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UNIVERSALIST QUARTERLY

AND

GENERAL REVIEW.

ARTICLE I.

Modern Teleology.

PHILOSOPHERS of all schools have practically agreed upon one fundamental fact as the basis of metaphysical speculation -the existence of a First Cause. However much theories may have differed in regard to its essence, the fact of a First Cause, in some form or other, has been scarcely questioned. Only in the Positivism of Comte do we find any exception. Here the idea of law replaced the idea of cause. But such a system can hardly be called a philosophy. It is rather a plea for the scientific method. It ignores any question as to the origin of the laws which science discovers. Yet at best Positivism was short-lived and had few followers, and even Spencerian Agnosticism diverges from it at this point. "We cannot think at all about the impressions which the external world produces on us, without thinking of them as caused, and we cannot carry out our inquiry concerning their causation without inevitably committing ourselves to the hypothesis of a First Cause" (First Principles, p. 37). And again says Mr. Spencer, "We are no more able to form a circumscribed idea of Cause than of Space or Time; and we are consequently

NEW SERIES. VOL. XXI.

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obliged to think of the Cause, which transcends the limits of our thought, as positive though indefinite" (F. P.. p. 93).

We are justified, then, in taking this common point as a centre from which the wide-reaching speculations of countless philosophies have sought the circumference of truth.

Whether the belief in cause and effect is a primary necessity of human thought, or the result of the experience of the race, the fact remains that every mind does ask for the cause of an event, from the simplest occurrence of daily life to the revolution of the earth on its axis, from the revolution of the earth itself to the origin of a revolving universe. Theism finds this cause in self-existent mind; Materialism in selfexistent matter; Pantheism in the all-pervading essence; Agnosticism in the Unknowable Something. Still all these systems agree upon the fundamental fact that something is, however much they may disagree as to what that something is. Shall we grant with the Materialist that matter has qualities so unique as to warrant us in asserting that it is sufficient to produce law, harmony, and mind? Shall we assume with the Pantheist that the attributes of mind and matter, are the attributes of the immanent essence, that material phenomena and the God of our reason are one? Or shall we say with the Theist, that admitting the existence of a First Cause, we are justified; from the universality of law, in affirming intelligence as an attribute of this Cause?

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Much criticism upori e. theistic argument from adaptation is based upon a wrong conception of its scope. It is no real objection to this argument that it is only a "carpenter theory." All that we can hope to prove by it is that God arranges, plans, designs the universe. Nor is it an objection that, reasoning from a finite universe, it cannot prove an infinite Creator. This is giving to the teleological argument the burden of responsibility belonging to entirely different logical processes. This argument is not advanced to prove the existence or the infinity of a God. That belongs to the Ontological or Cosmological argument. ties of the First Cause.

Nor does it prove the moral qualiThe argument for the Divine intelli

gence logically succeeds the argument for the Divine existence, and precedes the argument for the moral qualities of the Divine Being. Only after the intelligence of the First Cause has been proved is it possible to prove the moral attributes of the First Cause.

The argument for Mind, then, can be separated logically from the arguments for Existence, Infinity, and Benevolence. We call it the modern teleological argument, although, in the phraseology of Mr. Hicks, in his "Critique of Design-Arguments," it is eutaxiological. We are not, however, satisfied that the distinction between eutaxiology and teleology is radical, since the authority for this distinction lies in such a separation of will and intelligence as good psychology does not

warrant.

In considering, then, the scientific value of the modern teleological argument, we can free the discussion from many of its metaphysical complications, and limit ourselves to the simple question well formulated by Physicus: "Are the facts of mind and matter of such a nature that they compel us to affirm intelligence of the First Cause, of the Something, the entity in which we must all believe?"

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That the adaptation of means to ends is an attribute of intelligence, is a truth which has become an axiom. Every one knows that an author has a thought before he pens the words which convey it. Every one believes that the artist has an idea which precedes the grouping of figures and the harmonizing of colors expressing the idea. This idea, then, in the language of the schools, is the final cause" of the picture. Although there are some well founded objections to the term, final cause," the fact that it has been used with varying meanings, is a criticism against those employing the term rather than against the term itself. Some technical word is necessary to express the meaning of "thought," or "idea," as distinct from its material expression, and, if we limit the term to this meaning it cannot be confusing. The final cause, then, is the thought which precedes the picture. It is the idea directing the power which selects the material,

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