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design is universal; and that it has its origin in an ultimate, intelligent Will which acts as the guiding force in the world. What is the relation of Law to Design? Does a scientific analysis warrant the assertion, as a fact of science, that Law exists, and can exist, only as it is an expression of Design? Law is not a tangible thing which can be seen, or felt, or tasted. It is a relation, a mode of action It is a fact that fire will burn wood. Law determines the action of the efficient causes, wood and fire. Bring the causes together and law predicts the effect. Law tells us what result may be expected from the contact of certain chemicals. It tells us that a body in motion has a tendency to remain in motion. In a word, law is the unchanging mode of action of efficient causes. Have these two facts, law and design, any characteristic in common which compels us to affirm that the one is co-extensive with the other? Are design and law different facts, or obverse sides of one fact?

The essential characteristic of the final cause, the pre-existent idea, is its constructive power, its guiding force. It selects the material and adapts the parts for the sake of the future result. This future result, the embodied form, becomes thus the object, to accomplish which the final cause, the design, chooses, plans, and arranges the material. To accomplish this object, to give an idea an embodied form, to put the thought in the picture, the idea in the machine, the forces of efficient causes are used as means to the end. The inventor of the electric light uses a battery to carry out his design. There are, then, three distinct conditions necessary for every production the idea, which is psychical, the means, which are physical, and the object, which is to give an idea a material expression. Final cause, therefore, wherever we find it, transforms cause and effect into means and end. Is the same true of law? Is there any reason for believing that through law materials are adjusted for the sake of the future result? Do the planets revolve in their orbits because the force of gravity exists? Or does the force of gravity exist in order to keep the planets in their orbits? If the latter is true, it is

evident that the force of gravity is the means employed to carry out this design. Cause and effect converted into means and end must, therefore, be the basis on which law is identified with design.

To say that law is invariable is mere tautology. Invariability is law. Regular succession of phenomena is law. Although the whole meaning of the term is condensed into either of these words - invariability, regularity,-yet law regarded in the light of a regular production of the same result, assumes a new phase. This phase indicates that behind the

law exists the mind.

man.

A single action implies little in regard to the object of the action, but the regular recurrence of these actions implies a fixed purpose. Regularity characterizes all the operations of His presence at the office, the studio, the library, all imply a conscious design. A single obstruction on a railway may be accidental, but several successive obstructions renders the inference of a purpose legitimate. A person may walk in a certain direction with no special reason, but the daily walk in this direction implies a fixed purpose. In the realm of design, then, regularity implies an intention in relation to a future result, an intention of carrying out some idea to gain an end. Yet all science, indeed, all human actions are based on the assumption of the uniformity of nature's laws. The very fact that the same effect always does result from the action of the same causes under the same circumstances, indicates that the effect was a designed effect. The very fact that the force of gravity always does keep the planets in their orbits indicates, not that the planets keep their places because the force is there, but that the force of gravity existed for the express purpose of guiding the planets.

The idea which is the guiding force of human actions suggests that something of like nature is the guiding force of invariable law. The same regularity which in human actions implies purpose, mind, in law implies something analogous to mind.

Yet there is another phase in the aspect of law which does

more than imply the mind behind it. It proves that mind must be behind it. Thus far the analogy between law and design has been found to lie in the fact that law compels the same future event to follow the action of the same efficient causes, while design makes these efficient causes means to bring about the future event. The existence of efficient causes, then, is absolutely necessary in both law and design. In design they form the middle term in the series, idea, means and end. In law they are the necessary conditions preceding the corresponding effects. The action and reaction of efficient causes is a consequent of law. The bringing together of these efficient causes so that the action will take place, is the means by which the idea receives an embodied form. The mode of action of the forces producing the occan tides is governed by law. The mode of action of the forces producing the statue is governed by design. Yet the existence of both the ocean tides and the statue is dependent upon the action of efficient causes. The statue demands an idea for a guiding force. Do not the ocean tides also demand an idea for a guiding force? The fact that the same causes are brought together and made to produce the same effect, that the action of law is uniform, is itself a principle, a law, which demands explanation. But the only possible grounds of this uniformity are found in the agency of chance, or the properties of matter, or the action of mind. The forces forming the brain unite in making it the organ of thought, and only chance, matter, or mind, can be responsible for the combination of their forces. Whatever the darkness which envelops their union, the unvarying result

thought can be traced to no other sources. To chance, matter, or mind, then, we shall look for our explanation of the order and harmony in the world of mind and matter, for an explanation of the uniformity of law.

To affirm that the combination of the atoms producing the universe, with all the grand uniformity of nature's laws, is the product of chance, is to affirm what few atheists or antitheists of the present day would care to defend. Even Physicus himself banishes this hypothesis, and declares that the

alternatives are not Chance and God, but Force and God. It is a time-honored argument that it would be impossible to produce a poem by throwing together the letters of the alphabet, even if the throws were infinite in number. Yet, however convincing in popular acceptation, this argument has given place to the more philosophical reason that chance itself is governed by law. But law, here as elsewhere, must be explained. In the primordial state the chances of order in the combination of atoms forming the world, were to the chances of disorder as one is to the possible number of combinations. The doctrine of chance, therefore, requires us to believe that the world happened to take its present orderly form out of infinite possibilities of disorder. By common consent the

doctrine of chance is set aside.

For the origin of the uniformity of law, the ground of orderly combination, we must look, then, to the properties of matter or to the agency of mind.

If we give to matter this power of producing order, of always forming the same result from the same combination of forces, we have a right to ask what this attractive force is which draws the atoms together so that they form efficient causes which are always uniform in their effects. What is the property by which matter spontaneously combined in such proportions that a revolving world and thinking men were produced?

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To say that matter comes together in right proportions through its own peculiar nature, is to say that fire burns because it does. Grant that the atoms of the brain-cells have the property of producing thought by motion; yet the orderly arrangement of the atoms is still unexplained. When we consider the combination of causes in the eye alone, we give to matter a property of mind, in affirming that it is capable of getting itself together in such a shape that it does produce sight. It may be a property of the different parts of the eye, when combined, to produce sight, but disregarding the agency of mind, the parts happened to come together in the right proportions, or matter itself has an attractive force which

works for an end. To assert the former is to revert to the old doctrine of chance; and to assert the latter is to beg the question. If we discard chance we must admit that law is uniform in action for the sake of producing an orderly world. An orderly world thus becomes the object of this uniformity of action, whether this object has a conscious existence in mind, or an unconscious existence in matter. The final cause, therefore, is present, whatever its source.

Between chance and finality, then, there is no middle ground. It takes an exact adjustment of parts to produce the eye. To say that matter, from the millions upon millions of combinations offered, spontaneously took one which produced sight, is to say that matter itself, in taking this form, did so for the sake of the sight.

No one would defend the doctrine of chance, yet few realize that the moment we discard it we must adopt finality. The moment we admit that chance could not produce an orderly world, we admit that the combination of atoms which did produce an orderly world is chosen for the sake of an orderly world. Let us not disguise finality, and refuse to recognize it under its mask. If it was a property of matter to choose a combination which produced the present world, the finality is there, whatever be the character or name of this finality.

We allow, it will be said, that in discarding the doctrine of chance, we admit the existence of finality. We admit that matter, in taking spontaneously the combination which produced sight acted as if sight was the object for which the parts were combined. We admit all this, but we still maintain that this very power is a property inherent in matter. Call it finality if you like. Say that matter combined for the sake of the sight, yet what right have we to say that because finality is known to us in connection with conscious intelligence, that finality in matter must be due to the same source?

Since design is co-extensive with the will, and since the uniformity of law could not be due to chance, we have found that design, purpose, finality, exist everywhere. But is the finality exhibited in the uniformity of law the same in kind as the

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