CHAPTER II.
Of the Metaphysics which have been resorted to on the side
of Theism.
DR. CLARKE'S A PRIORI ARGUMENT ON THE BEING OF A
GOD.
1. ALL have heard of the famous a priori argument of Dr.
Clarke - an argument which Dr. Reid does homage to as the speculation of
superior minds; but whether it be as solid as it is sublime, he professes
himself wholly unable to determine.*
2. On this subject Dr. Thomas Brown
is greatly more confident. "I conceive," he tells us, "the abstract arguments
which have been adduced to show that it is impossible for matter to have
existed from eternity - by reasoning on what has been termed necessary
existence, and the incompatibility of this necessary existence with the
qualities of matter - to be relics of the mere verbal logic of the schools, as
little capable of producing conviction as any of the wildest and most absurd of
the technical scholastic reasonings, on the properties, or supposed properties,
of entity and non-entity."
3. But let us not dismiss an argument, which
so deeply infused what may be called the Theistical Literature of England for
the first half of the last century, without some examination.
* " These,"
says Dr. Reid, "are the speculations of men of superior genius - but whether
they be solid as they are sublime, or whether they be the wanderings of
imagination into a region beyond the limits of the human understanding, I am
unable to determine."
4. What then we hold to be the first questionable
assumption in the reasonings of Dr. Clarke, is that by which he appears to
confound a physical with either a logical or mathematical necessity. We feel no
difficulty in conceding to him the necessary existence of that which has
existed from eternity - and that the necessity for its existence resides in
itself and not in any thing apart from itself. That which has been created by
something else both came into being, and continues we may also admit to be, in
virtue of a power that is without it; and it is to this power exoteric to
itself that we have to look for the ground both of its first and its abiding
existence. But the thing which has existed for ever must also have some ground
on which it continues to be, rather than that it should not be, or go to
annihilation; and this ground on which at present it continues to be, must be
the same with the ground on which it continued to be at any past moment. But if
it never had a beginning this ground or principle of existence must have been
from everlasting - the present ground in fact, on which it continues to exist,
having abidden with it through the whole of its past eternity as the ground on
which it exists at all. But as we are not to look for this ground in the fiat
of another - it must be looked for in the necessity of its own nature - it
contains within itself the necessity for its own existence.
5. Now what
is the inference which Dr. Clarke has drawn from this necessity? The word is
applied to speculative truths as well as to substantive things. The truth of a
proposition is often necessarily involved in the terms of it, or in the
definition of these terms - just as the properties of a. circle lie surely
enveloped in the description of a circle. Nay a proposition may be so
constructed that the opposite thereof shall involve at first sight a logical
absurdity - so that this opposite cannot possibly be apprehended, or even
imagined by the mind. Its truth is necessarily bound up in the very terms of
it. It may be said to contain its own evidence within itself, or rather to
contain within itself the necessity of its being admitted among the existent
truths of Philosophy. The mind cannot, though it would, put it forth of its own
belief; or, in other words, put it forth of the place which it occupies within
the limits of necessary and universal, truth.
Now this test of a logical or
mathematical necessity in the existent truths of speculation, he would make
also the test of a physical necessity in the existent things of substantive and
actual Nature. He confounds we think a logical with an actual impossibility.
Insomuch that if the conception of the non-existence of any actual thing
involve in it no logical impossibility, then that thing is not necessarily
existent. He applies the same test to the things of which it is alleged that
they necessarily exist, as to the propositions of which it is alleged that they
are necessarily true. He holds that if things do necessarily exist, we cannot
conceive this thing not to be - just as when propositions have in them an
axiomatic certainty, we cannot conceive these things not to be true. And so on
the other hand if we can conceive any existent thing not to be, then that thing
exists but does not exist necessarily. It has not the ground of its existence
in itself - even as a necessary truth has its evidence or the ground of its
trueness in itself. And therefore the ground of its existence must be in
another beside itself. It must have had a beginning. - It must not have existed
from eternity.
6. It will be at once seen how when furnished with such
an instrument of demonstration as this, he could on the strength of a mere
logical category, go forth on the whole of this peopled universe and pronounce
of all its matter and of all mind but the one and universal mind that they have
been created. We can conceive them not to exist - and this without any of that
violence which is felt by the mind, when one is asked to receive as true that
which carries some logical or mathematical contradiction on the face of it.
"The only true idea," he says, "of a self-existent or necessarily existing
Being, is the idea of a Being the supposition of whose not existing is an
express contradiction." "But the material world," he afterwards says," cannot
possibly be such a being" - for "unless the material world exists necessarily,
by an absolute necessity in its own nature, so as that it must be an express
contradiction to suppose it not to exist; it cannot be independent and of
itself eternal."* This argument is reiterated in the following terms - "Tis
manifest the material world cannot exist necessarily, if without a
contradiction we can conceive it either not to be or to be in any respect
otherwise than it now is."
He proceeds all along on the assumption that
there is no necessity in the substantive existence of things, unless the denial
of that existence involves a logical contradiction in terms. Nay, if without
such contradiction we can imagine any variation in the modes or forms of matter
from those which obtain actually, this is enough with him to expel from matter
the property of self-existence. Ere we can award to matter this property, "it
must," he says, "be a contradiction in terms to suppose more or fewer stars,
more or fewer planets, or to suppose their size, figure, or motion, different
from what it now is, or to suppose more or fewer plants and animals upon the
earth, or the present ones of different shape and bigness from what they now
are."
* This and the other extracts from Clarke given within inverted
commas are quotations from his Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of
God.
At this rate, it will be observed, if we can imagine only five
planets and without any such contradiction as that three and four make five -
this of itself is proof that the actual state of the planetary system, or the
actual state of matter whereof this system is a part, is not a necessary state,
and so matter is not necessarily self-existent. In like manner the motion of
matter is held not to be necessary because it is no contradiction in terms to
suppose any matter to be at rest. Thus throughout, our powers or possibilities
of conception within, are with him the measures or grounds of inference as to
the realities of Being without. He denies the necessary existence of matter,
merely because we can conceive it not to exist; and the necessity of motion,
because we can conceive of other directions to it than those which obtain
actually; and a necessity for the actual order or number or figure of material
things, because without logical absurdity we can conceive of them variously.
The necessary trueness of eternal truths may be discovered thus, that in the
terms of that proposition which affirmed their non-trueness there would be
contradiction. And so he would have it that the necessary existence of eternal
things may be discovered thus, that in the terms of that proposition which
affirmed their non-existence there would be the like contradiction. And
therefore when the opposite of any existent thing can be imagined without such
contradiction, it exists not necessarily - nor is it of itself eternal. The
logical is made to be identical with, or made to be the test and the measure
of, the actual or the physical necessity. The one is confounded with the other;
and this we hold to be the first fallacy of the a priori argument.
7.
On the strength of this fallacy, the puny mind of man hath usurped for itself
an intellectual empire over the high things of immensity and eternity -
subjugating the laws of nature throughout all her wide amplitudes to the laws
of human thought - and finding, as it were, within the little cell of its own
cogitations the means of an achievement so marvellous, as that of pronouncing
alike on all the objects of infinite space, and on all the events of infinite
duration. Because I can imagine Jupiter to be a sphere instead of a spheroid;
and no logical absurdity stands in the way of such imagination - therefore
Jupiter must have been created, because he has only four satellites, whilst I
can figure him to have ten; and there is not the same arithmetical falsity in
this supposition, as in that three and one make up ten - therefore all the
satellites must have had a beginning. Because I can picture of matter that it
might have been variously disposed, that its motions and its magnitudes and its
forms may have been different from what they are, and that space might have
been more or less filled by it - because there is not in short a universal
plenum all whose parts are immoveably at rest - in this Dr. Clarke beholds a
sufficient ground for the historical fact that a time was when matter was not,
or at least that to the power of another beside itself, it owes its place and
its substantive Being in our universe. We must acknowledge ourselves to be not
impressed by such reasoning. For aught I know or can be made by the light of
nature to believe - matter may, in spite of those its dispositions which he
calls arbitrary, have the necessity within itself of its own existence - and
yet that be neither a logical nor a mathematical necessity. It may be a
physical necessity - the ground of which I understand not, because placed
transcendentally above my perceptions and my powers - or lying immeasureably
beyond the range of my contracted and ephemeral observation.
8. But we
have only touched on what may be called the negative part of the a priori
argument - that by which matter is divested of self-existence. Thence, on the
stepping-stone of actual matter, existent though not self-existent, might we
pass by inference to a superior and antecedent Being from whom it hath sprung.
But this were descending to the a posteriori argument - whereas the high
pretension is, that in the light of that same principle which enables the mind
to discard from all matter the property of self-existence, may it without the
intervention of any derived or created thing lay immediate hold on the truth of
a self-existent God. This forms what we might call the positive part of the a
priori argument. The truth is, if matter be not self-existent, because the
supposition of its non-existence involves in it no felt and resistlessly felt
contradiction; then the supposition of the non-existence of that which really
is a self-existent Being must involve in it such a contradiction.
"This
necessity must," to use the language of Dr. Clarke, "force itself upon us
whether we will or no, even when we are endeavouring to suppose that no such
Being exists." This is the same principle on which we have animadverted
already; but there appears, we think, to be a second and a distinct fallacy
involved in the application of it. What is that in the whole compass of
thought, whose existence must force itself upon the mind - and whose
non-existence involves that contradiction which the mind with all its efforts
cannot possibly admit into its belief. The answer is space and time. We can
imagine matter to be swept away and the space which it occupies to be left
behind. But we cannot imagine this space to be swept away. We cannot suppose
either immensity or eternity to be removed out of the universe, any more than
we can remove the relation of equality between twice two and four. "To
suppose," he adds, "immensity removed out of the universe or not necessarily
eternal, is an express contradiction." "To suppose any part of space removed,
is to suppose it removed from and out of itself; and to suppose the whole to be
taken away, is supposing it to be taken away from itself - that is to be taken
away while it still remains which is a contradiction in terms."The language of
Sir Isaac Newton to the same effect is - "Moveantur partes Spatii de locis
suis, et movebuntur (ut ita dicam) de seipsis." Here then is a something,
if you choose thus to designate either of the elements of space or time - here
is a something which fulfils what is affirmed to be the essential condition of
necessary existence. Its non-existence involves a contradiction which the mind
cannot possibly receive; and its existence is forced upon the mind by a
necessity as strong as either any logical or any mathematical.
9. Now it
is at the transition which the argument makes from the necessary existence of
space and time to the necessary existence of God that we apprehend the second
fallacy to lie. Eternity and immensity, it is allowed, are not substances -
they are only attributes, and, incapable as they are of existing by themselves,
they necessarily suppose a substantive Being in which they are inherent. "For
modes and attributes," says Dr. Clarke, "exist only by the existence of the
substance to which they belong." The denial then of such a Being is held to be
tantamount to the denial both of infinite space and of everlasting successive
duration - and so such denial involves contradiction in it. It is with him a
contradiction in terms to assert no immensity and no eternity; and to suppose
that there is no Being in the universe to which these attributes or modes of
existence are necessarily inherent is also a contradiction in terms. Now, it is
here we think that the non-sequitur lies. We do not perceive how boundless
space and boundless duration imply either a material or an immaterial
substratum in which these may reside as but the modes or qualities. We can
conceive unlimited space, empty and empty for ever, of all substances whether
material or immaterial - and we see neither logical nor mathematical
impossibility in the way of such a conception.
We do not feel with Dr.
Clarke that the notion of immense space as if it were absolutely nothing is an
express contradiction. Nor do we feel aught to convince in the scholastic
plausibility of such sentences as the following: "For nothing is that which has
no properties or modes whatever. That is to say, it is that of which nothing
can truly be affirmed, and of which every thing can truly be denied, which is
not the case of immensity or space." In spite of this we can imagine no eternal
and infinite Being in the universe - we can imagine an infinite nothing; nor do
feel that in so doing, we imagine eternity and immensity removed out of the
universe while they at the same time still continue there. There is nothing it
appears to us in this scholastic jingle about modes and substances that leads
by any firm or solid pathway to the stupendous conclusion of a God. Both Space
and Time can be conceived without a substance of which they are but the
attributes - nor is it at all clear that these modes imply a substantive Being
to which they belong.*
Now the main stay of the a priori argument is that
Eternity and Immensity are modes - and as we cannot rid ourselves of the
conception of a stable existence in the modes, so neither therefore can we rid
ourselves of the conception of an existent substance to which these modes
belong. We repeat that we have no faith in the product of such excogitation as
this - and should as little think of building upon it a system of Theism, as we
should of subordinating the realities of History or Nature to the mere
technology of Schoolmen.
10. However interesting, then, the modesty of
Dr. Reid on the subject of the a priori argument, yet we cannot but regard the
deliverance of the younger Metaphysician Thomas Brown as greatly the sounder of
the two - although in it, perhaps, there is a certain air of confident
temerity, especially as he only pronounces on the defects of the argument
without expounding them. And if any futile or inconclusive argument have been
devised for the support of religion, it is a real service to discard it from
the controversy altogether. It is detaching an element of weakness from the
cause. A doctrine stands all the more firm when placed on a compact and
homogeneous basis - instead of resting on a pedestal which like the feet of
Nebuchadnezzar's image is partly of clay and partly of iron.
Let us be
assured that a weak or a wrong reason is not only not an accession but is a
positive mischief to the interests of truth - a mischief indeed which Dr. Brown
has well adverted to in the following sentences: "Still more superfluous must
be all those reasonings with respect to the existence of the Deity, from the
nature of certain conceptions of our mind, independent of the phenomena of
design, which are commonly termed reasonings a priori, reasonings, that if
strictly analyzed, are found to proceed on some assumption of the very truth
for which they contend, and that, instead of throwing additional light on the
argument for a Creator of the universe, have served only to throw on it a sort
of darkness, by leading us to conceive that there must be some obscurity in
truths, which could give an occasion to reasonings so obscure. God and the
world which he has formed - these are our great objects. Every thing which we
strive to place between these is nothing. We see the universe, and, seeing it,
we believe in its Maker. It is the universe, therefore, which is our argument,
and our only argument ; and as it is powerful to convince us, God is, or is
not, an object of our belief."
And again - " The arguments commonly termed
metaphysical, on this subject, I have always regarded, as absolutely void of
force, unless in so far as they proceed on a tacit assumption of the physical
argument, and, indeed, it seems to me no small corroborative proof of the force
of this physical argument, that its remaining impression on our mind has been
sufficient to save us from any doubt, as to that existence, which the obscure
and laborious reasonings, a priori, in support of it, would have led us to
doubt, rather than to believe."
11. We shall not go over the whole
unsatisfactory metaphysics of that period - and whereof Dr. Clarke is far the
ablest advocate and expounder. For the sake of our intellectual discipline, it
is well, however, to familiarize ourselves with his celebrated demonstration,
which though in effect vitiated by the one or two assumptions that we have
specified, is nevertheless an admirable specimen of close and consecutive
reasoning. It is not to be marvelled at, that possessed of such dialectic
powers, he should have tinged with his own spirit almost all the authorship of
natural theology at that period - till at length, in the impotent hands of his
followers and imitators, it wrought itself out of all credit when unaccompanied
by those redeeming qualities which buoyed up the performance of this great
master, and has perpetuated its character as a standard and classical work,
even to the present day.
The whole of the Boyle lectureship, for example,
was for many years deeply infused by it. Bentley, so able in other departments,
presents us in his sermons on the subject, with what we should call, a perfect
caricature of this a priori extravagance. It even deforms, at times, the pages
of Foster, who is the most eloquent, and perhaps the best writer of that age on
natural religion. As to Abernethy, we hold his book, in spite of the high
character which was affixed to it some half century ago, as so utterly meagre
and insipid, that one cannot without the slackening of all his mental energies,
accomplish the continuous perusal of it - and therefore it really matters not
what quarter he gives, in his pages of cold and feeble rationality, to the a
priori argument. It is of more consequence to be told that it is an argument
patronised by Wollaston, who, in his "Religion of Nature Delineated," imitates
Clarke in making our ignorance of the Quomodo the foundation of a positive
argument. "If matter," he says, "be self-existent, I do not see how it comes to
be restrained to a place of certain capacity - how it comes to be limited in
other respects - or why it should not exist in a manner that is in all respects
perfect." And just because he sees not how - therefore matter must derive its
existence from some other being who causes it to be just what it is. Because we
do not see the reason why matter should have been placed here and not there in
immensity - because we cannot tell the specific cause of its various forms, and
modifications, and movements - because of our inability to explore the hidden
recesses of the past - and so to find out the necessary ground, if ought there
is, for the being and the properties of every planet and of every particle -
are we therefore to infer, that there is no such ground, and for no better
reason than that just by us it is undiscoverable? The reasoning of Wollaston
comes to this - Because we do not see how matter came to be restrained to a
particular place - therefore, it must not have been so restrained by an eternal
necessity.
Our own inference would have been diametrically the opposite
of this. Because we see not how, we should say not how. It is a strange
argument to found, as Clarke and Wollaston have done, on the impotence and
incapacity of the human mind, that its very ignorance should authorize it to
sport such positive and peremptory dogmata as have been advanced by them on the
high mysteries of primeval being and primeval causation.
12. Dr.
Clarke's style of reasoning upon this subject, has now fallen into utter
disesteem and desuetude. He himself disclaims the old scholastic methods of
argumentation, while there is much of his own that now ranks with the
impracticable subtleties of the middle ages. He deals in the categories of a
higher region than that which is at all familiar to human experience - and we
fear that when he attempts to demonstrate the non-eternity of. matter, and that
to spirit alone belong the attributes of primeval necessity and self-existence,
he leaves behind him that world of sense and observation within which alone the
human mind is yet able to expatiate. After the modest declaration of Dr. Reid,
it may be presumptuous in us to pass upon this argument a summary and confident
rejection. But we may at least confess the total want of any impression which
it has made upon our understanding - and that with all our partialities for the
argumentum a posteriori, we hold it with Paley greatly more judicious, instead
of groping for the evidence of a Divinity among the transcendental generalities
of time, and space, and matter, and spirit, and the grounds of a necessary and
eternal existence for the one, while nought but modifications and contingency
can be observed of the other - we hold it more judicious simply to open our
eyes on the actual and peopled world around us - or to explore the wondrous
economy of our own spirits, and try if we can read, as in a book of palpable
and illuminated characters, the traces or the forth-goings of a creative mind
anterior to, or at least distinct from matter, and which both arranged it in
its present order and continues to overrule its processes.
13.
Nevertheless, let us again recommend the perusal of Clarke's Demonstration. One
feels himself as if placed by it on the border of certain transcendental
conceptions, the species of an ideal world, which men of another conformation
may fancy, and perhaps even see to be realities. And certain it is, that the
very existence of such high thoughts in the mind of man may be regarded as the
presentiment or promise of a high destination. So that however unable to follow
out the reasonings of Clarke or Newton, when they convert our ideas of infinity
and eternity into the elements of such a demonstration as they have bequeathed
to the world - nothing, we apprehend, can be more just or beautiful than the
following sentences of Dugald Stewart, when he views these ideas as the
earnests of our-coming immortality:
"Important use may also be made of
these conceptions of immensity and eternity, in stating the argument for the
future existence of the soul. For why was the mind of man rendered capable of
extending his views in point of time, beyond the limit of human transactions;
and, in point of space, beyond the limits of the visible universe - if all our
prospects are to terminate here; or why was the glimpse of so magnificent a
scene disclosed to a being, the period of whose animal existence bears so small
a proportion to the vastness of his desires ? Surely this conception of the
necessary existence of space and time, of immensity and eternity, was not
forced continually upon the thoughts of man for no purpose whatever? To what
purpose can we suppose it to be subservient, but to remind those who make a
proper use of their reason of the trifling value of some of those objects we at
present pursue, when compared with the scenes on which we may afterwards enter;
and to animate us in the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, by affording us the
prospect of an indefinite progression ?"
14. Before leaving this
subject, we would remark on what may be called a certain subordinate
application of the a priori argument - not for the demonstration of the being,
but for the demonstration of the attributes of God. Dr. Clarke himself admits
the impossibility of proving the divine intelligence in this way - though, with
this exception, he attempts an a priori proof for the other natural attributes
of the Godhead - and the argument certainly becomes more lucid and convincing
as he carries it forward from these to the other attributes. The goodness, the
truth, the justice of the Divinity, for example, may not only be inferred by an
ascending process of discovery from the works and the ways of God - but they
are also inferred by a process of derivation from the power, and the unity, and
the wisdom. From the amplitude of His natural, they infer the equal amplitude
of His moral characteristics, - judging Him superior to falsehood, because He
is exempted from the temptations to weakness; and to malignity because exempted
from the temptations to rivalship; and to caprice because in the perfection of
his wisdom there is the full guarantee for his doing always what is best. We
give these merely as specimens of a style of reasoning which we shall not stop
to appreciate - and instead of attempting any further to excogitate a Deity in
this way; let us now search if there be any reflection of Him from the mirror
of that universe which he has formed. It may be a lowlier - but we deem it a
safer enterprise - instead of groping our way among the incomprehensibles of
the a priori region, to keep by the certainties which are spread out before us
on the region of sense and observation - to look at the actual economy of
things, and thence gather as we may, such traces of a handiwork as might
announce a designer's hand - to travel up and down on that living scene which
can be traversed by human footsteps, and gazed at with human eyes - and search
for the impress, if any there be, of the intelligent power that either called
it into being, or that arranged the materials which compose it.
15. But
our examination of the a priori reasoning will not be thrown away - if it guide
our attempts to separate the weak from the strong parts of the Theistical
argument. More especially it should help us to discriminate between the
inference that is grounded on the true existence of matter, the inference that
is grounded on the orderly arrangements of matter. The argument for the .being
of a God drawn from the former consideration, tinged as it is throughout with
the a priori spirit we hold to be altogether mystical and meaningless -
insomuch that for the doctrine of an original creation of matter we hold it
essential that the light of revelation should be super-added to the dull and
glimmering light, or rather perhaps to the impenetrable darkness of nature. We
agree with Dr. Brown in thinking "that matter as an unformed mass, existing
without relation of parts, would not of itself have suggested the notion of a
Creator - since in every hypothesis something material or mental must have
existed uncaused, and since existence, therefore, is not necessarily a mark of
previous causation, unless we take for granted an infinite series of causes."
In the mere existence of an unshapen or unorganized mass, we see nothing
that indicates its non-eternity or its derivation from an antecedent mind -
while on the other hand, even though nature should incline us to the thought
that the matter of this earth and these heavens was from everlasting, there
might be enough in the goodly distribution of its parts to warrant the
conclusion that Mind has been at work with this primeval matter, and at least
fetched from it materials for the structure of many a wise and beneficent
mechanism. It is well that Revelation has resolved for us the else
impracticable mystery, and given us distinctly to understand, that to the fiat
of a great Eternal spirit, matter stands indebted as well for its existence and
its laws, as for its numerous collocations of use and of convenience. We hold
that without a Revealed Theology we should not have known of the creation of
matter out of nothing, but that by dint of a Natural Theology alone we might
have inferred a God from the useful disposition of its parts. It is good to
know what be the strong positions of an argument and to keep by them - taking
up our intrenchments there - and willing to relinquish all that is untenable.
It is not the way to advance but really to discredit the cause of Natural
Theology, when set forward by its injudicious defenders to an enterprise above
its strength. Nothing satisfactory can be made of those obscure and scholastic
generalities by which matter is argued to be incongruous with Eternity; and
that therefore, itself originated from nothing, it must have a creative mind
for the antecedent not of its harmonies and adaptations alone but of its
substantive Being. We should like a firmer stepping-stone than this by which to
arrive at the conclusion of a God. For this purpose we would dis-sever the
argument founded on the phenomenon of the mere existence of matter, from the
argument founded on the phenomenon of the relations between its parts. The one
impresses the understanding just as differently from the other, as a stone of
random form lying upon the ground impresses the observer differently from a
watch. The mere existence of matter, in itself, indicates nothing. They are its
forms and its combinations and its organic structures which alone speak to us
of a Divinity - just as it is not the clay but the shape into which it has been
moulded that announces the impress of a Designer's hand.
The metaphysical
argument which we should like to discard from this controversy wants altogether
to our mind the character of obviousness. We can afford to give it up. It is
truly a dead weight upon the cause. It is like seeking for the indications of
an artist's hand in the rude and raw material upon which he operates - when we
might behold them at once in the finished work of those exquisite fabrications
which hold forth irresistibly the marks of contrivance and so of a
contriver.
16. In combating an argument for a doctrine, we are not
therefore combating the doctrine itself. Dr. Clarke has failed, we hink in his
attempt to demonstrate the non-eternity of matter - but it follows not that
because we have attempted to expose this failure, we advocate the eternity of
matter. It is well that our belief in the truths of religion does not stand or
fall with the success or the failure of any human expounder. We happen to think
that on the abstract question of the creation of matter out of nothing, there
is a want of clear and decisive manifestation by the light of nature; and that
for the establishment of what we hold to be the right and orthodox position
upon this question,there is an incompetency not in the a priori argument alone,
but in every argument which the unaided reason of man can devise. We wonder not
for example, that Aristotle, unblest and unvisited as he was by any
communication from Heaven, admitted both an eternal matter and an eternal mind
into his creed - for in truth the brightest and most convincing evidences for
the one might for aught we know, consist with the aboriginal and everlasting
occupancy of the other in our universe.
These evidences as we shall
afterwards see, are grounded not on the existence of matter, but on the order
and disposition of its parts - and point to the conclusion, not that there must
have been an intelligent spirit that willed the matter into being, -but that
there must have been an intelligent spirit who willed it into all those
beauteous and beneficial arrangements which we every where behold. It is
revelation alone we apprehend which has completely fixed and ascertained the
proposition, that God not only fashioned our universe into its present
mechanism and form; but that he also created the materials from which it is
composed. He not only moulded the clay; but he made it, and made it out of
nothing. Nature perhaps cannot pronounce decisively on the making; but of the
exquisite moulding, of the goodly dispositions and structures that bespeak
contrivance and a contriver, it taketh ample cognizance - so that it cannot
look with intelligence to any department of observation or of science without a
powerful impression that the hand of a divinity has been there.
Go To Chapter Four - MR. HUME'S OBJECTION.
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