1849.] The Idea of Cause as connected with Experience. 629 indications of this quality, we infer that these are in like manner evi. dences and results of the operation of a designing mind. Whatever may be true of the justness of this conclusion, it is altogether probable that it is one to which we are led in the manner now indicated, i. e. as the result of our own experience. The matter admits of a practical test. Suppose one destitute of any such experience, having never contrived anything, or seen aught contrived by others, a child thrown in early life upon some uninhabited island, subsisting on the spontaneous productions of nature, unacquainted with men and their ways. Let such an one discover, at length, on the shore of his solitary dwelling-place, some piece of human mechanism; -the watch with which Paley introduces his beautiful treatise. He has never seen such a thing before; forms no idea, of course, as to what it is, its nature, or use; is quite as likely to think it some strange shell-fish, or curious insect, as anything else. All reasoning about it, and from it to a producing cause is, in such a case, out of the question. The child or child-man may wonder where it came from, or how it came there, but not who made it. But suppose now the nature of this newly-discovered curiosity is in some way made known to him. His wondering eye begins to comprehend the mysteries of its complicated structure. He discerns its use, and the fitness of its parts to subserve that use. Does the idea of a maker, a contriver, necessarily suggest itself to his mind at this stage of the process? Why should it? Whence should it come? He has never known anything to be produced or contrived. What is there in the thing before him to awaken in his mind this new idea? The thing exists; that is certain ; but for aught he knows it may always have existed. It is very curious; that is certain; but it may always have been as curious as now. It is capable of use; but so far as he can see, it may always have been capable of the same. There is nothing in the machine itself to indicate that it ever had a beginning, or to suggest the idea of a cause. He knows not that it is a machine; an effect, a contrivance. To him it is simply an existence, - one of the thousand existences which he perceives about him, all to him mysterious; himself, if his thoughts should ever travel so far into the region of conjecture, his own existence, and origin, the greatest of all mysteries to himself. How comes now this untaught, unobservant being to reach the grand idea of a producing cause? According to Reid, Stuart, and others, he gets it by the operation of a primary law of the mind which leads him, from the perceived fitness of things to certain ends, to infer at once, and independently of all experience, the existence of design and a designer. According to those who maintain the opposite view, he does not get the idea of producing cause at all, and never will get it, apart from revelation, until his own experience comes to his aid, and guides him to the first steps of an analogy, which is to lead him on to the sublime conclusion that there is a being who made him and all things. That this is the right solution of the problem we are strongly inclined to believe. The question returns however, as on the other hypothesis, whether this inference, this reasoning from what we know to what we do not know, is perfectly just and sound. Assuming that the theory last mentioned is the true one,-that we reason in this manner only from experience, and our experience being necessarily limited, — how far, and with what degree of confidence, may we safely follow such a guide? When we reason in this manner from anal. ogy, do we reason always safely and conclusively? We have seen ships built, and houses; so far our experience; does it follow with certainty, from this, that worlds are built also, and are, in like manner, the effect of contrivance? So we conclude. But is the conclusion valid? Here is a man who, from whatever cause, has never as yet exercised the inventive faculties of his mind in the direct contrivance of anything with reference to the accomplishment of a given end, who has never observed such efforts, on the part of others, has no acquaintance in fact with the manifold devices and arts by which a busy, ever-plotting world makes all things subservient to its own purposes. This man is, according to the present argument, without evidence of the existence of a supreme being, in other words of a general designer of all things, since he is without personal experience or knowledge of any such thing as design. He may perceive manifold and notable instances of fitness and adaptation in the material world to the purposes of man's being, but they do not excite his wonder, for he has never known these things to be otherwise; much less are they data from which he can reason to the unknown and the infinite. Thus stands the case with him to-day. To-morrow, for the first time, he invents, he contrives, no matter what -the simplest mechanism of which we can conceive a wooden peg — a leaf-apron. Now matters are essentially changed. The mystery of the great Universe now opens before him. He has sufficient data now from which to reason out with unerring certainty the existence of a great first 'This wooden peg, this girdle of platted leaves, is a wonderful thing, soliloquizes our new artist; it's an invention of my a contrivance. It would never have existed in its present orm, and never have secured its present purpose, had not my own inventive mind formed the design and carried it into execution. Now cause. own, -- 1849.] Reasoning from Experience not always safe. 631 I understand how it is this goodly world, and I myself, exist. This peg instructs me. It is manifestly fitted to a useful purpose. It has that fitness only because of my forethought and contrivance. I am authorized then to conclude that whatever seems fitted to some use, is in like manner the product and result of forethought and intelligent design, and as all things about me in the universe seem to possess such fitness to useful ends, it follows, from this my specimen of contrivance, that all things are likewise contrived.' Such, we are to understand, would be the course of thought in his mind; and according to the philosophy we are now discussing, it is a method of reasoning perfectly fair and conclusive. Nor is it easy to see what should hinder our artist, and newly instructed reasoner, from proceeding a little further in the same direction. Ought he not, in consistency with the above reasoning, to conclude on the same principle, that if there be, anywhere else, out of this visible universe, and beyond this sphere of observation, any form of existence capable of promoting and bringing about useful ends, having a fitness therefor, that also is a contrivance and so the being, whoever he may be, that wrought out and first divined this present system, possessed the qualities that fitted him for such a work, must par eminence, be an effect. But even if we suppose him not to reason thus consistently, but to stop short of that dread conclusion, is it not evident, that to infer the contrived existence of everything which manifests fitness to useful ends, from the known contrivance of anything that has such fitness, to deduce the mechanism of the universe from the manufacture of the simplest human contrivances, is a method far too bold and sweeping; that the basis is quite too narrow for the superstructure; that there are and must be limits to this matter of reasoning from the results of our experience, the few and little things which we know, to the things which we do not know, the infinite, the eternal. Now it is precisely at this point in the line of defences, that the enemies of our religion bring their heaviest machinery to bear. Because in this world of ours certain things are well adapted to certain uses, it does not follow, say they, that these things, and this world, are of necessity contrived. There is no evidence of that. It is merely an inference of our own, and one based on insufficient premises. We came to this conclusion by seeing human contrivances and devices. Our experience helps us to it. But it does not follow that because we contrive and produce certain arrangements and adaptations of things, therefore all things whatsover, which manifest like fitness to certain ends, are also the result of contrivance. The watch that I have seen constructed by the skill and ingenuity of the artist, may be to me a sufficient datum from which to conclude that other watches are in like manner contrived. But what right have I to infer that all things in the universe are thus produced, because I have seen one thing made? If thrown on an uninhabited shore, I should find in my rambles some structure of reeds or sticks or stones, capable of affording shelter, and like to the habitations which men construct under such circumstances, I might reasonably conclude that some one had been there before me, and that this was his work. But because this hut of reeds or stones is manifestly a contrivance, the result of a producing intelligent cause, shall I proceed at once to the conclusion that the planet Jupiter is likewise a contrivance, or that the world in which I live is so? I have seen a ring manufactured. Is it therefore certain that the rings of Saturn are likewise produced? Who has ever seen a world made, continues the skeptic; or known of one being made within the sphere of his personal observation? If one had ever made, or seen made any such thing as a world, then he might reasonably conclude that other worlds were made also. But where is the evidence of it as matters now stand? Such is substantially the reasoning of Hume in his famous objection to the argument from design. The world, he contends, if it be an effect, is a singular one, unlike anything which we have ever seen produced. We have had no experience in world-making as we have in watch-making, and cannot therefore reason from the one case to the other. No one perhaps has more resolutely girded himself to encounter this formidable objection than the truly noble Chalmers. Admitting that experience is the basis of all our reasoning in such matters, he contends that in the present case we are not destitute of that basis, but, on the contrary, have all the experience we need. It is not necessary he contends that we should take into account the specific end which was intended to be accomplished in any piece of mechanism, but only that we should see an end, and that evidently designed. Having in many instances observed the invariable connection between a designing intellect, as cause, and any wise and useful end, as the result, we may in all cases where one of these two terms is given, infer the existence of the other. It matters not whether we have ever seen a watch made, or any machine having exactly that office and use. We have seen other things made in which was the like fitness of part to part, and of means to ends, and in which this fitness has always been the result of contrivance. In a thousand instances we have observed the relation between these two things, the fitness, and the contrivance, 1849.] Chalmers' argument in reply to Hume. 633 to be that of antecedent and consequent; of cause and effect. This experience warrants us in concluding, that whenever we find,in any new instance, the same phenomenon, i. e., adaptation to an end, we find it there as the result of the same antecedent, i. e., a designing intelligence. "Thus we might infer the agency of design in a watchmaker, though we never saw a watch made" - and so we can on the very same ground infer the agency of design on the part of a world-maker, though we never saw a world made." 66 This reasoning is valid, on the supposition that there is such a being as a world-maker; in other words, that the world is an effect, a thing made. The argument proceeds entirely and avowedly on this supposition. It is only in things made that we perceive this invariable connection between fitness and an end, in the things produced, and designing intelligence, in the producer. It is only in things made, therefore, that having one of these terms we can safely infer the other. If we extend the inference to other classes of objects, to things not produced, or of whose production, and begun existence, we have no evidence, we set sail on an ocean of which we know not the shores and bounds, if indeed there be any, or to what strange lands our venturesome course may tend; we drive before the winds with neither chart nor way mark to guide us, nor any headland in view, sed coelum undique, et undique pontus. Nay it is not difficult to foresee on what rocks we must in the end be driven, for if we reason in this manner from things which we know to be produced, to things which we do not know to be so, and conclude that fitness in the latter is the result of contrivance, because it is so in the former, then we must include the Deity himself in our catalogue of effects, nor is there any possible way of escaping that conclusion. cause. Now beyond doubt if the world be an effect, a produced and not an eternal existence, it is the production of an intelligent and designing But is it an effect? This is the very gist and substance of the whole question, the very thing we are in pursuit of, but which after all is as far from our grasp as ever. The argument of Chalmers does not put us in possession of this, nor indeed does it profess to do so. It is a point which must be reached, if at all, in some other way. The argument from design, however, as usually advanced, is intend ed and supposed, by those who bring it forward, to establish this very point, that this our world is an effect, a contrivance, and must therefore have had a contriver. They rely upon it as conclusive of this matter. Thus stated, the argument in question must be regarded as logically and essentially defective. Mere fitness to an end does not, |