths on good and sufficient evidence notwithstanding that there is evil in the world. But it is clear that in dealing with man as pos- sessed of free will and as having sinned, he must act on prin- ciples (if we can so speak) diiferent from those on which we act, and which we may not be able to comprehend. For us to allow evil, which we have power to prevent, would be wrong, except, indeed, in circumstances in which 238 PEATEE. we are not at liberty to interfere witli the free will of the agent. But were God bound by any such obligation, it is clear that evil would not exist in the world. Altogether, Grod's ways are not, and cannot be, like our ways in all re- spects. Many of them, in their device and mode of exe- cution, lie in a region altogether beyond our ken. We must believe, indeed, that in nature and kind justice with God, must be the same as justice with us. We cannot conceive that the wise and just God should act capriciously or arbitrarily, but he may, always in consistency with his character, act in a manner which we are not in a position to judge of. What advantage, then, has the praying man ? Much in every way. We pray as a duty, and it becomes pleasant. We unbosom ourselves to Him, and find that we have com- fort in doing so. We confess our sins to God, and feel a relief as if we had thereby thrown off a load. We pray for the forgiveness of sins, and trust that God has deliv- ered us from the guilt. We ask divine aid to enable us to resist the evil, and feel that we have got strength in the very act. We seek to have communion vnth God, and feel at times that we have succeeded. We do not ad- dress him as we would these lofty mountains and these stars which cannot reciprocate our feelings. We speak to him in the confidence that he is hearing us, and that he is speaking to us. We become like him as we look to him, as we have seen the image of heaven reflected on the bosom of a tranquil lake spread out beneath it. We pray in the certain belief that God hears us. We ask for tem- poral gifts so far as they may be agreeable to God's will, for our own higher good, and the good of others. We are sure that as God hears our prayers so he will answer them ; but we do not dictate to Deity and prescribe to him what GOD DOES NOT GRANT ALL OTJE BEQUESTS. 239 the answer shall be and how it must come. "We pray for what God sees we need, and are sure it will be supplied. We pray most earnestly for spiritual blessings, knowing that these will always be agreeable to the will of God. As we thus hold intercourse with God our will becomes assimilated to the divine will, and we thank him for what he withholds as well as for what he grants. A father encourages his child to make known his wishes, and lets him know that they will be attended to. This does not imply that every one of the petitions will be granted, even those that are capricious, or which the father knows might injure his boy. He complies with the entrea- ties, so far as this can be done consistently with the wise regulations of his household, so far as circumstances ad- mit, and so far as the youth's best welfare is not interfered with. It is much the same with our heavenly father when we are assured that, "if men who are evil know how to give good things to their children, much more shall our heavenly father give good things to those who ask him." The two cases, indeed, that of our heavenly father and that of an earthly father, are not identical, but they are parallel, and the earthly may throw light on the heav- enly. God, in his sovereign wisdom and for our good, has laid down governmental laws, and these he cannot be expected tc* contravene; and much as he may yearn to grant the requests of those who pray, yet he will not do so when this might injure their best interests; he will not, for instance, give them wealth when this might make them vain and proud, or tempt them into sinful indulgences. 240 WHAT 18 OUR WOBLD. SECTION VI. WHAT IS OUR "WOELD? This is a question whicli thinking minds have been putting and pressing from the beginning. It is one asked with intense eagerness and earnestness in these our times when science is making so many discoveries, when the heavens are opening to us new wonders, more especially as to the identity of the composition of stars and earth, and when the life and growth of plants are giving us glimpses of the inner secrets of generation and heredity. We know what the experience of man says. "We know what the Scriptiwes say. What does science say ? Do these three testimonies conflict ? or are they substantially the same ? We are in the heart of a profound subject which philosophers like Kant dignify with the name of Cosmology when they represent all higher and deeper thought as clustering round Theology, Anthropology, and Cosmology. I. When we believe that this world is the workmanship of God, all-powerful and benevolent, our first idea is that there should be nothing in it but beauty and benignity. The youth setting out on the journey through it is apt to expect to find only health and happiness, peace and pros- perity, sunshine and calm, flowers and fruit, love and smiles. There are abundance of such scenes on our earth's surface, and we should feel a pleasure in beholding them ; children prattling, young men and maidens romp- ing, pure and happy homes, prosperous lives in which SUFFERING IN OtTR WORLD. 241 character and honesty are rewarded, and contented old age living on the earnings of industry and activity. This is the life which the youthful fancy paints, and which the fond mother wishes for her son. But other aspects press on our notice whether we wish it or not. If there be blue sky over our heads, it may soon be covered with clouds big with devastating torrents. If there be lovely land- scapes on the earth, there are also howling deserts and malarial marshes. There is the light of day, but quite as lengthened is the darkness of night into which the day sinks. You see promising buds and blossoms, but how many are nipped by the frosts and blown away by the wind. The youth finishes his laborious education to find himself smitten down and his attainments apparently lost. The father expects the son to help and sustain him through life, and at last to lay his head in the grave, but has instead to perform that duty to his son. That young man has to weep over the grave of one whom he expected to be his bride and his life-partner. The serpent with his slime and his sting crawls into our home, pleasant as Paradise, and we have to leave it, hurt and sorrowing. If there be high en- joyments in our world there are also temptations and sins polluting the waters and making them offensive. We have •all seen the hope of his family and his friends led astray, and, as they hold down their heads in shame, they have to consign his remains to a dishonored grave. The drunken son is brought home to the house of his mother, who is thereby driven to a mad-house. 11. It is a curious circumstance that later science seems to be exhibiting our world under the same double aspect. In my younger years somcms enlarged admiringly, as well they 242 WHAT IS OUR WOKLD. might, on the perfect order and beauty of the heavenly bodies, and of the adaptation of all things to one another, and of a good end in the plant and animal. One would have thought that the world had come forth in the fulness of perfection and as a good God might wish it. I remember that I was not altogether satisfied with the account then given of nature in college lectures and books of science. I felt aa ii prima fade it was scarcely in consonance with Scriptm-e, and really inconsistent with our experience. Scientific men showed us order and law as universally prev- alent, and did not seem to think that there was anything else. It was believed that the great French mathemati- cians of the end of last century and the beginning of this, had demonstrated that if this world were not interfered with, it would go on forever. Paley had shown that there was an evidently designed fitting of one organ to another in every part of the animal frame. But T could not but observe another order of facts with a different look and expression. Everybody sees and feels, and every candid man acknowledges, that there is evil in our world as well as good. There is undoubtedly pleasure in our world, but there is also pain, and the one is quite as much a reality as the other. If there be happiness con- tinued through years, there is also at times pi'olonged misery. Law certainly reigns everywhere, but it seems often to work blindly. The law of gravitation holds a building firmly on its foundation, but it is quite as ready to pull it down and murder those who are dwelling in it. The fire that warms us may raise a conflagration to wrap thousands in its flames. The elements which unite to produce our food, may combine to produce poi- sons. If there be pure air from heaven, there may also be malarial damps from the earth. If there be widespread health, there is also disease. You notice that mother, SIN IN OUR WORLD. 243 to-day SQ happy as her eye follows that child who is play- ing around her ; to-morrow that child is languishing on a bed of distress, and next week has to be buried out of sight. To-day this man is strong, as if he were to live for years ; to-morrow he is stretched helpless on a bed of dis- tress, with no hope of ever rising. This year there is an unbroken family— father, mother, and children — next year the children are orphans, cast upon the world's cold charity. That young man has prepared himself at school, at college, in the shop or factory, for honorable work, but is not al- lowed to enter upon it. If there be multitudinous life, it everywhere terminates in death. There is a worse evil than pain, there is sin. If we do not purposely shut our eyes, we have to see it everywhere. In every age and in every country there have been wars and rumors of wars. History has consisted very much in the narrative of political strifes and bloody battles. In every great city there are sinks into which filth is constantly pouring. Even in our quietest rural districts, and our ap- parently happiest homes, are feuds and lusts breaking out in crimes, in slanders, fights, divorces, and murders, which startle the community. We do not need to look to distant places to discover all this, we find it close to us breaking out in ourselves in evil words and deeds ; we feel it fester- ing within us as a fever. We need not, we cannot deny it. There is pain in our world, and this is an evil ; there is sin in our world, and this is a worse evil. Later science has shown us that the worlds have been formed as they now are in the course of long ages, in which have been warring elements, convulsions with violent up- heavals, with earthquakes, with volcanoes, with seas over- whelming continents, and whole races perishing because they have become unfitted to their new surroundings. There is a dissipation of energy which in the end will 244 WHAT IS OUR WORLD. break up our world, and burn it with fire. It has been shown by geology that when animals were created capable of receiving pleasure, they were also liable to suffering and death. " A struggle for existence " is the characteristic of animated life from the beginning. All this while there are everywhere order and care. The arguments of Paley and other writers on natural the- ology in behalf of the existence and benevolence of God are as strong as they ever were and were thought to be by our fathers. When we look to this crowning goodness we feel as if there is something unnatural in the evils which appear in our world. It looks as if creation were unwillingly subject to them. ITature seems to rebel against the evils that are in it. " For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope." The creation is striving against the tendency to evil. If there be diseases in our world there are also remedies. Nature everywhere seeks to restore itself. If there be winters in the succes- sion of seasons, they are followed by springs, going on to summers and autumns. If there be the deaths of the in- dividuals, there is the continuance of the race. If there be travailing, it is in order to a birth. If there be deaths there are also resurrections. Nature is struggling, but it is in order to improvement. It is ploughing in order to sow and reap in due season. All creation is moving on- ward, but also upward. There is a struggle for existence, but a certainty that in the end the good will gain the vic- tory. ni. In all this, science seems to be coming nearer to the accoimt given in Scripture. Take only one passage : " For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for HOPE OF DELIVEEANOE. 245 the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not -willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature (creation) itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the chil- dren of God. For we know that the whole creation groan- eth and travaUeth in pain together until now." (Eom. viii., 19-23.) Socrates said of the philosophy of Hera- clitus, " "What I understand is so excellent that what I do not understand I am sure must also be excellent." I under- stand so much of this and other like passages, but I be- lieve it contains depths of meaning which I cannot fathom. It opens to me glimpses of objects more remote than the stars and more glorious ; of nebulae which we may not be able to reduce, but which shine across our sky like the Milky "Way with a mild lustre. There is evil, " vanity," " corruption," and " bondage," and a deep sense of the evil, " a groaning " and " travailing in pain ; " but there is a " deliverance," " an earnest expectation," and " a waiting," and a " glorious liberty," and " manifestation " of restored sonship. This is the account in the Scripture of our world. I believe it to be given by inspired men. Some, indeed, may be disposed to argue that it is the product of the genius or reason of man ; but if so, such views and senti- ments must have come from the deepest heart of human- ity, joining with experience and science to give their com- bined testimony as to the character of our world. Man craves for a deliverance and would fain look for a deliv- erance. He is conscious of the burden ; he groans under it and cries for relief. The Scripture tells us who the deliverer is, and what the nature of his deliverance. "We see clearly that the work of deliverance must be a stupendous one, reaching over all creation if it is to be as wide as the evil. According to Scripture God accomplishes 246 WHAT IS OUE WOELD. it in a particular way. The deliverer says that " he must needs go up to Jerusalem and there suffer many things." When he said this Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, " Far be this from thee, Lord." Our rationalists take the same view. And yet there is a fitness and a propriety, in a world of suffering, that the deliverer himself should suffer. God as God cannot suffer. But he takes upon him our nature and has suffered and died. God is love and he pities us. God as God cannot have sympathy with us. But as having suffered he has a fellow-feeling with all our infirmities. So we have the very remarkable expres- sion that even Christ himself became " perfect through suffering," not perfected thereby in spiritual excellence, for he had been perfect from all eternity in holiness, but made perfect as our mediator and as having the human susceptibility of sympathy added to his divine love. The reconciliation has many aspects. There have been keen disputes among theologians as to the precise nature of the atonement. These spring very much from the cir- cumstance that some look upon it exclusively under one aspect, neglecting the others. The essential feature of it seems to be that in it Christ suffers for us. If we leave out this, we are leaving out the deepest principle in the transaction. He had to say, " I have a baptism to be bap- tized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." He "groaned in the spirit and was troubled" as he con- templated death at the grave of Lazarus. In his agony in the garden he prayed, "if it be possible let this cup pass from me ; " but it was not possible for it to pass if the de- liverance was to be accomplished. More mysterious still, he had to say ere he expired, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." To this earnest appeal no answer was given. These heavens continued shut and silent. " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." Let us come to the foot THE ATONEMENT. 247 of the cross and give the answer. " Thou wert forsaken because of our sins. ' Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows : yet we did esteem him stricken, smit- ten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities : the chas- tisement of our peace was upon him ; and by his stripes we are healed.' " This is the keystone of the arch. But there are other aspects which ought not to be overlooked. There is what is called the moral aspect. Herein God manifests his love, and yet upholds the integrity of his law. The sin is con- deiimed and yet the sinner is saved. Farther, it is evident from this passage and from others that the rectification extends beyond our world. Science shows that every part of our cosmos is connected with every other. There is an attraction which binds all the bodies in one system. There are the same elements in distant stars as our earth. I move my arm, and an energy is let loose which may reach the most remote regions of space. It looks as if in like manner the restoration secured in Christ reaches over all creation. The earnest expectation of creation waiteth for the revealing or manifestation of the sons of God. The creation feels as if it should claim God as a father, and yet as if this fatherhood, through the evil, had been lost, and it looks for a restoration, for the revealing or manifestation of the sons of God. The grand reconciliation is effected by him who " made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself ; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven." Such is our world as attested by three witnesses. All men have seen and felt the evil, and this whether they look at it seriously or not, whether they avow it or not. Some have viewed it with a growling malignity, and argued that its existence shows that there is no proof of God's ex- 248 WHAT IS OUR WORLD. istence. The ancient sceptics gloated over the disorders in our world, the earthquakes, famines, and pestilences, the failure of good men and the success of bad. As they looked at these things James Mill the father, and John Mill the son, concluded that if there be a God aU- powerful and good he would not have permitted these things. I am not here to enter on the subject of the origin of evil. In my younger years I tried once and again to solve the problem. In my later life I have given up the attempt. I have become convinced that no one has cleared up the mystery, which remains as the one dark cloud in our sky. The great German philosopher, Liebnitz, propounded a grand doctrine of optimism which asserts that this is the best possible world, and this doctrine was expounded with glowing eloquence by Bolingbroke and in terse verse by Pope. This style of sentiment prevailed in our literature for more than a century, and people did little to remove the evils in our world or to elevate the great mass of the people, many of whom sank in our great cities to the lowest depths of degradation. But in later times thinkers have been obliged to view the other aspects. Astronomy teaches the generation of worlds out of star dust. Geology tells us that death has reigned over all animated beings from the beginning. In all past ages there has been a struggle for existence. We have now pessimism, which declares that the world is the worst possible, proclaimed and defended by a few moodish men of genius, and youths are wondering at it, and finding a confirmation of it in the circumstance that they are not meeting with an encourage- ment suited to their merits and their opinion of them- selves. On two points I have reached assurance : one is that God is not and cannot be the author of evil, and on the other hand, that those intelligent creatures who commit sin are THE ATONEMENT. 249 themselves to blame for it. Carrying these two convictions with me I leave speculative questions with God, of whose existence and goodness I have such abundant proof. On one other point I have reached assurance : the ex- istence of paiQ is not inconsistent with the existence of love. Suffering is one of the most potent means of call- ing forth love. The shepherd left the ninety and nine sheep in the wilderness to go after that which was lost. There was a tenderness in the interest which the father took in his returning prodigal son beyond what he felt in the one always with him, and which led him to run out to meet him and embrace him in his arms. " There is joy in heaven among the holy angels over one sinner that repent- eth." " Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is this : To visit the fatherless and widows in their aifiiction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." Man may feel at times as if he were kept at an infinite dis- tance from God ; yet if he would but think of it there is an endearing element in the love of God toward sinful men not found in his love to the holy angels. There is pity: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." That apparent frown which we see at times on the face of God is assumed only be- cause God has to mark his disapprobation of our conduct ; his love aU the while being ready to burst out. Thus it was that God was led to give up his only begotten son to suffer and to die for us. It was this affection which led the Son to leave the bosom of the Father and suffer and die on earth. The highest exercise of love which the uni- verse discloses is the love of God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — toward fallen and suffering man. "Herein in- deed is love." The mystery of darkness is swallowed up in the mystery of light, as we " comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height ; 250 WHAT IS OTJE WOKLD. and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowl- edge." IV. There are literary and scientific men in the present day who have outgrown, as they claim, the gospel ; outgrown it as the man outgrows the clothes of his childhood, as the young plant bursts from the envelope that protected it. But what have they substituted? A skeleton with the living form stript off. Nothing, absolutely nothing to give peace, and life, and assurance. Thomas Carlyle, whom all persons of literary tastes are talking about in these times, when every feature of his strong but not very lovely character is exhibited to us, used to talk of the " eternities," " the infinitudes," the " realities," " the moralities," " the idealities." Matthew Arnold speaks of " sweetness and light," and "making for righteousness," things equally empty and inane. These at best are abstractions, not filling up or satisfying the heart, as they are without a living God and a loving Saviour. A younger set of men, theii- true offspring, have sprung iip among us, and going on in the same direction have scattered and dissipated the empty truth retained in these generalities. Those who have given up Clii'ist find that they have to give up God, and those who have given up God find that they have no sus- taining morality left them ; no peace, no hope of immor- tality.' " O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast re- vealed them imto babes. Even so. Father, for so it seenied good in my sight." ' Some years ago I had a call at my house, in Ireland, by a young nohleman with whom I was at that time intimate, and who has since risen to eminence as a statesman (I mean Earl Dufferin), who intro- duced to me his friend Lord Ashburton. The nobleman introduced took coNOLrsiON. 251 What, then, is the conclusion to which we have come in our cosmology ? Our world is not all good on the one hand, nor is it all evil on the other. In it by the capacities we possess and the opportunities afforded we can discover truth solid and satisfactory, but in which we may fall into error if our eye be not single. It is a world in which we know only in part, but in which we get glimpses of vastly more which we do not know. It is not a world at rest, but a world in perpetual activity, every atom and every mass in rapid and unceasing motion, proceeding by conflict- ing forces, but all in a regulated system. There is in- flexible law, in which we can trust, and to which we can accommodate ourselves to secure ends, and yet a providence whereby it is made to take care of us and supply our me aside and said, " You know that I have lately lost my dear wife, who was a great friend of Mr. Carlyle's, and I have applied to Mr. Carlyle to tell me what I should do to have peace, and make me what I should be. On my making this request he simply bade me read Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. I did so, and did not find anything there fitted to improve me. I went back to Mr. Carlyle, asking him what precise lesson he meant me to gather from the book, and he said ' Read Wilhelm Meister a second time. ' I have done so earnestly, but I confess I am utterly unable to find any thing there to meet my anxiety, and I wish yon, if you can, to explain what Mr. Carlyle could mean. " I told him that I was not the man to explain Carlyle's meaning, if indeed he had any definite meaning. I told him plainly that neither Goethe nor Carlyle, though men of eminent literary genius, could supply the balm which his spirit needed ; and I remarked that Goethe's work contained not a little that was sensual. I did my best to point to a better way, and to the deliverance promised and secured in the gospel. I do not know the issue, but I got an eager listener. Carlyle wished to persuade his mother, a woman of simple but devoted piety, that his advanced faith was the same as that which she held firmly, and so much to her comfort, only in a somewhat different form. But in fact the mother's faith was crushed in the form in which the son put it, when it became a skeleton, as different from the life which sustained her as the bones in our museums are from the living animal. 252 WHAT IS OUR WORLD. special wants. It is a world in which God does not hold sensible communication with his creatures, but may be approached in prayer, which he will answer in his own way. In it we have a clear view of a moral law requiring obedience, but which we have disobeyed. There is evil in it, a universal evil — it is of no use denying this — but there is the universal hope of a deliverance. There has been a fall, but there has also been a recovery. God seems to have withdrawn, but by faith in the appointed mediator we can rise to communion with him. Our world is not perfect, but there is evidence that it is going on toward perfection. In it we are in a state of probation ; if we stand it, it wiU issue in promotion to a higher sphere. Let us properly understand our position and conform to it. \hcJj 1