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let them, as Locke says, "enjoy the benefit" of their own perspicacity. I am sure that the very obscurest intimations, the merest inklings of the Infinite which our consciousness may give us, are well worth attending to; but seeing that so many doubt whether there are any articulate utterances conveyed by such whispers of our consciousness; many more, who believe they are but vague presumptions,―auxiliary to other proofs, but proving little apart from them; and many more to whom any arguments derived from such sources are incomprehensible;-seeing, on the other hand, that the argument from "Design" is that which most strikes and has ever most struck mankind; and lastly, that if it be admitted up to the full extent of the inferences which such a universe as this affords, our relations to the Creator are the same, whether He or His work can be proved by us to be infinite, or not, I confess I have not patience to hear the fantastical depreciations of this class of proofs, in which some Theists indulge; merely because they think they can get to the same truth by a darker and more intricate passage ! Sure I am that their declamation, equally pompous and obscure, on this point, tends to nothing but to confirm Atheists in their absurdity.

In concluion, my dear youth, I would recommend you to warn W. F. that if he ever meet with any being who has the millionth of a billionth of the power and wisdom which (supposing the argument from design valid) the Creator and Governor of this universe must be endowed with, he will do well not to stand disputing with him as to the extent and limits of his prerogatives. That Being may not have the patience to listen to his metaphysical impertinence, which, happily for him, his Gracious Maker has! The philosopher was wise who would not dispute with the master of thirty legions; your friend will be still wiser not to dispute with Him, who, however "limited," is the master of so many worlds.

Believe me,

Ever yours faithfully,
R. E. H. G.

LETTER CXI.

To the Same.

1852.

My dear Tom,

I have but little time to-day, to reply to your three queries;

but a few words will suffice.

Your remarks on the defects of Paley's Ethical Theory, (which, I was glad to see, never imposed upon you,) are perfectly just. The greatest objection of all, however, you do not touch; I mean, that the utilitarian hypothesis can by no means account for the peculiar conceptions and terms, universal as thought and language, which imply the ideas of duty-the "ought " and the "ought not." Let an action be ever so generally, ever so universally useful, it could never carry us beyond the notion of the prudent, and the conception of duty would still have to be accounted for. It is perfectly and uniformly prudent for us not to receive base coin, just as it is perfectly and uniformly prudent not to pay our debts in it; but we should think that a man deserved to be hanged, who applied only the term "prudent" to both. It is prudent, indeed, to guard against being cheated, and not to cheat; but no sophistry can make us feel that prudence is all that is involved in both cases; yet if the utilitarian theory be true, ought we not so to reason? It is always prudent to eat when we are hungry, and also always prudent not to put our hands into our neighbour's pockets; but the moral distinction between these two perfectly prudent things is palpable enough, and no ingenuity can obliterate it; yet if Paley's theory be true, I see not how we can get beyond the idea of prudence in either case, or how the peculiar and superinduced idea of duty could ever originate.

Nothing in my judgment will account for it, except the supposition that we are endowed with a "moral sense," or with what is equivalent to it; that is, either with a single faculty, the province and prerogative of which is to generate the peculiar class of

ideas signified by obligation and duty; or else a combination of powers, the action and interaction of which, in the course of our development, as infallibly leads to these notions, as if we had a separate faculty. In the one case, conscience would be a distinct endowment—in the other, a resultant of many forces; but in either case leading to the formation of those peculiar moral conceptions for the existence of which we wish to account, and for which Paley's theory does not account.

And here I would remark that the theory of "conscience," whether it be simple or complex, is not inconsistent with those varieties of moral judgment in men which, you observe, form so plausible an objection to this theory; for it is not inconsistent with our experience that the most undoubted faculties of our nature may exhibit wide deviations from their normal conditions,

great irregularities and varieties of action in different individuals of the race; and these, within the limits observed, may be accounted for by custom, association, mal-instruction. But generic conceptions cannot be accounted for, without the distinct faculties adapted to form them, whether the conceptions themselves be right or wrong. Thus the eye may see well or ill, clearly or dimly; but to see at all,-to have the conceptions of light and colour,-implies the distinct faculty of vision. Similarly while, on the theory of a moral sense, or something equivalent to it, we can account for its divarications from a normal state, we cannot, by Paley's theory, account for the very origination of the. fundamental conceptions of right and wrong. It can never carry us beyond the idea of prudent or imprudent. Hence, phenomena of human nature, as indisputable and universal as any other, seem to me, on that theory, still to require a solution.

As to your second query, how far our modern Atheists are justified in pleading Bacon's occasional invectives against inferences from "final causes," as fortifying their doubts of the validity of the "Argument from Design," I answer, that if they would only read Bacon with candour, they would feel that they were not justified at all. Nothing can be plainer than that he did not mean to affirm, universally, that "arguments from final causes"

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must be sophistical; but merely that as they often were so, and philosophers had been, in every age, but too apt to prejudge the results of an enlarged induction by their narrow à priori conceptions of the purpose of this or that, it well became men of science to be perpetually on their guard against such a source of fallacy. But he who said that "he would sooner believe all the fables of the Talmud than that this universal frame was without a mind " could not be the idiot which some of our modern Atheists would make him; nor intend to imply that inferences from "final causes are universally precarious. They are so very often, no doubt; and this, in laying down the very canons of all philosophising, was quite sufficient reason for Bacon's jealousy and caution. If a lioness were to say to a lion, "My dear, what can be the reason that those curious bipeds without hair or feathers, which we find such peculiarly delicate eating, whenever we can get hold of them, come into the world without the rougher integuments which our prey in general exhibit !"- the lion might perhaps reply, "It is nothing, love, but a kindly provision of Providence ; man is a delicacy specially provided for us nobler creatures; our mouths are not filled with bristles or feathers in eating him. This was the 'final cause' why these two-legged creatures have such smooth skins.". This, it is true, would only prove that the lion was a bad philosopher; though it is much after the same wise manner that many philosophers have argued from "final causes." But nevertheless, it does not follow that he would be an equally foolish philosopher who argued that if the "final cause" of the telescope is to perform a certain purpose, the eye, with its infinitely more subtle and accurate adaptations to the same purpose, had a similar "final cause." In others words, the argument from "final causes" may, like most things in the world, be used well or ill; and it is against its frequent ill use that Bacon would guard us.

As to your third query. You ask how it is that while it must be admitted as a fact that men almost universally concur in the belief of a God, and that, if Induction can be trusted at all, they always will, there should yet be such differences as to the most cogent modes of proving this most cardinal of all truths? and

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whether there ought to be such various estimates formed of the validity of the different lines of Theistic argument, since those who squabble with each other as to the logic of this or that argument, yet agree in the conclusion?—I answer, that it is in exact analogy with the condition of human nature in general, and there is no more matter of surprise here than anywhere else. All the facts which determine human belief and conduct, are less disputable than the theories of them. Nearly everybody believes in a material world; but what endless disputes arise the moment we take the question into the field of metaphysics! Almost everybody believes in the great facts of ethics; yet perhaps you will hardly find five hundred who perfectly agree in any one of the many theories of them. Man is called, and justly, by Aristotle, "a political animal," wor ToλTikov, but you would be troubled, I fancy, to prove by any one line of argument, or any one class of phenomena, the truth of the assertion; certainly you would be troubled to prove that he had some one political faculty which led him to construct social and political organisations. You would rather dwell upon a variety of phenomena in his nature, (some of which might appear more important to this man, and others to that,) as justifying the conclusion; you would say that his uniform "political" tendency was the resultant of a great number of forces, the separate directions and magnitudes of which it might be difficult to calculate. Meantime, this fact of man's constitution remains the same, and nobody disputes or doubts it. It is, I fancy, much the same with the Theistic argument; the fact of man's general concurrence in the belief of Deity is unshaken; and, if we may trust induction at all, ever will be so. God has so constituted human nature, that the general result of the development and interaction of all his powers and faculties is to bear witness to Him; though the elements which constitute that result may be too various to be comprised in one connected chain of argument, or sometimes too subtle to be stated in the forms of syllogism; sometimes such as rather to be felt than seen; sometimes in a measure dependent for their cogency on the modifications of the individual mind, so as to be differently appreciated

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