WITHOUT THE REQUISITE KNOWLEDGE.

51

of the human mind, independently of all experience; and by approaching Mathematics on this side, that is, by considering the fundamental principles of Mathematics in their logical form, not only are the mental faculties enlarged and expanded, but the want of an intimate knowledge of its details is, in no slight degree, supplied to the student of the general economy of nature. To present the various departments of Mathematics in what may be termed their metaphysical form, should be an object with all those concerned in devising the means of placing an enlarged education within the reach of the public. It is not to be wished that men engaged in active pursuits should immerse themselves in the deep cultivation of modern mathematics. Geometry, in the prosecution of which every step is made clear to the mind, cannot but serve to expand the faculties; but the higher departments of Mathematics render the operator too much of a machine, and, unless when the mind is happily constituted, are very apt to spoil the faculties for use in the ordinary concerns of life. Opinions and Principles. At the commencement of an undertaking which involves so wide a range of discussion, it is incumbent upon us to make a profession of the rule by which we are to be governed on all those occasions when, in the capacity of instructors, we have to enter upon certain momentous questions that cannot be better indicated than as falling under the heads of OPINIONS and

PRINCIPLES.

Our paramount rule will be the love of truth. We repudiate the materialism which at present contaminates so much of our popular literature on subjects of science. We shall endeavour to show how groundless-how unphilosophical-are such views of the economy of the universe. We shall take pains, as often as an opportunity occurs, to make it clear to our readers that the faculties of the human mind are qualified to discover something greater than mere law in the economy of nature. We do not fear to promise that the proof of the operation and superintendence of an INFINITE AND PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE will be as completely exhibited as that of the existence of any of the laws of nature which man has discovered.

We shall, on all proper occasions, combat the erroneous notion, now so generally inculcated, that the discovery of a law includes all that the human mind can derive from the contemplation of nature. We know how plausible this notion may be made to appear; and how fascinating it is to think that all the complex operations of nature can be reduced within the limits of a few general laws. But we know also how many are deceived into the belief that such an explanation of the phenomena is satisfactory to the human mind, as including all which, by its constitution, it desires in the search into

52

OUR OPINIONS AND PRINCIPLES.

nature.

But do the popular writers who have adopted these views tell their disciples that this specious system of law is designed to supersede all idea of cause-all idea of efficiency-all idea of power -all idea of an overruling Intelligence? It will be easy to show that such is the case, notwithstanding that some may protest that, while they insist upon the universality of law, they never fail to profess their belief in an Omnipotent Creator. We admit that it is so; but we say that it requires but small penetration to see that their logic leaves no room for that GOD in whom their lips alone profess a belief.

Further, we affirm, and challenge contradiction, that the great apostle of such views, from whose works the ideas and reasonings of these writers are chiefly drawn, makes no such limitation in his doctrines; but, on the contrary, he explicitly declares that the age of theology in human science is gone by-meaning, by that expression, that the doctrine of universal law has superseded the idea of a Creator.

We know that some persons cherish the notion that the light of nature cannot carry men to the knowledge of God. We will not, however, enter into debate on this point at present; we will only remind those to whom our argument may suggest this sentiment, that what we are contending against is altogether different-namely, the proposition latent in many popular treatises, that human science is positively adverse to the belief in a SUPREME INTELLIGENCE.

It would not surprise us if many of those who have become fascinated with the apparent simplicity of that philosophy which insists upon the universality of law, should persuade themselves that we are misrepresenting their favourite system. They have not discovered that the system involves the denial of an intelligent and infinite FIRST CAUSE. We have already reminded them that the great modern apostle of the doctrines to which they listen with so much satisfaction expressly says, however seldom the impious words may have been allowed to reach their ears, that philosophy finds no place for God in nature. This philosopher is a most dangerous logician. It is not in his reasoning that flaws are discoverable; it is in his first principles, and these first principles are exactly those which they have been seduced to think favourably of. Let them not forget that a rigid logic brings out falsehood as certainly as truth, if the principles be false. Among these first principles, all the victims of this system of universal law, we have no doubt, are well familiarized with that which enunciates that, between any two events in nature reputed to stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect, there is no link discoverable except invariable sequence; or that nothing more can be known of their connection, except that the one is uniformly the antecedent of the other -- the second the uniform consequent of

OUR OPINIONS AND PRINCIPLES.

53

the first. It follows from this proposition, when stated as above, without any qualification, that the term "cause" is superfluous in reference to the changes which take place in the economy of nature. Authors who have adopted such views, still employ the term cause; but when we examine the use they make of that term, we find it to be exactly synonymous with law. For example, if the question be asked what is the cause of the curvilinear path of the planets, and the answer is, that the attraction of the sun draws them from the straight line, the cause here assigned is manifestly nothing more than

FIG. 21.

a reference to the law of gravi tation. The question would have been answered in exactly equivalent terms, if it had been said, by the law of gravitation, two bodies moving otherwise than in the same straight line deflect each other into a curvilinear orbit; and if the one be much inferior to the other in magnitude, the less will circulate around the greater. If, then, there be no case, in the whole of nature, in which, when a change takes place, anything more can be discovered than that an invariable antecedent has been succeeded by an invariable consequent, there is no case in which the term cause is applicable in any other sense than as expressive of the law under which the change in question falls, if such a law has been discovered. And if no law including the change has been discovered, then no cause can be assigned beyond the affirmation that such and such a phenomenon has been invariably observed to succeed another phenomenon; that is to say, as a particular instance of an undiscovered law. If, then, man can discover nothing but law in nature, there is no separate sense for the term cause; and if there is no room for the term cause, then there is no known instance of the evercise of power. And if man be incapable of discovering the exercise of power in the universe, then he is incapable of discovering the hand of GOD; for what is GOD in nature but INFINITE, INTELLIGENT POWER? Such is the logical conclusion from the unqualified statement that nothing is discoverable by man, in the investigation of the operations of nature, but a mere sequence of phenomena.

But to this proposition we maintain that an important addition is indispensable. Man cannot, indeed, discover anything but invariable sequence in the phenomena of nature; but he never sees two phenomena thus succeed each other in invariable sequence, without an involuntary acknowledgment than an exercise of power has taken

OUR OPINIONS AND PRINCIPLES.

54 place. This is the addition required to the doctrine of law in physical science; and this feeling of the excrcise of power, as often as a change is seen to take place in the universe, is easily proved to be the light of nature, at every moment suggesting to men's minds the presence of Omnipotence.

This point admits of easy illustration. That our earth was once destitute of every living thing, plant, or animal on its surface, admits of the clearest evidence. At a period, how distant from our time is immaterial, the earth became stocked with plants and animals. Here, then, are two states of our planet to be compared together in reference to the signal change implied in the proposition.

We clearly understand that the crust of the earth may at one time have been in a liquid state, owing to the high temperature then prevailing at the surface. Hence all the existing water, and all the volatile chemical compounds, such as the carbonic acid, now so abundantly known in combination with lime, magnesia, and other earths and metallic oxides, would, at that time, form a part of the atmosphere. But by the simple familiar process of cooling, that crust, in the course of ages, would become solidified; the water, along with the less volatile bodies, would descend to the surface, and, dissolving the soluble substances with which it came in contact, would create in them new arrangements, from which the present character of many parts of the crust of the earth would be derived. In such changes nothing is apparent but the activity of laws and properties known to belong at this moment to the Mineral Kingdom.

But although it be now known, from the evidence of chemical analysis, that all the members of the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms are entirely composed of materials to be met with in the crust of the earth, never has any one property of mineral matter come to light, from which it could be justly conjectured that there is any natural tendency, in the mineral substances composing organic bodies, to pass from the mineral state into any forms of organization, however simple. Here observation is completely at fault. No fact exists to form the very embryo of an induction. The doctrine of equivocal generation held its ground, only while uninvestigated; and the alleged results of the experiments of Mr. Crosse, which, if correct, would have been so easily authenticated, are believed by nobody but the credulous and partially instructed. To say that we are entitled to assume that the germs of the organic bodies exist in the minerals of the earth, is to revert to the philosophy of the ancients to throw aside the precepts of Bacon-to forget that induction consists in first discovering facts, and then principles. If it be

OUR OPINIONS AND PRINCIPLES.

55

said that this is merely an hypothesis brought forward to stimulate inquiry, we simply reply that an hypothesis which has not the shadow of a fact in its favour is no better than an idle dream.

We maintain, then, that the contemplation of the transition of the earth, from a state destitute of living things to one teeming with life, forces upon the human mind, by its very constitution, the conviction that in that vast change, so irreconcileable with the ordinary properties of the mineral matter out of which the organic world has arisen, there has been an exercise of POWER—that is, of a PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE-commensurate with the wonders of the work which has been accomplished.

The philosophy, then, to which we shall uniformly conform throughout our undertaking is easily understood. We set out with the belief that there are other truths within man's reach besides those determined by observation. There are, in the first place, certain necessary truths, which, independently of all observation and experience, man, by the very constituent of his nature, must believe. Of these some are intuitive, and others established by reasoning back to the intuitive truths. The conviction in each individual of his personal identity, and of the reality of all acts of consciousness, are intuitive necessary truths—also such propositions as that, when equals are taken from equals, equals remain; that things which are equal to the same are equal to one another; that things which are doubles or halves of the same, are equal to one another; that twice four are eight; and that when two are taken from four two remain. All Mathematical demonstrations are necessary truths, not intuitive, but resting upon intuitive necessary truths, being established by reasoning back to such truths; for example, that the angle in a semicircle is a right angle, and that two tangents to a circle drawn in opposite directions from the same point are equal.

There are also intuitive truths which are not necessary truths, that is, intuitive truths, the opposite of which, or a greater or less deviation from which, does not involve a contradiction. The intuitive truths which are not necessary truths, are such convictions as the belief in an external world, and in the free agency of self; the feeling that every event has a cause; and that there is an exercise of power whenever a natural event takes place. There are also truths obtained by reasoning back to those intuitive truths. For example, by reasoning back to the two truths that every event has a cause, and that an exercise of power is felt to have occurred whenever a natural event takes place, we obtain the conclusion, as soon as we can combine with these the observation of the infinite extent of the universe, that there is an INFINITE OMNIPOTENT CAUSE.