consequences of our general laws are deduced, we may yet consider it possible that a philosopher, whose mind has been mainly employed, and his intellectual habits determined, by this process of deduction, may possess, in a feeble and imperfect degree only, some of those faculties by which truth is attained, and especially truths such as regard our relation to that mind, which is the origin of all law, the source of first principles, and which must be immeasurably elevated above all derivative truths. It would, therefore, be far from surprising, if there should be found, among the great authors of the developments of the mechanical philosophy, some who had refused to refer the phenomena of the universe to a supreme mind, purpose, and will. And though this would be, to a believer in the being and government of God, a matter of sorrow and pain, it need not excite more surprise than if the same were true of a person of the most ordinary endowments, when it is recollected in what a disproportionate manner the various faculties of such a philosopher may have been cultivated. And our apprehensions of injury to mankind from the influence of such examples will diminish, when we consider that those mathematicians whose minds have been less partially exercised, the great discoverers of the truths which others apply, the philosophers who have looked upwards as well as downwards, to the unknown as well as to the known, to ulterior as well as proximate principles, have never rested in this narrow and barren doctrine; but have perpetually extended their view forwards, beyond mere material laws and causes, to a First Cause of the

moral and material world, to which each advance in philosophy might bring them nearer, though its highest attributes must probably ever remain indefinitely beyond their reach.

It scarcely needs, perhaps, to be noticed, that what we here represent as the possible source of error is, not the perfection of the mathematical habits of the mind, but the deficiency of the habit of apprehending truth of other kinds;-not a clear insight into the mathematical consequences of principles, but a want of a clear view of the nature and foundation of principles; -not the talent for generalising geometrical or mechanical relations, but the tendency to erect such relations into ultimate truths and efficient causes. The most consummate mathematical skill may accompany and be auxiliary to the most earnest piety, as it often has been. And an entire command of the conceptions and processes of mathematics is not only consistent with, but is the necessary condition and principal instrument of every important step in the discovery of physical principles. Newton was eminent above the philosophers of his time, in no one talent so much as in the power of mathematical deduction. When he had caught sight of the law of universal gravitation, he traced it to its consequences with a rapidity, a dexterity, a beauty of mathematical reasoning which no other person could approach; so that on this account, if there had been no other, the establishment of the general law was possible to him alone. He still stands at the head of mathematicians as well as of philosophical discoverers. But it never appeared to him, as it may have appeared to

some mathematicians who have employed themselves on his discoveries, that the general law was an ultimate and sufficient principle; that the point to which he had hung his chain of deduction was the highest point in the universe. Lagrange, a modern mathematician of transcendent genius, was in the habit of saying, in his aspirations after future fame, that Newton was fortunate in having had the system of the world for his problem, since its theory could be discovered once only. But Newton himself appears to have had no such persuasion that the problem he had solved was unique and final; he laboured to reduce gravity to some higher law, and the forces of other physical operations to an analogy with those of gravity, and declared that all these were but steps in our advance towards a First Cause. Between us and this First Cause, the source of the universe and of its laws, we cannot doubt that there intervene many successive steps of possible discovery and generalisation, not less wide and striking than the discovery of universal gravitation : but it is still more certain that no extent or success of physical investigation can carry us to any point which is not at an immeasurable distance from an adequate knowledge of Him.

CHAP. VII.-On Final Causes.

WE have pointed out a great number of instances where the mode in which the arrangements of nature produce their effect, suggests, as we conceive, the belief that this effect is to be considered as the end and

purpose of these arrangements. The impression which thus arises, of design and intention exercised in the formation of the world, or of the reality of Final Causes, operates on men's minds so generally, and increases so constantly on every additional examination of the phenomena of the universe, that we cannot but suppose such a belief to have a deep and stable foundation. And we conceive that in several of the comparatively few cases in which such a belief has been rejected, the averseness to it has arisen from the influence of some of the causes mentioned in the last chapter; the exclusive pursuit, namely, of particular trains and modes of reasoning, till the mind becomes less capable of forming the conceptions and making the exertions which are requisite for the apprehension of truths not included among its usual subjects of thought.

I. This seems to be the case with those who maintain that purpose and design cannot be inferred or deduced from the arrangements which we see around us, by any process of reasoning. We can reason from effects to causes, say such writers, only in cases where we know something of the nature of the cause. We can infer from the works of men, the existence of design and purpose, because we know, from past observation, what kind of works human design and purpose can produce. But the universe, considered as the work of God, cannot be compared with any corresponding work, or judged of by any analogy with known examples. How then can we, in this case, they ask, infer design and purpose in the artist of the universe? On what principles, on what axioms, can we proceed, which shall include this

necessarily singular instance, and thus give legitimacy and validity to our reasonings.

What has already been said on the subject of the two different processes by which we obtain principles, and by which we reason from them, will suggest the reply to these questions. When we collect design and purpose from the arrangements of the universe, we do not arrive at our conclusion by a train of deductive reasoning, but by the conviction which such combinations as we perceive, immediately and directly impress upon the mind. "Design must have had a designer." But such a principle can be of no avail to one whom the contemplation or the description of the world does not impress with the perception of design. It is not therefore at the end, but at the beginning of our syllogisms, not among remote conclusions, but among original principles, that we must place the truth, that such arrangements, manifestations, and proceedings as we behold about us imply a Being endowed with consciousness, design, and will, from whom they proceed.

This is inevitably the mode in which such a conviction is acquired; and that it is so, we may the more readily believe, when we consider that it is the case with the design and will which we ascribe to man, no less than in that which we believe to exist in God. At first sight we might perhaps be tempted to say, that we infer design and purpose from the works of man in one case, because we have known these attributes in other cases produce effects in some measure similar. But to this we must reply, by asking how we come