Theism

The whole reading public knows the masterly chapter on "The Machinery of Flight" in the Duke of Argyll's 'Reign of Law.'

Note XIX., page 149Psychology and Design

The following writers treat at considerable length of the evidences of design to be traced in the constitution of the mind: Sir Matthew Hale in his 'Primitive Origination of Mankind;' Barrow in the seventh of his 'Sermons on the Creed;' Bentley in the second sermon of his 'Boyle Lecture;' Crombie in the second volume of his 'Natural Theology;' Lord Brougham in his 'Discourse on Natural Theology,' sect. iii., pp. 52-80; Turton's 'Natural Theology Considered,' pp. 65-160; Chalmers's 'Natural Theology,' Book III.; Buchanan's 'Faith in God,' pp. 213-231; Tulloch's 'Theism,' pp. 182-247; and Ulrici's 'Gott und Mensch.'

The phenomena of animal instinct are of themselves an inexhaustible source of instruction as to the Divine wisdom and goodness. "The spinning machinery which is provided in the body of a spider is not more accurately adjusted to the viscid secretion which is provided for it, than the instinct of the spider is adjusted both to the construction of its web and also to the selection of likely places for the capture of its prey. Those birds and insects whose young are hatched by the heat of fermentation, have an intuitive impulse to select the proper materials, and to gather them for the purpose. All creatures, guided sometimes apparently by senses of which we know nothing, are under like impulses to provide effectually for the nourishing of their young; and it is most curious and instructive to observe that the extent of provision which is involved in the process, and in the securing of the result, seems very often to be greater as we descend in the scale of nature, and in proportion as the parents are dissociated from the actual feeding or personal care of their offspring. The mammalia have nothing to provide except food for themselves, and have at first, and for a long time, no duty to perform beyond the discharge of a purely physical function. Birds have more to do – in the building of nests, in the choice of sites for these, and after incubation in the choice of food adapted to the period of growth. Insects, much lower in the scale of organisation, and subject to the wonderful processes of metamorphosis, have to provide very often for a distant future, and for successive stages of development not only in the young but in the nidus which surrounds them. Bees, if we are to believe the evidence of observers, have an intuitive guidance in the selection of food which has the power of producing organic changes in the bodies of the young, even to the determination and development of sex, so that, by the administration of it, under what may be called artificial conditions, certain selected individuals can be made the mothers and queens of future hives. These are but a few examples of facts of which the whole animal world is full, presenting, as it does, one vast series of adjustments between bodily organs and corresponding instincts. But this adjustment would be useless unless it were part of another adjustment – between the instincts and perceptions of animals and those facts and forces of surrounding nature which are related to them, and to the whole cycle of things of which they form a part. In those instinctive actions of the lower animals which involve the most distant and the most complicated anticipations, it is certain that the prevision involved is a prevision which is not in the animals themselves. They appear to be, and beyond all doubt really are, guided by some simple appetite, by an odour or a taste, and, in all probability, they have generally as little consciousness of the ends to be subserved as the suckling has of the processes of nutrition. The path along which they walk is a path which they did not engineer. It is a path made for them, and they simply follow it. But the propensities and tastes and feelings which make them follow it, and the rightness of its direction towards the ends to be attained, do constitute an adjustment which may correctly be called mechanical, and is part of a unity which binds together the whole world of life, and the whole inorganic world on which living things depend." – Duke of Argyll on Animal Instinct (Cont. Rev., July 1875).

Instinctive actions will not be shown to be less evidences of Divine purpose by its being proved that intelligence, at least in the higher animals, probably always co-operates in some degree with instinct, or that much which is referred to instinct may be traced either directly to experience or to the hereditary transmission of qualities originally generated by experience.

Note XX., page 152History and Design

The quotation is from the eighteenth – the concluding – volume of the 'Etudes sur l'Histoire de l'Humanité,' by Professor Laurent of Ghent. I have given some account of his historical doctrine, and endeavoured to defend the theistic inference which he has drawn from his laborious survey of historical facts against the objections of Professor J. B. Meyer, in my 'Philosophy of History in France and Germany,' pp. 321-330. Bunsen, in the work entitled 'God in History,' seeks to establish the same great thesis.

"History," says Niebuhr, "shows, on a hundred occasions, an intelligence distinct from nature, which conducts and determines those things which may seem to us accidental; and it is not true that history weakens our belief in Divine Providence. History is, of all kinds of knowledge, the one which tends most decidedly to that belief." – Lectures on the History of Rome, vol. ii. p. 59.

Süssmilch's celebrated treatise, 'Göttliche Ordnung in der Veränderung des menschlichen Geschlechtes, &c.;' M'Cosh's 'Method of the Divine Government;' and Gillett's 'God in Human Thought,' vol. ii. pp. 724-792, may be consulted as regards the evidences of Divine purpose to be found in the constitution of society.

Note XXI., page 168History of the Teleological Argument

The proof of the Divine existence from the order and adaptations of the universe is known as the physico-theological or teleological argument. It has also been sometimes called the cosmological argument; the very word cosmos, like the Latin mundus and our own universe, implying order. It is so obvious and direct that it has presented itself to the mind from very ancient times. It is implied in such passages of Scripture as Job, xxxvii. – xli.; Ps. viii., xix., civ.; Isa. xl. 21-26; Matt. vi. 25-32; Acts, xiv. 15-17, xvii. 24-28. Pythagoras laid great stress on the order of the world; and it was mainly on that order that Anaxagoras rested his belief in a Supreme Intelligence. Socrates developed the argument from the adaptation of the parts of the body to one another, and to the external world, with a skill which has never been surpassed. His conversation with Aristodemus, as recorded in the 'Memorabilia' of Xenophon, is of wonderful interest and beauty. Few will follow it even now without feeling constrained to join Aristodemus in acknowledging that "man must be the masterpiece of some great Artificer, carrying along with it infinite marks of the love and favour of Him who thus formed it." Plato presents the argument specially in the 'Timæus,' and his whole philosophy is pervaded by the thought that God is the primary source and perfect ideal of all order and harmony. Aristotle expressly maintains that "the appearance of ends and means is a proof of design," and conceives of God as the ultimate Final Cause. Cicero (De Nat. Deor., ii. c. 37) puts into the mouth of Balbus an elaborate exposition of the design argument. The 'De Usu Partium' of Galen is a treatise on natural theology, teaching design in the structure of the body.

This proof is found more frequently than any other in the writings of the fathers and scholastics. "When we see a vessel," says Theophilus, "spreading her canvas, and majestically riding on the billows of the stormy sea, we conclude that she has a pilot on board; thus, from the regular course of the planets, the rich variety of creatures, we infer the existence of the Creator." – Ad Autol., 5. Minucius Felix (c. 18) compares the universe to a house, and Gregory of Nazianzum (Orat., xxviii. 6) compares it to a lyre, in illustrating the same argument. Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, Basil the Greek, Chrysostom, &c., employ it. So do Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, &c.

The opposition of Bacon and Descartes to final causes had no influence in preventing theologians from insisting on their existence. From Boyle and Derham to Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises, an enormous literature appeared in England devoted to this end. Germany, also, in the second half of the eighteenth century, was almost as much overflooded with Lithotheologies, Hydrotheologies, Phytotheologies, Insectotheologies, &c., as it at present is with works on Darwinism. In France, Fenelon in his 'Démonstration de l'Existence de Dieu,' and Bernardin de Saint Pierre in his 'Etudes' and 'Harmonies de la Nature,' eloquently, although not perhaps very solidly or cautiously, reasoned from the wonders of nature to the wisdom of God.

Hume and Kant, by their criticisms of the design argument, rendered to it the great service of directing attention to the principles on which it proceeds. Theologians had previously gone on merely accumulating illustrative instances and instituting minute investigations into the constitutions of the complex objects which they selected with this view. Attention was thus distracted from what really needed argument. Hume and Kant showed men the real point at issue.

Although Kant rejected the argument, he speaks of it in these terms: "This proof deserves to be mentioned at all times with respect. It is the oldest, the clearest, and the most suited to the ordinary understanding. It animates the study of nature, because it owes its existence to thought, and ever receives from it fresh force. It brings out reality and purpose where our observation would not of itself have discovered them, and extends our knowledge of nature by exhibiting indications of a special unity whose principle is beyond nature. This knowledge, moreover, directs us to its cause – namely, the inducing idea, and increases our faith in a supreme originator to an almost irresistible conviction."

I must refer to the Notes from XIII. to XX. inclusive, for the titles of recent works on the design argument.

"The assertion appears to be quite unfounded that, as science advances from point to point, final causes recede before it, and disappear one after the other. The principle of design changes its mode of application, indeed, but it loses none of its force. We no longer consider particular facts as produced by special interpositions; but we consider design as exhibited in the establishment and adjustment of the laws by which particular facts are produced. We do not look upon each particular cloud as brought near to us that it may drop fatness on our fields; but the general adaptation of the laws of heat and air and moisture to the promotion of vegetation does not become doubtful. We do not consider the sun as less intended to warm and vivify the tribes of plants and animals because we find that, instead of revolving round the earth as an attendant, the earth, along with other planets, revolves round him. We are rather, by the discovery of the general laws of nature, led into a scene of wider design, of deeper contrivance, of more comprehensive adjustments. Final causes, if they appear driven farther from us by such extension of our views, embrace us only with a vaster and more majestic circuit. Instead of a few threads connecting some detached objects, they become a stupendous network, which is wound round and round the universal frame of things." – Whewell, 'History of Scientific Ideas,' vol. ii. pp. 253, 254.

Note XXII., page 182Creation and Evolution

Creation is the only theory of the origin of the universe. Evolution assumes either the creation or the self-existence of the universe. The evolutionist must choose between creation and non-creation. They are opposites. There is no intermediate term. The attempt to introduce one – the Unknowable – can lead to no result; for unless the Unknowable is capable of creating, it can account for the origin of nothing. All attempts to explain even the formation of the universe, either by the evolution of the Unknowable or by evolution out of the Unknowable, must be of a thoroughly delusive character. The evolution of what is known can alone have significance either to the ordinary or scientific mind. Nothing can be conceived of as subject to evolution which is not of a finite and composite nature. Nothing can be evolved out of a finite and composite existence which was not previously involved in it. And what gives to anything its limits and constitution must be more perfect than itself. Το πρωτον ου σπερμα εστιν, αλλα το τελειον.

"As many philosophers as adopt the supposition – such as the Pythagoreans and Spensippus – that what is best and most fair is not to be found in the principle of things, from the fact that though the first principles both of plants and animals are causes, yet what is fair and perfect resides in created things as results from these, – persons, I say, who entertain these sentiments, do not form their opinions correctly. For seed arises from other natures that are antecedent and perfect, and seed is not the first thing, whereas that which is perfect is." – Aristotle, 'Metaphysics,' xi. 7.

"It is manifest by the light of nature that there must at least be as much reality in the efficient and entire cause as in its effect; for whence can the effect draw its reality if not from its cause? And how could the cause communicate to it this reality unless it possessed it in itself? And hence it follows, not only that what is cannot be produced by what is not, but likewise that the more perfect – in other words, that which contains in itself more reality – cannot be the effect of the less perfect." – Descartes, 'Meditations,' iii.

"In not a few of the progressionists the weak illusion is unmistakable, that, with time enough, you may get everything out of next-to-nothing. Grant us, they seem to say, any tiniest granule of power, so close upon zero that it is not worth begrudging – allow it some trifling tendency to infinitesimal increment – and we will show you how this little stock became the kosmos, without ever taking a step worth thinking of, much less constituting a case for design. The argument is a mere appeal to an incompetency in the human imagination, in virtue of which, magnitudes evading conception are treated as out of existence; and an aggregate of inappreciable increments is simultaneously equated, – in its cause to nothing, in its effect to the whole of things. You manifestly want the same causality, whether concentrated on a moment or distributed through incalculable ages; only, in drawing upon it, a logical theft is more easily committed piecemeal than wholesale. Surely it is a mean device for a philosopher thus to crib causation by hair's-breadths, to put it out at compound interest through all time, and then disown the debt." – Martineau, 'Essays Philosophical and Theological,' pp. 141, 142.

"Think of it! An endless evolution, an eternal working, an infinite causation, and yet an effect so finite. Nature has been working upward from eternity, and has just passed the long-armed ape who begat prognathus, as prognathus begat the troglodyte homo. What becomes of our doctrine of progress? As sure as mathematics, it should have been all evolved, all that we now have, over and over again – all out, or far more out than has come out, incalculable ages ago. An eternal ante-past of progressive working. To what a height should it have arisen! It should have transcended all our ideals. The most exalted finite being should have been reached, the most exalted that our minds can conceive, instead of this creature man, so poor, so low; for you will bear in mind that I am speaking of him as measured by no higher scale of value than that afforded by this physical hypothesis – man evolved from nebular gas – man just coming out of darkness, and so soon to return to darkness again —e tenebris in tenebras. This all comes from that hideous υστερον προτερον, that inversion of all necessary thinking. Nature first, it says – matter first, an impalpable nebulous nihilism first, the lowest and most imperfect first; life, thought, reason, idea, their junior products, and God, therefore, the last product, if there be a God at all, or anything to which such a name can possibly be given. And we are asked to adopt this, and call it grand, whilst rejecting as narrow and soul-contracting the revelation which makes God first, reason first, idea first, the perfect first, – as has been said before – the imperfect and the finite ever a departure from it, whether in the scale of order or of time, whether as exhibited in processes of lapse and deterioration or the contrary seeming of recovery and restoration in cyclical rounds. The two schemes have two entirely different modes of speech. Says the mere physical hypothesis: In the beginning was the nebula, and all things were in the nebula, and all things were self-evolved from the nebula – even life, thought, consciousness, idea, reason itself, having no other source. The other speaks to us in language like this: Εν αρχη ην ο Λογοσ, "In the beginning was the Word," the Λογοσ, the Reason, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being by Him. In Him was life," Ζωη, and "from this life" – not from motions, or molecules, or correlated forces, or the vibration of fibres, or the arrangements of nebular atoms, but from this life of the Logos, the eternal Reason – "came the light of men" – the mind, reason, conscience of humanity – even "the light that lighteth" every rational being "coming into the cosmos." – Prof. Lewis, 'The Kingdom of God' (Dickinson's Theological Quarterly, No. 6).

Note XXIII., page 195Theological Inferences from the Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation

An eloquent preacher exclaims, "Great ought to be our compassion for the weak brother whose faith in God would be shaken because a chemist should succeed next year in producing vital cells out of a hermetically-sealed vessel containing only the elements of protoplasm." – Rev. E. A. Abbott, D.D., 'Cambridge Sermons,' p. 33. It must be admitted, however, that many who certainly cannot be fairly described as "weak brethren," entertain very strongly that fear of the doctrine of spontaneous generation which Dr Abbott deprecates. I quote, from the 'Presbyterian Quarterly' of January 1874, the words of President Barnard of Columbia College, New York, expressing an entirely opposite sentiment. I do so without criticism or comment, as I shall have to consider the relation of materialistic theories of the origin of life to theism in next volume.

"To the philosopher, the demonstration of the theory of spontaneous generation, should it ever be demonstrated beyond all possibility of doubt or cavil, cannot but be a matter of the deepest interest. But to the man who finds himself compelled to receive it, this interest, it seems to me, must be no less painful than it is deep. Nor is this the only theory which the investigators of our time are urging upon our attention, of which I feel compelled to make the same remark. There are, at least, two besides which impress me with a similar feeling; and the three together constitute a group which, though to a certain extent independent of each other, are likely in the end to stand or fall together. These are, the doctrine of spontaneous generation, the doctrine of organic evolution, and the doctrine of the correlation of mental and physical forces. If these doctrines are true, the existence of an intelligence separate from organised matter is impossible, and the death of the human body is the death of the human soul. If these doctrines are true, the world becomes an enigma, no less to the theist than it has always been to the atheist. We are told, indeed, that the acceptance of these views need not shake our faith in the existence of an almighty Creator. It is beautifully explained to us how they ought to give us more elevated and more worthy conceptions of the modes by which He works His will in the visible creation. We learn that our complex organisms are none the less the work of His hands because they have been evolved by an infinite series of changes from microscopic gemmules, and that these gemmules themselves have taken on their forms under the influence of the physical forces of light and heat and attraction acting on brute mineral matter. Rather, it should seem, we are a good deal more so. This kind of teaching is heard in our day even from the theologians. Those sentinels on the watch-towers of the faith, whose wont it has been for so many centuries to stand sturdily up in opposition to the science which was not, in any proper sense, at war with them, now, by a sudden and almost miraculous conversion, accept with cheerful countenances, and become in their turn the expounders and champions of the science which is. But while they find the mystery of the original creation thus satisfactorily cleared up in their minds, they seem to have taken very little thought as to what is going to come of the rest of their theology. It is, indeed, a grand conception which regards the Deity as conducting the work of His creation by means of those all-pervading influences which we call the forces of nature; but it leaves us profoundly at a loss to explain the wisdom or the benevolence which brings every day into life such myriads of sentient and intelligent beings only that they may perish on the morrow of their birth. But this is not all. If these doctrines are true, all talk of creation or methods of creation becomes absurdity; for just as certainly as they are true, God Himself is impossible. If intelligence presupposes a material organism, of which it is a mode of action, then God must be a material organism or there is no God. But it is the law of all living organisms that they grow, mature, and perish; and since God cannot perish, He cannot be an organism."

Note XXIV., page 208Darwin and Paley

To the two treatises of Mr Darwin mentioned in the lecture, there must now be added another equally rich in fact suggesting theological inferences – 'The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the same Species.'

A multitude of books have been written on Darwinism and Teleology. Most of those published between 1859 and 1875 will be found named in the list of works on Darwinism appended to Seidlitz's 'Darwin'sche Theorie.' There are two good popular accounts of the controversy: 'What is Darwinism?' by Dr Charles Hodge of Princetown, and 'Die Darwin'schen Theorien' of Rudolf Schmid.

As to Paley, it gives one pleasure to quote the following passage from Sir William Thomson's address to the British Association in 1871; because the foolish writing which is so frequently met with in books and journals about "the mechanical God of Paley," about Paley representing Deity as "outside of the universe," or as "a God who makes the world after the manner that a watchman manufactures a watch," &c., can only be explained by utter ignorance of Paley's views: "I feel profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations. Reaction against the frivolities of teleology, such as are to be found, not rarely, in the notes of the learned commentators on Paley's 'Natural Theology,' has, I believe, had a temporary effect of turning attention from the solid irrefragable argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. But overpowering proof of intelligence and benevolent design lies all around us; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us through nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one ever-acting Creator and Ruler."

Note XXV., page 214Kant's Moral Argument

The unsatisfactoriness of the position that conscience can supply the place of reason, and can do without its help, in the search after God, is clearly seen in the case of the thinker who undertook with most deliberation to maintain that position. When Kant said, – Although all other arguments for the existence of God are delusive, still conscience gives us a feeling of responsibility and a sense of freedom which compel us to believe in One through whom virtue and fortune, duty and inclination, will be reconciled, and in whom the will will be free to do all that it ought, – he saw that he would be met with the retort and reproach that the same process by which he pretended to have demolished the other arguments was just as applicable to this new one; that the ideas of freedom and responsibility might be as delusive when supposed to assure us of reality, as those of causation and design; that if the latter were mere forms of human thought, the former might be held to be so likewise with equal reason, and to be equally incapable of affording a warrant to belief in God Himself; and consequently, that the final religious result of his philosophy was, not that there is a God, but that there is an idea of God, which, although we cannot get rid of it, is full of contradictions, and wholly incapable of justification or verification. He saw all this as clearly as man could do, and it is marvellous that so many authors should have written as if he had not seen it; but certainly he might as well not have seen it, for all that he was able to do in the way of repelling the objection. His reply amounted merely to reaffirming that we are under the necessity of associating the idea of a Supreme Being with the moral law, and then qualifying the statement by the admission that we can know, however, nothing about that Being; that as soon as we try to know anything about Him we make a speculative, not a practical, use of reason, and fall back into the realm of sophistry and illusion from which the Critical Philosophy was designed to deliver us. In other words, what he tells us is, that the argument is good, but only on the conditions that it is not to be subjected to rational scrutiny, and that no attempt is to be made to determine what its conclusion signifies. It seems to me that, on these conditions, he might have found any argument good. Such conditions are inconsistent with the whole spirit and very existence of a critical philosophy. And it is not really God that Kant reaches by his argument: it is a mere moral ideal – a dead, empty, abstract assumption, which is regarded as practically useful, although rationally baseless – a necessary presupposition of moral action, but one which tells us nothing about the nature of its object. Fichte was only consistent when he refused to speak of that object as a Will or Person, and affirmed that God exists only as the Moral Order of the universe, and that we can neither know nor conceive of any other God. He was also, only following out the principles of his master when he represented that order as the creation of the individual mind, the form of the individual conscience, a mode of mental action.