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THE FIRST EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY
GIFFORD LECTURES.

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB,
FOR

T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH

LONDON, n.VMILTON, ADAMS, AND 00.

DUBLIN, GEORGE HERBERT

KEW YORK, SCRIBNER AND WELFORD.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

BEING

THE FIRST EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY

4r

IIFFORD LECTURES

JAMES HUTCHISOX STIELING, LL.D. (Edin.)

FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF BERLIN
GIFFORD LECTURER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, lSSS-90

EDINBURGH
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET

1890

\_All Rights Eeserved.]

These Lectures are published at the request of the
Senatus Academicus of the University of Edinburgh
in agreement with the terms of the Gifford Bequest.
Further, tliey explain themselves.

CONTENTS.

GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIRST.

THE BEQUEST OP LORD GIFFORD — ITS CONDITIONS.

PAGE

Introductory — Lord Gifford — The bequest — The lectureships — God
really all in all to Lord Gifford — The lecturers — Natural theo-
logy the only science — The immediate lecturer — The three
Churches — Feeling — Understanding — Both — Intolerance —
Reason as reason — The positive — Rationalism — Auflvliirung —
" Advanced " views — The temper of the time — Tom Paines of
the tap — No -God men — What is really the new — The pre-
judice against belief — Duty of philosophy now — Sacred books —
Those of the Hebrews — Discrepancies — Buckle, Hume, Voltaire
— Historical anachronism, 3-2G

GIFFORD LECTURE THE SECOND.

NATURAL THEOLOGY — HOW TO BE TREATED.

Natural theology, what is it? — Usual answers — Hutcheson — Varro
— The Middle Ages — Raymund of Sebondc — Rays, Paleys, etc.
— Till 1860 — Since — Philosophies of religion — Pagan gods — De
Quincey, Augustine, Cicero, Pliny, Juvenal, Herodotus, Aulus
Gellius — The proofs historically treated — That the theme —
Plotinus, Augustine — Natural theology not possibly a physical
science — Understanding and faith, Augustine, Anselm —
Monotheism alone religion proper — The course, affirmative,
negative — China, India, Colebrooke, Ras bihari Mukharji —
Hindu texts (Gnostics) — Hesiod, 21-40

Vlll CONTENTS.

GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRD.

HISTORICAL TREATMENT OF THE I'ROOFS — ANAXAGORAS.

PAGE

Filial causes — The four Aristotelian causes — Are there final causes
in nature — Matter and form — Other causes only to realize the
final causes — Cudworth — Adam Smith — The proofs, number,
order, etc. — Teleology — Anaxagoras — Socrates in the Phfedo —
Xenophoii — Plato — Socrates on Anaxagoras — The causes to-
gether, concrete — "Abstract" — Forces, Clerk Maxwell —
Heraclitus — Newton — Buckle — Descartes — Gassendi — Bacon on
causes, metaphysics, and forms— The uoiJs (7^o?w) of Anaxagoras —
Bacon on design — Reid, Newton, Hume on design — Newton, 41-59

GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTH.

ANAXAGORAS AND DESIGN.

Anaxagoras, the vovs — Aristotle — Understanding — Pythagoreans —
Pantheism — Lord Giff'ord^Baghavad Gita — The volJ; to Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle — Grote, Schwegler, Zeller — The world a life —
Berkeley, Cudworth, Plato, Zorzi — Subject and object — Nature
and thought — Externality and internality — Bruno — Universal
and particular — Spinoza — Physical theories — Space and time —
Hodgson, Carlyle, Berkeley, Reid, Leibnitz, Kant — But for an
eye and an ear, the world utterly dark, utterly silent, . 60-78

GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIFTH.

DESIGN GENERALLY — SOCRATES.

Astronomy, space, time, the voiJ; — Kant, Fichte, Schelling — Carlyle,
the Sartor — Emerson — Plato — Aristotle— A beginning — The
want of eye and ear again — Deafness and blindness together
— Design restored — Thomson — Diogenes of ApoUonia — Socrates
— Meteorology and practical action — Morality and ethicality —
The first teleological argument — Proofs of design — Bacon —
Socrates finally, 79-96

GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTH.

DESIGN — PLATO.

Plato — His position — His prose — Indebted to Socrates— Monotheism
— The popular gods — Socrates' one principle— His method —
Universalized by Plato— Epinomis— The Timaeiis — The eyes,
etc. — Kant liere — Subject and object — Mechanical and final

CONTENTS. IX

PAGE

causes — The former only /or the latter — Identity and difference
— Creation, the world — Time and eternity — The Christian
Trinity — The two goods — Religion, the Laws — Prayer — Super-
stition— Hume, Dugald Stewart, Samuel Johnson, Buckle — The
Platonic duality — Necessity and contingency — Plato's work, 97-114

GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTH.

THE SOPHISTS — THEIR NEGATIVE, ARISTOTLE.

Sophists— Aufkliirung — Disbelief, Simon of Tournay, Amalrich of
Bena, David of Dinant — Italian philosophers, Geneva Socinians,
Bacon, Hobbes, the Deists, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza — Hume,
Gibbon — Germany, Reimarus, etc. — Klopstock, Lavater — Less-
ing, Hamann, Herder, Jacobi — Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul —
Carlj^le — France — Kant and his successors — Necessary end of
such movements — Cosmological argument — Locke, Clarke, Leib-
nitz— Aristotle — Dependency — Potentiality and actuality — A
beginning — Aristotle and design — Mr. Darwin's mistake — Em-
pedocles and the survival of the fittest, .... 115-134

GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

ARISTOTLE AND THE PROOFS.

Aristotle and design — Matter and form — Abstraction — Trinity — The
ascent — The four causes — A first mover — Lambda of the Meta-
physic — The hymn of Aristotle — Speculation — Mankind —
Erdmann — Theory and practice — Nature — Kant, Byron, Mme.
de Genlis — Aristotle's ethic and politic — God — Cicero — Time —
Design — Hume, Buffon — Plato and Aristotle — Immanent Div-
inity and transcendent Deity — Schwegler — Bonitz — The soul —
Unity — Homer — The Greek movement up to Aristotle, Biese —
The Germans and Ai'istotle — Cuvier, Owen, Franzius, Johann
von Miiller — Darwin — Aristotle in conclusion, . . . 135-156

GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINTH.

THE SECTS AND THE PROOFS — CICEKO.

The Sects — The Skeptics — The Epicureans — Epicurus — Leucippus
and Democritus — Aristotle, Plato — Stoics, Pantheism — Chry-
sippus — Origin of evil — Antithesis — Negation — Epictetus — The
Nco-Platonists — Important six hundred years^Course of his-

X CONTENTS.

PAGE

tory— Kcflection at last— Aufkliirung, Revolution — Eome —
The atom, the Caesar— The despair of the old, the hope of the
new — Paganism, Christianity — Tlie State — The temple— Ascetic-
ism— Philosophy, the East, Alexandria — The Neo-Platonists —
Ecstasy — Cicero — Paley and the others all in him — All pro-
bably due to Aristotle — Sextus—Philo Judaeus — Minucius
Felix — Cicero now as to Dr. Alexander Thomson and the
Germans — A word in defence, 157-176

GIFFOPD LECTUPvE THE TENTH.

THE FATHERS — ANSELM.

Cicero— To Anselm— The Fathers— Seneca, Plin^', Tacitus— God to
the early Fathers — Common consent in the individual aud the
race — Cicero — Irenaeus, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Arnobius,
Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, Cyril of Alexandria, Julian,
Gregory of Nyssa, and others, Athanasius — Reid, religion,
superstition— The Bible— F. C. Baur— Anselm— His argument
—The College Essay of 1838— Dr. Fleming— Dlustrations from
the essay— Gaunilo— Mr. Lewes— Ueberweg, Erdmann, Hegel—
The Monologium— Augustine and Boethius— The Proslogium—
Finite and infinite — What the argument really means — Des-
cartes— Knowledge and belief, 177-193

GIFFORD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

INTRODUCTORY — LORD GIFFORD'S ESSAYS.

Lectures by Lord Gilford — By whom edited — Germane to, aud illus-
trative of, natural theology— Number and nature— Their literaiy
excellence — Even poetical — Der laute Lcirni des Tages — On
attention — On St. Bernard of Clairvaux — (Luther, Gibbon) —
What Lord Gilford admires— The spirit of religion— The Trinity
— Emerson, Spinoza — Substance — Brahmanism — Religion — Un-
derstanding and reason — Metaphysical terms — JIaterialism —
Literary enthusiasm — Technical shortcomings — Emerson and
Carlyle — Social intercourse — Humanity — Liberality and toler-
ance—Faith— Mesmerism— Ebenezer Elliott— An open sense to
evidence 197-216

GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

THE NEGATIVE — HUME.

A settlement for faith Lord Gifford's object— Of our single theme
the negative half now — Objections to, or refutations of, the

CONTENTS. XI

PAGE

proofs — Negative not necessarily or predominatingly modern,
Kant, Darwin — The ancient negative, the Greeks, Pythagoreans,
Ionics, Eleatics, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Democritus, (Bacon),
Anaxagoras, Socrates, Sophists, Diagoras, Aristotle, Aristoxenus,
Dicaearchus, Strato, (Hume, Cudworth), Aristophanes, etc. —
Rome — Modern Europe, France, Hume and the seventeen
atheists — Epochs of atheism — David Hume, his influence^To
many a passion and a pi'ejudice — Brougham, Buckle — Style ! —
Taste ! — Blair — Hume's taste, Pope, Shakespeare, John Home
— Othello — The French to Hume — Mr. Pope ! — Some bygone
litterateurs — Personality and character of Hume — Jokes,
stories, Kant, Aristotle — The Scotch — The Epigoniad — America
— Germany — Generosity, affection, friendship, hospitality —
Smollett — Burke — but Hume, honest, genuine, and even re-
ligious and pious, 217-242

GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRTEENTH.

THE NEGATIVE AND HUME {continued).

The Dialogues concerning Natural Religion — Long consideration and
repeated revision of them — Their publication, Hume's anxiety
for, his friends' difficulties with— Style, Cicero — Words and
things, Quintilian — Styles, old and new — The earlier works —
The Treatise— The, Enquiry, Rosenkranz— Hume's provision —
Locke, Berkeley — Ideas — Connection in them — Applied to the
question of a Deity — Of a Particular Providence — Extension of
the cause inferred, to be proportioned only to that of the given
effect— Applied to the cause of the world— Natural theology to
Hume— Chrysippus in Plutarch — Greek — The order of argu-
mentation— The outological — Matter the necessary existence —
The cosmological answers that — Infinite contingencies insufficient
for one necessity — The teleological — Analogy inapplicable —
Hume's own example, 243-264

GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTEENTH.

THE NEGATIVE AND HUJIE {concluded).

The teleological argument — Two moments— First, the alleged ne-
cessity of thought— It has itself no end— So matter enough-
Thought itself only a part, limited, imperfect, and in want of
explanation — Thought as thought common to irs all, Grote,
Hume, Erigena, Heraclitus— The sole necessity — Second, the

XU CONTENTS.

PACE

analogy — Tlie supreme cause not situated as other causes
Other principles, vegetation, generation — The world an animal
— The Emp6doclean expedient — The effect only warrants great
power, not Almighty power — Evil — Free opinion — Hume's
friends — Epicurus's dilemma — Superstition results — Four
suggestions — No pain — Special volitions — Greater strength —
Extremes banished from the world — Creation on general prin-
ciples— Erasmus Darwin — Mr. Froude, Carlyle — Finitude as
such, externality as such — Antithesis — Charles V. — Abdal-
rahman III. — Septimius Severus — Johnson — Per contra —
Wordsworth, Gibbon, Hume — Work, Carlyle — The trades —
Comparison — Self-contradiction — Identity — Hegel — ' ' As re-
gards Protoplasm " — The Hindoos — Burton on cause — Sir John
Herschel — Brown, Dugald Stewart — Spinoza — Erdmann —
Notions and things, Erigena — Rabelais — Form and matter —
Hume in conclusion, ....... 265-285

GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIFTEENTH.

KANT ON THE PROOFS.

Transition, Hume to Kant— Effect of Kant on natural theology
—The centre of Kant's thought — Hume led to tliis — Causal
necessity — That necessity objective — Still in matters of fact —
Relations of ideas — Hume on one side, Kant ou the other, of the
dilemma — Hume quite as Reid, on natural necessity — But what
the explanation to intellectual insight — Synthetic addition —
Analytic implication — Change — Kant's explanation is, There
are d priori syntheses native to the mind — The whole Kantian
machinery in a sentence — Time and space — The twelve cate-
gories and the three ideas — A toy house — A peculiar magic
lantern — A psychology — A metaphysic — Analysis of the
syllogism for the ideas — Simple apprehension missed — An idea
—The ideal— The teleological proof, .... 286-304

GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTEENTH.

KANT AND THE PROOFS {concluded).

The cosmological proof — Contingencj' — A h alio esse and esse a se —
The special contingency an actual fact in experience — This
Kant would put out of sight — Jehovah — Two elements in
the argument, experience and ideas — The generality of the
experience — Also of the idea — Contingency is a particular

CONTENTS. Xlll

PAGE

empirical fact — Ens reaUssimum — Onlythe ontological argument
in disguise — Logical inference — But just generally the all-
necessary being of such a world — Hume anticipated Kant —
Why force analogy — Why transcend nature — No experience of
such cause, which must not exceed the effect — Hume's early
memoranda — The "nest" — All Kant dependent on his own
constant sense of school-distinctions — His entire world — The
system being true, ivhat is true ? — The ontological argument —
No thinking a thing will bring it to be — What it all comes to,
the single threefold wave — Hegel — Middle Age view from
Augustine to Tauler — Meister Eckhart — Misunderstanding of
mere understanding — The wickedest then a possible divine
reservoir — Adam Smith and the chest of drawers — Absurd for
Kant to make reason proper the "transcendent shine" — The
Twelfth Night cake, but the ehrliche Kant, . . . 305-322

GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTEENTH.

DARWIN AND DESIGN.

The three degrees, positive, comparative, superlative in negation of
the proofs, or Hume, Kant, Darwin — The Life and Letters of
Charles Darivin, chapter viii. of the first volume — Darwin one
of the best of men — Design — Uniformity and law — Darwin's
own words — He himself always gentle — But resolute to
win — Concessiveness — Religious sentiment — Disbelief — .Jokes —
Natural selection being, materialism is true, and ideas are only
derivative — The theory — A species what — Sterility — What
suggested natural selection to Darwin — Bakewell's achievements
as a breeder — Darwin will substitute nature for Bakewell, to the
production, not of new breeds, but, absolutely, of new species —
His lever to this, change by natural accident and chance : such
necessarily proving either advantageous, disadvantageous, or
indifferent — Advantage securing in the struggle for life survival
of the fittest, disadvantarje entailing death and destruction,
indifference being out of count — The woodpecker, the misletoe
— But mere variation the very fulcrum — Variation imist be, and
consequences to the organism must be : hence the whole — But
never design, only a mechanical pullulation of differences by
chance that simply prove advantageous or disadvantageous, etc.
— Conditions — Mr. Huxley — Effect of the announcements of
Sir Joseph Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell — Mr. Darwin insists
on his originality — His difficulties in winning his way — Even
those who agree with him, as Lyell, Hooker, and others, he

XIV COXTENTS.

PAGE

flemnrs to their expressions : thej' fail to luulerstand — Sir.
Darwin's own qualms — "What makes a tuft of feathers come
on a cock's head, or moss on a moss-rose ? " — That the question
— Still spontaneous variation both universal and constant, 323-342

GIFFOED LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

DAKwix AND DESIGN (continued).

The theory — Individual variation- — Darwin early looked for natural
explanation of design — Creation, its senses — Antisthenes, Cole-
brooke, Cudworth — Creative ideas — Anaxagoras — Aristotle —
Jlr. Clair Grece and Darwin — For design Mr. Darwin offers a
mechanical puUulation of individual difference through chance,
but with consequent results that as advantageous or dis-
advantageous seem concerted — The Fathers — Nature the pheno-
menon of the noumenon, a boundless externality of conthigency
that still is a life — Nature, the object will only he when it
reaches the subject— That object be, or subject be, hoth must
be — Even the crassest material particle is already both
elementarily — As it were, even inorganic matter possesses
instincts — Aristotle, design and necessity — Internalization —
Time space, motion, matter — The world — Contingency — A
])erspective of pictures — The Vestiges and evolution — Darwin
deprecates genealogies, but returns to them — The mud-fish —
Initial proteine — There are so many mouths to eat it up now
— Darwin recants his pentateuchal concession to creation —
Depends on "fanciers and breeders" — The infinitudes of
transition just taken by Mr. Darwin in a step — Hypothesis —
Illustration at random — Difference would go on to difference,
not return to the identity — Mr. Lewes and Dr. Erasmus — The
grandfather's filament — Seals — The bear and tlu^ whale — Dr.
Erasmus on the imagination, on weeping, on fear, on the
tadpole's tail, on the rationale of strabismus, . . . 343-362

GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINETEENTH.
DARWIN AND DESIGN {continued).

Dr. Erasmus Darwin — Student scribbles on Zoonomia — Family
differences, attraction and repulsion — The Darwins in this
respect — Dr. Erasmus of his sons, Mr. Charles and Dr. R. W. —
Dr. R. W. as to his sons — Charles on his grandfather, father,
brother — Mr. Erasmus on his brother's book — On tlie a priori
— On facts — Darwin's one method — Darwin and Hooker on

CONTENTS. XV

PAGE

facts — Family politics — Family religion — Family habits —
Family theories — Mr. Darwin's endowments — His Journal —
The Zoonomia — Theories of Dr. Erasmus — Paley — Instinct —
An idea to Dr. E. — Dugald Stewart — Picture-thinking —
Dr. E.'s method — Darwin's doubts — His brave spirit — The
theory to his friends — Now — Almost every propos of the grand-
son has its germ in the grandfather (Krause) — Yet the position
of the latter — Byron on — Mr. Lewes also — The greater Newton,
original Darwinism now to be revived — Dr. E. admirable on
design — Charles on cats made by God to play with mice ! —
Dr. E. on atheism — The apology — But will conclude with a
single point followed thoroughly out : the Galapagos — Darwin
held to be impregnably fortified there— The Galapagos thrown
up to opponents at every turn — But we are not naturalists ! —
Dr. E. rehabilitates us — Description of the Galapagos from
the Journal — The islands, their size, number, position,
geographical and relative — Depth of water and distance between
— Climate, currents, wind — Geology, botany, zoology — Vol-
canoes, dull sickly vegetation, hills, craters, lava, pits, heat,
salt-pools, water — Tortoises, lizards, birds — Quite a region to
suggest theory, 363-381

GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWENTIETH.

DARWIN AND DESIGN — (COnclusion) .

The action — South American types, left here to themselves, change
into new species from accumulation of their own individual
spontaneous differences — The birds — -Differences in the times
and modes of arrival between land and sea birds — Carte and
tierce — Contradiction — Parried by a word — An advocate's proof
— The printer and Mr. Darwin's wouhls — The sea-gull — The
finches — Sir AVilliam Jardine — The process to Darwin — What
was to him "a new birth" — Where the determinative advant-
age for these different beaks — The individual central islands not
incommunicably separate — French birds at Dover — Isolation —
Ex-contrario — Individual difference the single secret, that is
the "law " which has been "discovered " of " natural selection "
— Apply influence of external conditions to the Galapagos —
Kant — The Galapagos rat and mouse — New beings but yet the
old names — If difference goes always on only to difference
without return to identity, why are there not infinitely more
species ? — Bowen — Darwin only empedoclean — Parsons — Lyell
— Monsters (giants and dwarfs) sterile — Frederick's grenadiers,

XVI CONTENTS.

PAGE

the pygmies — Divergent species at home — Tlie Galapagos but
the Mr. Jerkins of the Darwinians — The tortoise, where did
it come from ? — The amhlyrhyncus similarly inexplicable —
Lizards of the secondary epoch — The Galapagos Islands ab-
solutely without a vestige of the struggle for life in any
direction — The breeder, and nature, can act only on what is
already there — The breeder deals in identity, not difference,
and his breeds would all turn back to the original — No breeder
a new species — Nature acts not on Darwin's method, but design
— Toothed birds, the hipparion, the otter-sheep — Accidental
individual difference to be the sole creator in the end of all
that enormous and infinitely complicated concert to unity ! —
Farewell, 382-400

Index, 401

THE FIRST COUESE OF LECTURES
THE AFFIRMATIVE.

1889.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY.

GIFFOIID LECTUEE THE FIEST.

Introductory — Lord GifFord— The bequest — The lectureshipfs — God
really all in all to Lord Gifford — The lecturers — Natural theo-
logy the only science — The immediate lecturer — The three
Churches — Feeling — Understanding — Both — Intolerance —
Reason as reason —The positive — Rationalism— Aufkliirung—
" Advanced " views — Tlie temper of the time — Tom Paines
of the tap — No-God men — What is really the new — The
prejudice against belief — Duty of philosophy now — Sacred
books — Those of the Hebrews— Discrepancies — Buckle, Hume,
Voltaire — Historical anachronism.

]\Ir. Principal and Fellow-Students, — The first word
that is due from a man in my position is necessarily one
of thanks. I owe it to the Senatus of this University
respectfully to tender it my best thanks for the high
honour it has done me in electing me to the distinguished
office of its first Gifibrd Lecturer.

Again, a word is no less due from me in respectful
acknowledgment of the rare liberality and signal generosity
of him who disinterestedly sought to bestow what best
boon he could think of for the public, in the founding of
this and the other University lectureships which bear
his name.

I have had but few opportunities of acquaintanceship
with the late Lord Gifford. I have, however, met him
over the dinner-table and elsewhere ; and 1 could not
but like what I saw in him. He had eminently the

4 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIRST.

bearing of an honourable gentleman who hold his own
ground. "With a smile, there was humour on the mouth ;
but there was at the same time a look of shrewdness in
the eyes, with a certain firm stability of the chin and the
whole countenance, that intimated as plainly as any words
could : I am accessible, open, willing ; but, have a care
that you neither trespass nor exceed. He was frank, loyal,
warm, generous in his affirmation of merit ; but neither
bitter nor unjust in his negation of demerit and insuffici-
ency. He was c;ood-natured : he could listen to what
was out of place, or doubtfully offensive even, in a per-
sonal regard, and keep silence with a smile on his lips.
That he was skilful and successful as a lawyer ; esteemed,
respected, honoured as a judge, — that is a matter of puljlic
recognition. To me it belongs rather to note that he was
a lover of books. The hours he loved best were those
he spent with the writings of his favourite authors ;
foremost among whom were the heroes of his own day and
generation : and, of them all, that it was Emerson for
whom, perhaps, he entertained specially a predilection,
vouches for his love of philosoj)hy. Further, now, indeed,
we know that not philosophy only, but religion also, lay
at his heart, and must have constituted there a very
familiar theme of reverent and persistent meditation. I
did not think of that then as I met him often in my walks
about Granton. I did not think of that then as I saw
him trailing his poor semi-paralytic limljs along, but hold-
ing his head bravely aloft and looking imperturbably before
him, as, within his open coat, he still placed a broad chest,
as it were, in front of all the accidents of time. That,
in these circumstances, was always the impression he
exactly and vividly made upon me. He was for months
confined to the house before his death ; but, doubtless, even
in these walks at that time he was meditating this be-
quest that is the occasion of our being at present together.

THE BEQUEST. 5

And to that bequest it is now my duty to turn ; for,
clearly, the very first necessity of the case is to know
what that service specially is which the Testator expected
to be rendered to the University and the public in return
for his own munificence.

I have spoken of Lord Gifford as pondering in his
mind what best boon he could find it within his power
to bestow upon the public ; and about the very first
words of the Extracts from his Trust Disposition and
Settlement bear me out in this. " I, having fully and
maturely considered my means and estate, and the modes
in which my surplus funds may be most usefully and
beneficially expended, and considering myself bound to
apply part of my means in advancing the public welfare
and the cause of truth : " from these words it is plain
that Lord Gifford, finding himself in possession of what
appeared to him more than was necessary for the satis-
faction and fulfilment of all his private duties, claims,
wishes, or intentions, felt himself in presence with the
rest of a public burden which he was bound to discharge.
How, for the public welfare and the cause of truth, that
could be most usefully and beneficially effected, was the
next thought. And so, as he says further, " being of
opinion that I am bound if there is a ' residue ' as so ex-
plained, to employ it, or part of it, for the good of my
fellow-men, and having considered how I may best do so,
I direct the ' residue ' to be disposed of as follows : — I,
having been for many years deeply and firmly convinced
that the true knowledge of God, that is, of the Being,
Nature, and Attributes of the Infinite, of the All, of the
First and the Only Cause, that is the One and Only Sub-
stance and Being ; and the true and felt knowledge (not
mere nominal knowledge) of the relations of man and of
the universe to Him, and of the true foundations of all
ethics and morals, — being, I say, convinced that this

6 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE FIRST.

knowledge, when really felt and acted on, is the means of
man's highest well-being, and the security of his upward
progress, I liave resolved, from the ' residue ' of my estate
as aforesaid, to institute and found, in connection, if pos-
sible, with the Scottish Universities, lectureships or classes
i'or the promotion of the study of said subjects, and for
the teaching and diffusion of sound views regarding them."
From these words there can be no dcjubt that the con-
clusion of Lord Gilford's mind as to how, in satisfaction
of a public obligation which he felt lay upon him, he
could best employ an expected " residue " of his estate,
was the institution and foundation of certain lectureships
in Natural Theology. The lectureships in question, in
fact, are, within inverted commas, formally described as
established for " Promoting, Advancing, Teaching, and
Diffusing the Study of Natural Theology." That is ex-
press ; there is no possible mistake of, or possible escape
from, the bare term itself ; and just as little are we
allowed any possible mistake of, or possible escape from,
what Lord Gifford himself literally prescribes as his own
whole will and meaning in the term. Natural Theology
is, for Lord Gifford, in precise " other words," and with the
same distinction of inverted commas, " The Knowledge of
(Jod, the Infinite, the All, the First and Only Cause, the
One and the Sole Substance, the Sole Being, the Sole
lieality, and the Sole Existence, the Knowledge of His
Nature and Attributes, the Knowledge of the Relations
which man and the whole universe bear to Him, the
Knowledge of the Nature and Foundation of Ethics or
Morals, and of all Obligations and Duties thence arising."
All here, we see, is formal and express ; and everything
is done that can be done by capital letters and inverted
commas, by word upon word and phrase upon phrase, to
cut off the very possibility of any failure to understand.
That is the technical scroll, style, title, and designation of

GOD ALL IN ALL TO LORD GIFFORD. Y'

the business that is in hand. That is the Purview of the
Lecturer : these are his Instructions.

Further, indeed, and more expressly as regards the
lecturers, he says this : " I have intentionally indicated
the general aspect which personally I would wish the
lectures to bear, but the lecturers shall be under no re-
straint whatever in their treatment of their theme . . .
provided only that the ' patrons ' will use diligence to
secure that they be able, reverent men, true thinkers,
sincere lovers of, and earnest inquirers after, truth."
These, then, briefly are Lord Gilford's views in regard to
the lecturers ; while, as for the lectures, we have already
learned that they are to promote the teaching and diffu-
sion of " sound views " in respect of Natural Theology.
Now the whole question here is — What did Lord Gifford
mean by " sound views " ? This, in the first place, is
plain, that Lord Gifford wished the " sound views " he
desiderated to be independent of Eevelation ; but, in the
second place, Eevelation apart, he undoubtedly expected
the phrase to be understood as it is ordinarily understood
— and that is on the serious and affirmative side.

Unless we can suppose that Lord Gifford could, in such
serious and solemn circumstances, descend to a paltry
quibble and an unworthy irony, we must believe that the
phrase bore for him, and must have borne for him, the only
signification that is given to it in current usage. But we
can say more than that. Lord Gifford himself expressly
tells us, " I have intentionally indicated, in describing the
subject of the lectures, the general aspect which 'personally
I would expect the lectures to bear ; " and with such an
avowal as that before us, there can be no great difficulty
in coming to a certainty of assurance as regards what
was peculiarly meant by the expression " sound views."
Lord Gifford tells us that his personal expectation as
regards the general aspect of the lecturers has been " in-

8 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIRST.

tentionally indicated " by himself, and that we shall find
as much in his description of the " subject " of the lectures.
We are not even allowed a moment's hesitation in the
reference, then ; for not only do we know that the subject
is Natural Theology, but we know also, and that, too, in
all fulness and completeness of detail, Lord Gifford's own
definition of the subject. "We need but recall a phrase
or two here to have the whole before us again, and to feel
relieved from all doubt relatively. " The First and Only
Cause," " the Sole Being," " the greatest of all possible
sciences, — indeed, in one sense, the only science, that of
Infinite Being," — surely when Lord Giffbrd solicits " sound
views " on such subjects, and so expressed, he is speaking
affirmatively, and not negatively ; seriously, and not mock-
ingly. The whole tone of any relative wording all througli
is one of reverent belief in, and reverent desire foi',
the realization of religion. His solemn last words are
these : " I give my body to the earth as it was before,
in order that the enduring blocks and materials thereof
may be employed in new combinations ; and I give my
soul to God, in Whom, and with Whom, it always was,
to be in Him, and with Him for ever in closer and moie
(^onscious union." These sublime and solemn, almost awe-
ing, last words comport but ill with '• sound views," in the
construction that would make them only ironical and a
mock. 1 have no desire to strain the situation to any
undue extreme ; it is not my wish to make a Saint Simeon
Stylites of Lord Gifford in the matter of Eevelation, nor yet
an antique ruling elder in rigidity f)f Confession and the
Creed. As to that I know nothing. How it was situated
with Lord Gifford as regards any particular religious body
or persuasion, is beyond my ken. I know only this, and
the document so long before us bears ample testimony to
the fact, that, during these suffering last years of Lord
Gifford, it must have been the subject of religion that

THE LECTURERS. 9

occupied his whole mind and heart. The proof is his
Testament and Will, in which he is not content to concern
himself only with the things of earth and his worldly
relations, but in which he draws nigh also to his God and
his heritage on the other side. " I give my soul to God,"
he says, "in Whom, and with Whom, it always was, to be in
Him, and with Him for ever in closer and more conscious
union." What, in a religious sense, Lord Gifford personally
felt, and what, in a religious sense, as regards his lecturers,
he personally expected or desired, I shall hold now to have
been made conclusively plain. It is equally plain, at the
same time, that Lord Gifford had no wish in any way to
trammel his lecturers, or to bind them down to any express
articles, provided always that whatever they advocated
was advocated only by them as " reverent men, true
thinkers, sincere lovers of, and earnest inquirers after,
truth." No doubt that is true ; though I think we may
also take it for granted, from the whole tone and general
drift of his expressions, that it was the serious side he
would wish to see triumphant in the world, and prevailing
in the lives of men. " My desire and hope " — this is his
own, most unambiguous declaration towards the close —
"my desire and hope is that these lectureships and lectures
may promote and advance among all classes of the com-
munity the true knowledge of Him Who is, and there is
none and nothing besides Him, in Whom we live and
move and have our being, and in Whom all things consist,
and of man's real relation to Him Whom truly to know is
life everlasting."

Now, coming from such considerations as these, it is
not unnatural that the question should suggest itself,
And how of the lecturer, — how is he situated in regard
to the momentous interests which have been before us ?
Of course there is no necessity in the bond that the
lecturer, whom it has been the care of the patrons to

10 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIRST.

appoint, should declare himself before he lectures, or,
simply, further and otherwise than as he lectures. Still
it might be convenient did he contrive to let his hearers
have some inkling beforehand, generally, of what spirit
and drift they might expect from him. Fielding, in one
of his novels, tells us that, when we dine with a gentle-
man who gives a private treat, we must not find fault,
but cheerfully accept whatever fare he pleases* whereas,
in the case of an ordinary, with a bill of fare in the
window, we can see for ourselves, and either enter or
turn away as it suits us. This hint, which only bears
on physical food, Fielding does not disdain to borrow in
respect of food otherwise. Following his example, then,
let us prefix, not exactly now a bill of fare (which will
come later), but an explanation, so far, in regard to
creed. But that amounts to a religious confession,
whereas it may seem that Lord Giflbrd himself deprecates
or disapproves all such. It is certain that, according to
the terms of the document, all previous declarations are
unnecessary ; but still it cannot be said that there is any
actual prohibition of them, either expressed or under-
stood. Lord Gilford himself, as I have attempted to
show, has made no secret of his own convictions on the
general question ; and without at all desiring to set up a
compulsory precedent for others, we may, without impro-
priety, follow his example. I am a member of the
National Church, and would not willingly run counter
to whatever that involves. Again, as is seen at its
clearest and most definite in the sister Church farther
south, perhaps, — there are three main sections of that
Church, or rather, as actual speech has it, in that one
Church, — there are three Churches. There is Broad
Church, High Church, Low or Evangelical Church. I
daresay it has been by some — few or many, I know
not — supposed that I am Broad, and it is very certain

THE IMMEDIATE LECTUUER. 11

that it is not with my own will that I shall be narrow. I
am an utter foe to religious rancour — religious intolerance
of any kind. In that respect I am absolutely as Lord
Clifford himself would appear to have been from his own
statements, which are now, I hope, clearly in our minds.
Nevertheless, I have to confess that I would quite as soon
wish to be considered High as Broad, and that the party to
which I do wish to be considered to belong is the Low or
Evangelical one. No doubt there is deeply and ineradic-
ably implanted in the human soul an original sentiment
which is the religious one ; and no doubt also there is as
deeply and ineradicably implanted there a religious under-
standing. We not onlj feel, we know religion. Eeligion
is not only buoyed up on a sentiment of the heart, it is
founded also on ideas of the intellect. So it is that, if
for me High Church seems too exclusively devoted to the
category of feeling. Broad Church, again, too much
accentuates the principle of the understanding. Now,
if as much as this be true, as well for the one Church as
the other, it will not be incorrect to say that while the
Low or Evangelical Church is neither exclusively High nor
exclusively Broad, it is in essential idea both ; and so it is
that it is on its side that I would wish to be considered
to rank. I know not at the same time but that all three
Churches have a common sin, the sin of absolute intoler-
ance and denial, the one of the other. That I would
wish otherwise for them in a mutual regard, and that I
would wish otherwise from them in my own regard when
I point out this difference between them and me, that what
they possess in what is called the Vorstellung, I rely upon
in the Begriff. What they have i^ositivcly in the feeling,
or 2^ositively in the understanding, or positively in a union
of both, I have reflectively, or ideally, or speculatively in
reason. What the term positive amounts to will be best
understood by a reference to other religions than our own.

12 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIRST.

The very edge and point of the 2'^ositive may be placed in
bare will, the bare will of another, Mormonism is a
positive religion. There, says Joseph Smith, holding up
the book of Mormon, take that, believe whatever it says,
and do what it tells you. That is positive : the religion —
the book — is just given, and it is just received as given.
There is not a shadow of explanation, not a shadow of
reasoning, not a shadow of stipulation on the one side
or the other. So it is with Mahomet and the Koran.
Book in hand, he just steps forward, and there, on the
instant, the Mahometan is at his feet, simply repeating
the precise w^ords he hears read out to him. It is for
the same reason that laws are positive. They rest on
authority alone, another will than his who must obey
them : as the dictionary has it. They are prescribed by
express enactment or institution. Nevertheless, it is
implied in laws and law that they as particulars, and it
as a whole, are as much the will of him or them who
receive, as of him or them who give. Law is but a
realization of reason, of the reason common to us all, as
much yours as his, as much his as yours. So it is, or so
it ought to be, with religion ; and there you have the
wliole matter before you. He whose religion rests only
on the Vorstcllung possesses it positively — believes it
positively only ; whereas he with whom religion rests on
the Begriff, has placed beneath it a philosophical founda-
tion. You may illustrate this by a reference to the
Shorter Catechism. If you get its specifications by heart
and, making them your own only so, straiglitway act
upon them, then that is an illustration of what is
positive. To dwell on each specification separately V)y
itself again, making it to flow and coalesce, and live into
its own inmost meaning — that is to transmute it into the
Begriff, for the Begriff is but the external material words
made inward intellectual notion or idea — thought — some-

THE THREE CHURCHES, ETC. 1

o

thins from without converted into one's own substance
from within. Not but that the positive has its own
rights too. "We 'positively muzzle our dogs, we positivclij
bridle our horses, and we positively install our cattle ; and
we have right on our side. In the same way, and for
the same reason, we positively teach our children ; and we
have no other resource — we positively must. But what
we teach them is only their own ; they follow only their
own true selves when they follow us. We make it only
that they are free — that it is absolutely only their own
true wills they have, follow, and obey when we give them
the wills of maturity and experienced reason. So it is
that it has been a custom of a Sunday in Scotland to make
our children learn by heart verses of the Bible or the
specifications of the Shorter Catechism. They take what
they learn only into the Vorstellung ; they are unable as
yet to convert it into Begriff; but the trust is that they
will do so later. Nor is there any reason that they
should not do so, at least on the whole. I do not mean
to say that earnest reflection will remove every difficulty
connected with the various articles of the Book of Articles
or of the Larger or Shorter Catechisms ; but I do say
that many of these articles mean at bottom the very
deepest and most essential metaphysical truths.

But it is not with that tliat we have to do at present,
at the same time that it, and what else I have said in
this connection, will all serve to 'realize to you the reli-
gious position of the lecturer as what we are concerned
with at present. And in that reference I ought to
explain that, when I have opposed what is positively
held in feeling, or understanding, or a union of both to
what is reflectively, ideally, speculatively held in reason,
it is not the system of belief technically known as
Eationalism that I have in mind, whatever relation there
may exist between the two words etymologically. As

14 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIRST.

tlie sentence itself shows, indeed, the term reason is
opposed l)y me, not only to feeling, but also to under-
standing ; and understanding is the faculty, special, proper,
and peculiar, of nationalism. Eationalism, in fact, means —
in its religious ajiidication — nothing but Aufkliirung, is
nothing but the Aufkliirung, though claiming a certain affir-
mative side in its bearing on religion. The prevailing mind
of the Aufkliirung, namely, as in Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume,
Voltaire, is seen to be, in a religious direction, negative,
so far at least as Eevelation is concerned ; whereas the
Aufkliirung in the form of Eationalism, as in such a
writer as the German Eeimarus, for example, while
l)laning away much, or perhaps almost all, that is essen-
tial in religion, makes believe still to have an affirmative
attitude to Eevelation. Of course, I need no more than
mention the distinction letivccn understanding and reason,
as I have no doubt it is now well known and familiar.
It is current in Coleridge. I think, then, there will no
longer be any possibility of misapprehension or mistake
when I oppose religion as in reason to religion as in
understanding ; while the latter, in the form of Eation-
alism say, lias to do only with what is conditional and
finite, the former, in idciil or speculative religion, would
attain to converse with the unconditional and the infinite
itself.

But though I am thus careful to preclude the danger
of a religion in reason being confounded with Eationalism,
it seems to me tliat I nmst be equally careful to provide
against another and opposing danger. There is a great
])rejudice against old forms now-a-days ; and it is not
usual for the advocates of them to find themselves
listened to. Advanced views, that is, what are called
advanced views, are very generally, l)ecause advanced,
supposed to represent the truth- — at least the truth in its
highest contemporary form. The supporters of them

RATIONALISM AUFKLARUNG. 15

have been fighting a battle against the old, it has been
conceived — a battle of enliglitenment, progress, and im-
provement against received prejudice, traditional bigotry,
and stereotyped obstruction. It is the new only that is
to be hailed as the true. He who, in any way, may seem
now to stand for the old must be but a hired spadassin,
a gladiator, a Pr;vtorian guard, a bravo, a bully upon
wages. He cannot have anything to say worth hearing.
He must simply be going to babble the orthodoxy he is
paid for.

These words, I doubt not, will be found to strike a
true note now. If a man would have any success with
the general public now-a-days, almost it would seem as
though, very commonly, he must approve himself, on the
whole, as an Aufgekliirter, a disciple of the " advanced "
thinking we all understand so well. That is the temper
of the time, and the time — let critics say as scornfully as
they like, " whatever that may mean " — the time has a
a temper ; and, suppose it even in the wrong, it is as
much in vain to move against it as for Mrs. Partington
to stave out the Atlantic with her besom. The reason,
of course, is that the Aufkliirung, — call it if you will
Secularism, Agnosticism, or even Eationalism, — the reason
is that the Aufkliirung which, to our greatest thinkers,
was old and worn-out, and had completely done its task,
by the beginning of this century has descended upon the
generality.

In our large towns in these days, in our capitals, in
our villages, we are confronted by a vast mass of un-
belief. The Aufklarung, the historical movement called
Aufkliirung, as I say, dead among thinkers, has descended
upon the people ; and there is hardly a hamlet but has
its Tom Paines by the half-dozen — its Tom Paines of the
tap, all emulously funny on the one subject. I witnessed
such a thing as this myself last summer in the country

IG GIFFOKD LECTURE THE FIRST.

— the bewildered defeat of my landlady under the crow-
ing triumph of her son, a lad of seventeen or so, who had
asked her to explain to him where Cain got his wife !
In such circumstances we cannot expect to find a large
portion of the Press different. I recollect I was once
warned by a publisher, that I must remember it was the
No-God men who had the pull at present. One is glad
to think, however, that in this the dawn of a change
begins to show. There are those among our highest,
best, and most influential organs that have ceased to
think that it is any longer necessary only to follow.
They will teach now, inform, instruct, educate, lead.
Still, on the whole, we may lay our account with this,
that there is a prejudice in the mass for what apj^cars,
at least, to come to it as new. These are the words of
the advanced, it thinks, of those, as I have said, who have
been fighting the battle of time, in which, of course, it is
always the new is the true. I am sorry for this. It is
only a radical mistake of what is the new and what is
the true. " Distinguished Paine, rebellious staymaker,
rebellious needlenian," as Carlyle calls him, cannot at
least be new in these days, seeing that it is now about a
hundred years since, by his chalked door on the wrong
side, he just escaped the very last tumbrils of the French
lievolution. I suppose deep with Paine was but shallow
at its best : it is not likely that the shallowness of a
hundred years ago is less shallow now.

That, however, is tlie other danger. If there was a
danger that reason micjlit be confounded with the under-
standing, and philosophical faith with liationalism, there
is also a danger tliat said pliilosophieal faith, just in this
that it is faith, should, by the followers of what they
consider the new, not be listened to. It is to be sus-
])eeted, indeed, that many good men, who know quite
well what and where the Aufklarung is, are now-a-days

THE PREJUDICE AGAINST BELIEF. 17

reduced to silence precisely by such a consideration.
"Why speak if no one will listen ? Nothing succeeds
like success, and a failure remains a failure. Human
nature is but weak ; and it cannot be wondered at, that
it very soon gets hoarse in the throat, if it finds itself
to be bawling only in a desert. It takes patience and
a long life for men like the Carlyles and the Brownings
to be overwhelmed with plaudits in the end that can
only spoil themselves.

What I mean by all this, however, is only to protest
against such religious views as I have, not expounded,
but indicated, being regarded as something too old to be
listened to. I, for my part, very stupidly, perhaps, but
still, as even the adversary will hasten to allow, not
unnaturally, am apt to look upon them as the very
newest of the new, as precisely the message which the
votaries of philosophy have to give the world at present.

And so it is that, to my mind, such votaries of philo-
sophy must not allow themselves to be browbeat by
the vulgarity that cries, and can only cry, as Cervantes
tells us, " Long live the conqueror," meaning, of course,
by that, only the side that is uppermost for the moment.
What is really out of date, what is really behind the
time, is to insist on regarding as still alive an interest
that, as is historically known, had, so far as the progress
of thought is concerned, fully come to term a hundred
years ago. Not, at the same time, that there is any call
for us to be either narrow or intolerant. What is in
place now is a large and wise liberality that shall not
fail at any time in the wish and the will to face and
admit the truth. If any man confessed to me, for
example, that, when the walls of the city were said to
have fallen at the blast of the trumpet, his own belief
was that this was merely the Oriental phantasy express-
ing in a trope the signal speed of the event — if any man

B

1 8 GIFFOED LECTURE THE FIRST.

confessed such attitude of mind to me u-'dJi fears for his
orthodox security, I do think that I should not feel
justified in bidding hiui despair ! In fact, our relative
riches are such that, to my belief, we may readily allow
ourselves as much. For tlcc sahc of comparison, let us
even do this — let us consent, so far, and for this purpose,
to place the sacred books of the Hebrews on the same
level as the other sacred books of the East, and what
have we lost ? Will they lose in the regard ? Is it not
amusing at times to note the exultation with which our
great Cochinese and Anamese scholars, our great Tonquin
explorers, will hold up some mere halting verse or two,
or say some bill of sale, certificate of feu, against the
Hebrew Scriptures. Suppose the state of the case re-
versed. Suppose we had been rejoicing all this time in
these bills of sale, certificates of feu, and halting verses —
nay, give them all, give them their own best, suppose we
had been rejoicing all this time in the Confucian Kings
and the very oldest Vedas, and suppose, in the face of
all these possessions, the Hebrew Scriptures, unknown
before, were suddenly dug up and brought to light !
Then, surely, there might be a cry, and a simultaneous
shout, that never before had there been such a glorious —
never before had there been such a miraculous find !
The sacred writings of the Hebrews, indeed, are so im-
measurably superior to those of every other name that,
for the sake of the latter, to invite a comparison is to
undergo instantaneous extinction. Nay, regard these
Scri])tures as a literature only, the literature of the Jews
— even then, in the kind of quality, is there any
literature to be compared with it ? will it not even then
remain still as the sacred literature ? A taking simple-
ness, a simple takingness that is divine — all that can
lift us out of our own week-day selves and place us, pure
then, holy, rapt, in the joy and the peace of Sabbath

HISTORICAL ANACHRONISM. 19

feeling and Sabbath vision, is to be found in the mere
nature of these old idylls, in the full-lilling sublimity
of these psalms, in the inspired Godwards of these
intense-souled prophets. With all that in mind, think
now of the tumid superiority of Mr. Buckle ! If any one
can contradict me, he magnanimously intimates when
perorating against all that, " I will abandon the view for
which I am contending ! " With the Hebrew Scriptures
lying there before us in their truth, as I have attempted
to image it, is it not something pitiably small to hear
again the jokes even of a Voltaire about the discrepancies'^
I do not apprehend that it is pretended by any one that
there are not discrepancies ; but what are they in the
midst of all that grandeur ? He, now, who would boggle
at the wife of Cain, or stumble over the walls of Jericho,
is not an adult : he is but a boy still. For my part, I
do believe — I feel sure — that David Hume, that Voltaire
himself were he alive now, and were he cognizant of all
the education that we have received since, even on
prompting of his own, would not for a moment be inclined
to own as his these laggards and stragglers of an army
that had disappeared. He would know that the new
time had brought a new task, and he would have no
desire to find himself a mere anachronism, and historically
out of date.

But with whatever general spirit we may approach
the subject, it is to be considered that that subject, that
Natural Theology itself, makes no call on Eevelation — -
nay, that the Lecturer is under an express stipulation
to treat it in independence of lievelation. Natural
Theology, indeed, just as Natural Theology, means an
appeal to nature, an appeal that is only natural. In it
the existence of a God is to be established only by
reference to the constitution of the universe, even as that
universe exhibits itself within the bounds of space and

20 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIRST.

time ; and not in anywise farther than as it is reflected
also in the intellect and will of man.

Having thus exhausted what appeared necessary pre-
liminaries of the subject so far as the respective persons
seem concerned, their claims, wishes, intentions, views,
powers, and understandings in its regard, we shall, in the
next lecture, proceed to what more directly bears on the
subject itself.

GIFFORD LECTUEE THE SECOND.

Natural theology, what is it ? — Usual answers — Hutcheson — Varro
— The Middle Ages — Raymund of Sebonde — Rays, Paleys, etc.
— Till 1860 — Since — Philosophies of religion— Pagan gods — De
Quincey, Augustine, Cicero, Pliny, Juvenal, Herodotus, Aulu.s
Gellius — The proofs historically treated — That the theme —
Plotinus, Augustine — Natural theology not possibly a physical
science — Understanding and faith, Augustine, Anselm —
Monotheism alone religion proper — The course, affirmative,
negative — China, India, Colebrooke, Ras bihari Mukhaiji—
Hindu texts (Gnostics) — Hesiod.

Having discussed and settled, so far as seemed desir-
able, the personal aspects in connection with the matter
in hand — what, viz., may have been the wishes, inten-
tions, and general spirit of the Testator himself in the
reference, as well as what expectations it may be in
place to form in regard to the immediate lecturer, and
the mood of mind in which he avows himself to enter
upon this theme, — questions, it is hoped, all viewed with
feelings and considerations not alien from, but so far
in harmony with, the subject, — to that subject itself
it only now remains for us more directly to turn.

It — that subject — is formally dictated and expressly
prescribed to us under the name of Natural Theology.
We are met at once, in the first place, then, by the
question, What is it — what is Natural Theology ? I dare-
say we have all some idea, more or less correspondent to
the interest itself, of what Theology is. Theology, by
the etymology of the mere expression, is the logos of
God. The Greek logos, to be sure, like the Latin ratio,

22 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SECOND,

lias quite an infinitude of applications ; but the applica-
tion that comes pretty well at once to the surface here,
suggests, as in some degree synonymous with itself, such
words as description, narrative, account, report, rationale,
theory, etc. Geology is a description, narrative, account,
report, rationale, theory of all that concerns the earth
in itself and in its vicissitudes. Zoology is such an
account of all that concerns animals ; and astrology,
supposing it to mean, as it ought, all that astronomy
means, is a description, narrative, account, report, rationale,
theory of all the objects we perceive in the heavens,
and of their various movements and general phenomena.
Theology, then, is to expound to us God, the fact of His
existence, and the nature of His Being. Now, the
qualifying word. Natural, when applied to Theology,
must have a limitative, restrictive, and determinative
force. What is still in hand is Theology, the account
of God ; but that account is to be a natural account.
In short. Natural Theology means that we are to tell
of God all that we can tell of Him via natnra:, by
the way of nature, — we are to tell of Him all that we
can tell of Him from an examination of mere nature —
of nature as we perceive or find it to be without us,
of nature as we perceive or find it to be witliin us.
The information so acquired will sometimes be found
to be named, as by the Scholastics, and by Descartes
and Leibnitz after them, the lumen naturm, lumen
naturale, lumicre naturelle, the light of nature ; and
consequently, by very name, is opposed to the super-
natural light which is to be understood as given us
by express revelation.

Francis Hutcheson, in the third part, Dc Deo, of his
excellent little Latin Sj/nopsis of Metaphj/sics, says that
" altliough all philosophy is pleasant and profitable, there
is, nevertheless, no part of it more productive and rich

HUTCHESON VAERO. 23

than that which contains the knowledge of God, c[uccgue
dicitur Thcolorjia Naturalis." This Natural Theology he
goes on to describe as due to " philosophers who support
themselves on the sole powers of human reason, and make
no reference to what God has supernaturally revealed to
inspired men." And the thing itself confirms the defini-
tion. We have only to look to what treatises have been
actually written on the subject to perceive that the
attempt in all of them is to demonstrate the existence
and attributes of the Deity by reason alone, in applica-
tion to nature itself as it appears within us or without
us. Any sketch of the history of these treatises— of the
history of Natural Theology — usually begins with the
mention of Varro, the contemporary of Cicero, a man,
as it appears, of encyclopaedic knowledge. I cannot see,
however, much in his connection that is in application
here. All that is known of Varro on this head is to be
found in the sixth book of St. Augustine's City of God,
the greater part of which is taken up with Varro and
his relation to the gods. Augustine praises Varro, and
says, " he will teach the student of things as much as
Cicero delights the student of words." There shall have
been on his part also " a threefold division of theology
into fabulous, natural, civil." And here Varro says
himself, "they call that kind mythical (or fabulous)
which the poets chiefly use ; physical, that which the
philosophers use ; civil, that which the people use ; "
and again he says, "the first theology is especially
adapted to the theatre, the second to the world, the
third to the city." But without going any further into
this, it may be said at once that the Natural, rather
Physical Tlieology here, only considered the principles
of the philosophers, as the fire of Heraclitus, the
numbers of the Pythagoreans, the atoms of Epicurus ;
and was merely a rationalizing of what was alleged

24 GIFFOED LECTURE THE SECOND.

of the gods into these— these principles, and had no
claim whatever to the title Natural Tlieology as
understood by us. At all to allude to Yarro in this
connection is on the whole idle.

Of the power and majesty, as well as of the love of
God, exhibited in the spectacle of the creation, we know
that in the Old and New Testaments there is much both
of awing sublimity and heart-touching gentleness. And,
accordingly, we may as readily surmise that such marvels
of poetry and inspiration would not escape the early
Fathers, but would be rapturously used by them. And
so indeed it was. Not but that there was a religious
teaching, sooner or later, in vogue also, that despised
nature, and turned from it as something inferior or
wicked. All through the Middle Ages, and in most
of their respective writings, there occur traces of refer-
ences to nature that may be claimed in any professed
liistory of the subject ; but in point of reality there is no
veritable " Natural Theology " till the work expressly
so named by the Eaimond Sebond, the Eaimondus de
Sebonde, of Montaigne. The place he is named from is
supposed to be somewhere in Spain, but nobody seems to
know where it is to be found ; every new authority has
a new name for it, Sebonde, Sabunde, Sabeyda, Sabieude,
etc.

Kaymund flourished in the middle of the fifteentli
century, and his book was called T/icoloffia Naturalis sice.
Liber Creaturarum ex quo homo in Dei ef creatnrarum
suiqiLe ipsius cognitionem assurgit — Natural Theology or
Book of the Creatures, from which a man rises to a
knowledge of God and the creatures and his own self.
This is sufficiently promising ; but, after all, there is not
a great deal in the book. Nevertheless, it appeared of
such importance to the Roman Curia that we find its
Trologus in the list of forbidden books; this in 1595,

EAYMUND lUYS, PALEYS, ETC. 25

more than a century and a half after its presumed
composition. Montaigne, too, who translated it into
French for his father, speaks in the highest terms of
it. " Many folks amuse themselves reading it," he says,
" and especially the ladies." I had noted some pas-
sages to quote, but they are hardly worth the time.
In the ascent of things to God, man is on the fourth
grade, he remarks : he is, he lives, he feds, and he under-
stands. This is a fourfold distinction taken from Aris-
totle, which we find in most writers throughout the
Middle Ages ; it is the esse, vivere, sentire, i'litcUifjcrc, so
universally applied in exposition of the stages of creation
during the Hexaemeron — the six days of it.

After Eaymund, or his commentator Montaigne, I
fancy we need hardly mention any other writers on the
subject till we come to the Grews, Eays, Cudworths,
Stillingfleets, Derhams, Clarkes, and Fenelons nearer our
own times ; in which (times) all previous authorities
have been superseded by our Paley and our Bridge-
water Treatises.

These last, then, — this now is the important considera-
tion, and here is the critical pause, — these last, then,
represent Natural Theology, and, as a whole, exhibit it —
is it their contents that shall constitute the burden of
these lectures, and be reproduced now ? It is Natural
Theology we have to treat — Paley is Natural Theology.
Shall we just give Paley over again ? I fear the ques-
tion will be met by most of us with a shudder. For
many years back it would seem as though the Natural
Theology of the Eays and the Derhams, of the Paleys
and the Bridgcwater Treatises had vanished from our
midst. " Where," asked a metaphysician some four-
score years ago, — " where may or can now a single note
of former Natural Theology be heard — all that has been
destroyed root and branch, and has disappeared from

26 GIl'TORD LKCTUKE THE SKCOND.

the circle of the sciences ? " His own question, all the
same, did not hinder the same metaphysician from
lecturing affirmatively on Natural Theology a considerable
number of years later ; while, at about the same time in
England, there was a revival of interest in the subject,
l)rincii)ally in consequence, perhaps, of a new edition
uf I'aley's work, to which Sir Charles Bell and Lord
]>rougham had, each in his own way, contributed.
From that time, quite on indeed till 18 GO, we may
say, there was the old interest, the old curiosity, ad-
miration, reverence, awe, as in presence of the handi-
work of God, when the descriptions of Natural Theology
were before us, whether in lecture or in book. But
now, again, a new wave has come and washed, for some
twenty years back, Natural Theology pretty well out
of sight. He who should take it up now as Paley took
it up, or as Lord Brougham took it up, would simply be
regarded as a fossil.

In such circumstances the resource seems to be to
turn to what is called the Philosophy of Beligion, and
has been introduced into Great Britain almost quite
recently in the form of one or two translations from
the German. There are other pliilosophics of religion
in existence besides any as yet translated. Perhaps,
indeed, there is no department of philosophy, so far as
publishers' lists are in evidence, which claims a greater
number of books at present. Even here, however, with
a special vicio to the requirements of Lord GiJfo7'd's
Bequest, I do not find my look of inquiry quite hope-
fully met. In one of the translated books, for example,
what we find as a philosophy of religion is pretty well a
series of biographies ; while, in the other, there are two
parts — a part that is general, and a i)art that is bio-
graphical. Now, I do not apprehend that a mere series
of biographies would suit the requirement which we

PHILOSOPHIES OF RELIGION". 27

have in view ; and, as for the general part, it does
not seem to satisfy me in that consideration either.
That part may be said to consist of three divisions —
one division being given to what we may call alien
religions, another to our own Christianity, and a third
to what may be regarded as specially general. Now,
as regards Christianity, I do not feel that I should be
happy did I philosophize it to you, even if that were
competent to us on Lord Gilford's foundation, in the
way in which it has been usual to do so, as, in fact,
we find at once in the example readiest to hand —
I mean in the Eaymund of Sabunde we have just spoken
of. This writer holds that there must, of necessity, be a
plurality of persons in the Godhead, quia in Deo debet
esse communication qiim nequit esse sine dante, ct recipiente
afque communieante (that is, " because in God there must
be communication or community, which, again, is im-
possible unless there be a Giver, a Receiver, and a
Comviunicator "). Of course, as is obvious at once,
Eaymund means that the Father should be the Giver,
the Son the Eeceiver, and the Third Person in the
Godhead the Communicator. I do not mean to say
that it is literally thus our modern writers philoso-
phize to us the Trinity ; but it is an example in
point, and perfectly illustrates the general method
actually in use. I do not know that it is popularly
known ; it is quite true, nevertheless, that in the
greater number of the Fathers of the Church, and
the other ecclesiastical, especially mystical, writers of the
Middle Ages, some such method of philosophizing the
persons of the Godhead is commonly to be found. In
them, for example, as in more modern philosophical
writers, it is quite usual for Christ to stand as the ex-
istent world. Now, I am not at all a foe to a warranted
religious philosophizing ; I am not at all a foe even to

28 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SECOND.

the carrying of trinity — trinity in unity — into the very
heart of the universe in constitution of it. But it strikes
me that in these days, and as we are here in Great
Britain, so to attempt to philosophize the Christian God-
head would only repugn. I, for my part, cannot feel at
home in it. I feel quite outside of it. There is such a
naked naivcU in the Old Testament, and there is such a
direct trust of natural simplicity in the New, as comport
hut ill with the apparent artifice and mere ingenuity of
these seeming externalities. Again, as regards the divi-
sion which, in these books, is devoted to other religions
than our own, one finds it hard to put faith in that
adjustment of them, the one to the other, that would
make a correlated series of them, and a connected whole.
With whatever attempt to philosophize them, there
appears little for us that is vital in these religions now.
They are not lively these nondescript divinities. My
reading of these parts of these philosophies has been
careful enough ; but I always found that a Gcsindcl
(a rabble) of gods would not prove to me, as a Gesindel
of ghosts had proved to a German professor, entertaining,
that is, and refreshing. My experience rather seemed
to be something like that of De Quincey in his dreams.
" I fled from the wrath of Brahma ; Vishnu hated me ;
Siva lay in wait for me ; I came suddenly on Isis and
Osiris. I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and
the crocodile trembled at." Milton's " Lars and Lemures,"
and " wounded Thammuz," and " the dog Anubis," and
" that twice-battered god of Palestine," were only delight-
ful to me in his own most glorious poem. Apart from
it, I was as grimly content to see them turn tail and flee
as he was. I quite sympathized with Augustine in his
contempt or horror of such gods as Jugatinus and Domi-
ducus, and Domitius and Manturna. and Subigus and
Prema and Pertunda. I agreed with Cicero that it was

PAGAN GODS. 29

" detestable," that it was to be " repudiated," and not to
be " tolerated," that there should be such gods as Fever
and Mischance, Insolence and Impudence. I did not
wonder at Pliny's disgust with the human folly that would
believe in such gods. And did not Juvenal tell us of
the Leek and the Onion as the gods whom, inviolably,
the Egyptians swore by ? " Oh, the holy nation," exclaims
Juvenal, — " oh, the holy nation whose very gods grow in
their gardens ! " One remembers, nevertheless, that in
the erection of the pyramids, according to Herodotus,
these same Egyptians ate up ever so many hundred
talents' worth of those gods of theirs. As for the
divinity of the onion in particular, Aulus Gellius informs
us that the Egyptian priests believed it, because the
onion reversed for them the usual order of sublunary
things, growing, namely, as the moon declined, and de-
clining as the moon grew. I am not aware that modern
science has confirmed the supposition ; but, no doubt,
they knew a great many more things then than we know
now ' A Gesindel, a canaille, a rabble of gods truly !
And Pliny has it that there was, in his time even, a
greater population of gods and goddesses than of human
beings ! The Greek poets and the Koman poets — I am
just recounting my relative experiences here — were all
as pleasing to me, no doubt, as to another ; but I
could not say that the special gods, Jupiter and the rest,
made any very appreciable part of the pleasure. I had
no interest in the gods of polytheism at all : after strange
gods I suppose it formed no part of my idiosyncrasy to
run. In short, in the division under reference of the
said philosophies of religion, the philosophizing of the
various gods of the various nations failed to move me or
inspire me with a will to follow in the same direction.
This, of course, cannot be without some natural exaggera-
tion ; for, in the end, I by no means deny a certain affinity

30 GIFFORD LECTUKE THE SECOND.

of the religions, the one to the other, and a consequent
possibility of philosophically bringing them together. I
only wish that for the purpose of use the actual attempts
in this direction, so far as possibility of presentation is
concerned, were better suited for our public. But, for
the mere histories of the various popular divinities, I
failed to see that I could make any application of them
in the charge I had accepted in connection with Lord
Gilford's bequest. Natural Theology as Natural Theology
I could not in any way find in them.

But, besides the divisions philosophizing, — the one
Christianity and the other paganism, — there was the inter-
mediate division of a more general philosophical matter,
discussing, for example, the question of the seat of re-
ligion, whether it was a sentiment, or whether it was a
knowledge — even here I failed to find myself satisfied as
to its sufficient availableness in respect of the conditions
in view. The best performances in this regard had in
them, assuming all else to be unobjectionable, such a
mode of presentation and treatment as hardly could be
acceptably and intelligibly conveyed.

Eecurring perforce from the Philosophy of Eeligion to
Natural Theology again, it suggested itself that, after all,
Paley's way of it did not exhaust the subject. The field
was really a larger field than Paley occupied. Paley
entertained no questions of the proofs as the proofs, and
the proofs as the proofs constituted the subject. The
arguments, the proofs for the Being of a God — that was
Natural Theology. And, again, not less are these proofs
the very essential elements and bases of the philosophy
of religion itself. There is no philosophy of religion
that, extricating itself from mere biography, possesses a
general part, but finds room — the best of them large,
important, and essential room — for the subject of the
proofs. "Whence come these proofs, then ? They must

THE PROOFS HISTORICALLY TREATED. 31

have had a heginning. But begin where they might, they
could have had no place where paganism and polytheism
obtained. Side by side with religion, there might have
been vague, crude, general philosophizings, but there could
have been no Natural Theology as Natural Theology, and no
proofs as proofs of Natural Theology. Polytheism, therefore,
must fade, monotheism must dawn, before there could be
even a thought of Natural Theology or its proofs. What,
then, is the history of these proofs, and in this relation ?
Suppose, at long and last, we take up this, — suppose we
take up consideration of the known, received, tabulated,
traditional proofs, a?uZ in connection loith their history, — that
would be an escape at once from what is alleged to be
antiquated, and to what brings with it an element that
promises to be new ; for there may be in existence sketched
sucrgestions in regard to those who have written on the
subject ; but it seems unknown that any attention has
been paid as yet to the historical derivation of the proofs
themselves. In this way, too, there would be no abandon-
ment of the subject itself. Natural Theology — God as the
sole content of Natural Theology — would never fall from
sight nor cease to be before our eyes. Nor yet are we
any more in this way excluded from philosophy : we are
at once here in the very heart of the philosophy of religion
itself ; and, in a personal regard, there can be no want of
every opportunity to say everything whatever that one
may have a wish or ability to say on such theme generally.
AVith four men, at four universities, all declaiming, year
after year, on the same text, there may come necessity for
diversion and digression ; but now, in this first year, it
would ill become the lecturer who was first elected on the
whole foundation, and in the university at least of the
capital— it would ill become him, so signalized and so
placed, to set the example of an episode, while it was the
epic he was specially engaged for. There can be no doubt

32 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SECOND.

that Lord Gifford was very serious in his bequest, — there
can be no doubt of the one meaning, end, aim, intention,
and object of all those emphatic specifications and desig-
nations of his, — there can be no question but that the
Testator's one wish, in these days of religious difficulty and
distrust, was for some positive settlement in regard to the
Being of a God. One cannot read that last Will and
Testament of Lord Gifford's, indeed, without being reminded
of what Porphyry tells us of Plotinus. Plotinus died, he
says, with these last words in his mouth : Ileipdada) to
iv r)fjbli> Oelov avayeiv irpo^ to ev tm jravTi Oelov (strive to
liring the God that is in iis to the God that is in the All).
Kepler, apparently in contrast to this, says : " My highest
wish is to find within the God whom I find everywhere
without." In such a matter, however, it does not signify
from which side we take it. There can be no doubt that
the last thoughts of Lord Gifford concerned his own soul,
and the God who made it. To know that, was to Lord
(xifford to know all. It was with him just as though he
soliloquized with St. Augustine (Soliloq. i. 7) : Dcum ct
animam scire cupio (I desire to know God and the soul).
Nihilne plus (Nothing more) ? Nihil omnino (Nothing at
all) !

It is true at the same time — and it may be well for a
moment to meet this point — that Lord Gifford wished the
subject to be treated as a strictly natural science, just
as astronomy or chemistry is. But naturnl obviously is
(jnly opposed here to supernatural, only to what concerns
Hevelation. It were idle to ask me to prove this : every
relative expression is a proof in place. If it were said that
astronomy is to be treated as a strictly natural science
just as chemistry is, would it be necessary to substitute
in the former the method of the latter — to roast Jupiter
in a crucible, or distil Saturn over in a retort ? Things
that are identical in the genus are very unlike in the

NATURAL THEOLOGV NOT POSSIBLY A PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 33

species, as in the Aristotelian example of the ox and the
man, where each is an animal. The apparatus of chemistry
is for chemistry, and the apparatus of astronomy is for
astronomy : neither can be substituted for the other ; and
both are powerless in regard to the object of Natural
Theology, Our transatlantic brothers, as we hear at this
moment, are going to have object glasses, or reflectors, or
refractors, of ever so many feet ; but the very tallest
American, with the very tallest of telescopes, will never
be able to say that he spied out God. Natural Theology
is equally known as Eational Theology ; and Eational
Theology is equally known as the Metaphysic of God.
That last phrase is acceptable enough ; it repugns not ;
but fancy the Physic of God ! The Greek term, doubtless,
has an identity with the Latin one ; but it has also a
difference. Natural Theology may be considered a strictly
natural science ; but it were hardly possible to treat it as
a strictly physical science. Physical Theology sounds
barbarous, and carries us no farther than Mumbo-Jumbo
and the fetich in general.

What w^e have to aim at, wholly and solely, here, in
our science, is the knowledge of God, a knowledge that can
come to us only ?nctophysically ; for it is a knowledge that,
with whatever reference to nature, is still beyond nature ;
— a knowledge, in fact, whose very business in the end is
to transcend nature — the knowledge, namely, to which the
Finite is only the momentary purchase that gives the rise
to the Infinite. It can come to us, then, as said, only
metaphysically, and for that matter, too, only religiously.
The old w-ay of it is not without its truth, the old way of
it, as in the time of Augustine, or as in the time of Anselm.
To both Augustine and Anselm there may be a necessity
for a cultivation of the understanding ; but to both also
there is a necessity that faith precede. Augustine (Civ.
Dei, ix. 20) has in mind the verse (1 Cor. viii. 1), " Know-

C

34 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SECOND.

ledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up." " And this
can only be understood," he says, "as meaning that with-
out charity, knowledge does no good, but inliates a man,
or magnifies him with an empty windiness." So it is that
to Augustine faith, love, charity must precede knowledge.
Even as the ground must be loosened and softened for
reception of the seed, so must the heart be made tender
by faith, charity, and love, if it would profitably receive
into itself the elements of knowledge. The same necessi-
ties, to the same end, with humihty, occur in Anselm.
So here we have only to recollect his most fre([uent
expressions to know that the general object of Lord Gifford,
too, was faith, belief — the production of a living principle
that, giving us God in the heart, should, in this world of
ours, guide us in peace.

How inapplicable mere Physics are to Natural Theology
is obvious also from this, that Lord Gifford directly styles
the latter " the only science, the science of Infinite Being."
It is not in a science of Infinite Beinir that the lever or
the pulley or the screw can have any place ; in respect
of such a science, there is no power to deal with it Ijut
what lies in philosophy. And thus in meeting an objec-
tion that may rest on such expressions as astronomy,
chemistry, natural science, etc., we are brought back to
where we were in connection with the proofs and their
appearance in history. Natural Theology as Natural
Theology, the philosophy of Infinite Being as the philo-
sophy of Infinite Being, neither the one nor the other
can be found in Physics, and just as little in paganism
or in polytheism ; but both are to be found, and found
together, when on the stage of history polytheism is
melting into monotheism, and paganism is drawing nigh
to Christianity. I have been met with surprise when I
liave said that religion proper only begins with mono-
theism. But you will realize what I mean, if you will

MONOTHEISM ALONE RELIGION PROPER. 35

only consider the idea of sin. In mere mythology, which
is superstition only, there may be fear for an evil in threat,
or hope for a good that is desired, but there is no moral
sense of sin, no moral anguish and conflict in one's own
conscience. Moral responsibility comes only with the doc-
trine of the one God that has made man in His image.
For then man is no longer a slave ; he is a free man, and
is referred to his own standard as a rational being, in
regard to whether he is in unison with his Maker or not.
Had ever any Greek or Eoman struggles within himself
as to his belief or unbelief ? Many a modern has given
to this world soul-thrilling testimonies of struggles as to
God ; but never a Greek or a Eoman in regard to
Jupiter or Juno. Men, of course, will tear you like wild
beasts, and rend you into a thousand fragments, should
you spit upon their fetiches, in whose good - will they
trust ; but that is a different matter. These men may
hate you ; but they have no struggles in themselves.

And now, after all these meetings of objections and
all these explanations, in which, I trust, you will still
kindly acknowledge a certain treatment of the subject
itself, — after all this, it remains for me to state finally
and formally what our further course shall be both for
this session and the next. I take the theme as it is pre-
scribed to me — Natural Theology and the proofs for the
Being of a God. These proofs I follow historically, while
the reflection, at the same time, that we have still before
us " the only science, the science of Infinite Being," may
bring with it a certain breadth and filling, tending to
preclude, perhaps, what possible insufficiency of philo-
sophical matter a mere consideration of the proofs them-
selves might chance to involve. This is one half of my
enterprise. The other half — the negative half — shall
concern the denial of the proofs. This session I confine
myself to the affirmative ; next session, I shall conclude

36 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SECOND.

with what concerns tlie negative. In this way we shall
have two correspondent and complementary halves — one
irenical, and the other polemical ; one with the ancients,
and the other with the moderns. For I shall briim- tin;
affirmative half historically down only till we come again
in sight of Eaymund of Sabunde, with whom in a way
our explanations opened. I shall not trouble you with
any formal exposition of the proofs themselves till we
come to the negative that denies them ; and I do not
think it necessary to deduce the historical part farther
than Eaymund. I hold the Grews, the Eays, the I)er-
hams, etc., to have been all absorbed in your familiar
Paley, who, for his part, needs no exposition of mine.

Now, of the historical reference in question, I know
not that there is much to be said till the first faint rise
of monotheism begins to show itself among the Greeks ;
for I shall presume the writings of the Hebrews to have
stood fairly on the world-stage only after Christianity
came to the struggle with heathenism ; though cer-
tainly, some 250 years before the commencement of our
era, the Jews had attained, in Alexandria, to a decided
influence on, to say so, the universal historical life.

Before Greece, and in regard to possible philosophizings
spoken of as side by side with the religions, we have to
cast our eyes only on India ; for, as regards China, there
does not seem anything for us there, unless the declara-
tion of the sect of Lao-tse, that a material naturalism
need not alone be the object of knowledge and belief,
but that the superiority lies with the things of reason
and the soul. Henry Thomas Colebrooke, in his essays
on the philosophy of tlie Hindus, published in the Trans-
actions of tlie Royal Asiatic Society, and reprinted in his
Miscellaneoiis Essays, has collected for us all that bears
on the philosophical theology of India ; for what is
philosophical in that reference alone concerns us — we

CHINA, INDIA, COLEBROOKE. 37

Lave no call to turn to that Clesindel of gods them-
selves. I may allow myself to lament to you that I
have not an assistance here, which I had at least much
hoped for. I have in correspondence with me an Indian
gentleman of the greatest philosophical promise, who
has for years been engaged upon, and will soon publish, a
great historical work in reference to the philosophy and
philosophies of the Hindus — Mr. Eas Bihari Mukharji.
In the meantime, while we wait, we must be glad that
we have Colebrooke. Here among his translations is
one in which the beginning of all things is represented
very much as it is in the first chapter of Genesis : " The
earth was without form and void ; and darkness was
upon the face of the deep. Then, was there neither
entity nor nonentity ; no world, nor sky, nor aught
above it . . . darkness there was . . . but That breathed
without aflflation — other than Him nothing existed . . .
this universe was enveloped with darkness . . . but that
mass, which was covered by the husk, was at length
produced by the power of contemplation and desire, the
original productive seed." It is observed in a note to
the passage in Colebrooke that darkness and desire here
(Tamas and Kama) bear a distinct resemblance to the
Chaos and Eros of Hesiod. But that mighty formless
void, as it were the nebula of a world, breathed out like
an exhalation around the Supreme Being, who then was
simply contemplation and desire, reminds of similar ideas
in the Gnostics, who also were mainly Orientals. Thus
to Valentinus God was as the Bythos, the deeply-brooding
abyss, the syzygy of which was evvoia, meditation ; and
meditation was 0-177;, silence, or %a/3i9, bliss. All these
ideas seem to go together ; and, as Thomas Taylor might
say, are not iiaradigmatic only, but parental. They are
not merely schematic — merely in effigy or scheme, but
they are substantially productive, procreative, parturient.

38 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SECO^"D.

Almost we get the thought from tliem that God imtst
be, and 7vith God His world. There is the /BvOcx;, tlie
deep, the eternal deep, the abysmal deep — is it not
very striking that with such first principle, the second
should be evvota, meditation ? And that meditation is
crt7>;, silence, deep, eternal, infinite ; and that silence is '
;)^a/3i?, bliss, the mighty secret, the deep, silent, mystic,
felicity of the all-blessed God hidden and slmt up into
Himself. One cannot think of that first of things, that
unfathomable profound, all-silent there, all-blissful there,
— one cannot think of it but as full — the a3on world is its
TrXijpwjjia, and its TrXyjpco/xa, its filling, is the universe that
is to be. All the thoughts go together, and they come to
us as but the necessary nisus of the mighty prime, the
prime that is itself a necessity and a nisus. The Gnostics
proceed to add here, perhaps, a discordant note. They
call this ^v66<;, ap'pevo-OrfKv^, man-woman ; but still it is
not incongruous that it should be as yet the all-one, the
all - indifferent, the all - neutral, the simple infinite, the
direipov of Anaximander. Another syzygy of the Gnostics
here is aX')]6eLa truth, and truth also is in place. To all
mankind, as to Democritus, it has seemed only fit that
truth should be hidden in a well 0v6a)).

These gnostic ideas are evidently very much in
consonance with the conceptions of the Indians in regard
to their Supreme Being, who at first for them " breathed
without afilation." And I refer to such ideas now not
as formally illustrative of tlie proofs as such, but as being
at least akin to them. If there be a creating God as
there is both to the Indians and the Gnostics, then what
is called Teleology is irrepressible, design confronts us on
the spot. But however it be with Teleology, with the
proofs, how much such a passage as that Indian passage
is as a voice from what to Lord Gifford is " the only
science — the science of Infinite Being," must of itself be

HINDU TEXTS — GNOSTICS. 39

obvious at once. As might be expected too, it is not a
passage left to Colebrooke alone ; it is to be found in all
writers of the class, as, prominently, in the texts and
translations of that eminent Orientalist Dr. John Muir.
In his History of Ancient Sanscrit Literature, at page
546, there is also an admirable poetical rendering of it at
the able hands of Mr. Max Miiller, who, as we all know,
is not only a passed master in linguistic science, but in
comparative mythology as well the chief authority.

Further, here, it may not be out of place, indeed, that
I should name a few more of these Indian assonances.
This, for example, is very notable : " Looking around,
that primeval being saw nothing but himself, and he
first said, ' I am I.' Therefore his name was ' I.' " Here,
too, is a remarkable passage : " Brighu approached his
father, Varuna, saying, ' Venerable ! make known to me
Brahma ; ' " and on the third asking, it is said, " He
(Varuna) meditated in deep contemplation, and dis-
covered intellect to be Brahma ; for all these beings are
indeed produced from intellect ; when born they live by
intellect ; towards intellect they tend ; and they pass
into intellect." Anaxagoras on the vov^ could hardly
have been better abbreviated. The declarations of
Hindu philosophy in regard to causality may be referred
to as having a relation as well to Teleology as to Ontology,
or the Science of Being. But for them we shall have a
titter place elsewhere. Continuing our illustrations from
Colebrooke, here is another proposition which I think we
shall yet find of the greatest relevance and reach in
what constitutes for us our special interest : " There
must be one to enjoy what is formed for enjoyment : a
spectator, a witness of it ; that spectator is soul." There
is also to be found, similarly, in these communications
this remarkable statement in regard to the final cause of
the world, or rather simply of nature, nature as such.

40 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SECOND.

It (nature) is not there independently, self-subsistently,
and on its own account ; it is there only for a purpose
and as a means. " As a dancer," it is said, " having
exhibited herself to the spectator, desists ; so does
nature desist, having manifested herself to soul. . . .
He (the spectator) desists because he has seen her ; and
she (the dancer) desists because she has been seen."
That is, the work has been accomplished ; what was to
be done has bc^en done ; and the implements withdraw.

As regards the reference on the part of Colebrooke to
the Thcocjony of Hesiod and certain resemblances in its
traditions to those of the Indians, there cannot be a
doubt of its correctness. Both ring with assonances to
the cosmogony of the Pentateuch ; and it is impossible
to avoid believing, in reference to all three, that they
echo to us some of the most ancient utterances of the
race. Mr. Paley, the learned editor of Hesiod, observes
in his preface (xv.) that in the Thcogony we have " traces
of what appear to be primitive and nearly universal
traditions of the human family . . . traditions so
immensely ancient, that all traces of anything like a
history of them had, long before Hesiod's time, been
utterly and irretrievably lost. The coincidences between
the earliest known traditions of mankind and the Mosaic
writings are much too numerous and important to be purely
accidental, and much too widely dispersed to have been
borrowed solely from that source." So writes Mr. Paley.
The traditions in Hesiod, therefore, in regard to primitive
being, infinite and divine, are in nowise discordant from
those of the East. We shall allow Hesiod, accordingly, to
be, so far, the bridge from the East to the West, from the
Indian to the Greek, where and among whom we shall
find at last the scientific beginning, historically, as well
of Teleology as of Ontology, with all the ethical and other
consequences desiderated by Lord Gilford.

GIFFORD LECTUEE THE THIED.

Final causes — The four Aristotelian causes — Are tliere final causes
in nature — Matter and form — Other causes only to realize the
final causes — Cudworth — Adam Smith — The ]iroofs, number,
order, etc. — Teleology — Anaxagoras — Socrates in the Phasdo —
Xenophon — Plato — Socrates on Anaxagoras — The causes
together, concrete — "Abstract" — Forces, Clerk Maxwell —
Heraclitus — Newton — -Buckle — Descartes — Gassendi — Bacon
on causes, metaphysics, and forms — The vou? {nous) of Anaxa-
gox'as — Bacon on design — Reid, Newton, Hume on design —
Newton.

Feaeing that we should find the present lecture dull, I
have been at considerable pains this week in the re-
writing of it ; for I desire to be at least intelligible, if
not interesting or popular. My reason for fear was that
I had been led to speak at some length of final causes,
and the subject appeared a somewhat dry one. Still, let
it be as it may, it is one that in such a course as this is
unavoidable. For the very existence of our science, the
very existence of Natural Theology, is bound up with the
existence of final causes. Destroy final causes once for
all, and you destroy Natural Theology for ever.

The origin of the term, as is well known, lies in the
Aristotelian quadruplicity of causes as such ; final causes
being but one of its members. We are told in our class-
rooms, namely, of matericcl causes, formal causes, final
causes, and cfiicient causes ; and the usual example given
is that of a watch, in regard to which, the metals are the
material causes ; the wheels, pinions, cylinders, etc., the
formal causes ; the watchmaker, the efficient cause ; and

42 GIFfOUD LECTURE THE THIUD.

the pointing of the hour, the final cause. Warmth is the
final cause of a blanket ; but so much sheep's wool is its
material cause. The final cause of a bridge is the
passage of a river ; its material cause, the stones ; its
formal cause, the arch ; and its efficient cause, the archi-
tect with his workmen. Now, though we can hardly
say with Dr. Eeid {WW. 52G) that these four causes are
but four shades of the same meaning, we can certainly
maintain that, for the most part, they constitute together
but a single concrete ; as we can readily see in the
examples of the watch and the bridge. It is evident,
however, that such examples as these, let them be as
explanatory as they may, can have no application to, or
vitality in, Natural Theology, so far as, in its very terms,
it is to be considered a manifestation of nature. That
there are these causes existent in human affairs, even to
an almost endless extent, is not the question. We have
only to know a house, or a ship, or a canal, or a railway,
or a telegraph, or a garter, or a shoe tie, or a button, or a
knife, fork, and spoon, to understand all that. But are
there also such things in nature ? — that is the question ;
and there are those who answer it in the affirmative ;
while there are others, again, who meet it with a direct
negative. And this is the clash : here is the very edge
— here is the very knot, and point, and core of the battle.
The whole business of Natural Theology lies there — is
there, or is there not, design ? Is there, or is there not, a
final cause in nature ? If there be anything such in
nature — if there be anything in nature that, by very
formation, shows design, purpose, intention to have been
its origin, then there is also proof in nature of an efficient
cause that gave at least form to matter. And in this
way, even in nature, the four causes would be seen to
constitute together but a single concrete quite as much
and as manifestly as they do in art. Already, indeed.

MATTER AND FORM. 43

we can see as much as this to be at least the case with
the material and the formal causes, let it be as it may
with the others. That is, either apart is at once seen
to be null. If matter were without form, it would be
incognizable, a nonentity, a void, something nowhere to be
seen or touched or heard. Lump-paste, lump-clay, lump-
metal may seem formless to us, and yet cognizable ; but
this is not so. Lump-paste, lump-clay, lump-metal are
substances, each with its own qualities ; and these qualities
are to each its form. The qualities of paste are not the
qualities of clay ; nor are these the qualities of metal.
Consequently, all three are distinguishable the one from
the other. A substance without a quality were a non-
ens, and a quality without a substance were but a fiction
in the air. Matter, if to be, must be permeated hy form;
and equally form, if to be, must be realized by matter.
Substance takes being from quality ; quality, actuality
from substance. That is metaphysic ; but it is seen to be
as well physic, — it is seen to have a physical existence ;
it is seen to be in rerum natura. Form is, as it were,
the thought, the soul of matter ; and matter, as it were,
the body, the externale oi form. So it is that a thing is
understood when we see the externale in the internale ;
and, quite as much, the internale in the externale. Form
and matter are the same synthesis, or, what is equally
true, they are the same antithesis. But, taking it for
granted that this will be readily admitted to be the case
as regards matter and form, it will not be so readily
acknowledged, we may assume, that final causes are in
similar vital relation with the material and formal ones.
That these latter causes are but the vehicles in realiza-
tion of final causes, — this, in fact, is but the matter in
dispute, and can never be expected to be accepted by
those who oppose final causes themselves. What
we have presently historically to see, however, is pre-

44 GIFFORD LECTUEE THE TIlIllD.

cisely this doctrine ia Greece — that material causes
(with formal) are but the implements, and instruments,
and scaffoldinu' of final causes. It is in this mood
that Cudworth says, " To take away all final causes
from the things of nature is the very spirit of
atheism : it is no prejudice or fallacy imposed on our-
selves to think that the frame and system of this whole
world was contrived by a perfect understanding and
mind." As another modern illustration, we may say that
there is a passage in the Theory of Moral Sentiments
which almost bears out the supposition that even Adam
Smith saw the one set of causes to be but the comple-
ment of the other. " In every part of the universe," he
says, " we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice
to the ends which they are intended to produce ; and in
the mechanism of a plant or animal body, admire how
everything is contrived for advancing the two great
purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the
propagation of the species. But in these, and in all such
objects, we still distinguish the efficient from the final
cause of their several motions and organizations. The
digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, and
the secretion of the several juices which are drawn from
it, are operations all of them necessary for the great
jnirposes of animal life ; yet we never endeavour to
account for them from those purposes as from their
efficient causes, nor imagine that the blood circulates, or
the food digests, of its own accord, and with a view or
intention to the purposes of circulation or digestion."
That is, we never fancy that the one side suffices. The
" purposes," which are the final causes, do not, alone and
by themselves, realize themselves ; neither do we imagine
of the blood and the food, which are the material causes,
that the one circulates, or the other digests, of its own
accord. Tlahily, Adam Smith licre has excellently

THE PROOFS. 4»

caught sight of the two sides, abstract, idle, dead, apart,
but concrete, energetic, busy, living and life-giving in
unity. Of course, I need not remark that his efficient is
the usual material: he says efficient here, because what
he speaks of is the matter or material operant.

With these anticipatory explanations, I may now pro-
ceed. In regard to the history of the proofs for the
Being of a God, we are now arrived, as has been said,
within sight of Greece. As I am not intending at
present to expatiate on these proofs themselves ; so I
shall not take up your time with any rehearsal of the
various classifications and designations proposed in their
regard by the various authorities. It shall be enough
for us that all of these, with whatever peculiarity of
dressing, come, in the end, to the three arguments in and
with which Kant assumes to comprehend and exhaust
the subject. That is, there is, first, the Cosmological ;
second, the Teleological ; and, third, the Ontological
argument. There is no dispute as to the position of
this last. That argument, the ontological one, does not
appear in history until in the time of Anselm Christianity
has been for centuries the dominant religion in Europe.
About the order of the two others there has been some
little difference ; Kant characterizing the teleological
argument as the oldest, and Hegel postponing it to the
cosmological. It has been usual, however, to speak of
the latter in connection with Aristotle, and at all events
it seems, on the whole, more convenient to begin with the
teleological argument. Begin with which we may,
however, and let them be separated from each other as
they may be in time, the three, after all, do constitute
together but the three undulations of a single wave,
which wave is but a natural rise and ascent to God, on
the part of man's own thought, with man's own experience
and consciousness as the object before him.

46 GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRD.

The word Teleology (due as a word probably to Wolff)
has, in its meaning at all events, always been associated
with the name of Anaxagoras. He, so far as history
teaches, is the acknowledged originator of the idea.
That is to be admitted. There can be no doubt that,
whatever others may seem to have said in the same
direction, it was Anaxagoras who, for the first time in
Greece, perhaps in the world, spoke of the beauty and
order in the universe being due to a designing mind.
We have but to look to the single fragment of his lost
work, irepl (^vaew<i, which (the fragment) has been pre-
served to us by Simplicius, to become aware of sucli
clearness and fulness on the part of Anaxagoras in his
conception of the vov<i, nous, as could not fail to
impress on his successors the necessary proljlem,
generally, of what is meant by teleology, and must
perfectly justify, as well, the position which has been
assigned to him at their head. " Nous (Intelligence),"
he says there, "is infinite and absolute, free from ad-
mixture with anything else, alone by itself ; it is om-
niscient and omnipotent, and has disposed all things, in
order and in beauty, within the encompassing whole,
where the stars are, and the sun, and the moon, and
aether, and the air." This, beyond doubt, is fairly to
characterize Mind as the ultimate causality of the
universe, and of the order and design we see in it ; and,
very certainly, most amply, does the general voice of
antiquity confirm the gloss. For one, Socrates, in the
Flimdo, gives very full testimony to this effect. He had
heard a book of Anaxagoras' read, he says, in which it
was mainiained tliat i^oO?, which may be translated
mind, understanding, reason, was the disposing and
arranging principle in the universe, and he had been
mightily pleased therewith. For it seemed to him right
and excellently well that an intelligence should lie

SOCEATES IN THE PH^EDO. 47

recognised as the cause of all things, inasmuch as, in that
case, everything would find itself precisely where it was
best that it should be ; so that, accordingly, such con-
sideration would directly lead us to a perfect explanation
of anything in the world around us which we might be
curious to understand. In a personal reference, for
example, it became a man to ask, whether for himself or
others, only what was best. To know that was the same
thing as to know what was worst ; for in a single
cognition both lay (the j^i'oposition which is more
familiar to us now-a-days, perhaps, as the dictum de vero ;
that the truth, namely, is the index sui ct falsi). But it
is this that has specially struck the mind of Socrates.
What an inestimable good it will be to come to under-
stand everything by being made to see that an intelli-
gence has placed it precisely where it is best for it !
Nothing could better have suited him than such a
doctrine. What was as it should be, justice, right,
reason, moral and intellectual truth — that was the
special quest of Socrates at all times. Socrates is under-
stood to have had no favour for Metcorologia, speculation
into things celestial. Nay, Xenophon introduces him as
calling this very Anaxagoras mad in the special reference
{Mem. iv. 7. 6). Not but that Socrates, as we may see
further, has his own interest in cosmologia, if not in
meteorologia. It is only as characteristic of him, indeed,
that he should be made to say here : " It appeared to me
ev e^eiv — it appeared to me to be excellently well that
the Nous should be the cause of all things ; " for it
certainly Ijelonged to his very inmost and dearest thought
that all things should be found to be framed and arranged
by intelligence, and disposed according to what is best.
There are other expressions in Plato, not always in the
mouth of Socrates, quite to the same effect as regards the
Nous of Anaxagoras holding and disposing all things at

48 GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRD.

its own sovereign liest. Such expressions are to be
found in the Laus (967 B), for example, and in the
Cratylus (400 A, 413 C) more than once. But it is this
great passage in the Phcedo that must be considered the
locus j^TojJrius on the point. Socrates, in it, dwells at
very considerable length on the whole matter. It may
almost be referred to, actually has been referred to, as an
example and proof of Socrates' polylogia, his BcdsdiyJceit,
his loquacity, and, as Smollett says, clack. In point of
fact, there is no fuller reference to the consideration in
debate to be found anywhere, and Socrates docs seem to
have taken occasion from it to deliver himself in full
freedom, unrestrictedly at large. He expatiates, positively,
on the expectations which Anaxagoras had conjured up
in him, expectations quite contradictorily meteorological,
after all, seeing that, in great measure, they concern the
shape of the earth, the sun, and the moon, and the com-
parative courses of the stars, — he expatiates at great
length on these expectations, positively, and he would
not have given them up, he says, ttoWov, for a great
deal. Then he expatiates at equal length on his dis-
appointments, negatively, when, most eagerly possessing
himself of the books and most keenly reading them, he
found the man making no use whatever of the jSTous, but,
on the contrary, in all actual explanations of things, calling
in only mechanical causes, airs, and aethers, and waters,
and other aroTra the like, quite as before ! — ^just as though,
says Socrates, it should be first affirmed of Socrates that
lie did all that he did by his own understanding, and
then sapiently subjoined as if by way of example, that it
was because of such and such bones and tendons, so and
so constructed, that he sat there, the real reason l)eing
that it seemed to the Athenians best to condemn Socrates,
and to himself best to abide the result. "Else, by the
dog," he exclaims, " methinks these bones and tendons

THE CAUSES TOGETHER CONCRETE " ABSTRACT." 49

would, long ere this, have been somewhere about Megara
or the BoBotian confines, transported thither on the
thought of what seemed best."

We see here that Socrates not only understood the
principle of Anaxagoras with Anaxagoras' own further
stultification of it, but also, perfectly, the distinction
between final and mechanical causes. Proximately, it
was certainly because of certain bodily antecedents that
Socrates remained, as he did, sitting in prison ; but, as
certainly, for all that, it was the resolution of his own
mind that was the final cause. Here, too, this also is
to be seen, that the two sorts of causes do not remain
abstract, that is, as Bacon (compare the De Augmentis in
its correspondent part with The Advancement of Learn-
ing, ii. 8. 2) explains the word abstract, " severed," or
" dissevered," from all else ; but that they are, in rerum
natura, concretely associated. The centrifugal force, in
the revolution of the planets, is not the same as the
centripetal : rather, the one is directly the reverse or
the opposite of the other. Nevertheless, in the words
of Mr. Clerk Maxwell, they are " merely partial and
different aspects of the same stress." In point of fact,
as already seen in regard to form and matter, this syn-
thesis in antithesis, this one of two, this breadth of a
duality in the unity of strain, seems to be the cosmical
truth, and alone valid. There cannot be action without
reaction ; and the one abiding reality is the single nisus
between, that conjoins no less than it disjoins. It is
the TO avTL^ovv av/ji(ji€pov, the coherent disherent, attri-
buted to Heraclitus by Aristotle, who adds " that the
fairest harmony results from differents, and that all things
are produced from strife" (Uth. Nic. viii. 1). The two
sides, it would seem, though they stand over against
each other, and are absolutely opposed the one to the
other, do not, for all that, subvert or destroy each other,

D

50 GIFFORD LECTUEE THE THIKD.

but, on the contrary, even in and by their opposition,
conserve and maintain each other.

And so it precisely is with Socrates here. Tlie bones
and tendons that keep him in prison would in themselves
be no better than null were it not for the volition that
animates them ; and neither would this volition itself be
anything were it not for the bones and tendons that
realize it. Reaction depends on action, centrifugal force
on centripetal force, repulsion on attraction, and even
energy must have its support in corporeity. It is
Newton himself who says. Virtus sine suhstaiitia subsis-
tere non potest.

Authorities, however, are largely neglected now-a-days,
and it is widely the fashion at present to have changed
all that — it is widely the fashion, indeed, not only to
separate final and etticient (or mechanical) causes as
irreconcilable the one with the other, but even to de-
stroy those before these. And this even by reference to
such philosophers as Descartes and Bacon. Mr. Buckle,
for one, is very apt to rise authoritatively on trium})hant
toes in this matter as regards both. And, indeed, both
philosophers can be quoted, as though they were minded,
each, to dispute the truth of final causes. But, for all
that, suppose we do not simply accept the allegation —
suppose, on the contrary, that, as in the case of Charles II.
and the dead fish, we examine, rather, into its truth,
perhaps we shall find that the accompaniment of a grain
of salt may not prove altogether superfluous. As regards
Descartes, for example, it will not be found that he at
all denied the existence of final causes ; and if he dis-
couraged, which he undoubtedly did, the inquisition of
them, his reason, his motive was not that he respected them
less, but that he respected the place and perfection of
the Deity more. Any prohiljition in the case of the
former arose wholly and solely from devotion in the case

DESCARTES — GASSENDI. 5 1

of the latter. In fact, there can be no doubt that what
wholly and solely determined him here, was the peculi-
arity of his conception in regard to the Divine Being.
That conception was so high that it appeared pre-
sumptuous to Descartes to make one, as it were, in the
counsels of the Eternal as regards the creation of the
world, at the same time that our limited faculties ran the
risk, in such a daring, of seeing imperfection where there
was perfection alone. Gassendi, I may observe, has a
remarkable answer to Descartes here, the foundation of
which ii^ entirely the reference to design (see in Des-
cartes at Med. IV.).

As regards Bacon, it is on him that the greatest stress
is laid for the rejection of final causes ; but perhaps,
even in his case, as I have suggested, it may not be
necessary to take the allegation au pied de la lettre.
Formal causes, final causes, metaphysic itself, — and it is in
place here to name metaphysic, for such causes, with the
whole logos of God, constitute the very contents of meta-
physic,— formal causes, final causes, metaphysic itself,
Lord Bacon would seem to have thought of and respected
as much as anything whatever in physic itself. I hold
The Advancement of Learning alone to be sufficient to
prove this. That work, in numberless editions, is quite
possibly in the hands of everybody, and it constitutes
the original English form of what is known as the De
Augmentis Scientiaruvi. Eeally, one has only to look at it
to be immediately impressed with an utter surprise that
any one should ever have considered its author^ an enemy
of what is known as the metaphysical region of inquiry.
By the easy trick of isolating words and clauses, we may
make any writer argue on any side we please ; and so it
has been done with Bacon. The seventh section of the
seventh chapter of tlie second book of The Advancement
of Learning, for example, he begins in this way : " The

52 GIFFORD LECTUKE THE TIIIED.

second part of metaphysic is the inquiry of final causes,
which I am moved to report, not as omitted, hut as mis-
placed. And yet if it were but a fault in order, I would
not speak of it . . . but the handling of final causes,
mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted
the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical
causes." The correspondent Latin is to the same effect :
" Tractatio enim causarum linalium in physicis, in-
quisitionem causarum physicarum expulit et dejecit."
There can be no doubt from such words, then, but that it
was a decided opinion of Bacon's that the " handling,"
the tractatio of final causes, " mixed with the rest in
physical inquiries," has expelled and ejected the inquisi-
tion of physical causes. And I do not suppose there is
any one who will deny this. Tt is matter of the com-
monest information that the earliest physical explanations
were largely rendered impure and untrustworthy by the
reference of phenomena, not to literal antecedents, but to
figured agencies. Perhaps we have not lost the same
habit even in these days of enlightenment. Falling
bodies do not any longer seek the earth by appetite,
perhaps ; but we have still many other such like tropes
in abundance.

It is matter, then, of the commonest information that
the earliest physical explanations were apt to be dis-
figured, or sublimed, by all manner of metaphors, tropes,
and personifications. So it was, as Bacon righteously
complains, that real physical causes were apt to be pushed
out or overlaid. We will all readily grant that ; but we
must also say with Bacon, despite any such abuse, and
Bacon points to no more, that the general problem of
final causes is sufficiently to be respected. Final causes
constitute to Bacon the second part of metaphysic, as the
subject of forms constitutes to him the first. And
Bacon does not at all speak ill of metaphysic. " Natural

BACON ON CAUSES, FORMS, ETC. 53

science or theory," he says in The Advancement of Learning
(ii. 7. 2), is divided into physic and metaphysic." The
latter word, metaphysic, he adds, is used by him " in
a differing sense from that that is received." For us
here, then, it becomes necessary to know what that
" differing sense " is ; and Bacon, on that head, leaves us
in no difficulty. In the first place, we have (3) this :
" I intend philosophia prima, summary philosophy and
metaphysic, which heretofore have been confounded as
one, to be two distinct things ; " and, in the second place,
these words : " Natural theology, which heretofore hath
been handled confusedly with metaphysic, I have
inclosed and bounded by itself." It appears thus, that,
in the eyes of Bacon, metaphysic must lose two main
sciences or disciplines that formerly belonged to it.
Nevertheless, it must be said that even to Bacon meta-
physic must still remain a very sovereign region of human
intelligence. In "what is left remaining for metaphysic "
(his own words) he directly rules that "physic should
contemplate that which is inherent in matter, and there-
fore transitory ; and metaphysic that which is abstracted
and fixed ; and again, that physic should handle that
which supposeth in nature only a being and moving and
natural necessity ; and metaphysic should handle that
which supposeth further in nature a reason, understanding,
and platform or idea. . . . Physic inquireth and handleth
the material and efficient causes : metaphysic handleth
the formal and final causes." This, then, is to give to
metaphysic a serious and principal role. While physic
contemplates in nature only what is external, metaphysic
contemplates in the same nature, the reason, the under-
standing, the idea. It is important to observe that
reference to nature : the reason, the understanding, the
idea of metaphysic, according to Bacon, is a reason, an
understanding, an idea that is actually in nature, and no

54 GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRD.

mere figure of speech, no mere figment of phantasy. But
what under metaphysic are called reason, understanding,
and idea, are also called, and precisely in the same pages,
formal and final causes. Formal and final causes are to
Bacon, therefore, each a reason, an understanding, an
idea that is in nature ; and I can hardly think that any
metaphysician, even in these days, would wish for them
a deeper place or a more essential function. Bacon
insists very much on formal causes: he is even inclined to
place them in a region by themselves, a region that is to
be a sort of reformed, and improved, and renovated
" natural magic," as he calls it. Bacon laments (5) that
formal causes " may seem to be nugatory and void,
because of the received and inveterate opinion that the
inquisition of man is not competent to find out essential
forms and true differences." He, for his part, holds that
" the invention of forms is of all other parts of knowledge
the worthiest to be sought, if it be possible to be found.
And, as for the possibility, they are ill discoverers that
think there is no land, wlien they can see nothing but
sea." Of these forms, " the essences (upheld by matter)
of all creatures do consist." In short. Bacon would seem
to have in mind both Plato and Aristotle when they will
have us pass beyond all externality to the internality
itself which reason alone touches (ov avTo<; 6 X070? aTTTerat),
the oVto)? ovra which are, as Schelling interprets, the
very " subjects of what is predicted of the ovra." Such,
then, are the forms of Bacon, the very sul)jects of things
which reason itself touches. And no less decided is
Bacon as regards metaphysic in its reference to final
causes. "Both causes," he says (7), "physical and meta-
physical, are true and compatible, the one declaring an
intention, the other a consequence only," for " men are
extremely deceived if they think there is an enmity
between them." " Physic carrieth men in narrow and

THE XOUS OF ANAXAGORAS. 55

restrained ways, subject to many accidents of impediments,
imitating the ordinary fiexuous courses of nature ; " but
everywhere broad are the ways for the wise in metaphysic
" which doth enfranchise the power of man unto the
greatest liberty and possibility of works and effects " (6).
Bacon, in fact, has not a word to say against metaphysic
or final causes, but only against their " abuse," when they
happen to be " misplaced."

We have now left Anaxagoras and his commentators
a long way behind us, as though we had forgotten them,
and started oft' into quite another region. What con-
cerns us with Anaxagoras, however, is the vov<; ; and the
vov'i means for us design, at the same time that the forces
of design, the realizing agents of design, are final causes.
It is with Anaxagoras that design comes in, that final
causes first make their appearance ; and it is here and
now, where there is question of Anaxagoras, that there
should be question also of that part of metaphysic which
embraces the consideration of such causes. And here,
evidently, it was impossible to avoid the relative discus-
sion, especially of Bacon, in regard to whom it has
hitherto been received as an established commonplace
that he is the declared foe — the foe a Voutrance of any-
thing and everything that concerns the subject of final
causes. It is indeed surprising that, with such a common
English book before us as The Advancement of Learnimj,
any such opinion should ever have been so uncondition-
ally expressed. Even of Natural Theology, Bacon's
deliberate utterances are such as may surprise not a few.
He directly says, for example, " As concerning divine
philosophy or natural theology, it is that knowledge or
rudiment of knowledge concerning God, which may be
obtained by tlie contemplation of His creatures ; which
knowledge may be truly termed divine in respect of the
object, and natural in respect of the light. . . . Where-

56 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE THIRD.

fore, by the contemplation of nature, to induce and
enforce the acknowledgment of God, and to demonstrate
His power, providence, and goodness, is an excellent argu-
ment, and hath been excellently handled by divers "
(Adv. of Learn, ii. G. 1). " It is an assured truth, and a
conclusion of experience," he says elsewhere in the same
work (i. 1. 3), " that a little or superficial knowledge of
philosoi^hy may incline the mind of man to atheism, but
a further proceeding therein doth bring the mind back
again to religion. For in the entrance of philosophy when
the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do
offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay
there it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause ;
but when a man passeth on farther, and seeth the
dependence of causes and the works of Providence, then,
according to the allegory of the poets, he will easily be-
lieve that the highest link of nature's chain must needs
be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair." Lastly, here, as
regards Bacon, we may refer to that grand passage in the
Essays that begins : " I had rather believe all the fables
in the ' Legend,' and the ' Talmud,' and the ' Alcoran,'
than that this universal frame is without a mind." Even
of the fool it is not credible to Bacon that he hath
thought, if he hath said, in his heart, There is no God.
Even the fool. Bacon thinks, must have said it only, as it
were, " by rote to himself." That is an excellent idea,
the only speaking by rote ! " Atheism," as he .says
further, " is rather in the lip than in the heart of man."
" For, certainly, man is of kin to the beasts, by his body ;
and if he be not of kin to God, by his spirit, he is a base
and ignoble creature." Surely, then, in every way it is a
noble testimony that Bacon bears to final causes, to nieta-
physic, and to Natural Theology.

Of the teleological argument. Dr. Beid says that " it has
this peculiar advantage, that it gathers strength as human

EEID, NEWTON, HUME. 57

knowledge advances, and is more convincing at present
than it was some centuries ago." This was all very well
when the " present " was a present that had before it a
second edition of the P'rincipia of Newton, in which it
was mentioned as a thing understood that said Principia
were a praesidium munitissinium, a most perfect defence
against the impetus atheorum, the sallies of atheists —
and a present that had before it also, at the hands of
Lagrange, an irrefutable demonstration of the stability of
the universe : it was all very well for that " present," with
its Newtons and Lagranges, to hug itself on its own
security, and more or less directly gird at Alphonso of
Castile, but what of this " present " that is our present ?
Our task now is not as the task then. Then even a
Hume, who sought in his somewhat narrow ingenious way
to reason us out of both soul and body, and the universe
out of God, felt forced even by necessity to speak thus :
" Were men led into the apprehension of invisible, intel-
ligent power by a contemplation of the works of nature,
they could never possibly entertain any conception but of
one single being, who bestowed existence and order on
this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to
one regular plan or connected system. . , , All things in
the universe are evidently of a piece. Everything is
adjusted to everything. One design prevails through the
whole. And this uniformity leads the mind to acknow-
ledge one author. . . . Adam, rising at once, in Paradise,
and in the full perfection of his faculties, would naturally,
as represented by Milton, be astonished at the glorious
appearance of nature— the heavens, the air, the earth, his
own organs and members ; and would be led to ask
whence this wonderful scene arose " {Nat. Hist, of Pel.
sections i and ii.). When it is the sceptical Hume that
speaks thus, we do not wonder to find the pious Newton
always expressing himself with the profoundest reverence

58 GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRD.

and admiration of the divinity lie saw everywliere in the
mighty scheme of the universe, that was for the first time,
perhaps, discovered in all its miglitiness only to him.
The writers that treat of the life and works of Newton
always refer to this. There are his queries in his Optics,
as, " "Whence is it that nature does nothihg in vain ; and
whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in
the world ? How came the bodies of animals to be con-
trived with so much art ; and for what ends were their
several parts ? Was the eye contrived without skill in
optics, and the ear without knowledge of sounds ? "
Then, with all else, there is that marvellous scholium
generale in the third book of the Principia : " Cum una--
quaeque spatii particula sit semper, et unumquodque
durationis indivisibile momentum sit uhiquc, certe rerum
omnium Fabricator et Dominus iion erit nunquam, nus-
(liiamr (" As every particle of space is always, and every
indivisible moment of duration is everywliere, assuredly
the Fabricator and Lord of all tilings will not be never,
nowhere.") Quite in place here is that colossal con-
ception on the part of Newton of the vast infinity of
space being the sensorium of Deity. In the course of
what follows the above words, Newton exclaims : " Deus
est unus et idem Deus semper et ubique ; " and, farther
on, " hunc cognoscimus solummodo per proprietates ejus et
attributa ; " and he adds, " et per causas finales " — " God is
the one and the same God always and everywhere — Him
we know by His qualities and attributes — and by final
causes." I ought to translate all that refers to God in
this grand scholium ; but I must content myself now by
declaring of the scholium itself that it requires to be
neglected liy no student of philosophy. As thought is
the principle of spirit, so is gravity the principle, the
essence, the formal cause, the very self of matter as
matter. It was Newton discovered that — that and the

NEWTON. 5 9

system of the heavens. There have been some unique
men in this world, as — say Shakespeare ! but never,
probably, was there a man more unique than Newton : in
his peculiar faculty he rises higher, more remote from,
more unapproachable of, ordinary men, than any other,
perhaps, that ever lived. Newton is the priest and
interpreter of the orbs that roll — the Brahmin of the
universe.

GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTH.

Anaxagoras, the s/oii; — Aristotle — Understanding — Pytliagoreans
— Pantheism — Lord Gifford — Baghavad Gita — The uov; to
Socrates, Pkto, Aristotle — Grote, Schwegler, Zeller — The
world a life — Berkeley, Cudworth, Plato, Zorzi — Subject
and object — Nature and thought — Externality and inter-
vality — Bruno — Universal and particular — Spinoza — Physical
theories — Space and time— Hodgson, Carlyle, Berkeley, Reid,
Leibnitz, Kant — But lor an eye and an ear, the world utterly
dark, utterly silent.

Returning to Anaxagoras, it is still a question how we
are to decide him to have regarded his principle of tlie
1/01)9, whether as a power immanent, that is, dwelling
in matter, or as a power transcendent, that is, outside
of and above matter. It really seems to me difficult,
however, to give any other interpretation than the latter
to the words of Diogenes Laertius at all events. As though
actually quoting from the very work of Anaxagoras,
Diogenes says, iravra '^p/j/xara i]v ofiov, all things were
together, etra vov^ eXdoiv aura SieKoafxrjae, then vov'i
coming, orderly disposed them. We seem to see here
one thing lying by itself apart, and another, at some
certain moment of time, coming, moving towards it, and
adding itself to it. But that being so, vov<i is not
immanent in matter, but transcendent over it. Aris-
totle, near the beginning of the eighth book of the
Physics, makes the distinction between the two positions,
what was first and wliat came second, even stronger.
His words are, " Anaxagoras says that all things being
together, and having remained so at rest an endless time,

UNDERSTANDING. Gl

i/oO? set motion into them and separated them." That,
plainly, is to the effect that the movement was set into
things from without, and not developed in them from
within ; that vov<;, namely, was a transcendent, not an
immanent principle.

The Germans seem to incline, on the whole, however,
to adopt the mere immanence of the vov<;. To some of
them the fault of theology is its rigorous separation of
the opposites. In the relation of God and the world
they would wish to see, not a fixed inconceivable sun-
deredness, but a living transition. Others would wish
us to see in the vou?, not reason, but understanding.
What they mean by understanding is what some time
ago I endeavoured to figure under the word X0709. You
see that inexplicable thing a reel in a bottle ; suppose
now it were all explained to you, every step in the
idea that generated it clear before your eyes, then that
X0709 (for the explanation would be a \6yo^), — then that
\6yo<i would be the Verstand, the understanding of the
reel in the bottle. This reel would no longer be a mere
piece of inexplicable matter ; it would now be impreg-
nated with the notion, so that all its parts were held
together by it, and, as it were, one in it. ISTow that is
what the vov'i is held by some to be in relation to the
world. The world were an unintelligible externality and
material chaos, did not the understanding enter into it
as a connecting and explaining tissue. So it is that
even the Pythagoreans, too, explain the world ; it is a
congeries of externalities ; but into that congeries of exter-
nalities, mere disjunct atoms, proportion enters ; and that
proportion gives them subsistence, connection, meaning,
and unity. In this way it will be intelligible what is
meant by an understanding being sunk into the things of
the universe. To certain Germans, then, vov<; is such
understanding — an immanent ideal bond, not a fashioning

G2 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTH.

creator apart from, and independent of it. This, in general,
and on its own account, is a point of view necessary for
us to know, even with reference to our general subject
(jf Natural Theology. I mean that the doctrine of the
immanence of the vov<i involves what is called pantheism.
This is the more interesting to us here inasmuch as some
of the expressions in which Lord Gifford characterizes his
idea of God may seen to have in them a pantheistic echo.
As, for example, these, that God is the Infinite, the All,
the One, and the Sole Substance, the Sole Being, the Sole
Eeality, and the Sole Existence. Some of these expres-
sions no doubt, even as pantheistic, suggest criticism.
Reality and existence, it may be said, for instance, are
l»oth doubtful words. An iron nail or a brass button is,
as we generally speak, a reality ; but God's reality must
be a much other reality than the reality of such as these.
Existence, too, at least in certain philosophical works,
has been pretty well exclusively used in identically the
same sense as reality in the case of either nail or button.
A brass button is an existence, and an iron nail is an
existence, — the word existence being here taken in its
strictly etymological sense as a compound from the Latin
words ex and sta^^e. Whatever finitely stands out to sense,
as an actual object seen of eye or touched of hand, etc.,
is an existence ; it stands up and out. But existence in
no such sense as that, plainly, can be predicated of God.
God is not an object for eye, or ear, or toucli, or any
sense. We cannot see God as we see a statue or a house,
or hear Him as we hear the blowing of the wind or the
dashing of the wave. In a word, God is to be thought
as infinite, not finite, as immaterial and not material, as a
spirit and not as a body. In the sense alluded to, then,
He may not exist ; but He will still he. The soul of a
man will be granted to he — let us conceive its nature to
be, how we may. Even the crudest judge of character

PANTHEISM. 63

has not his idea of a man as such and such a body merely.
There really is an entity that is logically distinguishable
from the body, and is, on its side, as much a one, or more
a one, than, on the other side, the body itself. An ego
is a unity, and a unity of the whole of its infinite con-
tents, take it how you may. Logically, then, an ego is
an entity on its own account — an integer, self-contained
and self-complete teres, totum, ac rotundum. An ego, of
course, makes itself known only through and by means
of its body, but, with whatever difference, it is precisely
so with God ; it is the very contention of these lectures
that God makes Himself known through His body, which
is the visible world without and the intelligible world
within. As for Lord Gifford's term, substance, again, it
reminds at once of Spinoza ; suistance is the God of
Spinoza, and Spinoza, as we know, is the archpantheist.
The word All, again, is certainly a word in pantheistic
parlance, and mai/, as the others mai/, be so used by
Lord Gifford. Even pantheistically, however, we may
stop to say, it is a very objectionable word ; for, even so,
it is at once too much and too little. Too much ! All,
in its use by Lord Giftbrd, God as the All, cannot mean
stars and planets, sun, moon, earth, air, seas, and con-
tinents, minerals, plants, animals, men, — collectively, that
is, as so many individual objects in a ring, a mere outside
aggregate, there materially in space, and now materially
in time. Etymologically, no doubt, such a description
of an All as God, or of God as an All, may seem but a
necessary inference from the very word pantheism ; but
it is difficult to believe that any pantheist. Oriental or
Occidental, religious or philosophical, ever thought of his
God as any such clumsy miscellaneousness. In some of
the books of the Bhaghavad Gita, as the seventh, the
ninth, and the tenth, Krishna, indeed, may be heard
exclaiming to Arjoon : "I am sunshine, and I am rain ;

C-i GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTH.

I am the radiant sun, tlie moon, the book of liymns,
Meru among the mountains ; I am the lion, the vowel
A," etc. etc. No doubt, however, these are but as so
much spray from the overflow of the Oriental phantasy.
Hardly ever is it the case, indeed, that they occur in
that bare categorical form. More commonly the phras-
ing itself shows that the term is but a trope : " I am
moisture in the water, light in the sun and moon,
sweet-smelling savour in the earth. I am the sacrifice,
I am the worship, I am the spices, I am the invocation,
I am the provisions, I am the fire, I am the victim," etc.
etc. In such form as that it is quite evident that there
is no thought of an assemblage of mere outer objects as
constituting the All that is to be conceived as God.
But if such expressions as are in question, and so taken,
are too much, they are, as evidently, all too little. Xo
such names, and no such names even if they were multi-
plied a thousandfold, can exhaust the infinity in unity,
and the unity in infinity, of God. That, too, is a way of
the Orientals, that they would seek by mere numberless
namings to ascend to the infinite that is God ; but, again,
the Orientals themselves confess, even in the numberless-
ness of tlieir namings, the impotence of the numberless-
ness itself. The visible is but an accident and fringe of
the invisible ; no myriad namings of the seen can reach
the unseen.

To certain Germans, then, almost, we may say, to the
German philosophical historians generally, the inmianence
of the vov^ is the established doctrine. With vov'i, they
say, there certainly comes in, and for the first time in
acknowledged history, the principle of an understanding,
and the principle of an understanding that is self-deter-
minative ; but still we are not to think of the vov<i in
nature as of a mind and thinking consciousness in the
way we find it in ourselves. N0O9 is to be conceived of

THE XOUS TO SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE. 65

in nature as we see laws are : we know by the inquiries
of our sciences that in the universe of things there is law,
and consequently, so far, reason.

In a good deal of all tliis, however, there enters the
thought that there is the danger of supposing that what
Anaxagoras, after all, meant was merely a dcus ex machina
that came and ordered the chaos, a Zeus, a Jupiter, or
other merely mythological personage of the early crude
imagination. So far as such conception is concerned, I
think it is rio[ht to contend against that. Certain it is
that Anaxagoras did make no other use, so far as the
application is concerned, of his principle the rou? tJiaii
such dcus ex machina that was no more, despite all his
description of it, than the first cause of motion. It
seems that he had no sooner announced it in general, than
he set himself, in particular, to the usual mechanical
expedients. It does not follow, however, that we must
think tlie vov<i a merely immanent principle, as it were,
of lineamentation and proportion in the material mass,
and that it was not to be conceived, at the same time, as
a self-centred fount of intelligence and of intelligent
action, so to speak, on its own account and in its own
self-dependence.

It seems to me that even the advocates of the imma-
nence of the vov^, themselves, do not regard it as, so to
speak, a hrutchj immanent principle, but as an intelligent
and conscious principle that has in it the distinction of
personality. It seems to me also, that the universal
voice of antiquity is to the same effect. Even Socrates,
though speaking with disappointment of the application
of the principle, does not speak differently of the prin-
ciple itself. To Socrates the vov<i, in a word, was an
intelligent principle that knew the better, and acted on
it. riato repeats this description at least three times
further ; twice again, indeed, on the part of Socrates, but

E

66 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTH.

once on that of another ; so that of his own relative sen-
timents there can be no reasonable doubt.

As for Aristotle, again, it would take up too much
time to quote all that, in this connection, his writings
show, but we must see a passage or two. In the Dc
Anima (404&) he has this on Anaxagoras : to alriov tov
KaXm Kol 6pdoi<i (the cause of the good, beautiful, and
right), TOV vovv Xeyei (he calls the vov^). A little farther
on (40 5a 18), in this same work, we find the vov<;
characterized as " a principle that knows, and as a prni-
ciple that moves the to ttuv " (the all). In the Metajjhysic
there are several very distinct passages to a like effect.
Anaxagoras, he says once (985al8), "in his explana-
tion of the construction of the world, uses his vov<i as a
mere stage property ; that is, he only lugs it in when he
is at a loss otherwise." That concerns the application
of it. But the main passage in the McfapJn/sic is this
(984&8) : " These (preceding) principles proved insufficient
to explain what is ; and, in further eflbrt, this now sug-
gested itself. That things are good, and beautiful, and
right {ev Koi KaXm e'^eiv), can assuredly not be ascribed
to fire, or earth, or anything else of the kind, nor yet to
accident or chance ; and so it was that when Anaxagoras
came forward with the proposition that, as in animals, so
in all nature, vow is immanent as the cause of the world
and its whole orderly arrangement, he appeared as though
a man that was sober in comparison with mere drunken
stutterers that had preceded him. . . . Those, then, who
followed him, made the cause of what is good to be the
principle of u^hat is, and of the movement in it."
Especially does Aristotle insist on the unmixedness and
unmovedness of the vov<i, no doubt having in mind liim-
self his own principle of a rrrpcoTov klvovv (a first mover),
that, unmixed with other things and itself unmoved,
moves all of them.

THE WORLD A LIFE. 67

As for the vov<i of Anaxagoras, indeed, being a personal
self-conscious reason, such as we conceive on the part of
the Divine Being, there can be no doubt that such is the
natural inference of any of us now-a-days who will im-
partially read the words that expressly described it ; and
there can be as little doubt that, as we have seen, such
was the general understanding on the part of antiquity.
It is certainly impossible to think of this principle as
only a natural power sunk into matter, as Mr. Grote does.
One, too, must, with Schwegler, give it more spiritual
credit, by reason of the attributes of thought and con-
scious design ascribed to it, than even Zeller does.

It appears to me right, at the same time, even while
assuming vov'i to be capable of an independent existence
on its own account, that we should attribute, almost as
partly referred to already, more of a life of its own, and
more of an instinctive reason of its own, to nature itself
than we usually do. The pious Berkeley (Sins, 276)
vindicates the doctrine ; and it is surely, as a doctrine,
not by any means necessarily either atheism or pantheism.
To me it is quite as certain that there is an absolute sub-
ject, God, as it is certain that there is an absolute object,
His universe. Still, it appears to me that the object
should be brought much nearer the subject than is cus-
tomary among us. If we view the object as the other of
the subject, then we have the two, as I think we ought
to have them, in mutual relation. The world, as there
at the will of God, is still the work of God, the expression
of God ; whatever it is, it is still of God : there must be
relation between them. So it is, in fact, that there is
such a science as this very Natural Theology that we have
before us. Bacon himself, as we have seen, refers to the
two sides of it. He calls it a knowledge " which may be
truly termed divine in respect of the object, and natural
in respect of the light." Nature is not to be supposed

G.S GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTH.

the evil principle, and abandoned of God : rather it is the
garment we see Him by. Placed in the midst of beauty
itself, it is still the solemn temple most majestical in
which it is ours to bend the knee in awe, ours to worship
in love. So it is tliat we shall take nothino; from God
in commending His work. Nature has a life of its own ;
it is not simply brute. There is at least relevance for
the " plastic nature " of Cudworth, or even the world-soul
of Plato. We may exclaim in perfect agreement with
Cornelius Agrippa ab Nettesheim : " Supremus et unicus
rationis actus religio est ; " " Peligion is reason's sole and
supreme act ; in vain we philosophize, know, and under-
stand, if He, who is the essence and author of our intel-
lect, and whose image we are, is left unknown by us ; "
but we may, not inconsistently, at the same time, feign or
figure, with his contemporary Franciscus Georgius Zorzi
Vcnetus, that " the world is an infinitely living indi-
vidual, maintained by a soul in the power of God." We
may even allow ourselves to sympathize with Zorzi's
countrymen who came later, and held that " a single soul
pervades this living universe." In fact, there is great
truth in the old way of it, that the world is the macro-
cosm of man, as man is the microcosm of the world. AW'
may conceive that it has been the will of God that nature
should be the mere externalization of man, as that man
should be the mere internalization of nature. The cate-
gories which are in man and constitute his thinking fur-
niture— these categories, if in him only subjective and
within, are all objective and without in nature. Only so
it is that, at once, nature is inteWigihle and man intelli-
f/e7it. The relation, indeed, between an object that is to
be understood, and a subject that is to understand, is pre-
ci-sely as that between matter and form. If form is U)
take on matter, matter to admit into itself form, form
must be in rffcd matter, matter in effect form. So it is

EXTERNALITY AND INTEENALITY. 69

that nature is but the other of thought ; thought, again,
but the other of nature. In other words, nature is but
the externalization of thought — thought but the inter-
nahzation of nature. Or nature is externality ; thought
is internality. Nature is the externality of that inter-
nality ; thought is the internality of that externality.
Nature is difference ; thought is identity : the one the
difference of that identity ; the other the identity of that
difference. Nature, as the object, as the externality, as
the difference, is a boundless out and out of objects, a
boundless out and out of externalities, a boundless out
and out of differences — a boundless out and out under
physical necessity, which, at the same time, can alone be,
and is, physical contingency, fortuitousness, accident,
chance. Thought, again, as the subject, the internality,
the identity, is a boundless in and in of subjective inter-
nalities, subjective identities ; and its actuating principle
is freedom, free will ; for thought as thought, reason as
reason, the universal as the universal, is the only freedom,
the only free will. " As externality," says Giordano
Bruno in the Delia causa princiijio ed uno, " As exter-
nality, nature is only the shadow of the One, of the first
and original principle ; for what, in the 'principle, is
unseparated, single, and one, appears in externality
— in things — sundered, complex, and multiplex." The
thought here, Bruno's thought, as of the one and
the many in the language of the Greeks, is, evidently,
very much as I have expressed it a moment ago.
Thought is the form, and the truth, and the universal —
the one : nature is only the matter, and the show, and
the particular — the many. The world is but the negative
of the mind ; the mind is the affirmative of the world.
It is the world that stands up a presence, and the
only presence, to the senses ; but it is mind that is
the soul of that world. No man has seen the universal

■70 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTH.

— it is only the particular that can be scoi. It is only
the objects in the world that can be seen, and heard,
and handled. Accordingly, the philosophers of a sensa-
tional time will only speak of what they know, they say ;
and they know only the particular — only what they see.
They do not believe there is a universal : a universal they
never saiv. Nevertheless, it is only the universal that is
the trutli of the particular : the particular only is because
the universal is. What the particular is, that is the
universal. Or, it is in the particular that we are to see
and Iciioiv the universal. That is the way of the truth.
As there cannot be a naked outside — an outside that
has no inside, so there cannot be a naked particular
— a particular that is that and nothing else — a particular
that has no universal. We are, all of us that are here,
particulars ; I wonder what any of us would be if
the universal, if o^ian, humanity, were suddenly allowed
to run out of us ! The universal is not a single object,
a thing which we can touch and handle ; nevertheless
it is, and all these particulars are only its : we can touch
and handle them, only because of it. If it is only seen
in them, they disappear into it. Separate existence for
the universal is only possible in the absolute subject,
God. And His is the necessary existence. He is that
which cannot not be. We can conceive all — all the
things of sense — to perish ; but still we know that there
is God, that He cannot perish, and that they would come
again. Extinguish the lamp of this universe, and it is
still alight. Crush all into nonentity, and it only smiles
an actuality in your face. At the same time that, too,
is to be said : we are. We, too, think ; we, too, are
universals, but, being in a particular body and a parti-
cular world, not infinitely so : we are, as here below,
only finitely so. Here, however, the warning is necessary
tliat, even in the position that would give to nature

SPINOZA. 7 1

a certain life of its own, it is not for a moment to be
understood that it is Spinoza's deification of nature that
is meant. I am not one of those who, in these days,
apotheose Spinoza, though I can very sincerely respect
him. He was a gentle, inoffensive, quietly living man,
who, for bare bread, contentedly sat polishing his glasses
while he pondered the writings of Descartes, and Hobbes,
and others the like, which were then before him. For
I see no reason to believe that Moses Maimonides, or
other Jeioish philosopher, earlier or later, had such
power over Spinoza as men of an imagination of the
Arabian Nights are profuse in eloquence to lead us to
believe. Descartes, with a little of Hobbes, was, after
all, quite enough for Spinoza. It is only the peculiarity
of its presentation, perhaps, that hides the milk and
water in the system, that, for the rest, belonged to the
character of the man. It might not be very difficult
to look at Descartes geometrically ; and then, for the
most part, the thing was done — the work was accom-
plished. Generalized to its ultimate, what was in rerum
natura was extension and thought. Space, indeed, was
more than extension : it was solid ; it was extension in
all directions. Even so, however, it was still geometrical.
But take it as extension only, then its surface was
susceptible of infinite lineamentation, infinite con-
figuration. But infinite configurate lineamentation in-
volved relations, involved ideas, was tantamount to
thought. There, then, it was ; that was the world —
extension and thought. That also was God : extension,
with its involution of thought, geometrical thought —
that was God. What, then, of man here ? Why, finite
things were the figurations, the lineamentations of ex-
tension ; and one of these was man. Even at the least,
even at the worst, consequently, man did occupy, actually
was, a certain portion of the divine surface. The lines

72 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTH.

that ficrured him — the lines that cut liim out — miLiht
indeed be evanescent and perish ; but what of the
surface they isolated remained. To that extent man
was as God ; to that extent man was divine ; to that
extent man was immortal. Surely, at all events, par-
ticularly, while quite in coherence with the general idea,
that is the burden and the effect of propositions 22 and
23 in the iifth book of the Ethic. We are significantly
warned by Erdmann, however, not altogether to trust
ourselves to any such concession of immortality on the
l^art of Spinoza, seeing that, if in such propositions we
find " a personal God, a personal immortality, and one
knows not what else, we must not forget that, according
to his (Spinoza's) own express declarations, God has neither
understanding nor will ; that, according to him, a God
who reciprocated love were no God ; further, that to liim
personality and duration are only figments of the
imagination, which, even as such, he will not eternalize ;
finally, that he makes religion and blessedness to consist
simply in the self-forgetting resignation thi'ougli which
man becomes only an instrument of God, that, when
useless, is thrown away and replaced by another."
Evidently, then, on such foundations, what stuff, what
portion of the very substance of his God, Spinoza will
allow us, cannot come to much, though applying it as,
so far, a concession on his part to the general interest
of the immortality of the soul, we may feel inclined
in our hearts to thank him at least for his good-will.
But, to thank him so is not to accept his deification
of nature. Nature, as that immeasurable panorama
out there, around us, and in front of us, give it what
properties we may, is still an externality and a materi-
ality ; it is not a spirit ; as such it is not even
tantamount to the vov<; of Anaxagoras. To attain even
to the 1/01)9 of Anaxagoras, it is not the externality and

PHYSICAL TIIEOPJES. 73

the materiality that we have to hjok to, but what is
of the quality of thought — the order, beauty, aud design-
ful contrivance of the world. The remarkable con-
sideration is, that all this is otherwise precisely in these
sensational days in which our own lot has fallen. We
are enormously in advance of Anaxagoras in our know-
ledge of the sun and moon, which, he said, he was born
to speculate — in our knowledge of the whole heaven,
to which he pointed as his country ; but increase of
knowledge, instead of guiding and directing us, like
Anaxagoras, more and more to mind, seems to have
completely turned us round to matter. The stars are
matter, and the sun, and moon, and planets ; neither
is it a principle from within that would give them
union and society, but only ather, a matter from with-
out, that, according to some, shall compress them.
Matter here, matter there, matter everywhere. Particles
of matter that, in mechanical rushing to their clash,
shall take fire, and flame out suns. Particles of matter
that, in inevitable mechanical swirl and sweep, shall
be as worlds around the fires. Worlds and fires, for all
that, which, sooner or later, shall be as cold and useless
as the spur of Percy. Throw the spur of Percy into
space, and let it sink : even as that spur, we are to
follow our whole universe into an eternal cold, into
an eternal dark, into an eternal wilderness. Astronomy
gives us no hint of life. Geology gives us that much —
geology does indeed tell of life ; but geology is powerless
to save us. Geology transports weathering into the sea,
and is the while, almost even in the single word, the epic
of the elements, piped by the winds, in flash of the sun,
to the dash of the rain ; but geology can only join
astronomy in the end, and speak our doom. Space is to
be an infinite tomb : over that tomb time shall be an
infinite pall. Existence may have hce7i — a bubble, that

74 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE FOUUTII.

no sooner was than it burst, but what properly is, what
truly is, are in everlasting silence, in everlasting cold,
in the everlasting dark — two dead corpses, two dead
infinitudes, the corpse and the infinitude of space, the
corpse and the infinitude of time. But what are space
and time themselves ? If they are the infinitudes, if
they ai'e the eternities, perhaps it is precisely in them
that we shall find some light. And shapes, more am-
biguous and equivocal than time and space are, it is
impossible to conceive — at once the inockingest of
shadows and the toughest of stuffs — now described as
the very warp and woof on which the universe is
stretched, and now as the most unsubstantial playthings
of dream. To one, Mr. Hodgson, they are " immediately
and ineradicalily certain," the basis of cognition, the
" corner-stone of philosophy ; " to another, Carlyle, they
are but the two " world -enveloping appearances," the
" canvass " for all other " minor illusions," if there to
" clotJie " us, there also to " blind " us, as it is into iheii'
([iiality all that is resolves. Berkeley (IVIV. iv. 468),
to whom this " world without thought is nee quid, nee
quantum, nee quale," declares " time a sensation, and
therefore only in the mind ; space a sensation, and
therefore not without the mind ; " while, even to the
sober, sensible, and somewhat prosaic Dr. Eeid {WW.
324, 343), space, looming up there "an immense,
eternal, immovable, and indestructible void or emptiness,"
is " potentially only, not actually," and time is " a dark
and difficult object," " a beginning in wliich is only a
contradiction." The monadology of Leibnitz, as is easy
to know, could give no authority to the perception of
sense, and no external reality to the forms of space and
time, which in some way only resulted to us from our
perception of the interaction among things. All the
early writings of Kant, those, namely, that preceded the

SPACE AND TIME. 7o

Dissertatio de mundi scnsihilis atque ititclligihilis forma ct
principiis, which did itself precede and usher in the
Kritik of Pure Reason — in ahnost every one of these
early writings, there is such mention of time and space
as proves the great interest of Kant, from the very first,
in their regard.

As is only to be expected, Kant is seen in these
writings to l:)e for long in respect of time and space
a follower of Leibnitz. In his Gcdanken von der ivahrcu
Schdtzung der khendiffcn Krdfte, for example, he holds
that " there would be no space and no extension, if
things had not a power to act out of themselves ; for
otherwise there would be no connection, while with-
out connection there would be no order, and with-
out order no space." He even goes on to say, " It
is probable that the three dimensions of space derive
from the law of the interaction of substances ; and
substances interact so that the force of their action
is inversely as the square of their distances." And,
eight or nine years later, we have the same doctrine,
in his Nova dilucidatio ^rincipiorum primorum cogni-
tionis metaphysicce, as where he says : nexu suhstaniiarum
aboiito, sncccssio ct tempus pariter facessunt (the con-
nection of substances being withdrawn, succession and
time are equally withdrawn). In his Monadologia
pliysica, about the same time, he characterizes space
as sid)stantialitatis plane expers, as plainly devoid of
substantiality, and as but the phaenoynenon, the appear-
ance or show, of " the external relation of the monads
in union." What is remarkable, however, is that in
1768, writing his brief paper, Vom ersten Grunde dcs
Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume, he, as it were,
turns his back upon himself, and attempts to prove
cogently, and with conviction, that space is an absolute
reality and no mere Gedankending — that is remark-

76 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOUKTII.

able; but it is more remarkable still that, in 1770,
only a furtlier two years, we find the dissertation " con-
cerning the form and principles of the sensible and
intelligible world," in large part, written to prove space
a mere subjective appendicle of sense as sense. This
is Kant's last position relatively, and in the sequel he
never varies from it. Still there are in the writings
of the different dates, the vacillation on the part of
Kant, and the contradiction in question. What con-
cerns lis, however, is the fact that Kant did decide
in the end both space and time to be but forms of
our own sensory within us, into which perceptively
received, disposed, and arranged by aid of the categories
and their schemata, the contributions of our special
senses stood up and out at length, apart from us, as
though an infinite universe around us and inhabited
by us.

These, then, are great authorities ; and there seems that
even in space and time (on every supposition), which
would call a halt to the conclusions of the sensationists.
But, unfortunately, we cannot expect every one to be
at home with the subtleties of metaphysic, or with
what may appear the mere dreams of philosophy.
One would like, so far as, in some respects, it seems
hostile and obstructive to the interests of Natural
Theology — one would like to approach science in that
regard, on its own grounds, and to enter into it on
its own terms. Suppose we leave aside all questions
of a beginning, and equally all questions of an end.
Suppose we take the world even as we see it, or rather
even as astronomical science sees it at this very moment.
Well — there is the sun by day ; and there is the
spectacle of the heavens by night. AVhat does astro-
nomy say of all that, not as it conceives it to have
begun, and not as it conceives it to be predestinated

THE WOULD, BUT FOR EYE AND EAR. 77

to end, but simply as it is. And as it is, it was seen
in his prime by Anaxagoras, more than two thousand
three hundred years ago. That is a long time in the
life of man ; but, in the life of the universe, it would
seem, so far as difference is concerned, simply to drop
out. The sun and the moon that we see now from
the streets of Edinburgh, Anaxagoras saw then from
the streets of Athens. Our Sirius was, for Anaxagoras,
his Sirius too ; and so it was with the Hyades and
the Pleiades, and Castor and Pollux, and the Milky
Way as well. What he saw led him, the only sober
man among mere inebriates, according to Aristotle, to
speak of an order and a beauty that could be due to
intelligence only. Almost in our own days, the
experience of Anaxagoras was precisely that of Kant.
The starry heaven above him was one of the only
two things that filled liis soul with ever new and
increasino- wonder and veneration the more and the
oftener he reflected. " In effect," he says again, " when
our spirit is filled with such reflections, the aspect
of the starry heavens on a clear night, awakens in
us a joy which only noble souls are capable of feel-
ing ; in the universal calm of nature, and in the
peace of sense, the hidden faculty of the immortal
soul speaks to us indescribably, and breathes into
us mysterious thoughts, which ma}' l)e felt, but not
possibly named." There, then, it is, that starry heaven
— there — in infinite space above us, globe upon globe,
in their own light and in the light of each other,
all wheelinsf, wheeling in and out, and round and
round, and through each other, in a tangle of motion
that has still a law, not without explosions in this
one and the other from within, doubtless, that would
sound to us, did we hear them, louder, dreader, more
awfully terrific than any thunder of the tropics, that

78 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTH.

would sound to us, did we hear them, veritably as
the crack of doom — well, just to think it, all that is
taking place, all that is going on, all these globes
are whirlinc: in a darkness blacker than the mouth of
wolf, deeper than in the deepest pit tliat ever man
has sunk, — all that is going on, all that is taking
place in a darkness absolute ; and more, all that is
going on, all that is taking place — for exploding
globes even — in a silence absolute, in a silence dead,
in a silence that never a whisper — never the faintest
whisper, never the most momentary echo breaks ! Is
not that extraordinary ? but it is no less true than
extraordinary. Undulations there are, doubtless, that
are light to us ; but no undulation will give light to
them, the globes. Vibrations there are, doubtless, where
there is air, that are sound to us ; but all vibrations
are as the dead to them. It is in a cave, in a den,
blacker than the blackest night, soundless and more silent
than the void of voids, that all those intermingling motions
of the globes go on — but for us, that is ; but for an eye
and an ear, and a soul behind them ! That cannot be
denied. The deepest astronomical philosopher, en-
tranced in what he sees, entranced in wliat he fancies
himself to hear, must confess that, but for himself
and the few and feeble others that are like himself,
all would be as dark as Erebus, all would be as
silent as the grave. But as the hour now is, you
will allow me to bring this home — vou will allow me to
point the lesson in a future lecture.

GIFFORD LECTUEE THE FIFTH.

Astronomy, space, time, the voij; — Kant, Fichte, Sclielling— Carlylo,
the Sartor- — Emerson — Plato — Aristotle — A beginninc,^— The
want of eye and ear again — Deafness and blindness together —
Design restored— Thomson— Diogenes of Apollonia — Socrates —
Meteorology and ijractical action— Morality and ethicality —
The first teleological argument — Proofs of design — Bacon —
Socrates finally.

We resume where we left off at our last meeting. The
universal conclusions, we may say, of every writing on
astronomical science which we may chance to take up
now-a-days, in regard to the eventual entomhment of the
whole present system of things as a single cold corpse in
a perpetual grave of space, under a perpetual pall of time
— these conclusions brought us, at the close of our last
lecture, to some consideration, firstly, of space and time
themselves, and then, secondly, of the heavens above us,
at once as, to astronomical observation, they presently
are, and, historically, always have been. We have still
to bring home what was said then ; and here it may be
perhaps well, indeed, not to expand, but just a little to
open statements. The subject, certainly, has fairly come
to us in connection with the assertion of the presence of
vov<i, intelligence, in the general system around us — an
assertion which such a science as this of Natural Theo-
logy, with peril of its very life, requires to make good ;
at the same time that, obviously, on the contrary sup-
position, with such an eternity of night and the grave
before us as astronomy predicts, it would be just as well

80 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE FIFTH.

to say as little as possible, whether of the vov<; of
Anaxagoras, or of the Natural Theology of anybody else.
In regard to time and space, we had strong evidence of
their very peculiar nature on many hands, even on the
part of Reid, at once the sworn foe of idealism, and
equally the sworn friend of common sense. After vacilla-
tion, Kant's final opinion was such as we find expressed
in these words of his own (Text-Book to K. p. 157):
" Were our subject abstracted from, or simply the sub-
jective constitution of our senses, all the qualities and all
the relations of objects in space and time — nay, space
and time themselves — would disappear : for all these are,
as mere appearances to sense, incapable of existing in
themselves, but only in us." And if such was the
doctrine of Kant, it cannot be said, on the whole, that
his immediate successors differed from it at least as
regards the general ideal quality of space and time,
richte, for example, laboriously deduces, in his dialectical
manner, the construction and setting out of time and
space in the imagination. Schelling, again, while simply
taking his material from the hands of Fichte, and as
Fichte himself gave it him, remained, all through his life,
sufficiently an idealist to believe in the ideality of space
and time. In a writing, dated 1804 (vi. 223), he will
be found saying, '•' Space, purely as such, is, even for the
geometrician, nothing real;" and again, "independently
of the particular things, space is nothing." In his
Transcendental Idealism of 1800, which, however, is
little more than a ricliauffe of Fichte's Wissensehaftslehre,
he had already said (iii. 470): "Time is only inner sense
becoming to its own self object ; space is outer sense
becoming object to inner sense."

We referred then to the same belief on the part of
Carlyle. In that magnificent chapter of the Sartor Rcsartus
which bears the title of " Natural Supernaturalism," he

CAKLYLE, THE SARTOR. 81

will be found, on a considerable canvass, to speak both fully
and grandly on this special topic. Carlyle himself calls this
section of his work a " stupendous section ; " and it is a
stupendous section, — I suppose the very first word of a
higher philosophy that had been as yet spoken in Great
Britain, — I suppose the very first English word towards
the restoration and rehabilitation of the dethroned upper
2Jowers, which, for all that, I fear, under our present
fvofound views in religion and philosophy, remain still
dethroned. Here it is, as the words are, that the
" professor first becomes a seer." Hitherto he has been
struggling with all manner of " phantasms," " super-
annuated symbols, and what not ; " but now he has
" looked fixedly on existence, till, one after the other, its
earthly hulls and garnitures," time and space themselves,
" have all melted away," and to " his rapt vision, the
celestial Holy of Holies lies at last disclosed." As
intimated, it is especially the stripping off of these two
" world-enveloping phantasms," space and time, that has
enabled him to attain to such grand consummation and
blissful fruition. The " deepest of all illusory appear-
ances," he exclaims, they are " for hiding wonder," the
wonder of this universe. They hide what is past and
they hide what is to come ; but yet, as he exclaims again,
" Yesterday and to-morrow both are : " " with God as it
is a universal liere, so is it an everlasting now." As
Carlyle himself says, it is in this chapter that he attains
to " Transcendentalism," and to a sight at last of " the
promised land, where Palingenesia, in all senses, may be
considered as beginning." And certainly, as I say,
Sartor Besartus itself was a first attempt to reconstruct
and revindicate those substantial truths of existence,
which are the enduring, firm, fast, fixed, ineradicable
foundations of humanity as humanity, — humanity in the
individual, humanity in the kind.

82 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIFTH.

However much the general testimony of Emerson be in
this vein of Carlyle, it is not in my recollection that I can
quote him specially in regard to time and space. He does
say in that reference, " Therefore is Space, and therefore
Time, that man may know that things are not huddled and
lumped, but sundered and individual : " that is, time and
space are there for " the perception of differences ; " Init
they must disappear, as beams and joists of the mere out-
ward, into his general idealism. Emerson regards " nature
as a phenomenon, not a substance." He attributes
" necessary existence to spirit," but esteems nature only
" as an accident and an effect." He says once, " Even the
materialist Condillac, perhaps the most logical expounder
of materialism, was constrained to say, ' Though we
should soar into the heavens, though we should sink into
the abyss, we never go out of ourselves ; it is always our
own thought that we perceive.' " The quotation in itself
is excellent ; but it is strange that Emerson should
attribute to Condillac, what is so prominent in David
Hume ; not but that Condillac may have paraphrased
Hume, whom Emerson, like most students of his day,
under the influence of Coleridge possibly, openly de-
preciated and disparaged. It is a later series of Kantian
studies that has brought up Hume again. Emerson is
probably happier when he attributes to a French philo-
sopher the saying that " material objects are necessarily
kinds of scoriae of the substantial thoughts of the
Creator." It is Emerson himself who says, and it is one
of the most beautiful things that ever has l^een said,
" Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which conies into the
arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to
paradise."

Before leaving the consideration that we have here, it
may be pointed out that tliere are views in Plato and
Aristotle relatively, wliich are not essentially different.

PLATO ARISTOTLE. 83

Apart from the general philosophy of Plato, there is a
reference to Time in the Timacus (37 E-38 A) which is
manifestly of an ideal import. The parts of time there,
the was and the will he, are called but phenomenal forms,
which we wrongly transfer to what is nouraenally eternal ;
" for we say, in a time reference namely, it was, it is, it
will be ; whereas of what truly is, we can only say it is."
As regards Aristotle again, what he has to say in this
connection would of itself constitute an excellent in-
troduction to metaphysic proper, for it is full of the
subtlest turns possible, and requires the intellect that
would follow them to have sharpened itself, at least for
the nonce, to the fineness of a razor. The mention of
one or two of them, however, must here suffice. As
regards space, for example, it is enough to point out that
to Aristotle it cannot demand for itself a place, so to
speak, whether in heaven or in hell. Of the two known
elements, that is, it is without a claim upon either. It
cannot pretend to mind or soul ; for its extension excludes
it : and just as little can it profess itself corporeal ; for it
has got no body. The prestidigitation, or jugglery, that
time exacts, is subtler and more irritatin" still. All
other things, for example, consist of parts that are ; and,
on that necessity, time itself cannot be, for, in view of
the past and the future, it consists of parts that are not.
But leaving all such finenesses aside, we may limit our-
selves to the distinct avowal on Aristotle's part, in the
last chapter of the fourth book of the Physics, that, as to
how time is, when viewed in reference to a mind, " one
might doubt whether, if there were no mind, time would
be or would not be."

Now, the purpose of all this that concerns time and
space is to suggest that the constitution of them may be
somewhat in the way of the constitution of a universal
beginning or a universal end, as postulated by science.

84 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIFTH.

Till the world began, there was, conceivably, neither
time nor space ; and when the world ends, it is equally
conceivable that neither will remain. In short, ideal
considerations must be allowed to interfere with all such
materialistic conclusions as, excluding vov^;, intelligence,
from any role, part, place, or share in the composition of
the universe, would summarily truncate all pretensions of
a so-called Natural Theology, and concisely close this
lecturer's vocation.

But now, again, what was all that about black wolves'
throats, and palls, and graves, and Erebus', and what
not ? How is that to be brought home to us, and what
is the lesson that is to be pointed ? Well, in a word, all
that is just this : — kill us all oft', and the likes of us,
wherever to be found — kill us all oft" in the universe, I
say, and from that moment all is dark, and all is silent
as the grave. The in and out, and round about, of all
the stars in the firmament, of Arcturus and Aldebaran, of
Vega, Spica, and Capella, of Alamak, Alpharat, and Scheat,
of Ophiuchus and Fomalhaut, and every myriad spark
and sparkle in the Milky Way may go on ceaselessly still,
by day, by night, but henceforth in a silence absolute —
in a darkness dense, impenetrable. That, let move what
move may ; that, indeed, will be all — a solid soundless-
ness, a substantial black ! AVhat, you will say, will there
not be Charles's Wain still circling in the north, and
Cassiopeia's Chair, like a swarm of busy bees, and tlie
glorious constellation of Orion, with his grand belt of
three, and in his surpassing brightness Sirius, and the
Pleiades in their pallor ? Or simply, as regards this
earth of ours, do you mean to say that the thunder will
no longer roll nor the lightning flash — or just to reduce
and confine it to a single point, do you mean to say that,
though there were not a single life in the whole solar
system, the sun would not continue to shine ? Well, now

THE WANT OF EYE AND EAR. 85

that is just what I do mean to say. But for a living eye,
but for a living ear, there would be no light in the sun,
no voice in the thunder. Vibration in the air, caused by
whatever it may, is sound in the ear ; but the vibration
itself is soundless, it is but a mechanical tremble, a
mechanical quiver ; alone and by itself it is in silence
only, there is not the very suggestion of a tone or a note
in it. So it is with light. Similar to the vibrations of
the air there are the undulations of the aether. These
undulations are light in the eye, but in themselves —
alone and by themselves — they are darkness itself.
Without an eye and without an ear all those globes in
the heaven around us career among themselves in a
single unbroken black that has not a sound in it. The
darkness is still in its size monstrous, it is still equal to
the infinitude of space. But, all dark, does it not seem
to lose its proportions and to contract somehow ? Wliat
are all these enormous differences in that one dark V
Let them be as they may, they are all, as it were, within
the hollow of a single den. But if these great globes are
only to wheel and wheel, and circle and circle, in a single
silent den, why should they be so huge — why should they
be at such vast distances ? Let them draw nearer each
other, let them shrink in themselves : still, to all intents
and purposes, there is scarce a change, all everywhere to
our minds remains pretty much the same. Quantity is
but relative ; there is no absolute large, there is no
absolute small. The earth, possibly, is but as a pea to
Sirius ; Sirius, possibly, but as a pin's point to the Magellan
clouds. After all, the mighty black of space is no more
than an indefinite cave — a den — no more than as a black
hole of Calcutta. It is as though it were in a black
hole of Calcutta that, without an eye, all the operations
of the firmament proceed. Quantity has pruned itself,
quantity has retrenched its idle, useless dimensions — very

86 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIFTir.

idle, very useless if in a single, soundless dark ; quantity
has retired into a black hole of Calcutta, but if into a
black hole of Calcutta, why not into the butt of a mantua-
niaker's thimble ? There ! that is the result ! Without
an eye to see, and without an ear to hear, the world,
whether for magnitude or for use, were no worse or
better, did it compress the operation of its dimensions
from the infinitude of space into the butt of a mantua-
maker's thimble ! I have actually seen the world almost
so compressed. Years ago, at a Welsh ironwork, I found
a man, a fireman, who, from some injury in the course of
his occupation, had incurred an inflammation that cost
him not only the sight of both his eyes, but even, by its
extension, the hearing of both his ears. He was still in
the vigour of life. He might have been yoked, like a
beast of burden, to some mechanical appliance ; but
otherwise he was useless. He was left (with a small
pension, I fancy) to some poor people who took care of
him. Henceforth, for the poor fellow, there was only a
life of dream. Night and day, day and night, he lay
warm in his bed, shut up, like a cat before the fire, into
the bliss of subjectivity, bare subjectivity — so to speak,
brute subjectivity, physical, corporeal subjectivity. He
rose only when his smell told him that his meals were
ready. The senses of smell and taste he enjoyed,
evidently, with the intensest avidity ; but still there was
one pleasure which, during his meals, he seemed to enjoy
more than the pleasures of either of these. It was a
pleasure of touch ; but it was a human pleasure. His
poor face wore a smile, a sweet smile, a smile of our
common reason, as he fed the cat that rubbed on his legs
only, knowing the uselessness of a mew ! Now to that
man the world was contracted into a silent dark, where
his meals were, and the cat that rubbed on his legs.
What, then, would the world be were all mankind as he ?

DESIGN RESTORED THOMSON. 87

What would the world be were there no such things as
an eye and an ear within the immeasurable vast of its
entire infinitude ? So far' as any use or purpose is con-
cerned, would it be any bigger or better than a black hole
of Calcutta, — would it be any bigger or better than the
butt of a mantua-maker's thimble ? To any one who
will approach to look, an eye, an ear is as much a
necessity in the realization, is as much involved in the
very plan, of the universe, as matter and molecules, and
the immensity of space itself. But the moment we see
that, we see design also. We see that intelligence has
gone to the composition of the universe. We have come
to be sober, like Anaxagoras, in the midst of inebriates,
and, like him, we proclaim the vov'i. There is, then, a
reality in our science of Natural Theology, and we can
still exclaim with the poet of the Scaso7is: —

" These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing spring
Thy beauty walks. . . .

Then comes the glory in the summer months. . . .
Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined. . . .
In winter, awful Thou ! with clouds and storms,
Majestic darkness I

Mysterious round I what skill, what force divine,
Deep-felt, in all appear ! "

For our purpose of Natural Theology, it is Diogenes
of Apollonia that offers himself next to our consideration ;
but I leave what I have on him aside, and pass at once
to Socrates.

The position of Socrates on the historical roll, as well
of civilisation as of philosophy, is, like that of Anaxagoras,
a sole and singular one. If Anaxagoras introduced the
consideration of purpose in an intellectual regard, it was
Socrates that turned the attention of mankind to the

88 GIFFORD LECTUKE THE FIFTH.

same principle in practical application. It was with him
as though he had said, Anaxagoras cannot apply his
principle meteorologically — in the heavens, that is ; he has
only announced it meteorologically ; neither can / apply
it meteorologically, but let us see whether it has an
application or not to human life. I do not know that
there is anything to be got from the trees and the fields,
but there is a good deal to be got from the market-place,
and the gymnasia, and the people in them. Accordingly,
what new principle Socrates introduced was that of
morality. By this word, however, there is something'
else and more to be understood than it usually suggests.
As far as that goes, it is to be hoped, indeed, that there
was morality upon the earth, that there was morality
in mankind, that there was morality among the Greeks,
l)efore even Socrates appeared among them. The old
Die-hards of the Medic wars, to say nothing of those
of times yet earlier, old Trojans say, were surely not
without morality. The distinction is this. The old
morality, the old virtue, was an unconscious morality, an
unconscious virtue. These men of old only did what
they did. They did what they did without a thought of
themselves. They thought, indeed, and they thought
well ; but their thoughts were not properly conscious or
self-conscious thoughts. Their thoughts were instinctive,
natural, as the blood in their veins, as the breath they
drew, as the food they ate. They made, in a way, no
merit to themselves of what they did. 'What they did,
and why, was but as tlie institutions of their country,
was but part and parcel of their streets and houses, was
but as the common voice, the common sound, the common
hum of the agora. They and the State were not different
individuals, they and the State were one. Their life was,
as it were, foetal as yet, foetal in the State, their mother,
and there was the common circulation still between them:

SOCRATES. 89

the medium of that circulation was the laws familiar to
them, the beliefs they all believed, the patrimonial use
and wont, and established manners, so to speak, natured
in them. If we can so name the distinction, morality
was then ethicality. Both are right doing, but ethi-
cality is the right doing according to the conscience of
the State, of the community, while morality is right
doing accordinof to the conscience of the individual.
Or both are virtue : the one the virtue of the public,
the other the virtue of the private, conscience. As it is
in the Bible with the words and the thoughts, which still
seem, as it were, vitally connected ; so it is here with the
State and the individual, the universal and the particular :
both are still one. Existence is as yet objective ; sub-
jectivity has still to appear. Now thus it was in Greece
upon the whole, up almost to the time of Pericles and
the Peloponnesian war. But, during, say, some two-
hundred years before that, the philosophical consciousness
had been gradually growing, and, no doubt, during the
same time, the common mind correspondently altering.
After Anaxagoras, the rate of progress, or, as it may be
thought, regress, rt'gress especially in a public respect it
unquestionably was — after Anaxagoras the rate of
change became greatly accelerated. Publicly such men
as Alcibiades and Lysander were but poor substitutes for
such others as Leonidas and Miltiades. Then there were
the Sophists, occupying a position not quite public, nor
yet again quite private. In these respects there was
regress ; but what we have in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
who came next, is progress, and compared with M'hat
result preceded it, progress nameable pretty well infinite.
Almost it would seem as though Anaxagoras by his
reference to the vom had concentrated all attention on
intelligence as intelligence ; which was raised, as it were,
well-nigh to the position of an Absolute then when the

90 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE FIFTH.

Sophists said or seem to have said to themselves, That
absohite shall be ours, ours in our individual consciousness
— if thought is to be the principle, and the authority,
and tlie deciding consideration, then that thought is ours
even as we are : it is we alone ; it is men alone, who
think. Socrates, now, was a reflective, considerate
personality who turned over everything in his mind to
see what it came to, what was the worth of it. But
turning from the fields and the trees to the homes and
liaunts of men, the interests that were offered for that
reflection and consideration of his could only be of a
practical nature. That is, what immediately presented
itself to him was, as we may term it, the ethicality of
the past, which, shaken in the present, promised but
poorly for the future. So it was, in his hands, that
ethicality became morality — in this way that, ethicality
being taken into his consciousness and there looked at,
questioned, and examined, had to make good its claim
to its authority of heretofore. Virtue, that is, what was
right and good, was now before the bar of the single
consciousness, but in a universal regard. And it was
tliat regard, the universality of that regard, that, for the
first time, realized in history and the life of man,
morality as morality. Actions, if they had been ethical
jjefore, were now to be moral. On the question of riglit
or wrong, the tribunal of sentence was now within, and
no longer without. The indiN'idual was now referred to
his own self, to liis own responsibility, to his own con-
science and judgment. But the conscience or judgment
must not be, as with the Sophists, a private one, in this
sense that the individual was to consider only what was
good for himself as this particular individual that lie
was, Callicles, Cebes, Chaerephon, or another. No ; it
was not one of these as one of these, Callicles as Callicles,
Cebes as Cebes, Chaerephon as Chaereplion, that was to

MOIIALITY AND ETHICALITY. 91

be considered — not each as he was in his immediate
individuality, but each as he was in his universality,
each as he was in his manhood, each as he was in his
humanity. The conscience that was to decide, the judg-
ment that was to pass sentence, must be a universal
conscience, must be a universal judgment. N"ow that
universality could, as was plain to Socrates, only come
by hioiving. And so it was that to Socrates virtue was
knowledge or a knowledge. So far, too, Socrates was
perfectly right. The individual will universalize his
nature only by knowledge. It is by knowledge that the
individual must excavate himself ; it is by knowledge
that he must dredge and deepen himself ; by knowledge
that he must widen his walls, and raise his roof, letting
in light and fresher air upon himself. It is by know-
ledge that man — man as man — is made of men. Every
true growth in a man's garden must singly be gone round
about, and tended with as much peculiarity of care as,
under the impost, makes a perfect exemplar of every
individual tobacco plant in France. Or we may say, in
the camera of a man's soul, there falls many a blur on
the so sensitive crystal there ; and it takes the cunning
pouring on of chemicals to transmute the haze into
transparency and shape. And all that is principally an
affair of knowledge ; but still we are not to forget that
knowledge alone is not enough. Socrates was wrong
there ; and Aristotle added the training and discipline,
the custom and practice that, with all knowledge, were
still necessary to make man good — good not only in his
knowledge, not only in his thoughts and wishes, but good
also in his will, good in the acts and actions of his daily
life.

This, then, is what is meant by saying that Socrates
was the first to introduce into the State morality as
against ethicality. The ethicality of the State was still

92 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE FIFTH.

morality ; but it was the material morality of the organ-
ized objectivity without, as against the ideal morality of
the conscious subjectivity within. This is Socrates in
his historical position ; but, though averse to what is
called mctcorologi/, and even expressing himself against
it, we know from what he confessed himself to have
hoped to learn from Anaxagoras concerning the sun, and
the moon, and the other stars, and the causes of all
things — we know, from as much as this, I say, that
Socrates still entertained a lively curiosity in respect to
the constitution of this universe. That, indeed, could
not fail the inquirer into the universal will, into the
universal good and right. And it was from that side,
in fact, that he had his interest in the universe. As an
observer who saw, marked, and inwardly digested what
he saw and marked, he could not be blind to the in-
numerable proofs, as he said, of the goodness of the gods
in care of animal life in the world around him. Man's
body, for example, what a contrivance it was, — what
an organism of contrivances it was for the support, pro-
tection, and enjoyment of the soul that dwelt in it !
And in this way it is that we have from Socrates his
various discourses on the evidences of design which he
saw in man and in the life of man. In consequence of
these discourses on design, indeed, and of the turn he
gave them, it has been, so to speak, officially entered into
the historical record that, of the three theoretical argu-
ments for the existence of God, the argument from
design was originated and first used by Socrates of
Athens, the son of Sophroniscus the statuary and
riiaenarete the midwife. Plato and Xenophon have
pretty well deified this Socrates for many virtues and
for many excellences ; and we have just seen how a very
peculiar speciality of well - merited fame is justly his
as originator, and first, in regard to a most important stage

THE FIRST TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 93

— in regard to a main epoch in the progress and develop-
ment of morals and the moral principle in mankind ;
])ut what lustre attaches to his name, in consequence of
the argument from design, is only second to that in
regard to morality. "This proof," says Kant (iriF. ii.
485), "deserves to be named always with reverence. It
is the oldest, the clearest, and the most suited to our
common understanding. It animates the study of nature,
which gives existence to it, and acquires thereby ever
new power. It shows ends and intentions where our
own observation would never of itself have discovered
them, and extends our knowledge of nature through
guidance of a peculiar unity, the principle of which is
above nature. The new knowledge acts back again
towards its cause, its originating idea namely, and exalts
(jur belief in a Supreme Originator into an irresistible
conviction."

We shall not deny as against this, that power probably
v:a8 what first in the perception or feeling of men led
them to the thought and the worship of the supernatural ;
but we shall incline very much to agree with the opinion
as to Greece having been the birthplace of the first teleo-
logical argument for the being of a God. Only to men
who had reached their majority, — only to men who looked
about them in reason, and in full freedom were led in all
their doings by reason, — only to such men was it at all
probable that the " order " of this universe should, as in
the case of Anaxagoras, for the first time, have shown
itself. Only of reason could reason have been seen.
But Kant is still riglit in regard to the value and im-
portance of the argument itself. We may say, on the
whole, it is the key to the position, and only with special
satisfaction is it that we take it from the hand of
Socrates. The precise source of our information in this
respect is the Memorabilia of Xenophon. There we find

94 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIFTH.

Socrates conversing again and again on the evidence of
design in nature and in the objects of nature. Since
Kant, as we know, there are two ways of looking at
design. There is a design that is to be named external,
and a design as well that is to be named internal, or
immanent, indwelling. Of these it is only the latter
that is worthy of the name. In truth there is no design
that is not internal and immanent. What is meant by
external design is a purpose not intrinsic, but quite ex-
trinsic to the relation concerned. The common joke of
Goethe or Schiller in the Xcnien about the cork-tree
having manifestly its purpose, the reason of its being in
the manufacture of bottle-corks, perfectly illustrates the
idea, or that a clerk's ear was made that he might carry
a pen in it ! And, certainly, in regard to some things
adduced by Socrates, the designfulness is but contingent
or external, inasmuch as the relation between the terms
or factors in the connections alleged are not always seen
to depend on qualities of agreement inherent in them.
But when Socrates proceeds to refer to thought in man
and its necessary exercise, as in discrimination and
selection of the beautiful and useful, in the inventing of
language, the enacting of laws, the establishing of gOA'ern-
ment, etc., it is possible to demur to as much as that
])eing a matter of mere externality. Nay, when witli
^Vristodemus the little, he goes more into details in this
department, as regards the constitution of the human
body, say, it seems impossible to maintain that the
design he signalizes is only external and extrinsic.

The eyes, ears, nostrils, tongue, the various organs and
their uses by no means evidently concern relations of
accident. The eyelids that close when necessary, the
eyelashes that are as a screen, even the eyebrows that
are as eaves or copitigs to ward off the perspiration — I
have never been able to persuade myself, as I find some

PROOFS OF DESIGN" BACON SOCKATES FINALLY. 95

others do, that these, too, involve correlations that are
contingent only. In this reference, Bacon, for example,
has the following in The Advancement of Learning (ii.
7. 7) : " The cause rendered, that the hairs about the eye-
lids are for the safeguard of the sight, doth not impugn
the cause rendered, that pilosity is incident to the orifices
of moisture : muscosi fontes" etc. One is happy to see
here that Bacon does still not deny, but admit final
causes : " both causes," he expressly says, in the immedi-
ate reference are " true and compatible, the one declaring
an intention, the other a consequence only." But one
does not find it merely self-evident for all that, that eye-
lids must be pilous, even as fountains are mossy. The
fountain makes a soil for low germs even out of its
stony lip ; but the tears can hardly be conceived to do
as much by the covered cartilage that borders the eye ;
while the eyebrow and perspiration bring no analogy.
I hold that an eye is immanent in nature, that an eye is
a necessity of nature, and that, consequently, all is at
first hand complete in that idea, — I hold this, and I am
not ignorant of the vast varieties of the vast gradation
of eyes which nature shows, — I hold this, and it is to
me nothing against it that a lion's eyebrow, or a horse's
eyebrow, is not exactly as is a man's eyebrow, or that
such and such a tiny insect, microscopic insect if you
will, has a score or twice a score of eyes. Nature is
externality, nature is boundless external contingency,
and the idea can only appear in nature as in externality,
as in boundless external contingency.

One hears of " the open secret of the universe : " now
the open secret of the universe is just that idea — an
idea and a secret, the bearing of which, on design at
least, was not hid from Socrates, more than two thousand
years ago. He tells Aristodemus that whatever mani-
fests design is a product of thought and not of chance.

96 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIFTH.

He tells liim all these things about the eyebrows, and
the eyelids, and the eyelashes ; and I daresay he could
have told Bacon that it is not absolutely necessary for
all moist animal orifices to be pilous. Among others,
there are the lips, for example ; the beard does not
exactly grow on the lips ; neither is it the moisture of
the lips that has anything to do with the pilosity of the
Ijeard. Besides what concerns the eye, etc., Socrates
refers to the teeth, — the front ones to cut, and the back
ones to grind. I mention this as it is insisted on also
by Aristotle. Then it is really matter for congratulation
to find Socrates dwelling on the thought that is present
in the general structure of the world. Is it to be sup-
posed, he asks, that it is only we have reason, and that
there is none in the whole ? It is really wonderful how
this man must reflect on everything, and give himself
account of everything — the bare-footed, poorly - clad,
street wanderer, pot-bellied and Silenus-faced, that was,
perhaps, the wisest, best, and bravest man that was
then alive. His God — and he was sincerely pious, he
worshipped devoutly — His God was the God of the
yvdifjUT}, the understanding, the reason, which in admon-
ishing Aristodemus he opposed to the tuxv, the chance,
the accident and chance which, at least, as science rules,
alone seem worshipped now-a-days. Nor had the pupil
riato missed the lesson ; but of this again in our next.

GIFFORD LECTUEE THE SIXTH.

Plato — His position — His prose — Indebted to Socrates — Monotlieism
— Tlie i^opular gods — Socrates' one principle — His raetliod —
Universalized by Plato — Ei^inomis — The Timaeus — Tlie eyes,
etc. — Kant here — Subject and object — Mechanical and final
causes — The former only /or the latter — Identity and difference
— Creation, the world — Time and eternity — The Christian
Trinity — The two goods — Eeligion, the Laws — Prayer^Super-
stition — Hume, Dugald Stewart, Samuel Johnson, Buckle — The
Platonic duality — Necessity and contingency — Plato's work.

With the name of Plato, we feel that we are approaching
one of the greatest figures in all time. As a philoso-
pher, the first place, and without a single dissentient
voice, was universally accorded him throughout the whole
of antiquity. So completely was this the case, that it
does not seem for a moment to have been as mujsh as
dreamt that even Aristotle could dispute it with him.
Nay, it cannot be doubted that, at this very day, were
the question put to the world at large as to which of the
two philosophers were the greater, an immense majority
of votes would be handed in for Plato. The very quality
of his writing would, with the general public, readily
secure for him this. With an ease and fulness that are
natural simplicity merely, there is, as we can only name
it, that amenity in the compositions of Plato that con-
stitutes him, unapproachably, the greatest, sweetest, most
delicate and delightful master of prose that ever wrote
it. One can feel oneself here, then, in such a presence,
only with a certain apprehension. What, however, comes
to save us from being altogether oppressed at the call to

G

98 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE SIXTH.

speak on Plato, is the consideration that it is not of the
great whole that we are required to give an account, but
only of what in it has a hearing historically on the proofs
for the Being of a God. And here we can see at once
that Plato, as usual, only receives the torch from his
master Socrates, not merely to carry it and hand it on to
his further fellow, but to make it blaze withal both
1)righter and wider. That, too, is as much as to say
that, said proofs being concerned, we have here, on the
part of Socrates and Plato, two degrees in the advance
to nionothcism. What Socrates actually said in this
regard comes to us in the course of his conversation, now
with Aristodemus, and again with Euthydemus, as re-
spectively recorded in the first and fourth books of the
MemoraUlia. It is as to Oelov, simply as the Divinity,
he characterizes the gods, when he speaks of them to the
former as " seeing and hearing all things at once, as being
everywhere present, and as equally caring for all things ;"
while to Euthydemus he names one sovereign god, and
others subordinate. " The other gods," he says, " who
give us good things do not come before us visibly in so
doing, and he who regulates and keeps together the whole
world — he is manifest as thus effecting what is greatest,
but even in such consummation he, too, is invisible to
us." There is (no doubt) in such words as these a
monotheistic tinge ; but it is not yet pure. In that
regard, there is a certain advance in Plato ; he still
makes respectful reference to the popular gods, in what-
ever has a public bearing, at tlie same time tliat, in
other circumstances, he reprobates, as in the second book
of the RepuUic, the traditional fables about the parti-
cular gods almost as though these gods themselves were
fabulous.

If we do but consider, however, the scientific prin-
ciples which dominated the thouglits, whether of Plato

PLATO INDEBTED TO SOCRATES. 99

or Socrates, we shall not wonder at this. As we have
seen, the one great principle of Socrates was the good,
whether in a moral or a physical regard ; for even in the
adjustment of the external universe, he took it with
enthusiasm from the hand of Anaxagoras that all was
for the best, or that everything precisely was where it
best should be. Now, there was unity in the very
thought here. If all was for a purpose, and if we were
all to strive to a single end, there was necessarily a
direction given in our thoughts and wills towards a
single power. The whole tendency of such teaching
could not but be monotheistic — could not but lead awcuj
from the traditional gods with question and doubt.
Plato directly says, " God, least of all, should have many
shapes;" and again, " God is what is absolutely simple
and true" {Rep. 381 B and 382 E).

The mental attitude on the part of Socrates, to whicli
his principle was the vital force, has been made
abundantly plain to us both by Xenophon and Plato.
Almost any single conversation in the one, or dialogue in
the other, will suffice for proof. So far, there is a certain
sameness in them all. Per example, let us but hear, on
the one hand, Socrates ask Hippias what Beauty is ; and,
on the other hand, Hippias answer Socrates that it is a
beautiful maiden, — let us but hear such question and
answer, knowing well the retort of Socrates in the end,
that lie does not want to know what a beautiful person
is, but what is Beauty itself, and we are well - nigh
admitted to the very heart of the mystery. Beauty
itself, courage itself, justice itself — that was the perpetual
quest of Socrates. This quest of his, too, was, on the
whole, always in a moral direction. It was always, also,
by a certain dissection of the very thinking of his respon-
dent, or opposite, that he came to his result. Now, what
Plato did was simply to universalize all this. As he

100 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTH.

deified the man Socrates, so he deified his work. Firstly,
to extend the moral quest of Socrates into the whole field
of knowledge,— this for Plato was to discover the Ideas.
Then, again, secondly, the mental dissection of Socrates
hecame for Plato his express Dialectic. While, thirdly
and lastly, what was an indefinite unity, or " scattering
and unsure " unities with Socrates, was carried up by
Plato into the single unity of the Good — a good that was
to Plato more than moral good, more than a summating
and consummating goodness — a good that was to Plato
God. And all that is in our own direction — all that
is towards monotheism — all that is towards Natural
Theology — all that is towards realization of the proofs for
the Existence and Attributes of God.

Even in that reference, even specially in' the matter of
design, we may, not altogether wrongly, assume Plato to
have still followed his master ; but in him we do not
find, so easily and so commonly as in Socrates, instances
of what we may call particular design. As we saw,
indeed, the design instanced by Socrates was not always
free from the reproach of externality. For example, we
do get many advantages from the animals we have
domesticated ; but we can hardly intimate, as Socrates
would seem to wish, that pigs and poultry were directly
made for us. Illustrations in this kind are, perhaps,
chiefly or alone to be found in Plato, when, as in the
Timacus, he is engaged in his fanciful description of the
construction of man. There is a passage in the J^pinomis
that refers to the earth producing fruits for us and food
for animals, as well as to winds and rains that we see
to be seasonable and in measure. The Epinomisis, denied
to I'lato, and transferred to Philip of Opuntium. Philip,
however, as a pupil of Plato's, may, possibly, in this case,
be only repeating his master. The illustration, too, how-
ever external on the whole, is not insusceptible of

THE TIMAEUS THE EYES, ETC. 101

relative application, for I know not that it is unallowable
to point to the possibility of human existence as dependent
on the totality of influences, though, for the rest, winds
certainly do blow as they list, and rains certainly do fall
on the barren sea and the unproductive desert. In the
Timaeus we have (45 E) the eyelids and the hair
(76 C and D) of the head spoken of; the former as pro-
tective, and the other as a covering, production by
intention being assumed in both cases. Plato talks of
the flesh simply as clothing, but designedly thiii on the
joints, not to impede motion (74 E). Had he been more
of an anatomist, contracting muscles, with their pointed
terminal tendons, would have better suited his purpose.
Tlie Timaens dwells (46 E, 47 A) on the wonders of the
eyes, too, and on the wonders of what has been submitted
to them. But for the eyes, it is said, proof of the
universe there would have been found none, since without
them we should never have known of either stars, or sun,
or heaven ; but " now day and night and the changes of
the year yield to us the knowledge of time, and the
power of investigating the universe ; " and " from these we
have attained to that thing called philosophy, than which
a greater good has not ever come, nor ever will come, a
gift from the gods to the race of mortals" (47 B). Here
what Plato has in mind is simply the information we
attain by sight, simply the intellectual advantage of that
information. He has no idea of what the world would
be, we may almost say, physically, were there no seeing
subject anywhere to be found in it. Such an idea was,
of course, impossible to Plato, who knew nothing about
the undulations of the aether, etc. Something of the
same thought, but more in a moral reference, occurs in
Kant. He says in the Kritik of Judgment (§ 86), "If
the world consisted of beings merely inanimate, or some
animate and some inanimate, but the animate still without

102 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTH.

reason, the existence of such a world would have no worth
at all, for there would exist in it no being that possessed
the slightest notion of any worth . . . the existence of
rational beings under moral laws can alone be thouglit as
final cause of the existence of a world." I may also
remind you here of a quotation from Colebrooke which I
specially emphasized as of future use. This, namely :
" There must be one to enjoy what is formed for enjoy-
ment : a spectator, a witness of it : that spectator is
soul." Nature, as I said then, too, is not there independ-
ently, self-subsistently, and on its own account : it is
there only for a purpose and as a means. Evidently a
universe without a spectator to make it his, object
without subject, would be a gross self-stultification, a
manifest meaninglessness, an idle anomaly, a palpable
monstrosity, an arrant cheat.

Proceeding nearer to our main subject of design
generally, we may remark that, in the Timaeus, Plato is
very full and clear on that to us essential interest, final
causes, and in their opposition to physical ones. " There
are two genera of causes," he says (Tim. 68 E), " the one
necessary and the other divine." The one cause, that of
necessity, being subordinated to that of intellect, and
made its minister and servant merely. " The genesis of
this world," it is said (48), " has been effected by the con-
junction of necessity and intellect;" but necessity is
under the rule of intellect. The causes of necessity, in
short, are only " the accessory causes which the Deity,
in realizing the idea of the possibly best, uses only as
hodmen for the work ; " adding, however, that that " is
not the conception of the most, who hold the causes of
things to be cold and heat, solidification and liquefaction,
etc. ; but both causes ought to be spoken of." We see
thus that it is here with Plato just as we saw it was with
Socrates in reference to Anaxagoras. Both will insist on

MECHANICAL AND FINAL CAUSES. 10

<y

final causes as equally present with mechanical ones, but
as being, at the same time, the ruling and directing
powers of these, which are only the physical materials
and mechanical agents in realization, so to speak, of the
counsels and will of the causes we call final. This point
of view is perfectly plain in Plato. He is perfectly well
aware, he says, that there are those who maintain that the
causes of necessity are the only causes, and that what are
named final causes are merely secondary causes that result
from these ; that, for example, fire and water, and earth
and air, are all of them from nature and chance, and none
of them from plan and contrivance — that, in short, chance
and physical necessity are to be credited with the pro-
duction of all things, heaven with all that is in it, the
seasons, and earth, and animals, and plants. But he
will still believe that earth, and sun, and all the stars,
and the seasons so beautifully arranged in years and
months, as well as the universal faith of man, whether
Greek or barbarian, prove that there are gods. Besides
this passage in the Laws (886), there is another to a
like effect in the Timacus.

There are other two terms very current in Plato, here
at once in the Timaeus, for example, which involve pretty
well the same distinction as the two kinds of causes do.
They are identity and difference, for to that meaning the
Greek words tuvtov and Odrepov amount. These are
really, just as in the form of final and physical causes,
the warp and woof of the whole divine fabric. The one,
the same namely, or identity as identity, is the principle
of the permanent, of that that eternally is. And that,
plainly, is the side of the intellect, the side of thought,
the side of the in and in. The other, as the difference,
the otherwiseness, is just as it is named, the other as
other, the outer. This is the side of the show, of the
externalization, the side of the senses, the side of the

104 GIFFORD LECTUEE THE SIXTH.

mutable and transitory. Either, too, is necessary to the
other. Identity would be indistinguishable unless clijfcr-
enccd, differentiated. And what would be a difference that
was only difference, and, by consequence, unidentified ?
The inner must be outered, the outer innered. Whatever
is must be able to ajpipcar. The physical cause is but
the realization of the final cause. The Odrepov, the other,
the difference, is but the realization of the ravrov, of that
that is tlie same, of that that is the identity.

But if there is a side of the intellect, if there is a final
cause in the constitution of thing's, then design is at the
heart of them, design is the root and the centre of the
universe. And, in fact, it seems the very purpose of the
entire dialogue of the Timaeus to prove tliis. That dia-
logue may be named a teleological exposition throughout.
The God, for the sake of what is good only, fabricates, in
beauty and harmony, the entire world, and man in par-
ticular. The former, indeed, the world, is itself described
as a " blessed god," possessed of intelligence, life, and
soul. All that is made in it is made after an eternal
pattern, the most beautiful of things, and from the most
perfect of causes. For the God is good, and there is
never any grudge or envy in the good about anything
whatever ; and he made the world, consequently, to be
like unto himself. Thus, then, this world has reason in
it, and is truly made by the providence of God. Further,
created most beautiful in the perfect image of the most
beautiful, it is declared sole and single ; for, as is
implied, perfection needs no multiple.

It is in this part of the Timaeus that Plato comes to
the genesis of time. We have seen some of his ex-
pressions in that reference already ; but it is difficult to
follow liim here. Difficult, I suppose, the subject itself
proved to Plato, and his words are correspondently
obscure. The notion itself of the Eternal Being that was.

TIME AND ETERNITY. 105

and is, and always will be, offered, as a notion, probably
no hardship. It is easy to use the words, the predicates
that describe what we conceive to be eternal, as, for
example, in the terms of Plato, to say that the eternal,
" what is always unmoved the same, can become by time
neither older nor younger, nor has been made, nor appears
now, nor will be in the future, nor can any of those things
at all attach to it which mortal birth has grafted on the
things of sense ; " but how to bring into connection with
this everlasting rest the never-resting movement of time
— that is the difficulty. Plato seems to say that all the
phenomena of sense are nothing but " the forms of time
imitating eternity, and moving numerically in its circle."
Now, if I read my own notion into these obscure words,
perhaps it will help to the formation of no irrelevant idea.
Suppose eternity a continuum, and time to measure the
discrcta of it, — eternity to be a continuity, and time to
enumerate the parts or divisions of it, — eternity to be a
completed and an ever-enduring circle, and time to be the
counting, the traversing of the dots, the infinite dots, that
compose its periphery, — suppose we conceive this, then
we may have something of a picture of both the unmoved
and the moving, and yet in coherent relation. Now, that
may be the truth. Time may be no straight line, as we
are apt to figure it, but a curve — a curve that eventually
returns into itself. In that way the phenomena of sense
will be but as the hands of time externalizing its moments,
the moments of time, even as the hands of the clock point
out, or externalize, the divisions of the hour.

But, leaving these dark matters, it is in this part of
Plato that we find that reflexion of the Christian Trinity
which is so often referred to. The words Maker and
Father occur about a dozen pages on from the beginning
of the Timaeus. There it is said : " Of this the All, to
find the Maker and Father is difficult, and having found

lOG GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTH.

him, it is impossible to declare him to all men." Farther
on (37 C) we have this : " When the Father that created
it saw it moving and alive, this the created image of the
blessed gods, he was well pleased." We have seen this
creation itself already called " a blessed god ; " and a few
pages earlier than the last quotation (at 31 A and B),
unity, eU, is not only asserted of this " blessed god," but
it is even called iJiovoyevri<;, a word that in St. John and
elsewhere is always translated " only-begotten." This
remarkable term, too, is to be found repeated at the very
end of the dialogue. Lastly (50 D), we have this that is
the " only-begotten " also called " Son." The Greek word
is not vlU, indeed, but still it is €Kyovo<i, a word of ex-
actly the same import. On the whole it is not surprising
that these expressions in Plato of an only-begotten Son,
made in the image of the Father, should, on the part of
the Christian world, have attracted so much attention.
This passage in Plato probably it was that led the Fathers
of the Church, followed by the ecclesiastical majority of
the Middle Ages, to represent, as I formerly remarked,
the existent world as the Son. The Jew, Philo of Alex-
andria, it is to be said also, used, in respect of the world,
the same expression of Son of God. We may note here,
also, that Numenius of Apamea (a Pythagorean philoso-
pher familiar with tlie writings of Plato, who lived in
the second century) has distinct references to the Good
as God, and to the world as his only-begotten Son.
Philo was still a Jew at least forty years after the death
of Christ, so that it is not to be thought that either he or
Numenius had a Christian reference in the use of the phrase.
Even as regards Plato, the analogy, I doubt not, is only
to be characterized as verbal. What, in truth, he means
by the two that he names here God and World or Son
are simply the two principles which we have so often
seen already — identity and difference ; the two causes,

RELIGION, THE LAWS. 107

design and necessity, or the two Goods, as in the Zaics
(631 B), the divine and the human, the latter conditional
on the former, so that " if any city receives the greater,
it possesses also the less ; but if not, it is without either."
" It is not possible," says Plato {Laws, 967 D), " for any
one of mortal men to become permanently pious who
accepts not these two affirmations, that the soul, as it is
the eldest of all that is created, is immortal, and rules
everything corporeal." That is, again, the duality in
question, and we see it is made here the condition of
piety ; for piety is to Plato always the ultimate result.
" Whoso, according to the laws, believes that there are
gods, he never willingly did a wrong deed nor spoke a
wrong word" {Laivs, 885 B) : accordingly Plato is at
pains to prove the existence, the power, and the justice
of God. The whole of the tenth book of the Laws may
be regarded as such proof ; and a very slight change
might make the whole discussion of the religious element
there assume quite a modern look. We are not surprised,
then, in Plato, to find the first of every inquiry, as in
the Timaeus (2 7 C), to be an invocation for the blessing
of the God, and a prayer that whatever might be said
should be agreeable to his will, and becoming to them-
selves, the inquirers. And, probably, just such a state
of mind is natural to humanity as humanity. I fancy
that in front of any serious emergency, of any grave
responsibility, invocation rises spontaneously in a man,
were he even an atheist. No one to Plato (Bpin. 989 D)
can even teach, unless the God lead. This piety on the
part of Plato, as on the part of Socrates his, has been
stigmatized as superstition.

Now, there are undoubtedly such things as supersti-
tions, and they may exist in weak minds in such excess
as seriously to interfere with the sound and healthy
transaction of the business of life. " It is natural,"

108 GIFFOUD LECTURE THE .SIXTH.

says Hume {A'aL Hist, of Bel. iii.), " that superstition
should prevail everywhere in barbarous ages." And then
he tells us also of the superstition of the educated— of
such men as Pompey, and the advanced Cicero, and the
wily Augustus. " That great and able emperor," he says
of the last, " was extremely uneasy when he happened
to change his shoes, and put the right-foot shoe on the
left foot." Dugald Stewart also is to be found quoting
this same anecdote of Augustus, and reflecting some-
what loftily on superstition occasionally appearing in the
most enlightened. In illustration, he quotes a long
paragraph from Boswell about Dr. Johnson counting his
steps so as to have his left or riglit foot first in refer-
ence to an entrance or an exit, and winds up with this
reflection from his Professorial Chair : " They who know
the value of a well-regulated and unclouded mind would
not incur the weakness and wretchedness exhibited in
the foregoing description for all his literary acquirements
and literary fame." Dugald Stewart is one of our very
best and most elegant writers of i)liilosophical English.
Philosophically, he had an excellently well-filled mind too,
and seldom writes anything that is not interesting and
valuable. Despite a little spoiling, moreover, from a vast
success, social and otherwise, he kept, on the whole, as
we see in his intercourse with Burns, his manhood by
him. Nevertheless, when he prelects in that grandiose
fashion on poor Johnson, he can only remind us of the
great Mr. Buckle evolving his periods mouthwards like
the ribands of a showman from the very drum-head of
the Aufkliirung. " They who know the value of a well-
regulated and unclouded mind," that is the very jargon
of the general position, and is not more Dugald Stewart's
than it is Thomas Henry Buckle's and a hundred
others', David Hume among them. " The weakness and
wretchedness exhibited in tlie foregoing description " —

SUPERSTITION. 109

that means the counting of his steps on the part of John-
son ; and, looking at it so, we may fail to see the wretched-
ness. It does not appear as though Samuel Johnson
had, in the main, during life been a wretched man. But
l)e it as it may with the wretchedness, perhaps we will
allow the " weakness " ? Well, truly estimated and
appreciated, what underlay and had initiated the habit
was certainly a weakness, in the sense that it concerned
a non-ens ; it is quite safe to say that, if Johnson had not
counted, had not thought of his steps, but had done
unconsciously precisely what he consciously did do, — it is
quite safe to say that, in that way, no actual circum-
stance of time and place varying, the events and issue of
the day then and thereafter would have been identically
the same as they were in fact experienced. But if there
was weakness, there was also to some extent strength.
Johnson made no attempt in any way at concealment ;
he did not hide the habit ; he practised it in apcrto. Of
course, it may be very naturally suggested that Boswell
was but a weak brother, and Johnson might have been
careless of his opinion. But, then, in Stewart's very
quotation from Boswell, the information is as of a matter
within the common knowledge of " his friends." I don't
know, therefore, that many of ourselves would have been
as bold as Johnson; we might, perhaps, have felt a
greater amount of shame and timidity at the idea of
exposing ourselves. And yet we may have our own
superstitions not less, or not much less, than Johnson.
In saying this, I simply go on the broad fact of our
common humanity. Man, as man, from the first of
days to the last, will always show the cross, the con-
trarium, the contradiction, the Platonic duality, which
forms the frame or groundwork of his nature. Man will
never cease to humble himself in heart and soul before
the mystic Divinity of this universe ; but he will always

110 GIFFOllD LECTURE THE SIXTH.

be found, nevertheless, sneaking towards a Mumbo- Jumbo
that he is rather ashamed of. He will always have his
luck and his unluck, with the signs and the means to see
and foresee, to ward or forward accordingly. I suppose he
will always count his sneezes, and wish them to end in
an odd one ! Such things as amulets, charms, luck-
articles of a thousand descriptions, will never die out.
Tokens, foretokens, and fortune-telling. Biblical or Ver-
gilian lots — instances of such things will in no time be
lost among us. We may depend upon it that our table-
turnings, spirit-rappings, spectral apparitions, and what
not, will not be without their successors even to the
remotest ages. Superstition is the shadow of religion ;
and they will seldom be found separate, — quite as though
there were two authorities, two ruling powers, two
dominions : one of the heavens, and another of the earth ;
one of the light, and another of the dark ; one of our
hopes, and another of our fears. And so, doubtless, it
really is. Here, again, it is but the cross, the contrarium,
the contradiction, that crops up to us. Once more, as
lias been said, we have to look for a rationale to the
Platonic duality, lleligion shall go with the ravrov,
the identity ; and superstition with the Oarepov, the
difference. Or we may apply in the same way the two
genera of causes. He who realizes final causes, and the
intellectual side, is necessarily religious ; while he who
realizes physical causes, and the corporeal side, is neces-
sarily superstitious. And as both causes go together,
the same man, as in the case of Johnson, may be at once
religious and superstitious ; rather, perhaps, it belongs
to man, as man, to be at once both. Now of physical
causes the outcome is contingency. I know that the
opposite of this is generally said. See the waves upon
the shore, it is said ; there is not one of them that, in its
birth and in its end, and in its entire course between, is

NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY. Ill

not the result of necessity. That is true ; but it is also
true that not one of these waves but is the result of
infinite contingency. Every air that blows, every cloud
that passes, every stray leaf, or branch, or feather of bird
that falls, every contour of the land, every stone or rock
in the sea-bottom, almost, we may say, every fish in the
element itself, has its own effect ; and the various waves,
in their form, and size, and velocity, are the conjoint
result. That is necessity ; but it is also contingency.
That is, the serial causal influences cross each other, and
from their own infinitude, as well as from the infinitude
of space and time, in both of which they are, they are
utterly incalculable and beyond every ken. That is con-
tingency. There are infinite physical trains in movement.
Each taken by itself might be calculable ; but these
trains cross each other in the infinitude of space and
time endlessly ; and that is not calculable — the con-
tingency of them, the tingency con, the touching or falling
together of them. This touching together is something
utterly unaccountable. The outcome to us in the finite
world, — so to speak, in the terminal periphery, can only be
that we are submitted to a ceaseless to and fro, to a bound-
less miscellaneousness, an infinite pele-mSle. But that
beiuCT, it is with infinite astonishment that I have heard
necessity thrown at philosophy, as though the belief of
philosophy must necessarily be necessity. Plato's
intellectual world, the world of the ideas in hypothetical
evolution the one from the other, may be a realm of
necessity ; but such necessity is already contingency the
moment that this realm, tlie ideas themselves, have
become externalized — got flung, that is, into otherness as
otherness, externality as externality. And thus it is
that, in philosophy, contingency is the category of the
finite. Every crossing in the infimte 23ele-mele may be plain
to a spaewife, possibly ; but it offers no problem for any

112 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTH.

reason as reason. It is in this connection, too, that I
liave heard very competent people speak of the system of
philosophy as, of necessity, a system of necessity, moral
as well as metaphysical, and not of free will. That, to
me, as before, gives again boundless astonishment. Why,
it is only in a realm of contingency that there were any
scope for free will; it is only against contingencies that
free will has to assert itself ; it is only in their midst
that free will can realize itself.

And here we have come at last, perhaps, to the very
angle of the possible rationale of superstition. We have no
power ourselves over contingency : it ramps, and frolics,
and careers, in its blind way, independent of us. Of course,
it is understood that I speak of things as they are open to
the reason which is given us : to omniscience and omni-
potence, there can be neither contingency nor necessity.
]Uit taking it just so as it is to mankind, here, it seems,
there were a realm in which chance, and chance alone, ran
riot. How, then, propitiate, conciliate, and, so to speak,
win the soft side of chance ? It is only so that one can
explain or excuse the existence of superstition in so power-
fully intelligent, and so religiously devout a mind as that
of Saumel Johnson, And if we can so speak of the exist-
ence of superstition in his mind, we may similarly speak
of its existence in those of most others. There is no doubt
that Johnson prayed most reverently and fervently — there
is no doubt that he trusted himself wholly to God ; but
yet, for all that, there seem to have been for him as well
})Owers of contingency : he would render them favourable,
too, and have even chance, luck on his side. The realm
of the infinite, the realm of the ravriv, the realm of the
final causes, led him to God ; but he could not ignore and
turn his back upon the realm of the finite, the realm of
tbe darepov and dillerence, the realm of the physical causes.
Of course, this also is true : that it is just as the race or

PLATO'S WOKK. 1.13

the individual advances in knowledge and in wisdom that
the latter world disappears more and more from our con-
science; and the former world alone has place. Far back in
time the race had superstition only, and not religion; but as
regards the individual, it is only some four hundred years
since a king of France, Louis XL, knelt to a leaden image
in his hatband on the ground, and invoked his " gentle
mistress," his " only friend," his " good lady of Clery," to
intercede with God Almighty for the pardon to him of his
many murders, that of his own brother among them ! No
man can call that religion. To a Louis XL heaven was
peopled with contingencies, even as the earth was. To
him final causes there were none ; caprice was all. Plato,
in his perception of physical as but the material for final
causes, was quite in another region than the most Christian
king of France. In fact, Plato's whole world view was
that of a single teleological system with the Good alone as
its heart, with the will of God alone as its creator and
soul.

Plato, then, in a way, but carries out and completes
what Socrates began. Socrates was not content with right
action only as action, he must see and know why it was
right ; action, as it were, he must convert into knowledge ;
that is, for man's action, as a whole, he must find general
principles, and a general principle. Now all that involved,
first, a dialectic of search ; second, the ideas and the idea
as a result ; and third, the realization of the State as its
practical application. But that is simply to name the
work of Plato in its three moments. The State was his
one practical result ; the ideas and the idea the media of
realization; and the dialectic the instrument of their
discovery, limitation, and arrangement. The ideal system,
then, was the centre of the Platonic industry. Sensible
existences, the things of sense, have for Plato no real truth.
All that we see and feel is in perpetual flux, a perpetual

H

114 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTH.

mutation. The ideas alone are the truth of things ; and
things have truth only in so far as they participate in the
ideas. 1 or ideas are the paradeigmata of things, and things
are but the sensible representations of these. AVhat the
ideas logically are, things ontologically are ; but the logical
element is alone true ; while the ontological element, as
representative, is but temporary show only. The only
true ontological element, the 6vTco<i 6v, is the Good. To
the Good not only is the knowledge of things due, but it
is the Good also that gives them being. It is /or it, and
because of it, and through it that all things are. It alone
is the principle, and the ratio cssendi, and the foundation
of philosophy itself. Man, being in his constitution double,
the truth of his senses is alone tlionght. The end-aim
of everything, and the end-aim of the entire system of
everything is thought. That alone is good, and the Good
alone is God. And God is the creator of the universe.
The Good, design is so absolutely the principle of all things
for Plato, that whatever exists, exists just because it is
better that it should be than not be. Design, the one
principle of design, is the vov'i itself : '^vj(r] alriov uTrdvjwv,
the soul is the cause of all things, and that amounts to
this, that all things are first of all in the soul, only not
externalized. I hope we have some conception of where
Plato is historically as regards the proofs required by
Natural Theology.

GIFFORD LECTUEE THE SEVENTH.

Sophists — Aufklixrung — Disbelief, Simon of Tournay, Amalrich of
Bena, David of Dinant — Italian pliilosopliers, Geneva Socinians,
Bacon, Hobbes, the Deists, Locke, Descai'tes, Spinoza — Hume,
Gibbon — Germany, Eeimarus, etc. — Klopstock, Lavater — Leas-
ing, Hamann, Herder, Jacobi — Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul —
Carlyle — France — Kant and his successors — Necessary end of
such movements — Cosmological argument — Locke, Clarke, Leib-
nitz— Aristotle — Dependency — Potentiality and actuality — A
beginning — Aristotle and design — Mr. Darwin's mistake — Em-
pedocles and the survival of the fittest.

One can hardly leave Plato without saying a word about
the Sophists : it is his handling of some of the most con-
spicuous Sophists, indeed, that constitutes the special charm
of several of his very best dialogues. Amongst the
individual Sophists, there are, of course, many character-
istic differences; still, when looked at from a certain
historical distance, they, so to speak, appear to run into
each other, as though but units in a single movement.
One general spirit we assume to unite them all, one
common atmosphere to breathe around them. In brief,
they all step forward as the apostles of the new ; and this
distinction they all arrogate in one and the same way, by
pointing the finger at the old. Suppose the old to be a
clothed figure, then one Sophist has the credit of stripping
off its gown, another its tunic, a third its hraccae, and so
on. So it is that the whole movement is shut up in a single
word now-a-days, the word Avjklcirung. In the Greek
Sophists we have before us the Greek Aufkliirung. Auf-
kliirung is Klarung Auf, a clearing up. It means that,

116 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTH,

as it were, day had dawned, that light had come, that
people at last had got their eyes opened to the absurdity
of the lies they had hitherto believed in. It was as thougli
they had suddenly turned round upon themselves, and
found, strangely, all at once, everything in the clearness
of a new revelation. They were all wrong, it seemed :
they had been dreadfully stupid. Hitherto they had lived
only, and never thought ; but now they both saw and
thouglit. This was not true, and that was not true.
Tliere was absurdity there, and there was absurdity here.
And it was only they were right — only they, the Sophists
themselves. They saw how it was with all things, and they
could speak of all things. They saw just so well, indeed,
and had so much power in the seeing, that, on the whole,
they could speak of all things pretty well as they pleased.
That is very briefly, but not unjustly, to name the
Sophists as we see them in Plato. If we but take up
into our minds the general characteristics of this move-
ment, then, the movement on the part of these Sophists
— if we but take it up into our minds and name it
Aufklarung, we shall have some idea of what an
Aufkliirung means. It was not the Sophists, however,
that suggested the word. This, the suggestion, was due,
not to an ancient, but to a modern movement — a move-
ment that was, on the whole, more peculiarly French, but
still a movement in which England, Germany, Holland,
and all the other nations of Europe more or less partici-
pated. It was preceded here, in Europe, I mean, by a
want. This want was the product of suf!ering, on the
one hand, and of the ordinary human curiosity, or the
desire of gain, on the other. Political tyranny and
religious corruption had become, on the ])art of the
arbitrators, whether of the State or tlie Church we may
not too incorrectly say, universal. Men grew scandalized,
indignant; yearned for delivery from the wrong ; and

spixoza's teactatus tiieologico-politicus. 117

revolted against both — both Church and State. Mean-
time, too, discoveries in the pursuit of curiosity or gain
had been going on. There were discoveries by sea, and
there -were inventions in the arts. America was dis-
covered, and gunpowder — gunpowder and printing were
invented. Greek fugitives had fled into Italy ; Protest-
antism arose. There was but one treneral result ; there
was but one desire awakened — the desire to know.
And it was the desire to know, conjoined with the
political and ecclesiastical wrong, that gave rise to the
modern Aufkliirung. What concerns religion is, un-
doubtedly, the most notable phase of the Aufkliirung,
l)ut it is not the only one. The Aufkliirung was a
movement of the whole of humanity, and extended into
humanity's veriest roots, political, social, educational, and
all other. So far as books are concerned, perhaps it is
the religious element that shows most. There are not
wanting many heretical opinions during the whole
history of the Church, some of which were as extreme
in their quality as even those of a Hume, or a Voltaire
himself. As early as about 1200, there was Simon of
Tournay, with his book, cU Tribus Impostorihus, and,
somewhat later, the followers of Amalrich of Bena, and
David of Dinant. Considerably later than these still
there were the Italian Philosophers of the Transition
Period, and the Socinians of Geneva, who, with their
questions, harrowed the very soul of Calvin. Bacon,
Hobbes, and the English Deists may or may not be
reckoned to the movement of the Aufkliirung ; in strict
accuracy, perhaps, they were better named its fore-
runners ; among whom even John Locke is sometimes
included, and, if John Locke, then surely also Eene
Descartes. For myself it always appears to me that the
Tradatus Thcologico - Politicus of Spinoza, published
perhaps about 1660, may be very fairly accounted

118 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTH.

the hcginning itself of the Aufkliirung. That work is
very much the quarry from which Voltaire drew — very
much a source of direction and supply also to the Critics
of Germany. In (Jreat Britain we may instance as
undouhted members of tlie Aufkliirung such men as
David Hume and Edward Gibbon, but only at the head
of a cryptic mass. In Germany the movement, as in
writers like Nicolai, Mendelssohn, Baumgarten, Semler,
Eeimarus, and even scores of others, was much milder
than elsewhere, if also considerably thinner. In
Germany, too, there was speedily a reaction against it, as
exemplified in the pious spirit which reigns in the works
of its Klopstocks and Lavaters. But what writers put
an end to the movement, if not generally, at least in
their own country, were Lessing, Herder, Hamann, and
Jacobi — four men distinguished (of course, variously
among themselves) almost by an inspiration, we may
say, not less religious than it was philosophical, and not
less philosophical than it was religious. There is not
one of the four but excellently exemplifies this. Lessing
is not an enormous genius — he knows himself that he is
not a poet, but only a critic. For all that, however, to
get the German sjnrit that is peculiar even yet, he is,
perhaps, just the very best German writer whom it is
possible to choose. As the truth for him was ever the
middle between two extremes, so he himself stands there
a figure in the middle for ever. Clearness, fairness,
equity constitute his quality. Living in the time of the
Aufkliirung, he, too, would have Aufkliirung ; but the
Aufkliirung he would have should not be for his ci/rs
only, he would have it for his sonl as well. It was his
heart that would have light — feeling — not mere per-
ception. He was not a man that trusted, like so many
other literary men of the day, to himself and his own
inspiration. He was a thoroughly educated man, trained

LESSING JEAN PAUL. 119

in mathematics as well as in philology ; and he had read,
deeply. Even of archaeology, even of Church history,
he surprises by his knowledge. Christianity is to him,
for all his enlightenment, the religion of our maturer
humanity ; and he vindicates /or reason and hy reason, the
very strictest dogmas of the Creed. To him the unity of
(lod and the immortality of the soul are truths dcmon-
strciUe. Yet he prefers the religion of the heart to the
religion of the head. He defends the tradition of the
Church ; and yet he opposes the Christian of feeling to
the dogmatist of Ijelief, even as he opposes the spirit to
the letter. He clings to the rule of faith — the regula
fidei ; but lie would as little sacrifice reason to faith, as
he would sacrifice faith to reason. Still his place in
theology is only, as he says, that of him who sweeps the
dust from the steps of the temple ; and his religion
proper is rightly to be named, perhaps, only the religion
of humanity.

This that I have said of Lessing will dispense me from
any similar details as regards the other three. Hamann,
with whom I have no great sympathy, is a very peculiar
personality, and has left behind him certain pithily far-
fetched and peculiar sayings quite currently quoted, while
both Herder and Jacobi are eminently noble men, as well
as great writers. The specialty that I would attribute to
all four of them is, that they correct and complete the
Aufklarung by placing side by side with the half on
which alone it will look, the failing half on which it has
turned its back, and have, in this way, done good work
towards the reconstitution and re-establishment of the
central catholic and essential truth. Nor has it proved
otherwise with German literature in general, and its
coryphei in particular. The example of Lessing and the
others has proved determinative also for such men as
Goethe, and Schiller, and Jean Paul. Neither on their

120 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTH.

part is tliere any mockery or disregard (jf religion as
religion. On the contrary, it is approached with sincere
feelings liy all of them, who know it to be, and never
doubt of its being, an essential element in the very
construction of man. It is this that is meant when we
hear of Thomas Carlyle being directed, at one time of his
life, to German literature as likely to supply him with
what he wanted, at once in a j)hilosophical and a religious
reference. It is this also that he actually did find there.
Xothing else than this made Goethe to Carlyle a prophet.
Speculating on this relation between two men, in many
respects so unlike each other, I had, in my own mind,
referred the source of it to that part of Wilhelm Meisfcr's
Travels, where one of the Heads of an educational insti-
tute, conducting Wilhelm from hall to hall, prelects
equably on the various religions. To read this was a
new experience to Carlyle. As his early letters tell us,
the perusal of Gibbon had won him over to the side of
heresy ; and any further progression in the same direc-
tion could only exhibit to him Christianity — in Hume,
Voltaire, and the Encyclopedists, say — as an object, not
of derision merely, but even of the fiercest hatred and
the most virulent abuse. This, then, as on the part of
these Germans, was a novel experience to Carlyle, — the
dispassionate, open - eyed, significant wisdom of such
tolerant and temperate discourse even in respect of the
Christian religion ; and it was as with the light and the
joy of a new revelation that he returned, at least to all
the feeling, and the reverence, and the awe, that had been
his in his boyhood under the eye of his father. And so it
was that the first aim of Carlyle, as in the Sartor
Besartus, was the re-establishment, in every earnest,
educated, but doubting soul, of the vital reality of true
religion. In that work, to such souls, wandering in the
dark, the light of Carlyle suddenly strook through the

CAKLYLE. 121

black of night as with the coming of a celestial messenger.
" It is the night of the world," they heard, " and still long
till it be day : we wander amid the glimmer of smoking
ruins, and the sun and the stars of heaven are as blotted
out for a season ; and two immeasurable phantoms,
Hypocrisy and Atheism, with the ghoul, Sensuality, stalk
abroad over the earth, and call it theirs : well at ease are
the sleepers for whom existence is a shallow dream.
But what of the awestruck wakeful ? " And thence-
forward after this book of Carlyle's it was in the power
of any one who at least ivould awake, to lay himself
down in the very heart of that awful '* Natural Super-
naturalism," to see, to wonder, and to worship ; while
those mysterious " organic filaments " span themselves
anew, not in vain for him. That was the Jirst mood of
Carlyle ; and it was his highest. He never returned to it.
His Hcro-Worsliip contains, perhaps, what feels nearest
to it ; and it is significant that Carlyle himself made a
common volume of the two works. But history and
biography occupy him thenceforth ; and in these, un-
fortunately, so much of the early Gibbonian influence, to
call it so, crops out, that Carlyle, on the whole, despite
his natural, traditional, and philosophical piety, passes
through life for a doubter merely, and is claimed and
heset by the very men whose vein of shallow but exultant
Aufkliirung is precisely the object of his sincerest repro-
bation and uttermost disgust. There is a good deal to
confirm as much as this, in his Address as Eector here of
this University, especially in his reference to " ten pages,
which he would rather have written than all the books
that have appeared since he came into the world." These
ten pages contain what I have referred to in connection
with Goethe's Wilhclm Meister ; and I was well content
to hear from Carlyle's lips on that occasion that I had
not speculated badly as to the source of his veneration

122 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTH.

for a man who, if a prophet to him, might prove, on a
closer inspection, perhaps, for all his dispassionate words
on religion, somewhat of the earth earthy to us.

All this will, pretty well, have made plain to us what
the Aufkliirung is. ]\Ien, as I have said, instead of
simply living hliudly straight on, suddenly opened their
eyes and turned round to look. What they saw was
only the old, and it was not all good — as koto could it he ?
They revolted against it ; they would not believe a word
they had been told ; they would see for themselves.
Now, naturally what they saw for themselves, what
alone they could see for themselves, lay without. What
was within was what they had been told, and they would
not have it. The result was that the concrete man was
separated into abstract sides ; abstract by this, that they
were each apart, and not together, as they shoidd be, in
a vital one. What a man saw and felt, exjierience, was
to be the only truth. All was to be learned and won
from the examination of the objects of the external
senses. And so, while the outer flourished, the inner
perished. The inner was only superstition, prejudice,
unenlightened prejudice, and had to be thrown away.
But the very best of humanity could not escape from
being included in the cast. Eeligion apart, no one, for
example, can read the French writings of the period
without disgust at the flippant manner in which the best
principles of morality are lield up for derision and a
sneer — even the principles of the family, say, which
are the very foundation of the State and of our social
community within it.

Now it was to this movement, certainly to tlie untrue
and sliallow extreme of it, that the German writers
named put an end. And so it is that the philosophical
successors of Kant, all to a man, speak of tlie Auf-
kUirung as a thing of the past, as a thing that had

NECESSARY END OF AUFKLARUNG. 123

been examined, seen into, and shelved — shelved as
already effete, antiquated, out of date, and done with.
This, however, can only be said on the level of true
philosopliy. It cannot be said at all generally for the
mass ; the mass at present rather can largely be seen
contentedly at feed on the husks and stubble of the
Aufkliirung, gabbling and cackling sufficiently.

But, in regard to Greece, when we consider that the
principle of the Sophists was subjectivity pure and
simple, that is, that truth as truth is only whatever
one feels, or perceives, or thinks, and only in his own
regard for the very moment that he so feels or so
perceives or so thinks, — when we consider this, and that
the result was only opposition to whatever had been
established in law, or morality, or religion, or social
life, we must see that the Greek Sophists very fairly
represented what is called an Aufkliirung.

It is not unimportant withal for us to note that this
movement, despite these three greatest and best men and
philosophers, — Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who, in
absolute correction and refutation of it, followed it, —
that this movement, despite all, destroyed Greece.
Noting this, there may here, I am inclined to say, be
a lesson for tis. What, if all this enlightenment, all this
liberation from prejudice, all this stripping bare of every-
thing in heaven and earth, should, despite our telegraphs
and telephones, end in the compulsory retreat of the
whole of us — men and women of us, after war upon war,
and internecine strife, and confusion limitless — into our
original woods arain ! If we will but consider of it,
with all that we are tauQ-ht now to believe of this uni-
verse, such a consummation cannot be held to be any
longer a matter of mere dream. The subject, however,
is inexhaustible ; illustrations there are to hand endlessly
— in the east, and the west, and the north, and the

124 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVEXTH.

south, and without one exception of a single human
interest.

I must return to our theme — the proofs for the Being
of a God. In view of what was currently held in regard
to Socrates and the argument from design, I had passed
over the claim to priority made by some for the cos-
mological argument, stating that it had been usually
assigned to Aristotle. It is in place now to turn to
that argument, seeing that, in our historical survey, it is
Aristotle that we have reached. And here I only fear
that what presses on us must enforce undue brevity.

A form of the cosmological argument occurs in Locke
to this effect : " If we know there is some real beinrj,
and that nonentity cannot produce any real being, it is
evident demonstration that from eternity there has hcen
something, since what was not from eternity had a
beginning, and what had a beginning must be produced
by something else." That is pretty well the argument of
Dr. Samuel Clarke, too. Something is, therefore some-
thing has always been, and so on. The proper angle
of the cosmological argument, however, is dependence.
"What we see around us are evident effects ; the whole
world is but a single scene of change ; phenomena
follow phenomena. Accordingly, a German writer says :
" The teleological view takes not, like the cosmological,
its point of departure from the vanity {Eitclkcit), but
from the grandeur {Herrliclihcit) of the world." But
that is too much. Dependence is not exactly vanity ;
and what is called vanity {Eitclhcit) in the one argument
is really identically the same thing as is called grandeur
{TIerrlichkeit) in the other argument. The grandeur is
not vain, though it is dependent. The gardens, pictures,
and statuary with which a rich man surrounds lumself
are dependent, but they are not vain ; they are a beauty.
The plienomena of the world are dependent — dependent

COSMOLOGICAL AKGUMENT. 125

on noumena and a noumenon, and that, on the whole,
constitutes the cosmological argument. This argument
is often called Leibnitz' argument ; but if we call
Socrates the originator and founder of the teleological
argument, it is Aristotle who is named as the originator
and founder of the cosmological argument. And with
him this argument turns on motion. Whatever is in
motion has had a mover ; but we cannot go back from
motion to motion, and from mover to mover, endlessly ;
there must be a final stop at last where motion and
mover are one ; where what is, is a self-mover, which
self-mover evidently also by mere position is infinite and
eternal. Motion, mover, that is causa sui, cause of
itself, that is God. The aim of philosophy, says Aris-
totle, is to know the truth ; but to know the truth of
anything, we must know its cause. Then truth in the
cause must be eminently what is found in its effects, as
fire, being cause of warmth in everything that is near
and nearer to it, must itself have most warmth. The
first cause, being from nothing else, and always equal to
what it is, must in its being be the cause of the leing of
everything else. And that there is a first cause as
ultimate principle is evident from this, that there can be
no infinite series of causes, whether in a straight line or
in natural kind.

" God," says Leibnitz, " is the first cause of things ; for
all finite things, as all that we see and know, are con-
tingent, and have in themselves nothing that makes
their existence necessary, inasmuch as plainly time,
space, and matter, each continuously identical with
itself and indifferent to all else, might assume quite
other movements and forms and another order. We
must, therefore, look for the cause of the existence of
this world, which is a collection of things merely con-
tingent, only in such substance as has the cause of its

12G GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTH.

existence in its own self, and is therefore eternal and
necessary." The angle of this reasoning, whether in the
one form or the other, is, as I have said, dependence. Tlie
contingency of all things which come within our ken in
this universe is assumed as of such character that, alone
and by itself, it implies a necessary first cause. What
is contingent is, as contingent, not something sc//-supported,
st'/Z-subsistent, l)ut presupposes something else that is
such, or that is in its own self necessary. But now the
world is contingent, for the world is an aggregate of
things, all of which are contingent in themselves. There-
fore the world presupposes and implies an absolutely
necessary being as its substantiating ground or cause.

Not only is this being an absolutely necessary being,
1)ut, according to Aristotle, and still cosmologically reason-
ing, he is an absolutely actual being. And of this reason-
ing the angle is that what is j^otcntial only presupposes
a preceding actuality ; for to be potential only is to be
such as may quite as well not be as be. In Aristotelian
terms, the irpwrov klvovv, what first gives movement to
this world, must in itself also be absolute functioning actu-
ality, absolute ivepjeia ; for were it only potential, only
Bvuafit,<;, there were no reason, so fa)' as it loas onlij that,
that it should become actual. What is potential, what
is potential only, there is no reason, in such quality, for
any step further. There is, then, an actual God. To
Aristotle, in fact, there is no beginning. And, for that
matter, I know not to what style of thinker there can be
a beginning — in the sense, that is, of an absolute begin-
ning, of an absolute first. No theist can assign a first
to Deity ; and no atheist can assign a first to the system
of things in time. But where there is no beginning,
tliere can only be eternity ; and that really seems the
thouglit of Aristotle. What is, is not, as it were, a
straight line to Aristotle, a virtue, a power, tliat goes

MK. daewin's mistake. 127

ever out and out, and on and on. Eather, what is, is
to him a virtue that returns into itself, a power that
returns into itself — so to speak, an eternally circling
circle. That is eternity ; such circle, that ever is, and
never was not, and never will not be. Eternity is the
self-determining organism that operates, acts, moves out
of itself into itself ; life that feeds itself, lives into itself ;
thought that ever thinks, thinks itself into itself.

I omit much here on the cosmological argument, to
proceed to what is plainer. Aristotle, it is to be said, is
not to he supposed as only limited to the one argument,
the cosmological. On the contrary, it may be almost
held that, let it be as it may with Socrates and Plato,,
Aristotle has made the teleological argument expressly
and at full his own. In point of fact, design is the
central thought of Aristotle in his whole philosophy
everywhere. As adaptation of means to ends, it is per-
haps seen at its liveliest in the little work of the Parts
of Animals. The general teaching here is the same as
we saw in Plato, — that the element of necessity, physical
necessity, concerns alone the external conditions, the
materials ; while it is the final cause that alone gives
meaning to them — alone makes a reality of them — a
doctrine — (that the mechanism eveiywhere existent in
the world is at the same time everywhere existent in
the world only as the realizing means of final causes) —
a doctrine which, after long struggles, was the final con-
viction of Leibnitz. Perhaps for a distinct, clear, com-
prehensive statement in both references, that is at the
same time brief and succinct, there is no more remark-
able chapter in the whole of Aristotle than the eighth of
the second book of the Physics. All, indeed, is so em-
phatically plain in that chapter that one can hardly
believe in the possibility of any mistake in its regard.
It seems, however, from the very first note, almost on

128 GIFFORD LECTUltE THE SEVENTH.

the very first page, of the Orir/in of Species, that Mr.
Darwin has allowed himself to be misled into a literal
inversion of Aristotle's relative meaning. In this note,
Mv. Darwin speaks thus : " Aristotle, in his Fkijsicae
Auscultationes (lib. 2, cap. 8, s. 2), after remarking
that rain does not fall in order to make the corn grow,
any more than it falls to spoil the farmer's corn when
threshed out of doors, applies the same argument to
organization ; and adds (as translated by ]\Ir. Clair Grece,
who first pointed out the passage to me), ' So what
hinders the different parts [of the body] from having
this merely accidental relation in nature ? as the teeth,
for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp,
adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and service-
able for masticating the food ; since they were not made
for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident.
And in like manner as to the other parts in which there
appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever,
therefore, all things together (that is, all the parts of one
whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake
of something, these were preserved, having been appro-
priately constituted Ijy an internal spontaneity ; and
whatsoever things were not thus constituted perished,
and still perish.' We here see," says Mr. Darwin on
this, " the principle of natural selection shadowed fortli,
but how little Aristotle fully comprehended the principle,
is shown by his remarks on the formation of the teeth."
This note of Mr. Darwin's is not without value in a
reference to his own views. At present, however, I have
not to do with tliat, but only with what interpretation is
given to certain declarations of Aristotle in regard to
design. And in this reference it will suffice to point out
the literal inversion of meaning of which I speak. As is
well known, Aristotle is not always easy to translate, nor
is his meaning always a clear one. I have no hesitation.

MR. Darwin's mistake. 129

however, in saying that, in both references, the particular
chapter in question may be quite fairly regarded as an
exception. It is at once easy to translate, and clear in
its meaning. I cannot afford time to it as a whole now ;
but I will translate as much of it as is indispensable for
our purpose at present. The first words concern the two
elements, now familiar to us, which both Plato and
Aristotle describe as accompanying each other, and as
necessary to each other.

" We have first to tell," says Aristotle here, " how
nature exhibits causality on design, and then to speak of
the necessary material." In the first reference, for
example, he asks, " What hinders nature from acting
without design, but just as Jove rains — not, namely, that
the corn may grow, but from necessity (the condensed
vapour, namely, falling back in rain on the earth, and the
corn growing as only concurrently receiving the rain) ? In
the same way, if rain spoils corn on the threshing-floor,
it does not rain precisely for this end, that it may spoil
the corn : that is only a coexistent incident." Aristotle
has thus put the two cases, and he will now bring the
truth home by asking how it is that, in regard to living
organization, we cannot accept necessity, but must demand
design. That is really the single import of the whole of
Mr. Darwin's quotation, as a little further translation will
at once show. " What then," Aristotle continues, " pre-
vents it from being just so with the parts in nature ?
What prevents the teeth, for example, from being just
necessarily constituted so that the front ones would be
sharp for cutting, and the back ones broad for grinding
the food ; which would be, not to be from design, but
just to so happen?" What I translate by this last clause,
" which would be, not to be from design, but just to so
happen," appears in Mr. Darwin's translation, " since they
were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of

I

130 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTH.

accident." That is a categorical assertion as on Aristotle's
part of the very oj)posite of what Aristotle has it in
mind to say. The Greek, however (eVet ov tovtou evexa
yev€adai, uXka avfivea-elv), involves no such categorical
assertion of an independent fact, but is only an explana-
tory clause to apply what precedes. So far the whole
mind of Aristotle is : Why should we not say that the
relative position of the two kinds of teeth, incisors and
grinders, is not an affair of necessity ; so that it would
not take place from design, but only so happen ? Even
in putting this question the opinion of Empedocles
suggests itself, and Aristotle continues illustratively to
ask, Why should it not be as Empedocles held it
to be ? Why should it not be that, in the becoming
of things, all such things as, though originating spon-
taneously, were still found fittingly constituted and,
so to speak, undesignedly designful, — why should it
not be that these should be preserved, while those that
were not so should have perished, and should go on
perishing, as is said by Empedocles of his jSovyevi]
dvSpoirpaypa, his cattle with the faces of men ? Xow to
this question Aristotle's direct answer is. It is impossible
that anything such should be — dSvvaTov 8e tovtov e^etv
Tov TpoTTov. And why is it impossible that anything
such should be ? Why is it dBvvaTov that tovtov TpoTrov
€%etv ? " Because these and all the things of nature
originate, as they do originate, either invariably or all
but invariably, but of the things of accident and chance
not one." That answer is decisive ; but the bulk of this
single chapter has still to come with expression upon
expression that is confirmatory merely, llcferring im-
mediately here, for example, to certain natural processes,
his emphatic deduction is, eaTiv apa to eveKu tov ev toU
(f)vaei ycvofiivoL'; koI ovcnv (there is therefore design in
tlie things that happen and are in nature). " Moreover,"

MR. DARWIN'S MISTAKE. . 131

he says, " in what things there is something as an end,
for that end is realized as well what precedes as what
follows ; as is the action, so is the nature, and as is the
nature, so is the action, in each case if nothing obstruct ;
and as the action is for the sake of the end, so also for
the same sake is the nature." Aristotle brings in now
illustrations from the intentional works of mankind with
the inference that if such works are eye/ca tov, are from
design, it is evident that so also are the works of
nature ; for both kinds of works are similarly situated
as concerns consequents and antecedents in a mutual
regard. As illustrations from nature we have now, in
animals, the swallow with its nest, and the spider with
its web ; and in plants (for even in plants Aristotle sees
such adaptations), the covering of the fruit by the leaves,
and the course downwards, not upwards, of the roots for
food. Consequently, says Aristotle, " it is manifest that
there is such a cause in the processes and facts of nature ;
and since nature has two principles, one that is as matter
and another that is as form, the latter the end, and the
former for the sake of the end, this, the end, must be the
determining cause." It may be, Aristotle continues,
that nature does not always effect its end ; but neither
do we always effect our ends. The grammarian does not
always spell correctly ; nor the doctor always succeed
in his potions. And if ever there were those man-faced
cattle, it was from some failure of the principle, as may
happen now from some failure of the seed. That, then,
nature is a cause, and a cause acting on design — " that,"
says Aristotle, and it is his last word, " is manifest —
(pavepov." In short, from its first word to its last, this
chapter of Aristotle's has not, and never for a moment
has, any aim, any object, any intention, but to demon-
strate design in nature and in the works of nature. The
next chapter, indeed, only continues the same theme,

132 GIFFOllD LECTURE THE SEVENTH.

but with more special attention to the necessity of
material conditions in which design may realize itself.
How Mr. Darwin should have ever fancied that Aristotle
first established necessity as the principle of nature in
its action, and then applied that same principle to
organization, it is impossible to conceive. Aristotle does
ask, Why should we not think of necessity in the
arrangement of the teeth ? but it is only that he may
luring home to our minds the palpable absurdity of the
very question. He directly says in the dc Partibus
(iii. 1 ), " j\Ian has teeth admirably constructed for the
use that, in their respect, is common to all animals,
the mastication of the food, namely : the front ones
sharp to cut, and the back ones blunt to grind." We
saw, too, exactly the same reference on the part of
Socrates. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any more
striking instance of design on the part of nature, or of
one in which there could possibly appear less room for
the action of mere material necessity. Why, if material
necessity were alone to act, we might have our molars to
the front, and how would it then be with our comfort at
our meals, or in speech, or in our mere looks ? To find
Aristotle suggesting the possibility of a material cause
for the arrangement of the teeth, is to find Pythagoras
arguing against numbers, Plato against ideas, or Newton
against gravitation. But, assuming that, though Aristotle
had, in the translated passage, " shadowed forth the
principle of natural selection," yet he had also shown,
as Mr. Darwin adds, " by his remarks on the formation
of the teeth," " how little he fully comprehended the
principle " — assuming this, I say, we may resolve the
statement, as on Mr. Darwin's part, into a compliment
to Aristotle, on the one hand, and into a reproach on
the other. The compliment is, that Aristotle was wise
enough to see that what was called design was still due

EMPEDOCLES AND THE SUEVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 133

to physical necessity. And tlie reproach, again, is
against this, that Aristotle should have applied the
necessity just so, quite unviodified, to the formation of
the teeth. Now, it must be admitted that, if the com-
pliment had been correct, the reproach would have been
correct also. Mr. Darwin smiles to himself in superiority
over Aristotle, because he (Aristotle) had missed his own
(Mr. Darwin's own) little invention, whereby, even on
physical necessity, the order of the teeth, designful as it
may appear, is and must be precisely as we see it. Justice
to that extent must be done Mr. Darwin even here. In
Mr. Darwin's scheme there is really supposed a provision
for the purpose. Mr. Darwin would have laughed at
you, had you objected to him, " Then, in your way of it,
the molar teeth might be where the incisors are ! " Mr.
Darwin would have felt armed against that !

But then, the absurdity of imputing at all to Aristotle
the suggestion that organization ivas due, or might be
due, to physical necessity, no peculiarity of Mr. Grece's
translation, not even the questionable clause particularized,
will excuse or condone that. Mr. Darwin tells us himself,
he had Dr. Ogle's translation of the de Partihus, in which
a note gives the correct version of the entire passage
rendered by Mr. Grece. That note occurs on the very
second page of Dr. Ogle's book, and must have been seen
by Mr. Darwin. Nay, that very book, the de Partihus,
and as admirably translated by Dr. Ogle — that very
book, just one argument, from end to end, for design,
Mr. Darwin has read with so much consequent admira-
tion of Aristotle, that he lauds him in excelsis and sets
him above the two supreme gods he had previously
worshipped — Linnaeus and Cuvier! "Linnaeus and Cuvier
have been my two gods," he says, " but they were mere
schoolboys to old Aristotle."

I will conclude now by pointing out how it has been

134 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTH.

the lot of Empedocles, as early as 444 years before Christ,
to anticipate all, every, and any theory that is built on
the survival of the fittest. What Empedocles says is in
substance this : Nature brought forth and gave existence
to every possible animal form ; but all such as were
incoherently and inconsistently constructed, perished —
and the same process continues. That, surely, is to give
directest, precisest, and palpablest expression to this,
Only the fittest survive ! Aristotle slyly remarks here.
Then I suppose it was the same with plants : if there
were calves of the cow with the countenances of men,
there were, doubtless, also scions of the vine with the
face of the olive !

GirrOED LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

Aristotle and design — Matter and form — Abstraction — Trinity — The
ascent^ The four causes — A first mover — Lambda of the Meta-
2?hysic — The hymn of Aristotle — Sj^eculation — Mankind —
Erdmann — Theory and practice — Nature — Kant, Byron, Mme.
Genlis — Aristotle's ethic and politic — God — Cicero — Time —
Design — Hume, Buffon — Plato and Aristotle — Immanent Div-
inity and transcendent Deity — Schwegler — Bonitz — The soul —
Unity — Homer — The Greek movement up to Aristotle, Biese —
The Germans and Aristotle — Cuvier, Owen, Franzius, Johann
von Miiller — Darwin — Aristotle in conclusion.

In the conclusion of the last lecture we saw that
Aristotle, in a chapter in which he was supposed to
have shadowed out the modern doctrine of natural selec-
tion, had nothing in view but the impossibility of
mechanical principles ever explaining the phenomena
which seem to bear on their front the relation that is
named of final causes. And, in fact, to say it again, the
whole philosophy of Aristotle is founded on, and rises out
of, the single principle of an object, a purpose, an end that
is good, an end that is beneficial, an end that is advan-
tageous. Design animates the whole, but the very breath
of this design, the heart that beats in it, the soul that
guides it, is the Good — service that is wise. Nature is
but a single organic congeries — as it were, a crystallization
into externality of internality. There is matter ; but
there is no separate individual entity so named, — cogniz-
able as so named, existent as so named. Conceived as
such separate existence, matter is only an abstraction.
Objects have matter, but they have also form ; and the

136 GIFFOED LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

two elements, the two sides are indissolubly together,
though we may logically see them apart, and name them
apart. That is, we may fix our mind on the material
side of some formed object, and, speaking of that side
abstractedly, we may name it apart ; but it does not
exist apart. Conceived apart it is but an abstraction.
There is no such thing as matter qua matter, any more
than there is such a thing as book qua book, or paper
qua paper : there is always only such and such a book,
such and such particular paper. But the other side,
already present and immanent in the material side, as it
were fused into, integrated and identified with it, is
form. An impression in wax, so far, illustrates the idea.
There is the wax, and there is the impress : they can be
conceived apart, and spoken of apart ; but they are prac-
tically one. You cannot take the impress into your hand,
and leave the wax ; and neither can you take the wax
into your hand without the impress. Only, in the case
of any Aristotelian crvvoXov, of any Aristotelian co-integer
of form and matter, the one side, without the other,
absolutely disappears. Destroy the impress and the wax
remains ; but destroy form, and with its extinction, there
is to Aristotle the extinction of matter as well. The
form can exist only in matter ; the matter can exist only
in form. Either of the two sides, as separated and by
itself, is abstract, an abstraction ; but in the concrete of
their coalescence, there is, as it were, a life between them.
Even as together, there is always to be conceived a niszts,
an effort of matter towards form, a hunger of matter for
form ; and there is no less on the part of form, such nisiis,
or such hunger for realization, substantiation in matter.
This is much the same thing as to say : What is, is
potentiality that realizes itself into actuality. We may
remember now that reference in Plato to a somewhat
trinitarian suggestion, where the receiving element was

TEINITY. 137

compared to the mother, the formative element to the
father, and the formed element between them to the
€Kyovo<;, the offspring, the son. And we may similarly
present here the avvoXov, the co-integer, of Aristotle, and
the life at work, as it were, within, even in its elements.
There is the matter vXrj, the form elSo^ or fj^opcf)?], and the
GvvoXov itself, all three respectively in a sort of relation
of mother, father, and son. It is but the same idea, the
same life, too, that we see in the further forms of potenti-
ality, energy, and actuality. There is an ivepjeia, energy,
comparable to the father, that leads 8vvd/jit<i, potentiality,
comparable to the mother, into ivreke^eia, actuality,
comparable to the son. This son, too, evidently combines
the virtue of both father and mother. The ivreXe'x^eia
has its own ivepyeia in its own hvpajxi^;. It has its own
end, TeXo9, within itself ; it is an end unto itself, — a life
that lives into itself, that reahzes itself. And there is
realization above realization. There is a rise from object
to object. The plant is above the stone, and the animal
above the plant. But man is the most perfect result.
His supremacy is assured. He alone of all living
creatures is erect ; and he is erect by reason of the
divinity within him, whose office it is to know, to think,
and to consider. All other animals are but incomplete,
imperfect, dwarf, beside man.

Potentiality is realized into form, then, but to effect
this, movement is necessary. The realization is move-
ment ; and the principle of movement is the efficient
cause, while of this cause itself the further principle —
what gives it meaning and guides it — is the purpose of
good, the intention of profit, design to a right and fit end.
There are thus, as we saw once before, four causes, and
generally co-operant in one and the same subject. There
is the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause ;
and there is also the final cause. All four causes may

138 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

be found apart, as in the building of the house. Here is
the matter, say stone, wood, lime, what not ; there is the
form in the idea of the architect ; and there are the
efficient causes in the various artizaus. But it is the
design that sets all the rest in motion ; and it is the last
to be realized, though also the first of the four that comes
into existence ; the final cause — namely, the comfort, con-
venience, pleasure, the shelter and protection which the
house is there alone to afford. In such a case, as we see,
material, formal, efficient, and final causes are all four
apart ; but in man, the formal, efficient, and final causes
are at once and unitedly the soul — the soul which in its
body is the master of matter. But man is still a
creature ; of all the creatures he is but one. And of all
the movements in the universe, and in the things of the
universe, he is not the mover. But a mover there must
be. In every movement that takes place there are always
at once moved and mover ; and for the universal series
and system of movements there must be an ultimate
mover. Further, indeed, there must be an ultimate
actuality. Potentiality, were it alone, as has been
already said, would remain potentiality. Potentiality
presupposes actuality. "Were there no actuality already
present, neither would there be any movement on the
part of potentiality into actuality. There must therefore
be a first actuality, and that first actuality must be the
first mover, which, unmoved itself, moves all. But that
first mover and that first actuality that is required for
every other actuality, and requires no other for itself, is
God — God eternal, increate, and immaterial. Not
throughout never-ending time was there in night and
chaos, in darkness and the void, potentiality alone, but
what was, was actuality : always, and ever, and everywhere
the infinite I AM.

No one, I may venture to say, will read the latter half of

THE HYMN OF ARISTOTLE. 139

the twelfth book, called by so^ie the eleventh, by all, the
Lambda of the Mdaphysic, and yet feel inclined to reproach
me with hebraizing Aristotle here. If we have not in
the Greek the direct words of the Hebrew I AM, w^e have
them, every such reader will, I feel sure, readily confess,
fully in meaning. When we turn from Plato to Aristotle,
it is usually said that we turn from the warmth of feel-
ing to the coldness of the understanding, from the
luxuriance of figurative phrase to the dryness of the
technical term, from poetry to prose ; but to my mind
these five chapters of Aristotle are, at least in their
ideas, more poetical than anything even in Plato. That
Trpcorov klvovv of Aristotle, let certain critics find what
fault they may with it, is as near as possible, as near as
possible for a Greek then, the Christian God. And
Aristotle si7igs Him, if less musically than Milton, still in
his own deep way, timisically, and in a vastly deeper
depth pliilosophically than Milton. Especially in the
seventh chapter of the twelfth book it is that we find
that wonderful concentration and intensity of thought
which, deep, dense, metalline- close, glows — unexpectedly
and with surprise — glows into song — the psalm, the
chant de profundis, of an Aristotle. It proceeds some-
what in this way : —

As there comes not possibly anything, or all, out of
night and nothingness, there must be the unmoved
mover, who, in his eternity, is actual, and substantial,
one. Unmoved himself, and without a strain, he is the
end-aim of the universe towards which all strain. Even
beauty is not moved, but moves ; and we move to beauty
because it is beauty, not that it is beauty only because
we move to it. And the goal, the aim, the end, moves
even as beauty moves, or as something that is loved
moves. It is thought that has made the beginning. As
mere actuality, actuality pure and simple, as that which

140 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

could not not-be, God knows not possibility, be is before
and above and without potentiality, the beginning, the
middle, and the end, the first and last, the principle and
goal, without peers as without parts, immaterial, im-
perishable, personal, single, one, eternal and immortal.
On him hang the heavens and the earth. And his joy of
life is always, as is for brief moments, when at its best,
ours. In him indeed is that enduringly so. But it is
impossible for us. For joy in him is his actuality, —
even as to us the greatest joy is to be awake, to see and
feel, to think, and so to revive to ourselves memories and
hopes. Thought, intellection is his ; and his intellection
is the substantial intellection of that which is substantial,
the perfect intellection of that which is perfect. Thought
as thought, intellection as intellection, knows itself even
in apprehension of its oliject ; for holding and knowing
this, it is this, and knowing and known are identical.
Intellection, indeed, takes up into itself what is to be
known, and what substantially is : it acts and is the
object in that it has and holds it. What, then, there is of
divine in intellection, that is diviner still in its actuality
in God ; and speculation is what is the highest joy and the
best. And if, as with us interruptedly, it is always in
felicity so with God, then is there cause for wonder ; and
for much more wonder if the felicity with God is of a
higher order than ever it is with us. But that is so. In
him is life ; for the actuality of intellection is life, and
that actuality is his. Actuality that is absolute — that, as
life of him, is life best and eternal. So it is we say that
God is a living being, perfect and eternal. Life eternal
and enduring being belong to God. And God is that.

That is the great passage.

There are many other passages, in several of his
works, where Aristotle returns again and again to the
bliss of mere thinking, the joy of Oecopia, speculation.

MANKIND. 141

contemplation, the joy and the bliss of Biaycoyr], of a life
that lives on, without a change or a check, in the
continuity of mere thinking. That to Aristotle is the
enviable beatitude of the Godhead. So we can think of
Aristotle as loving to retire from the world, always into
the bliss of his own thoughts. There are circumstances
in his life, as well as points in his will, that show Aris-
totle in a very favourable light with regard to integrity,
considerateness, and amiability, whether as affectionate
father, loving spouse, warm and constant friend, or good
master ; but, perhaps, experience did not lead him to
have any very high opinion of mankind as a whole. In
his Bhetoric (ii. 5. V), he speaks of it as a position of
fear to be within the power of another, men being mostly
bad, timid for themselves, and open to temptations of
profit. And the general scope of the observation is not
a solitary one. So it is, therefore, that, perhaps latterly
at least, his own thoughts in solitude were to Aristotle
his own best society.

This is what 8(,a<yw<y^ he assumes always for the
Godhead as tj aplarT), the best, and the best for us, too,
but alas ! as he sighs, only fxiKpov '^povov, only a short
time, rjiuv, for us — the condition, namely, of contem-
plative thinking, of inward peace, untroubled from
without, where spirit is in the element of spirit, thought
in the element of thought, spirit in spirit, thought in
thought. This, in his Ethic (x. 7. 1 2), is what he holds
to be the true life for us. " It becomes a man," he says
there, " not, as some advise, being man to think as a man,
or being mortal to think as a mortal, but to be in
possibility, immortal (e0' ocrov ivSexerai, as far as possible,
adavari^ecv, to become immortal, make oneself immortal) ;
that is, it becomes a man, as far as possible, to take on,
assume immortality. Of course, it has been pointed out
that such life of self-absorption may suit the philosopher.

142 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

l)ut not at all the citizen ; and, in tlie same way, it has
been objected that if Aristotle is a theist so far as he
assumes or grants an intellectual God, he is not surely
such so far as he denies this God the attributes of
practical action. And, certainly, it is with accuracy that
Erdmann, laying stress on Aristotle bettering Plato so far
as reality is concerned, points, nevertheless, to a failure of
this practical element in regard to the Godhead ; mean-
ing that Aristotle had secluded his God too largely
to the region of contemplation. But, says Erdmann,
Aristotle " could not have done otherwise, for the time had
not yet come when God should be known as the God that
took on himself irovo^;, labour, without which the life of
God were in heartless ease, and troubled with nothing,
while with it alone is God love, and with it alone is God
tlie Creator." " It was reserved for the Christian spirit,"
adds Erdmann, " to see in God at once rest and move-
ment, work and weal." And, no doubt, as I say, that
has its own accuracy. But it is to be said also that
where there is question of the citizen, Aristotle does
not confine himself to the joys of contemplation, but
has something to say on the duties of action as well.
Similarly, then, let Aristotle have expressed himself as he
may on the intellectual aspect of the Godhead, it by no
means follows that he deserves to be called by such an
ugly word as atheist, because, when occupied with one
thing, he did not turn his attention to another. It is
impossible better to illustrate this than by a reference to
the actual fact of Aristotle's practical philosophy. And
here the mastery of Aristotle in regard to what is
sensible and sound, as well as deep and true, will be
more readily apparent, perhaps, than even wliere it is
speculation, theory, that is concerned. I know nothing
more complete and cogent than what we have from
Aristotle, practically, as regards morals and the State.

NATURE. 143

Here the question is, How is man to realize his life
individually and in association ? Man's growth is given
to himself to realize. The principle in him is not a mere
force which, as in processes of nature, as in plant, as in
beast, acts, so to speak, in his despite, or without consult-
ing him. Unlike processes of mere nature, unlike plant,
unlike beast, man has his own self very much in his own
hands. He knows that he is from nature, he knows that
nature is in him ; but he knows that, if only so, he is
evil and the bad. He knows that he must control
nature in him ; he knows that he must lift it, that he
must lift sense into reason. Even externally he knows
that nature is his friend only if he harnesses it. He
must drive nature out — out into the wilderness, while he
remains himself in the cornfield. Nature clamours and
brawls and storms around him ; but he has made himself
a hearth and sits by it. Nature fills the hollows of the
earth with poisons, or hangs them on the tree ; but man
transforms them into health and the means of health. It
is somewhat in this way that we may conceive Aristotle
to regard mem, when he approaches him to build man
into manhood, and men into humanity — man into man-
hood being the province of ethics, men into humanity the
province of politics. How it is that man stands in need
of process and progression in either direction will readily
suggest itself by reference to what I have said of an
element of nature within him and around him. That
element, while it is to be walled out from without, has to
be eliminated from within. On both sides it is man's
business to convert nature into reason. No doubt, much
mistake still obtains here. There are those to whom the
prescript, Follow nature, is the open sesame of salvation,
and who, hardly opposed by any one in that form, are
yet silently controverted by the unceasing industry of
millions and millions of hostile life-points — parasites —

144 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

without and within them. So far as religion is con-
cerned, indeed, there have always been the two allegations :
on the one hand, that man is by nature bad ; and, on the
other, that man is by nature good. I daresay what has
been already said will not be far from suggesting the false
abstraction of either phrase. Man, in that he is of
sense, falls into the danger of sense ; but man, in that he
is of reason, rises into the safety and security of reason.
But both sense and reason are in the nature of man ;
and that nature may be named good or bad accord-
ingly. Nevertheless, if either side is to be termed more
exclusively nature, surely that side must be sense. It is
when we obey sense that we are said to obey nature, and
when we obey reason that we are said to rise above sense
and, consequently, above nature. Not but that there
may be legitimate application enough of the maxim or
precept, Follow nature. That nature, however, means an
emancipated nature, an enfranchised nature, a moralised
nature, a nature that has been lifted from the gi'ound,
the blind, confused ground of the particular, and placed
oil the specular heights of the universal. In regard
to clothing, eating, sleeping, drinking, etc., there is much
talk about following nature ; but if we look close in all
such cases, we shall find that to obey nature as it is
named, is to disobey nature as it is. Nature when she
calls to man, with the appetites, vanities, envies, and
sloths she has given him, in regard to his eating,
drinking, clothing, sleeping, calls to him in general " not
wisely, but too well." Immanuel Kant lay down at
ten and rose at five ; George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron,
sat up all night and breakfasted at four in the after-
noon; which of these men can be most truly said
to have followed nature ? Surely it was nature the
Lord followed when he yielded to his own inclinations,
and surely Kant had put himself in bonds to reason

Aristotle's ethic and politic. 145

and against nature, when Lampe was obliged to admit
that his master had never lain still a moment longer
than he was called. Not but that, in its overmuch,
it was only a kind of bastard reason that Kant
obeyed after all ! 'No doubt, it was only some copy-
line, " early to bed and early to rise," etc., that Kant
followed, as, indeed, such exemplary copy lines were
everywhere set by the Aufkliirung at that time. It
was in deference to some such copy-lines that Madame
de Genlis, as governess to a royal family, fed her young-
princes and princesses on bread and milk, and gave
them cow-houses to sleep in.

But what Aristotle would have from or for man
was, after all, only his own happiness. That was his
highest good, he taught him ; but, then, it was not from
nature that it came, but reason. Not but that it was
true still that nothing on earth could be made happy
without consultation of its nature. To give success to
anything, we must give it its own swing ; and to effect
happiness for man, we must effect the realization of his
nature. But that nature, at its truest and best, that
nature at its realest, is not mere animal nature ; it is,
on the contrary, rational nature. And only by being
put in accordance with reason is it that nature in man
can be realized. Eeason is the work of man, and man
is to be realized in his work. As it is with the flute-
player or the statuary, says Aristotle, whose happiness
lies in the successful practice of his work, so it is with
man generally. He must have the full exercise and
complete realization of the ivepyeia, the energy that is
proper to him. But when a man accomplishes this, he
is called virtuous ; it is only when he is virtuous that
man is able to realize himself ; and virtue requires to be
developed. All the principles in connection here, Aris-
totle expounds at full, and in the clearest and most

K

146 .GIFFORP LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

interesting manner, in his Ethics, which is essentially a
modern book. Curiously analytic and telling, captivating,
— that is the good sense of the world, one half of the
world's historical life back, and it is the good sense of
the world still. A like good sense we have in Aristotle's
politics. If it is man's virtue to realize emphatically
himself, then is that possible for him only in the State.
Hence it is ours only to live in the sense, and feeling,
and knowledge of what is due to the State. So living, we
shall be neither demagogue nor obstructive, not a partizan
of self under any name. But it cannot be my intention
to enter into the details of either Aristotle's ethics or
Aristotle's politics ; it is sufficient that I refer to their
interest, and their excellence, and their useful application
to these our own days and our own experiences. At the
same time our main object here was to point out by the
example of his practical philosophy as respects man, that,
if Aristotle, in one regard, seemed unduly to emphasize
the bliss of mere contemplation on the part of Deity, he
might not have been without practical ideas in the
other regard either. He certainly seems to accentuate
mere contemplation as the ultimate good even for man
himself ; and yet there is that vast and grand practical
philosophy of his, both for the individual and the State.
So, even in unmoved contemplation, it may be that
Aristotle does not conceive the Godhead to be wanting in
influence on, and care of, the affairs of mankind. He has
such words as these : Poets may lie, but God cannot l)e
envious, and neither is he inactive ; for man (Pol. vii. 1),
if he would be happy, must act, even as God acts, accord-
ing, namely, to virtue and to wisdom. All things for
Aristotle are directed to an end, an end which is good, an
end and a good which are ultimate — God. There is but
one life, one inspiring principle, one specular example in
the whole. All is for God, and from God, and to God. He

GOD TO ARISTOTLE, 147

is the all- comprehending unity, in whose infinite / am
all things rest ; but he is the ivepjeia, the actuality, also,
that realizes them all from the least to the greatest.
Even should we admit, what we do not admit, that con-
templation, as conceived by Aristotle, excludes action,
we would still point again, in proof of the purity of his
theism, to that wonderful hynniic inspiration of his
wonderful twelfth book. There is but one idea in the
midst of that inspiration ; and for the first time to the
whole pagan world, for the first time to the whole great
historical world, it is the complete idea of a one, supreme,
perfect, personal Deity. It is for Greece ultimate and
complete monotheism. I cannot conceive how, in any
sense, the word atheist, with as much as that before us,
can even by mistake be applied to Aristotle. The trans-
lator of the MetaiJliysic. in Bohn's Classics, however, does
so apply it, but in the midst, as one is happy to see, of
insoluble inconsistency and contradiction. It is in
reference to Aristotle's attitude ^s regards what are
called the moral attributes that the application is made.
Nevertheless, in identically the same reference, we can
read this : " It is indeed remarkable to find Aristotle
thus connecting the moral attributes of the Deity with
what we would call God's natural attributes." That is,
Aristotle does give God practical or moral attributes.
Then elsewhere we have this complete characteriza-
tion : " The Stagyrite, therefore, beholds in God a
Being whose essence is love, manifested in eternal
energy ; and the final cause of the exercise of his
divine perfections is the happiness which He wishes
to diffuse amongst all his creatures ; and this happiness
itself doth He participate in from all eternity. Besides,
His existence excludes everything like the notion of
potentiality, which would presuppose the possibility of
non-existence ; and, therefore, God's existence is a

148 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

necessary existence. Further, also, He is devoid of
parts, and, without passions or alterations, possessed of
uninterrupted and eternal life, and exercising his functions
throughout infinite duration." Now, I think it will he
admitted that many of these characters are of a quite
Christian quality ; they may, for Aristotle, be even a
little too Christian ; so that we may not unnaturally
expect excuse for our wonder at association with them
of the word atheist.

Cicero has preserved for us a passage from a lost
work of Aristotle's which, in its bearing on the proofs
for the Godhead, has seldom probably for power and
beauty, whether of idea or diction, been either equalled
or excelled. It is thus {d. N. D. ii. 37) that Aristotle,
as Cicero says, 'praedare, admirably, expresses himself :
" Suppose there were a people living under ground, but
in splendid domiciles, filled with statues and pictures,
and all the beautiful things that constitute in men's minds
happiness, — suppose, too, that, though secluded to their
subterranean abodes, they had heard of some strange
power on the part of some unknown supernatural beings
that were named gods, — suppose then that the earth
should open to this people, and that they should come
forth from their darkness into the light of day, — tlien,
assuredly, we must suppose, when, all of a sudden, they
saw the earth, and the sea, and the sky, and tlie great
cloud musters moving in the air, and the mighty sun in
the glory and beneficence of his all-pervading brightness,
— or when, again, it was night, and they saw the 1)6-
spangling stars, and the moon that wanes and waxes in
her gentleness, and all those movements immutable in
their appointed courses from eternity, — tlien, assuredly,
as we must suppose, they would tliink that tliere are
gods whose handiwork all these wonders were.'

Cicero, as we know, speaks of the to us hard, dry

CICEEO TIME. 149

Aristotle being sweetly and exuberantly eloquent. Flumcn
orationis aurmm f lindens, pouring forth a golden flood of
declamation : so it is that he pictures Aristotle to us.
And it would seem that Aristotle really had written in
that style works which are now lost to us. At all
events, it seems true that, let modern scepticism as to
the so-called exoteric writings of Aristotle be as well-
founded as it may,— it seems true that he did compose,
in a popular form, a dialogue on philosophy, from the
third book of which Cicero took his extract. And,
however all that may be, it is quite certain that, if
Aristotle really wrote what Cicero pretends to have
extracted from him, then the extravagant terms which
have been applied to that golden oratio of his are
more than justified ; for it is impossible to deny that
the extract in question is a morsel of genuine eloquence
that is at the same time popular. The great Humboldt
praises it in his Kosmos (ii. 16). "Such argument for
the existence of celestial powers," he says, "from the
beauty and infinite grandeur of the Creation, stands very
much alone in Antiquity." It is indeed magnificent, and
reminds us of the inspired Psalmist in his deeper Hebrew
grandeur. " The heavens declare the glory of God ; and
the firmament showeth His handy-work. Day unto day
uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.
... He hath set a tabernacle for the sun : which is as a
bridegroom coming out of his chamber. . . . His going forth
is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the
ends of it : and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."
How all that brings home to us at once the grandeur and
the stability of the universe ! To borrow an earlier illus-
tration. Hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago,
the Hebrew bard, from the streets of Jerusalem, as the
Greek philosopher from the streets of Athens, could look
up into the night, and see the stars, and the moon, and

150 GIFFORD LECTUltE THE EIGHTH.

the clouds, even as we can. Ay, when the first stone of
the first pyramid was laid, all was as now, in man, and
bird, and beast, and earth, and heaven. For man at
least, civilised man, the world is as it was in the begin-
ning. These names and dates by which we would drive
God from us, are names and dates, not in time, but
eternity. With our scales and weights, and tapes and
measuring-rods, we do but deceive ourselves : what is, is
dimensionless ; the truth is not in time ; space is all too
short for a ladder to the Throne. And what we say
now, was said by Aristotle then. Custom hides it from
us ; but not one of us can go out into the night and see
the heavens, without asking, as Napoleon did, but " Mes-
sieurs les philosophes, who made all that ? " That is the
argument which Aristotle, as reported by Cicero, makes
vivid to us — the argument from design, the proof in
Natural Theology that there is a Supreme God. So it is
that he feigns his underground people coming up to the
light of day. And Aristotle has not been left without
imitators. " Adam," says David Hume, to whom what
was poetry was pretty well starch, — "Adam, rising at once
in Paradise, and in the full perfection of his faculties,
would naturally, as represented by JMilton, be astonished
at the glorious appearances of nature, the heavens, the
air, the earth, his own organs and members ; and would
be led to ask, whence this wonderful scene arose ? " We
have from Hume's contemporary, Buffon, too, an accoimt
of the experiences of the first man after liis creation :
How, " il se souvient de cet instant plein de joie et de
trouble ou il sentit, pour la premiere fois, sa siuguliere
existence ; " how he, too, was astonished at " la lumiere, la
voute c(51este, la verdure de la terre, le cristal des eaux,"
etc. One, of course, has little hesitation in finding the
original of all that in Cicero's extract, not but that the
simple situation might very well have suggested his own

GOD IMMANENT AND TRANSCENDENT. 151

picture to Milton. The one idea in all is, how a man
should feel when he sees, for the first or the fiftieth time,
as a man, the miracle of heaven, and the glory and beauty
of the earth. To Aristotle, plainly, it must have brought
the certainty and the conviction that it was not from
accident it came, not from Tv^n, nor yet from to avrc-
fxarov, the spontaneity of chance. The whole movement
and life, on the contrary, must be inscribed with the
words, end-aim and design, reXo'^ and ov eveKa. Nature
was not to Aristotle, as it was to Plato, the mere /^r; oV,
the mere region of the false. No, it is to him God's
own handiwork, transcendent and alone in beauty, and
wisdom, and beneficence. There is nothing in it in vain,
nothing humblest but has its own nature to unfold, and
its own life to realize. And there is a common striving,
as though in mind and will, in all things towards God,
who is their exemplar and their home. Each would pro-
duce another like itself, says Aristotle, the plant a plant,
the animal an animal, in order that, as far as possible,
they too may participate in the eternal and divine ; for
to that all tends. And again, Aristotle directly asks,
directly puts the question. How are we to conceive this
eternal principle (Afct. xii. 10) ? Does it exist simply as
the order of an army exists in the order of an army
(which, as the moral order of the universe, was at one
time the answer of Fichte) ? Or does it exist as the
general of the army exists, from whom that order pro-
ceeds ? Contrary to what some say, Aristotle answers
this question quite unequivocally. And I may adduce
at once here the authority on the point of the two recog-
nised masters in the Metaphysic of Aristotle. Of these,
the one, Schwegler, has edited the text of the book, with
wonderful power translated it, and, in two volumes, com-
mentated it ; while the other, Bonitz, who, for that and
much else, is pretty well the acknowledged prince of

152 GIFFOUD LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

Aristotelians, has also edited the text, and, without trans-
lating, but, with a perfect insight and marvellous sagacity,
in admiral)le Latin, commentated it. " The answer of
Aristotle," it is thus that the former, Schwegler, speaks,
" is, that the Good exists in the universe as its designed
order and intelligent arrangement ; but it exists also,
and in a far higher form, ivithout the universe as a
personal being who is the ground and cause of this
designed order and intelligent arrangement : the prin-
ciple of immanence and the principle of transcendence are
here brought together and combined in one." As for
Bonitz, he heads his commentary of the last chapter of
the great twelfth book with the words : " How that which
is good and beautiful exists in the universe of the world "
— and he expresses himself on this fjuestion, as I translate
his Latin, thus : " In regard to the nature of the supreme
principle and its relation to the world, whether that
principle as the Good is to be referred to the divine
nature of the first substance or to the order of the world
itself, Aristotle finds that tlie Good has place in the world
in both ways, the possibility of which he illustrates by
the example of an army ; for the commander is certainly
the prime source of the discipline of the army ; but, if he
has rightly established that discipline, the individual parts
of the army accord together of themselves. In the same
way the first cause of that order which we observe in
the world is to be assigmed to the Supreme Intelligence,
but tlien the parts of the world have been so ordered by
him that they are seen to harmonize of their own accord;
for all things cohere with all tilings, and all tend to one."
In the presence, then, of both these proofs and these tes-
timonies, we must conclude that the views of Aristotle
in the particular reference were very much our own.
There was God transcendently existent ; but He had
created the world in beauty and harmony.

BIESE ON THE GKEEK MOVEMENT, 153

It is in a certain way in agreement with this that we
are to understand the soul projDer of man to enter into
him, as it were, from without. Aristotle's own words
are XetTrerat tov vovv jxovov OvpaOev eTretcTLevaL koI Oelov
elvai fiovov (d. G. A. ii. 3, med.). " We are left to con-
clude that the soul alone enters from without, and is
alone divine." The word for from without here, dvpadev,
meaning from outside, from out of doors, is too unequivo-
cal for any quillet to be hung upon it. This soul, then,
is the self-determinative principle of divine reason in
man, and in it is the immortality of man. The two
considerations cohere : God, the transcendent Deity as
Creator of the universe, and man, in reason, as cope-
stone, and key-stone, and end-aim of all. Aristotle is
specially emphatic on the unity of God. The universe
must have a single head, like any other well-organized
community. Polyarchy is anarchy : in monarchy alone
is there order and law, and Aristotle winds up with the
line from the second Iliad : Ou/c a<ya6ov irdKvKoipavlr]' eh
KOLpavo^ earco. " Many masters are not a good thing, let
there be but one."

And it is in this way that " Greek philosophy has in
Aristotle completed itself. Up to the time of Anaxa-
goras," says Biese, " the real characters of objective exist
ence were the business of philosophical inquiry. Through
him reason came to be pronounced the principle of the
world ; whereupon, from Socrates onwards, the develop-
ment of cognition, as exclusively in the special subjective
faculty of thought, occupied philosophy ; till at last Plato,
through and in the Ideas, returned to the objectivity of
cognition, without evincing it, however, as the power and
the truth in actuality. Aristotle speculatively resolves
the antithesis between reality and ideality, frees the
world of sense from the character of mere illusory
appearance, and raises it into the position of the genuine

154 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

reality in wliicli the Idea gives itself form and action. From
this liigh position, to which the philosophical spirit of
the Greeks had, in and through its own self, risen, Aris-
totle considers and examines with interest the manifold
forms of reality, and takes up into himself the entire
wealth of Greek life, as it has developed itself in science,
art, and the State, becoming thereby the substantial chan-
nel through which to attain to a view of the Greek world,
as well in its various aspects generally, as in regard to the
historical development of its philosophy specially."

There are other such testimonies from Germans in
regard to Aristotle. In fact, when one considers the
enormous development of the study of Aristotle among
them which this century exhibits, with the great names
that belong to it, — Bekker, Brandis, Biese, Bonitz,
Schwegler, Prantl, Trendelenburg, Michelet, Heyder
Stahr, Waitz, Zeller, and even a whole host more, — it
must be evident that it would quite be possible to fill
entire pages in the general reference. Even in a special
regard, as concerns matters of fact in science, there are
great names in all the countries that bear their emphatic
testimony to the ability, compass, and exactitude of
Aristotle. Thus Cuvier, for example, " lavishes un-
stinted praise " on much that concerns Birds ; while both
Cuvier and Owen regard as " truly astonishing " the
fulness and accuracy of his details in respect to the
Cephalopods. Franzius, in that connection, and other-
wise, alludes to the " surprising result that, in many
references, Aristotle possessed a far more extensive and
intimate knowledge than we." The celebrated Johann
von Miiller expresses liimself in this way : " Aristotle
was the clearest head that ever enlightened the world ;
he possessed the eloquence of a great, all-penetrating
understanding, supported on the direct observation of
experience : he is astonishingly learned, and, in natural

ARISTOTLE IN CONCLUSION. 155

history, compared with Buffon, has led me into remark-
able thoughts." Even, as we saw, Mr. Darwin himself,
who is recent enough, and, certainly, a special expert
enough, when he reads Aristotle on the Parts of Ani-
mals in the admirable translation which, with its valu-
able notes, had been executed and forwarded to him
by his friend Dr. Ogle, is obliged to cry out in his letter
of acknowledgment by return : " I had not the most
remote notion what a wonderful man he (Aristotle) was :
Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though
in very different ways ; but they were mere schoolboys
to old Aristotle." Aristotle, however, is no mere
specialist : he is as wide as the circumference, and as
the centre deep. The old idea of him is that he is cold
and dry, technical, practical, and of the earth earthy
only. But this is not the case. Aristotle is even a
deeper mind than Plato. He may take up things as
he finds them, or as they come to him ; but he never
lets them go till he has wrung from them their very
inmost and utmost. We have to bear in mind, too,
that we have lost five-sixths of his writings, while the
best of the sixth we have has suffered lamentably.
For myself here, I feel in this way, tliat, if T were
condemned to solitary confinement for the rest of my
life, and no book allowed me but an edition of
Aristotle, I should not, as a student, conceive myself
ill-served. Perhaps, indeed, looking round me to think,
I know only three other collective writings which, in
such circumstances, I should wish added to those of
Aristotle ; but these I shall leave to your own con-
jectures.

15G GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

Professor Blackie, after hearing tlie foregoing lecture,
was kind enough further to lionour it by pubHshing
(as dated) the following obliging note and admirable
verses : —

ARISTOTLE.

{Lines written after hearing the masterly discourse on the Philosophy
and Theology of Aristotle by Dr. Hutchison Stirling, in the University
of Edinburgh, on Saturday, 23rd March.)

Well said and wisely ! Who would measure take

Of his true stature, let him choose the tall :
We all are kin with giants when we make

Ourselves the big yoke-fellows of the small.
Give me no peeping scientist, if I

Shall judge God's grandly-ordered world aright ;
But give, to plant my cosmic survey high.

The wisest of wise Greeks, the Stagirite.
Not beetles he alone and grubs might ken.

Narrow to know, and curious to dissect.

But with a broad outlook he stood erect.
And gauged the plauful ways and works of men,

And owned the God who rules both great and small,

The soul, and strength, and shaping power of all.

John Stuart Blackie.
The Scotsman, Tuesday, March 26, 1889.

GIFFOED LECTUEE THE NINTH.

The Sects — The Skeptics — The Epicureans — Epicurus — Leucippus
and Democritus — Aristotle, Plato — Stoics, Pantheism — Chry-
sippus — Origin of evil — Antithesis — Negation — Epictetus — The
Xeo-Platonists — Important six hundred years — Covirse of his-
tory— Reflection at last — Aufkliirung, Revolution — Rome —
The atom, the Caesar — The despair of the old, the hope of
the new — Paganism, Christianity — The State — The temple
— Asceticism — Philosophy, the East, Alexandria — The Neo-
Platonists — Ecstasy — Cicero — Paley and the others all in him
— All probably due to Aristotle — Sextus — Philo Judaeus —
Minucius Felix — Cicero now as to Dr. Alexander Thomson
and the Germans — A word in defence.

What, for philosophical consideration, follows Aristotle,
are what are called the Sects — the Stoics, the Epicureans,
and the Skeptics. Our subject, however, relates only to
the proofs for the existence of God ; and we shall have
to do with the Sects, consequently, only so far as they
have any bearing on those proofs : it is not the history
of philosophy that we are engaged on. Now, in regard
to that bearing, the very 7iame of the Sect may here, in a
case or two, be determinative and decisive. Of them all,
in fact, it is only among the doctrines of the Stoics that
we shall find anything that bears on our business. The
Skeptics, for example, knew nothing — neither a KaXov
nor an ala')(^p6v, neither a BIkulov nor an ciStKov, neither a
good nor a bad, neither a right nor a wrong. They
knew not at all that this is more than it is that ; that
anything, in truth, is ; that, in fact, anything is, any
more than that it is not. Their standpoint was eiro-x/i :

158 GIFFORD LECTUEE THE NINTH.

they would not speak ; or it was aKaTa\r}y\ria, and they
did not understand ; or it was arapa^la, and they would
not be troubled. It is in vain to seek for any argument
on tlieir part in reference to the existence of the God-
head. The very best and most advanced of them admitted,
in regard to anything, only a more or less of pcrluqos.

Nor with the Epicureans are we one whit better
placed. They believe in no reality but that of the
body : they have no test for that reality but touch,
or sight, or hearing — the ear, or the eye, or the fingers ;
and the transcendent object we would prove is within
the reach of no sense. As it is written : " Eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard." In fact, Epicurus directly tells us
that we are not to believe in design, but only in the
movements proper of mere nature. We are not to sup-
pose, he says, the order of the universe to result from
the ministration or regulation of any blessed god, but
that, to the original consequences of the wliirlings to-
gether at the birth of the world are due the necessary
courses of movement {Diog. L. 24, 76). In short, in all
such matters we are to see only a physical operation
{ih. 78). Why Epicurus will have all from natural
causes, and not from any influence of beings super-
natural is, that belief in the latter would be the occasion
of fear. Very evidently, Epicurus has been an ex-
ceedingly sensitive person. For him the best thing from
within is calm enjoyment, and the worst thing from
without fear. All is useless and superfluous that does
not promote the one and prevent the other. So it is
that it is quite idle to have knowledge, as knowledge
of astronomical phenomena, say, since those who have it
are not led thereljy to happiness ; l)ut, on the contrary,
have rather more fears ; for such is the effect of belief in
the action of superterrestrial powers. But all accounts
of such powers are only fables. Undisturbed assurance — •

EPICUEUS. 159

that is the only end (ih. 85). " Our life," he says, " has
need, not of ideology and empty opinion, but of un-
troubled tranquillity " (ib. 87). "As for the size of the
sun and the stars, it is, as regards us, just such as
it seems" (ih. 91). "With contradiction of our senses
there can never be true tranquillity" (ib. 96). " If no
meteorological apprehensions, and none about death, dis-
turbed us, we should have no need of physiology "
(ib. 142). But "death is nothing to us, for what is
dissolved feels not, and what is not felt is for us
nothing " (i&, 139). These notices will be sufficient to
show the absolutely materialistic nature of Epicureanism,
and how it rejected everything like teleological agency,
or explanation, and referred all to the mechanical move-
ments of mere corporeal particles. In short, what we
have from Epicurus is but a repetition of the atoms
of Democritus and Leucippus, of whom Aristotle (d. G. A.
V. 18) said that "they rejected design, and referred all
to necessity." It seems to be they also whom Plato
(SojjJi. 246 A, and Thcad, 155 E) has in his eye when
he speaks of " those who pull all things down to earth
from heaven and the unseen, stubbornly maintaining,
with their insensate fingers on rocks and oak trees,
that only what they touch is, and that body and being
are the same thing, while of things that are incorporeal
they will not hear a word." Neither Skeptics nor
Epicureans, then, are here anything for us.

The religion of the Stoics, so far as they had a re-
ligion, consisted probably, on the whole, in a sort of
clumsy and crude material pantheism. Nevertheless,
unlike both Skeptics and Epicureans, they did point
to the nature of this universe ■ — its contingency and
design — as demonstrative of its origin in a divine and
intelligent causality. This causality is to them a con-
scious God, creative of the world through his own will.

IGO GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINTH.

but, according to the necessity of law, in beauty and
in order ever — and as much as that, in its terms at
least, must be confessed to be theistic rather than
pantheistic. The argument of Socrates is put by them :
Can we fancy that there is consciousness in us — the
parts, only — and not also, and much more, in the All
from which we come. Aulus Gellius (vii. 1) testifies to
the cogency with which the celebrated Stoic, Chrysippus,
redargued the reasonings in denial of a Providence,
because of the evils in tlie world, — the reasonings, namely,
that if Providence were, evil were not ; but evil is, there-
fore Providence is not. " Nothing can be more absurd,"
says Chrysippus, " than to suppose that there could be
good, if there were not evil. Without correspondent and
opposing contrary, contrary at all there could be none.
How could there be a sense of justice, unless there were
a sense of injustice ? How possibly understand bravery,
unless from the opposition of cowardice ? or temperance,
unless from that of intemperance ? prudence, from im-
prudence, etc. ? Men might as well require," he cries,
" that there should be truth and not falsehood. There
are together in a single relation, good and evil, happiness
and unhappiness, pleasure and pain. They are bound
together, the one to the other, as Plato says, with
opposing heads ; if you take the one, you withdraw both
(si tulcris unum, ahstulcris utrumque)." On similar
grounds Chrysippus vindicates or explains the fact of
man suffering from disease. That is not something, he
would seem to say, ordered, express, and on its own
account. It is only there Kara Trapa/coXovOTjaiv, as it
were by way of sequela and secondary consequence.
The greater witrinsic good is necessarily attended by the
lesser extrinsic evil. If you make the bones of the head
delicate and fine for the business of thought within, you
only expose it the more to blows and injuries from without.

NEGATION NEO-PLATONISTS. 161

" In the same way diseases also and sicknesses enter,
while it is for health that the provision is made. And so,
by Hercules, while by the counsel of nature there springs
in men virtue, faults at the very same moment by a
contrary affinity are born." In this way the Stoics have
put hand on a most important and cardinal truth — this
truth, namely, that discernibleness involves negation.
We should not know what warmth is, were there no
cold ; nor light, were there not twin with it darkness.
Everything that is, is what it is, as much by what it
is not, as by what it is. The chair is not a table ;
the table is not a chair. Negation, nevertheless, is no
infringement on affirmation : evil may be without pre-
judice to the perfection of the world. Evil in the
creation of the universe was not the design : it is but
the necessary shadow of the good, as the dark of light,
" Just as little," says Epictetus {Enchirid. c. 2 7), " as
there is a target set up not to be hit, is there in the
world a nature of the bad " — an independent bad. " In
partial natures and partial movements, stops and hind-
rances there may be many, but in the relation of the
wholes, none" (Plut. ref. St. 35).

The Neo-Platonists belong to a much later period than
the principal Stoics ; but, being Greek, we may refer to
them here — not that we can illustrate the arguments for
the existence of God technically from their writings, or at
all further from them themselves, than by their devotion
to God, a devotion which manifested itself in the form of
what has been named ecstasy. This phase of humanity,
however, or of philosophy, is to be better understood by
reference to the historical period at which it appeared.

From the death of Aristotle in 322 B.C. to the con-
version of Constantine, or say, to the date, more memorial
as a date, of the Council of Mce in 325 A.D., there is an
interval of some six hundred and more years, Now these

L

162 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE NINTH.

six hundred years belong to that period in the liistory of
the world when it is probable that a greater number of
civilised men were intellectually interested, occupied, and
active than ever before or since. The cause of this was,
so far, politics without, and religion within.

The general course in the common life of mankind
seems to be this : men are at first hunters, passing
gradually, perhaps, into nomads ; and intellect can assert
itself for many many years only in wild warfare, crude art,
superstition rather than religion, and a dawning literature
that is, for the most part, exclamation or song. By and
by the wanderers settle themselves, and take to agri-
culture. Agriculture necessitates dwelling-places and
implements — quite an assemblage of coverings and
shelters, of goods and chattels. This assemblage necessi-
tates the artizan to make them and mend them ; and the
artizan, to be paid and to buy, necessitates exchange. Then
exchange itself necessitates, or, in fact, is trade ; wliile
trade, again, necessitates the town. Now, in this settled
life, what men are to become the leaders ? Not any
longer, as was formerly the case, necessarily the young,
the strong, and the bold. What is required now is, so
to speak, counsel, advice, direction in practical conduct ;
and counsel, advice, direction — direction in practical
conduct — belongs to him who is tempered, chastened,
matured Ijy experience ; enlarged, enlightened, and
enriched, made wise by actually living life's many and
multiform eventualities. The calm hearts and grey heads
are now the guides, and this their guidance naturally,
in expression, takes the form of proverbs. Practical
sagacity is the crown of life. But the faculty thus
brought into action is the intellect. Insight into results
and the means of results, the causes of results, is now the
life of the matured brain. Every event is canvassed,
every proposal is canvassed, with all that appertains to

COURSE OF HISTORY. 163

it, in the new light that now is ever spreading, and ever
clearing around them. But in the midst of all this
science is seen to have taken birth, and to grow. Step
by step man learns to harness to his own ends the very-
powers that were his fears ; and step by step he becomes
presumptuous, contemptuous. What he feared is weak,
he finds ; and he that feared is now strong. There are
cobwebs all round about him from that old past ;
he laughs as he thinks of them, and will scatter them
to the winds. Betimes it is an age of scepticism ; and
bit by bit, politically, socially, religiously, the whole
furniture of humanity is drawn into examination and
doubt. And the more they examine, and ever the more
they doubt, the more their rebellion at the old grows.
Not a man but issues from his old wont as from a bond-
age and darkness in which he has been wronged. He is
bitter as he thinks of what is and of what was. They
are all bitter as they think of what is and of what was.
They are in their Aufkldrung, and their Ecvolution must
come — has come. They rush with a cry from their
corners ; and, all together, like a flood, they lay flat the
walls and the roof that had sheltered and saved them.
For a time all is joy, happiness, delight, action, in the
new light and the fresh air. But presently the mood is
changed, and they wander disconsolate amid the ruins.
They have nothing now to come to them and lift them
into a life that is common ; they have nothing to believe
in. They are together ; but they are single, each man
by himself. Had they been scattered down from a
pepper-box, they could not be more disjunct.

This is the condition of the Sects and of the atoms
around them ; for we are still in the ancient world
— the ancient world at its close. Everywhere, at that
time, there was the reality of political, social, religious
revolution, if not the madness and violence, if not the

164 GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINTH.

l)lood, with wliich it has been convulsed and dis-
figured into hideousness and horror here in Europe
within a century. And what, generally over the
known world, saved them from as much as that then
was the shadow of a vast vulture in the air that had not
even yet filled its all-devouring maw, and that, making
their hearts beat, suddenly darkened and terrified them
into the silence and stillness of an awaited doom. That
vulture was Eome. Her prey was helpless, and she had
but to seize. Any and everywhere she could stoop ; and
any and everywhere she could seize. The entire world,
within all its bounds, was her booty. And with this her
booty at her feet, the insatiable maw was at length
glutted, but not, even so, the fierce heart stilled. Even
so, the fierce heart could not be stilled. The one vulture
became a crowd of vultures. Each in the fierceness of
its own heart — each in its own pain, turned and tore at
the other ; and it was a distracted universe in fight,
until at length and finally, utterly worn out, exhausted to
the dregs, they sank in apathy at the feet of one, a single
one of themselves, lolio, all too soon, drunk with solitude
— the solitude of power and of j)lace — reeled into the
imbecility and delirium of the irresponsible, abstract,
absolute self that knows not what to do with itself, nor
any more what not to do — the realized C?esar !

What I endeavour to picture thus in these brief terms
is the condition of the whole world during the greater
part of the six hundred years wliich I have signalized.

The fall of the old world, which was at once political,
religious, and philosophical, was characterized by a uni-
versal atomism. Folitically, the individual, as an atom,
found himself alone, without a country, hardly with a
home. Beli/jiously, the individual, as an atom, has lost
his God ; he looks up into an empty heaven ; his heart
is broken, and he is hopeless, helpless, hapless in despair.

THE DESPAIR OF THE OLD. 165

Philosophically, all is contradiction ; there is no longer
any knowledge he can trust. What this world is he
knows not at all. He knows not at all what he himself
is. Of what he is here for, of what it is all about, he is
in the profoundest doubt, despondency, and darkness.
Politically, religiously, and philosophically, thus empty
and alone, it is only of himself that the individual can
think ; it is only for himself that the individual must
care. There is not a single need left him now — he has not
a single thought in his heart — but ev irpdrreiv, his own
welfare. How he can best take care of himself, provide
for his own comfort, or as the word was then, and, in
like circumstances, still is, secure his own tranquillity, —
effect it that that, his tranquillity, shall be undisturbed, —
this now is the sole consideration. He becomes an
Epicurean, and lives to sense. He lets his beard grow,
and, as a Stoic, is a king in rags. Or he is the jeering
Skeptic, and laughs at both at the same time that his own
heart is but a piece of white ash. As one sees, it is an age
of what is called particularism, subjectivity. Nothing is
real now l)ut what is particular, and particular for the par-
ticular subject. Universal there is none. A universal is
logical, a thing of the intellect ; and things of the intellect
are no longer anything to anybody. A universal there is
none ; in that sense — in the philosophical sense of per-
manent, guiding, and abiding principle, ohjcct there is
none. That is, there is no longer any common object for
all men certainly to know, for all men certainly to believe
in, for all men certainly to strive to. This that is now be-
fore us is about the most important lesson that philosophy
can bring to us — the lesson that lies in the antithesis of uni-
versal and particular, of objectivity and subjectivity — a
lesson that will be found more or less fully suggested, but
only suggested, in the Note on the Sophists in the English
Schwegler. It is such a time as what is now before us

166 GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINTH.

that best illustrates this lesson — a time when the old and
the new are to be seen in the deadliest grips of internecine
battle. The phoenix is being burned ; the phoenix is
being born. To the dying spasms of paganism the birth
throes of Christianity oppose themselves ; and the hope
of the new cannot but exasperate the despair of the old.
There is, in fact, so far as the prevailing externality is
concerned, but a heaving welter of misery everywhere.
The State has perished ; and its organic cells, its magis-
tracies, namely, and other offices, are dens and holes,
mainly, for fox or wolf, for snake or worm. The gods
have fled ; and in their temples there is only an
empty echo of departing footfalls. The world is struck
asunder and disintegrated into a mere infinitude of
disjunct selves — selves that must in the wildest orgies
rage, or, in the most prostrate asceticism, crouch. The
West, in this its utter bankruptcy — religious, social,
political, — if it looked around for help, could only look
to the East. There, at least, there were still tales of
religious communication, religious acceptance, religious
grace. The darkening mundane of the West would turn
to what gleam there was of a still shining supra-mnndsLne
in the East. If philosophy, that had still words for the
individual, was dumb in regard to all that was universal,
theosophy still spoke. And Alexander, too, had flung
down the barriers that, on this side and on that, had
excluded union. He had, as it were, built a bridge
between them ; he had founded a city, and given it his
name — a city that, as common to orient and to Occident,
became for both the centre of a new life. Here, in
Alexandria, it was that occidentals, on the one hand,
were orientalized into a theosophizing philosophy ; and
orientals, on the other hand, were occidentalized into a
philosophizing theosophy. The conditioning elements.
Eastern, were Indian, Persian, but especially Jewish ;

ECSTASY. 167

while, "Western, they were the doctrines of Plato, Aris-
totle, and jDerhaps, above all, Pythagoras ; and, as the
one tendency led to the Gnostics, so we can say that the
other terminated in the N"eo - Platonists. And, beside
both, there were the so-called Egyptian Therapeutae, who,
under Parsee, Buddhist, Pythagorean influences, largely
drew, probably as well, from the ascetic mysticism and
cabbalistic doctrines of the Jewish Essenes. If Eome
had been a colluvies of outcast and fugitive particulars,
surely Alexandria was a conflux, from the very ends of
the earth, of streaming universals.

As regards the Neo-Platonists, then, with whom we
are more particularly interested, we can see how much
they are conditioned by the historical influences that
precede and surround their rise. They, too, like the
Skeptics, the Epicureans, and the Stoics, would save the
individual from the misery and unhappiness of the
centreless, dispersed, and mutually self - repellent life
that alone now is. But this they would effect by
ecstasy. "We are miserable, one may conceive them to
feel, we are wretched, we are lost in this world, which
has nowhere a refuge for us, which has nowhere a rest
for our very feet. "What signifies the indifference of the
Stoic, who would conceal the serpent that still gnaws
beneath his rags ? "What signifies the complacency of
the Epicurean, whose aching void within no sensuality
can fill ? "What signifies the jeer that covers the white
ash of the Skeptic ? Security so, salvation so, there is
none for us. This wild soul of ours that would know
all, this wild heart of ours that would have and hold all
— ah ! %vc would leap to God ; only with Him, on His
bosom, in absorption into His essence, can there be satis-
faction, consummation, peace for us ! This is the sort of
rationale of the ecstasy by and in which Plotinus and the
other Neo-Platonists would obtain entrance to the very

1G8 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE NINTH.

presence of God — communion, as it were, with His very
being. In them, too, we see the same loneliness, the
same atomism, as in all the rest. They, too, have turned
themselves away from the world. They are without, any
longer, a nationality. Native country they have, any
longer, none. Almost any longer they are without a
home — without family, children, wife. All that remains
to them still human, though they say themselves they
are ashamed of their very bodies, and would gladly part
with them, is the amiable vanity tliat meekly suffers —
these disciples who will come to them !

Leaving the Greeks for the Eomans now, it is Cicero
that will interest us most in regard to the arguments for
the existence of the Godhead. It is impossible for us
here to do any justice to the length of treatment which
Cicero, in his de Natura Deorum, bestows in particular,
for example, on the argument from design ; he returns
to it there a score of times, and it reappears again and
again in his other philosophical works. In fact, it would
almost seem as though even a Paley had but few supports
to add to those already supplied by Cicero, and as though
what the former had mainly to do was simply to elabor-
ate the latter. Cicero follows design from the heavens
to the earth and to the creatures of earth; and Paley
does no more. The sun, how it fills the world with its
larrja luce, its large light ! Should we, for the first time,
suddenly see the light, what a species caeli, what a pre-
sence the heavens would be for us ! It is only the
custom of our eyes that stifles inquiry into the wonder of
such things. But that any one should persuade himself
that this most beautiful and magnificent world has been
produced by a fortuitous concourse of atoms ! As well
might innumerable scattered alphabets, thrown down,
take shape before our eyes as the annals of Ennius.
Who would call him a man who, seeing the assured

CICERO rALEY, ETC. 169

nioveineuts of the heavens, the marshalled ranks of the
stars, the harmony of all things mutually apt, should yet
deny that he saw reason in them, and assign to chance
the regulations of so great a wisdom, and a wisdom so
impossible to be reached by any wisdom of ours ? He
himself, certainly, is without a mind, who regards all that
as without the ouidance of a mind — all that which could
not only not be made without reason, but which cannot
possibly be understood without the highest reason. From
things celestial Cicero passes to things terrestrial, and
asks what is there in these in which the reflection of an
intelligent nature does not appear ? There are the plants
with their roots, their rinds, their tendrils, etc. There is
the infinite variety of animals with their hides, fleeces,
bristles, scales, feathers, horns, wings, and what not.
All of them have their food provided for them ; and
Cicero refers to the admirable manner in which their
frames are adapted for the seizure and utilization of their
food. All within them is so skilfully created and so
subtly placed, that there is nothing superfluous, nothing
that is not necessary for the conservation of life. The
progression of animals, the adaptation of their construc-
tion to their habits of life, their means of defence, beak,
tooth, tusk, claw, etc. ; the trunk of the elephant, the
cunning and artifices of various animals, as of spiders,
certain shell-fish, certain sea birds, cranes, crocodiles,
serpents, frogs, kites, crows, etc. etc. — I only name these
things to suggest how much what we have been accus-
tomed to read in Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises is
largely, or for the most part almost universally, indeed,
already represented in Cicero. Even the calculated con-
trivances found within the animal, in its anatomical and
physiological system, are gone into by Cicero at very
considerable length and in particular detail. In short,
the second book of the clc Naturci Dcontm of Cicero may

170 GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINTH.

itself be regarded as, iu preliminary sketch or previous
outline, already a sort of Paley's Natural Theology or
Bridgcwater Treatise. In so early a work that would
base itself on natural science, blunders, of course, there
must be ; and they are there for the enemy to make his
own use of them ; nevertheless, I will venture to say
that whoever reads this book impartially and without
prepossession will find himself under a necessity, willing-
ingly and generously, to express his admiration and
surprise. In fact, from various accidental vestiges, it
may even be that a suspicion will grow that here, too, in
the main, it is still Aristotle that we have before us.
The de 3Iundo wholly apart, it is quite possible that, in
his lost work or works de Philosophia, Aristotle really
did include such embryo Natural Theology that acted as
suggestive exemplar to Cicero. It does seem that there
are some sHght limts to that effect in the references to,
or the actual quotations from, Aristotle, wdiich are to be
found in other writers.

In Cicero, for example, there occur, not once or twice,
but several times, eloquent passages that lay stress on
the analogy between this furnished and inhabited uni-
verse and a furnished and inhabited house, or an adorned
and decorated temple of the gods. " As," he says (second
book, chap. 5), " any one coming into a house, or school,
or forum, and seeing the design, discipline, method of all
things, cannot judge them to be without a cause, but
perceives at once that there must be some one who pre-
sides over it and whom it obeys ; so, much more in such
vast motions and such vast revolutions, orders of so
many and so great things, in which immense and infinite
time has found no falsity, he must conclude that such
mighty movements of nature are governed by a mind."
In the next chapter he says again, " If you should see a
large and fine house, you cannot be brought to believe.

DUE TO ARISTOTLE. l7l

even if you should see no master, that it was built for
mice and weasels." Twice afterwards, also in the same
work, there is allusion to this comparison of the world
to a fine house built for a master, and not for mice.

Now there actually are some signs in existence to
suggest that it was Aristotle who was the original of this
illustration, and even of its extension generally. Cicero
himself, for example, in the thirteenth chapter of his
second book, dc Finihus, has this : '"' They did not see
that as the horse is born for the race, the ox for the
plough, the dog for the chase, so man {ut ait Aristotclcs)
is born, quasi mortalcm dcum, as though a mortal god,
for two things, ad intelligendtim, namely, d agendum."
In a similar passage in the de Natura Deorum where,
instead of Aristotle, Chrysippus is the authority, the
two things appear as ad mundum contcmplandiLin et
imitandum. Born for thought and action before, man is
now born for contemplation and imitation of the world.
It is evident, however, that if the former words were
those of Aristotle and the latter those of Chrysippus,
these latter have only been borrowed from those former.
But Cleanthes, as his master, preceded Chrysippus in the
Stoic school ; and Cleanthes shows traces of Aristotle as
the original quarry in these or similar references. Cicero,
for example, twice over refers to a fourfold origin for
the notion of Deity as — 1. Presentiments or divinations
natural to the mind itself ; 2. Destructive movements of
nature, storms, thunder, and lightning, etc, ; 3. Provision
and supply of all things necessary for us ; 4. The con-
stant order of the celestial phenomena — twice over, as I
say, Cicero refers to this fourfold origin of our belief in
Deity, and twice over he refers it to Cleanthes. Now
the inference is that Cleanthes again got this from
Aristotle. There is more than one passage in Sextus
Empiricus, namely (see Fragmenta Heitz, p. 35), in

172 GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINTH,

which it is directly attributed to Aristotle that he said
the notion of a God arose in us from the phenomena in
the heavens and the experiences of our own minds
through the communications of dreams or proplietic
vision just before death. There is the remarkable
passage we cannot forget in regard to the feelings of
a subterranean race of mortals if suddenly brought into
the light of day or the beauty of the night ; and again
also there is in the tenth chapter of the twelfth book
of the Mdaphysic that comparison of the order and its
Commander in the world with the discipline and general of
an army, followed up as it is there by a similarly consti-
tuted reference to a house with its planned and regulated
household. The illustration of the army will be found
carried out at full length in Sextus, who figures a spectator
to look down from the Trojan Ida, and observe the army
of the Greeks variously marshalled, " the horsemen first
with their horses and their chariots, and behind them the
infantry," as Homer is quoted to say.

Generally in this reference it is certain that Philo
Judaeus did adopt the illustration of the house, carrying
it out, too, into considerable detail. Of course Philo
Judaeus was born some fourscore years after Cicero, and
might very well have borrowed from him ; but being the
accomplished Grecian he was, and writing in Greek, it is
quite probable that he took the illustration from a Greek
rather than a Eoman source. It is in this way he
speaks : " Those before us inquired how it was we
assumed the Godhead, and those who were considered the
best of them, said that from the world and its parts, from
the excellences that were in these, we formed an infer-
ence to the cause of the world ; for as, should any one
see a house skilfully constructed with forecourts, porticoes,
and all the various chambers for the various persons and
purposes, he would conclude to its builder, — for not

CICERO A. THOMSON THE GERMANS. l73

without art and an artist would he suppose the house to
have been completed ; and in the same way as regards a
city, or a ship, or any other lesser or greater production ;
so now, also, any one coming into this vastest house or
city — the world- — and beholding the revolution of the
heavens, and the planets, and the stars, and the earth,
and then the animals and plants, assuredly he would
reason that these things had not been constructed without
a consummate skill, but that the creator of all this is
God." There are other passages also in which Philo
serves himself with the same illustration. We find it
repeated by others after him, as, in a remarkable manner,
by Minucius Felix.

It is now in place to say that, so far, we have seen
but the two arguments — that known as the teleological,
and that other which has been named cosmological. We
have still to see the rise of the third and, to us,
concluding argument. This, the ontological argument or
proof, unlike the others, has a Christian origin, in that,
as an invention or device, it is due, namely, to Anselm,
who died Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 1109.
That is more than a millennium after Cicero. But it is
to be borne in mind that, without any other exception
than this of Anselm's, already, as Cicero presents it, the
general argumentation was complete. Paley and the
Bridfjewatcr Treatises, though writing it, so to speak, into
modern instances, really added to the teleological argu-
ment— generally as an argument — nothing whatever else.
That argument, as it appears in the de Ncdura Beonirii,
may be left on the whole as pretty well finished.

I take it, we may suppose Cicero's to be good hands
to leave it in. Dr. Alexander Thomson published in
1796 a translation of Suetonius; but his principal object
in so doing, it seems, was to give him an opportunity of
perorating in his own way on Eoman literature in general.

174 GIFFORD LECTUEE THE NINTH.

In the course of that peroration he has this emphatic
affirmation, " The most illustrious prose writer of this or
any other age is M. Tullius Cicero." But, alas ! even as
Dr. Alexander Thomson was writing, the Germans were
bent on altering all that. For many years back there
has come only one note from Germany as regards Cicero.
The vanity and vacillation of the man, together with the
interminable wordiness of the writer, seem to have set
everyljody there against him — except the philologists, who
will have no Latinity absolutely classical except pretty
well only that of Cicero and Caesar. I could quote
largely from the Germans themselves in support of what
I say. But a sentence or two from Prantl, whose word,
in consequence of his Ricsenarheit, his giant labour on
logic, is pretty well authoritative now — a sentence or two
from Prantl, by way of specimen, will probably suffice.
Prantl, indeed, seems unable even to speak the name
Cicero without disgust. Cicero, he says, can certainly
Schwdtzen, that is, jabber or jaw. Then he speaks of his
" entire impotence," and " equally disgusting verbiage ; "
" Cicero, in fact," he says again, " is either so ignorant
or possessed of such frivolous levity that he, the bound-
less babbler that he is, has the conceit to think that, in
his three books, ' De, Oratore' he has brought together
the Ehetoric of Aristotle and that of Isocrates, although
it is notorious that in very principle there is an utter
difference between the two." In a note here also, he has
this : " Just generally, wherever Cicero names the name
of Aristotle, the effrontery is revolting with which,
without the slightest capability of an understanding, he
presumes to enter a judgment either for praise or blame."
These expressions will seem so extravagant as to defeat
themselves. Nevertheless, the present sentence of philo-
sophical Germany lies not obscurely at the bottom of
them. I fear we must admit the vanity, the vacillation,

A WORD IN DEFENCE, l75

the verbiage, and the want of either accuracy or depth ;
but still one would like to say something for Cicero. As
regards the Catiline conspiracy, for example, it was, to
be sure, tremulously, but still it was truly, persistently,
and successfully that lie broke its neck. There are a
considerable number of jokes too current in his name, as
of the Ptoman Vatinius, who had been consul only for a
few days, that his consulship had been a most remarkable
one, that there had neither been winter, spring, summer,
nor autumn during the whole of it ; or of that other
consulship which had been of only seven hours' duration,
that they had then a consul so vigilant that during his
whole consulship he had never seen sleep. These and
other such jokes attributed to Cicero are to be found in
Macrobius ; and I, for one, cannot believe that a man
with humour in him wanted, like a pedant or a craven,
either reality in his soul or substance on his ribs. Eather
I will give him credit for both, sincerely thanking him,
as well, for his three books, tie Natura Dcorum.

The lecturer has again gratefully to acknowledge the
honouring: obligation of Professor Blackie's felicitous
verses on occasion of the foregoing : —

ATHEISM AND AGNOSTICISM.

{Lines written after heariny the Gifford Lecture by Dr. Hutchison
Stirling on the Theism and Theology of the Stoics, Cicero, and the Neo-
Flatonists, last Saturday in the University.)

All hail, once more ! when nonsense walks abroad,

A word of sense is music to the ear
Vexed with the jar of fools who find no God

In all the starry scutcheon of the sjihere
Outside their peeping view and fingering pains,

And with the measure of their crude conceit
Would span the Infinite. Where such doctrine reigns

Let blind men ride blind horses through the street :

1*76 GIFFORD LECTUHE THE NINTH.

I'll none of it. Give me the good old Psalm ^

King David sang, and held it deadly sin
To doubt the working of the great I AM

In Heaven above, and voice of law within.
Where'er we turn, from earth, and sea, and sky,
God's glory streams to stir the seeing eye.

John Stuart Blackie.

1 Psalm xix., which subsumes under one category of intelligent
reverence the physical law without, and the moral law within, and
thus avoids the error of certain modern specialists, who see only
what can can be seen in the limited field of their occupation.

J. S. B.

The Scotsman, Friday, Ajiril 5, 1889.

GIFFOED LECTUEE THE TENTH.

Cicero— To Anselm — The Fathers— Seneca, Pliny, Tacitus — God to
the early Fathers — Common consent in the individual and the
race — Cicero — Irenaeus, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Arnobius,
Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, Cyril of Alexandria, Julian,
Gregor}^ of Nyssa, and others, Athanasius — Eeid, religion,
superstition — The Bible— F. C. Baur — Anselm — His argument
— The College Essay of 1838— Dr. Fleming— Illustrations from
the essay— Gaunilo — Mr. Lewes — Ueberweg, Erdmann, Hegel
— The Monologium — Augustine and Boethius — The Proslogium
— Finite and infinite — What the argument really means —
Descartes — Knowledge and belief.

With Cicero we reached in our course a most important
and critical halting-place. As we have seen, he is even
to be regarded as constituting, in respect of the older
proofs, the quarry for the argumentation of the future.
Henceforth, his works, indeed, are a perfect vall'ee de la
Somme, not for celts, flint-axes, but for topics of dis-
course. We have still, in the general reference other-
wise, to wait those thousand years yet before Anselm
shall arrive with what is to be named the new proof, the
proof ontological, and during the entire interval it is the
Fathers of the Church and their immediate followers
who, in repetition of the old, or suggestion of the new,
connect thinker with thinker, philosopher with philo-
sopher, pagan with Christian. Before coming to Anselm,
then, it is to the Fathers that we must interimistically
pass. A word or two may be found in some few inter-
vening writers, as Seneca, perhaps, or Pliny, or even
Tacitus ; but the respective relevancy is unimportant.

M

178 GIFFOED LECTURE THE TENTH.

Seneca is a specious writer, with a certain inviting ease,
as well as a certain attractive modernness of moral and
religious tone about him, all of which probably he has to
thank for the favour that made him an authoritative
teacher during many centuries. But his lesson is seen
pretty well now to be merely skin deep, and he is,
accordingly, I suppose on the whole, for the most part
neglected. Dr. Thomas Brown, I fancy, is about the last
writer of repute that takes much note of him. Brown,
ore rotundo, does indeed declaim, at considerable length
too, in Seneca's glib, loose Latin, from his very first
lecture even to his very last ; but then we must consider
the temptation, as well of the convenience, it may be, as
of the ornament. Aulus Gellius assigns to Seneca a
diction that is only vulgar and trivial, and a judicium
that is but leve and futile. He is in place here only in
consequence of the frequency with which he recurs to
the idea of God : " Prope a te Deus est, tecum est, intus
est ; Deus ad homines venit ; immo, quod propius est, in
homines." That is not badly said, but is it more than
said ? One reflects on Seneca's laeta paupcrtas of speech
while in midst of the luxury of fact, and on the con-
sequent meek self-sacrifice with which he expatiates on
the posse pati divitias ! The elder Pliny is, as his time is,
quite philosophical in regard to the gods ; but he is
evidently deeply impressed by the spectacle of the uni-
verse, of which there can be but one God, he thinks ; who
is " all sense, all sight, all hearing, all life, all mind, and
all within himself," and that, in terms at least, is the
One, Personal, Omniscient, and Omnipotent Deity, whom
we ourselves think. Tacitus is later than I'liny, and his
judgment is in uncertainty, he admits, whether the affairs
of mortals are under the determination of a Providence or
at the disposal of chance. The chapter, the 22nd of the
sixth book of the Annals, is a remarkable one.

THE FATHERS. l79

What strikes us first in the early Christian writers in
this reference is the frequency with which they employ
that argument that is known as the Consensus Gentium.
Nor is this strange. There came to these pagans with
Christianity then the awful form of the majestic Jehovah,
I Am that I Am, whom German and French writers
have taken of late, degradingly, I suppose, familiarizingly,
to call Jahve. But under whatever name, He came for
the first time then to those we call the ancients, as the
Almighty God of this vast universe, the Creator, Maker,
Sustainer, and Preserver ; the power that is for ever
present with us, to note and know, to bless or to punish.
This was the one great mightiness, the mystic, here and
now present awfulness with whom, to overwhelm, to
crush, and destroy, the early Christians confronted the
loose rabble of the polytheistic deities, the abstract null
of Neo-Platonic emanation, and the gloomy daemons of
the wildly heretical Gnosis. This was He of whom
Job spoke, of whom the Psalmist sung, with whose
wrath the Prophets thunderstruck the sinner. That
this God was, that this God alone was, there was, on the
part of the Fathers, a universal appeal, as well to the
common experience of the nations historically, as to the
very heart and inmost conscience of the natural man.
Cicero was quoted in many texts, as that, among men,
there is no nation so immansueta and so fera as not to
know that there is a God. This is a truth which seems
to have been insisted on by all the Fathers, from the first
to the last. Man, they say, is in his nature endowed by
the Creator with such capabilities and powers that, as soon
as he attains to the use of reason, he, of himself, and with-
out instruction, recognises the truth of a God, and divine
things, and moral action. That is the true light, which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world (John i. 9).
" All know this," says Irenaeus, " that there is one God,

180 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TENTH.

the Lord of all; for reason, that dwells in the sph'it, reveals
it," Tertullian has a remarkable work named De tesii-
monio animae naturaliter Christianae (Of the testimony of
the soul as naturally Christian), in which there occur
many striking passages in regard to the testimony of the
soul itself, as, even from the first, and by mere nature,
Christian. He calls it " an original testimony, more
familiar than all writing, more current than all doctrine,
wider spread than every communication, greater than the
whole man. . . . The conscience of the soul is from the
beginning a gift of God," and that there is a God is a
" teaching of nature silently committed to the conscience,
that is born with, and born in us." God from the
beginning laid in man the natural law, says Chrysostom.
Arnobius asks, " What man is there who has not begun the
first day of his nativity with this principle ; in whom it
is not inborn, fixed, almost even impressed upon him,
implanted in him while still in the bosom of his mother ? "
" Among all mankind," says Clement of Alexandria, " Greek
or barbarian, there are none anywhere upon the earth,
neither of those who wander, nor of those who are settled,
that are not pre-impressed with the conviction of a supreme
being. And so it is that every nation, whether in the east,
or opposite in the west, in the north, or in the south, has
one and the same belief, from tlie beginning in tlie
sovereignty of Him who has created this world ; the
very utmost of whose power extends equally everywhere
within it." " Man cannot divest himself of the idea of
God," is the averment of Lactantius ; " his spontaneous
turning to Him in every need, his involuntary exclama-
tions, prove it : — the truth, on compulsion of nature, bursts
from his bosom in its own despite." To Cyril of Alexan-
dria TO elBtvac 6e6v, the knowing of God, is dSiSaKTov rt
XPVH'^ /^^^ avT0jjLa6t<;, an untaught thing, and self-acquired ;
and he even quotes the Apostate Julian to the effect that

COMMON CONSENT. 181

the proof of this is the fact that " to all mankind, as well
in public as in private life, to single individuals as to
entire peoples, the feeling for divine things is universal ;
for even without teaching we all believe in a Supreme
Being." Gregory of ISTyssa, Eusebius of Caesarea, John of
Damascus, Jerome — in short, it is the common doctrine
of the Fathers of the Church and their followers, that
belief in the existence of God is in man innate ; and,
among them, Athanasius, in so many words, directly declares
that for the idea of God " we have no need of anything
but ourselves." So far, then, I think we may admit that
we have sufficient illustration of the argument for the
existence of God — it can hardly be called -proof — that
depends on the common agreement of mankind, nationally
and individually, and is frequently expressed by the Latin
brocard: Quod semiocr, quod uhique, quod ab omnibus.
It is hardly a proof, as I say ; but, as an argument, it has
its own weight ; and, as Eeid says, " A consent of ages and
nations, of the learned and the vulgar, ought, at least, to
have great authority, unless we can show some prejudice
as universal as that consent is, which might be the cause
of it." And here, of course, the tendency to a belief in the
supernatural on the part of mankind may be adduced as
precisely such a prejudice ; but the question remains, is
not such tendency precisely the innate idea — only, perhaps,
not always in the highest of its forms ? That, as an
argument, it should have jDOSsessed the full acceptance of
the Fathers, is only natural ; for there in their reading
it was ever before them : the intense Godwards of the
Bible as on every page of it. For that, indeed, is it
estimable : that, to all mankind, is its fascination and its
irresistible and overpowering charm. But, be it as it
may with the argument from the consensus omnium as
being the vox naturae, if it was from the Bible that the
Fathers were led to it, there was about equal reason for

182 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TENTH.

their being led, by the same authority, to the other
arguments ; as that from design especially. Why, to that,
innumerable passages of the grandest inspiration were
perpetually before their eyes or ringing in their ears. It
were out of place to quote such passages at any length
here ; but I may remind you of such exclamations in the
Psalms, as : " How manifold are Thv works ! in wisdom
liast Thou made them all : the earth is full of Thy riches :
who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment ; who
stretchest out the heavens like a curtain ; who maketh
the clouds Thy chariot; who walketh upon the wings of
the wind." "Whereupon are the foundations of the earth
fastened ? or who laid the corner-stone thereof, when the
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy ? " With such expressions as these before
their eyes, as I say, or ringing in their ears, it was im-
possible but that the Fathers of the Church should think
of the wonders of the creation. Ferdinand Christian
Baur points out, as though, indeed, they (these proofs)
were but beginning then, that in many the usual expres-
sions of the Fathers, elements may be seen to show
themselves towards the development of both arguments,
the cosmological as well as the teleological. And he
directly quotes, in evidence, passages from Tertullian,
Irenaeus, Theophilus, Minucius Felix, Athenagoras, Lac-
tantius, and others. But there are a great many other
ecclesiastical writers than those mentioned by Baur, who
give their testimony to the arguments for the existence of
God. One might quote at great length in this reference,
but time fails, and I must pass on.

Though it is perhaps possible to find matter of sugges-
tion elsewhere, especially in Augustine, I proceed then, at
once to Anselm of Canterbury as alone responsible for the
proof that bears his name. This, the ontological proof, as
it appears in Anselm's own Latin, I translate thus : —

THE COLLEGE ESSAY OF 1838. 183

" That there is in the understanding something good, than
which a greater cannot be thought — this, when heard, is
understood; and whatever is understood is in the under-
standing. But assuredly that than which a greater cannot
be thought, cannot be in the understanding alone : for if
that than which no greater can be thought were in the
understanding alone, then plainly than that (than which a
greater csiimot be thought), a greater can be thought — that,
namely, which is such also in reality. Beyond doubt there
exists, then, something, than which a greater cannot be
thought, both in the understanding and in reality."

I hold in my hand a little essay of my own, entitled,
" An estimate of the value of the cirgummt a priori," a
little optional essay it was, written for, and read in, the
Moral Philosophy Class, Glasgow University, in the winter
of 1838. Dr. Fleming, the Ethical Professor at that time,
was not a man of large culture, either ancient or modern ;
and with the literature of this present century, chiefly
poetry and romance as at first it was, he was on the whole,
perhaps, not specially sympathetic. His literature rather,
as I think we may say, was Pope and Goldsmith, Hume
and Ptobertson ; Samuel Johnson and Dr. Hugh Blair ;
and his philosophy, in the main, that of Eeid, Stewart, and
Brown, at the same time that his favourite writer of all,
perhaps, philosophical or other, was David Hume. Dr,
Fleming was a very acceptable professor, a man of elo-
quence, judgment, and taste, and taught well ; but, some-
how, one did not expect to hear of Anselm at his hands.
His Student's Manual of Moral Philosophy shows, however,
that the notice of Anselm was no peculiarity of the one
session, but belonged, in all probability, more or less, to
all. In that particular session, the form in which it was
given to us appears to have been this : " Our notion of
God is that of a Being than whom nothing can be greater ;
but if His existence be only in our intellect, there is room

1 84 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TENTH.

for the existence of a Being greater (by the addition of
reality) than the One of whom we have the notion that He
is infinitely great ; which is absurd. God has therefore
a real existence." That, indeed, comes pretty well to the
same meaning as what I have translated. The essayist
remarks of it: "With respect to Anselm's argument, it is
indisputably a mere sophism, a cunningly-entangled net,
but still one which it is possible to break through." And
then he continues : " But, though its nature be such, it may
not be altogether useless to be able to expose its fallacy.
Let us try, for example, if we cannot concoct an argument
in appearance just as conclusive as Anselm's, and yet
evidently absurd. When Milton attempted to describe
the Garden of Eden, he attempted to portray the most per-
fect paradise his mind could conceive. Milton's notion, then,
of Eden, is that of a garden than which nothing can be more
perfect ; but if the existence of Eden be only in Milton's
intellect, there is room for the existence of a garden more
perfect than that of which Milton has the conception ;
which is absurd. Milton's Eden has therefore a real
existence. Again, when Thomson conceived his Castle of
Indolence, his conception was tliat of a scene than which
nothing could be more lazy, languid, and indolent ; but if
the existence of this scene be confined to his intellect,
there would be room for a scene still more lazy, languid,
and indolent (as it might have a real existence) than that
of which he has the notion; which is absurd. Therefore
there is a Castle of Indolence." " The fallacy lies in the
forming the conception of something superlative, and yet
leaving out one of the notions necessary to render it
superlative." I quote this for the purpose of showing
that if I now view Anselm's argument somewhat otherwise
than I did then, it cannot be for any want of the usual
and reputed common-sense and correct understanding in
its regard There is no book now, which tells us any-

GAUNILO. 185

thing of Anselm, but tells us as well of Gannilo or
Gauuilon. " Gaunilon," says Mr. Lewes, " pointed out the
fundamental error of Anselm in concluding that whatever
was true of ideas, must be true of realities." This, indeed,
was so clearly the whole state of the case to Mr. Lewes,
that that remark appears enough to him, and he does not
condescend to repeat Anselm's argument at all. Prantl,
too, seems very much of the same mind as Mr. Lewes. In
a note he does, indeed, give the argument ; but he adds,
" and so on in a current, crude confusion of thought and
being ; " while in the text, he writes of it thus : " It
exhibits to us only the spectacle of the grossest self-
contradiction, made possible by the attempt to prove pre-
cisely subjectively, the most perfect objectivity. But the
absurdity of the enterprise was quite clearly seen into by
Gaunilo, who alleged that the proof was equally applicable
to the existence of an absolutely perfect island." Gaunilo
was a certain Count de Montigni, who had retired, late in
life, and disgusted by feudal failures, into the convent of
Marmoutier, near Tours. Every reader of philosophy
knows about Gaunilo and his island now. It is certain,
however, that the essayist who opposed Milton's Eden,
and Thomson's Castle of Indolence, to the argumentation
of Anselm, had still many years to wait before he
should know that there had been any such man as
Gaunilo. Indeed, I am very much inclined to believe
that Gaunilo was at that time a perfectly unknown name
almost to everybody, perhaps to the professor himself.

Ueberweg seems to be of the same opinion in regard to
the entire argument of Anselm. " The notion of God," he
says, " which, in the Monologium, Anselm arrives at
cosmologically by a logical ascent from the particular to
the universal, he endeavours to make objectively valid in
the Proslogium ontologically by mere development of the
notion, thereby demonstrating the existence of God from

18G GIFFOED LECTURE THE TENTH.

the simple idea of God ; for he was dissatisfied that, as in
the method of the Monologium, the proof of the existence
of the absolute should appear dependent on the existence
of the relative." As is easy to understand, Ueherweg has
little favour for the idea of actually extricating real exist-
ence out of ideal existence, things there without out of
mere thoughts here within : he sees very clearly the
absurdity of sacrificing one alleged maximum to another
alleged maximum because, after all, the allegation is false,
and what is alleged in the one case is not a maximum.
His words are : " The absurdity of comparing together two
entities, one of which shall, not exist, but only be thought,
while the other shall both be thought and exist, and so
inferring that this latter, as greatest, must not only exist
in thought, but also in reality ! " Generally, is Ueberweg's
perfectly cogent remark here : " Every inference from
definition is only hypothetically true, with presupposition,
that is, of the actual existence of the subject."

There cannot be a doubt, then, of the correctness of
all these views in their hostility to the argument of
Anselm. It is hard to believe, however, that any mere
absurdity, and for nothing but the curiosity of it, should
have been distinguished beyond all others such by the
unexampled honour of such enormous reference. Accord-
ingly, as Erdmann puts it, there is already a turn given to
it towards a more respectable significance. Alluding to
the Monologium as preliminary to the Proslogium, and
to the cosmological result of the former as preliminary
to the ontological operation of the latter, Erdmann writes
thus : " The resultant notion of God is now applied by
Anselm in behoof of the ontological proof for the exist-
ence of God, which he has developed in his Proslogium,
the further title of which is Fides quaerens intellectum,
faith in search of an understanding for itself. Eeferring
to the first words of the 14th Psalm, he would prove to

ERDMANN HEGEL. 187

the fool who says in his heart, There is no God, that he
contradicts himself. He assumes for this only the single
presupposition that the denier of God knows what he says,
and does not give vent to mere meaningless terms. Assum-
ing him to understand by God that than which nothing
can be thought greater, and assuming him also to admit
that to be both in the intellect and in fact, is greater
than to be in the intellect only, then he must likewise
admit that God cannot be thought not to be, and that he
has therefore only thoughtlessly babbled. And just so
also is Anselm perfectly in the right when he replied to
the objection of Gaunilo, in his illustration of the island,
namely, that what he (Anselm) started from was not
something that is greater than all, but something than
which nothing can be thought greater, and that he had
thereby brought the fool into the necessity of admitting
either that he thinks God as actually existent, or that
what he says he does not thinJu" If this account of the
matter be followed out, I doubt not most people will feel
inclined to allow Anselm a greater amount of sense than
in this particular instance he has hitherto got the credit
of. His reply, in fact, in that sense, is utterly irresistible.
You say there is no God ; but if you think what you
say, then God is. If you think God necessarily as that
than which nothing can be greater, then God is : God is, a
God thought not to be were no God : give such an import
to it, then the notion of God were no notion of God. It
is very probable that Erdmann has touched the very
kernel of the nut here. Kant does not come into con-
sideration at present, as his place is among the opponents
of the proofs, and characterization in his case is still
distant. As for Hegel, Anselm's argument comes to be
mentioned by him a great many times, and always with
the greatest respect. He actually says at page 547 of
the second volume of his Philosophy of Religion :

188 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TENTH.

" This argument has been, found out only first in Christen-
dom, by Anselm of Canterbury, namely ; but since then
it has been brought forward by all other later philoso-
phers, as Descartes, Leibnitz, Wolff, always, however, with
the other proofs, though it alone is the true one." This,
nevertheless, is not, as one knows, the common opinion ;
as, indeed, I find not badly put in this little old essay
of fifty years ago, the concluding words of which are
these : — " Such, then, is our estimate. And we think
ourselves entitled to conclude, that the value of the a
^'io7'i argument is, in comparison with that of the a
posteriori, insignificant. It is needless to make use of a
weak evidence, when we can get a stronger. Why
should we attempt to read by the light of a candle, when
we may open our shutters to the sun ? " Evidently,
therefore, it. will require us to look at Anselm's argument
in a very peculiar manner before we shall be able, in
opposition to the current opinion, to endorse that of
Hegel. Hegel, in fact, will not satisfy many readers in
these proofs of his for the existence of God. They seem
so diffuse, so vague, so indefinite ; even to abound so in
repetitions, in circumlocutions, in strange clauses out of
place, or insusceptible of any meaning in their place —
in short, so confused, dry, colourless, and uninteresting,
that one wonders if it be possible that there ever was
found a class of young men able to listen to them. I do
not suppose it can be denied, indeed, that it is impossible
to find in all Hegel more slovenly writing than in these
Beweise that constitute pretty well the latter half of the
second volume of the Lectures on the Plcilosophy of
Belirfion. Words seem thrown down again and again
just at a venture : as they came they were taken, no
matter that they looked more or less ineffectual perhaps.
We seem to have before us, in fact, a marksman who
has indeed a mark in his view, but who fires at it always

MONOLOGIUM. 189

carelessly, and often almost as though intentionally widely.
Nevertheless, ever here and there, grains are to be found
by an eye that shall look long enough and deep enough ;
and they are not wanting in what concerns Anselm.

But in the method of Anselm an essential prelim-
inary to the Proslogium is the Monologium ; the reason-
ing of which is, in a certain modified way, cosmological.
The fulcrum of it lies in what the act of predication
is found to involve. Things similar have a common
predicate, which common predicate obtains less or more
according to the individual condition of each. Each, as
participant, then, in what is common to them all, pre-
supposes that in which it is participant. What is good
presupposes the Good ; what great, the Great ; what true,
the True ; what beautiful, the Beautiful, etc. But all
things also are : they all participate in Being ; and they,
therefore, all presuppose Being. Being as Being, highest
Being, truest Being, best Being, supreme Being, perfect
Being, absolute Being is the one universal presupposition.
Belativcs only prove an absolute. All that relatively is, only
is through that which absolutely is — which withdrawn, all
falls, all disappears. This is the teaching of Augustine
as well ; and Anselm exclaims, it must be " most certain
and clear to all who are only willing to see." Further,
there cannot be a plurality of absolute beings ; for even
if there were many, they must all participate in a
common absolute Being, which is, therefore, one and
single, and alone by itself. " This highest nature," says
Anselm is " ])cr sc ipsam ct ex se ipsa: all other things
are not through themselves, but through it, and not from
themselves, but from it. . . . Then, since it were wicked-
ness to think that the substance of the most perfect nature
is something than which something else were in any way
better, that most perfect substance must itself he." In
this way, evidently, we have a complete introduction to

190 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TENTH.

what is regarded as the proper argument of Ansehn.
AVe have here, that is, completely formed, what that
argument starts with as the notion of God, the notion,
namely, of tliat, than which there cannot possibly be a
greater. In the Monologium, Anselm puts the case at
iuU length ; but the same strain is to be found in
Boethius as well as in Augustine. Boethius held,
namely, that negation as such equally presupposes
affirmation as such ; and that, consequently, imperfect
things being, there must of necessity be a highest perfect ;
and in such wise that the perfection were no mere predi-
cate, but the very essence, substance, and nature. Anselm,
then, having made good in the Monologium this notion
of a most perfect being, as in Augustine and Boethius,
proceeds somewhat thus in the Proslogium to secure his
notion reality. " Thinking of my opusculum, the Mono-
logium," he says, " which I had put forth as an example
of meditation on the reason of faith, and considering that
it was made up of a concatenation of many arguments,
I began to ask myself if it were by chance possible to
invent a single argument, which to prove itself should
stand in need of no other, and which alone should suffice,
etc. etc., I have written this little book which I have named
Proslogium, that is, alloquium Dei." He then begins his
book by an actual prayer to God in its reference, and in
the same way, at the conclusion of his argument, he gives
" thanks to Thee, because what, by Thy gift, I first believed,
I now, by Thy illumination, so understand that if I were
unwilling to believe I should not be able not to perceive."
In fact, Anselm, it appears, had long anxiety and no rest
day or night for the thought of proving, by a simple
argument, that whom we believe, exists, fearing for long
that it was mere temptation of the devil to propose to
establish by reason the things of faith, but rejoicing at
length in liis success through the grace of God. We

WHAT THE ARGUMENT EEALLY MEANS. 191

cannot but see, then, that this was a most serious matter
to Ansehii, and that he conceived himself in the end to
have accomplished only what was a true and genuine
work under the approbation and through the inspiration
of the Deity Himself. His reply to Gaunilo, indeed,
makes all this only the plainer ; and it, too, must be
pronounced in its own way, and in what it aims at, not
only genuine, but successful. Anselm needed no Gaunilo
to tell him the difference between ideality and reality.
His own words are these : " It is one thing, that there
is something in the intellect and another thing to per-
ceive that it is. For when a painter prefigures in
thought the image of what he is to do, he has indeed
that image already in intellect, but he does not yet per-
ceive that it really is, because he has not yet made it ;
but when he has painted it, then he both has in the
intellect, and perceives as existent, what he has done."
That Anselm was broad awake, then, to the usual dis-
tinction, must be held as a matter absolutely beyond
doubt ; and there can, consequently, be no means of
saving his intelligence in the matter of his argument,
but by the supposition that he assumed the distinction
in question to be plainly inapplicable to God, who was a
Being, not finite as an island, or a garden, or a castle —
but infinite. God was no object for the senses, like the
picture of the painter : God was the infinite substance
that is of all that is. That, indeed, is the burden of his
argument. At the same time, it is certain that, as a
formal syllogism, it is faulty and inadequate. The
major premiss, in fact, already, by j)resupposition, con-
tains within it the whole case. Its subject is that which
is reallest, that which is most perfect ; but that subject
cannot be reallest or most perfect unless it is. To com-
pare a part of the notion with the whole notion cannot
possibly give the real existence which the notion, by pre-

192 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TENTH.

sui)position, already has. At best, considered as a
syllogism, it has all the cogency it can have when put as
Erdmann puts it, who expressly says, " Precisely by the
quite subjective turn which Anselni gives his proof, is
its value greater than in the later forms of Wolff and
others." That word " subjective " here is the merit of
Erdmann. Anselm is supposed to speak to the fool who
says in his heart. There is no God, and twits him with
self-contradiction. When you say God, you name that
than which nothing can be thought greater : you under-
stand as much ; but you still say, it has no existence ;
but if it has not existence, it is not greatest, and you
have contradicted yourself. That is the truth of the
matter, then. To think God — truly to think God, we
must think Him to exist. Existence is an element in
the very notion of God ; or with God notion and exist-
ence are inseparable. Existence is involved in the very
thought of God — flows and follows from His very nature
and essence. That is the very idea of God, — viz. tliai He
is. We cannot think God, unless we think Him to be. To
say it is only an idea, contradicts the very idea that it is,
for that idea is that God is. The idea of what is most
perfect, of what is reallest, is the idea of God, take that
idea as a rule, and compare with it what shall be thought,
but not be, why, plainly, as much as this is not enough ;
it falls short and fails. Or, to say the same thing
otherwise, we admit the notion of God, the idea of God,
to be the highest possible notion, the highest possible
idea ; but if it is the highest, then it is. Examine our-
selves as we may, that we find to be our own actual
subjective condition : our own actual subjective condition
is precisely that notion, precisely that conviction. The
syllogism of Anselm, then, is but an explication, an
analysis of our own state of mind : it is there .simply to
bring home to us what our own thought amounts to.

KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF. 193

In a word, God is not something that can be tlwught, and
yet thought not to BE. That is a contradiction — that is
a contradiction of thought itself ; and that really is the
thought of Anselm. That is the sublimest thought of
Descartes also, and that is the very first word of modern
philosophy — this, namely: God is that whose nature
cannot be conceived unless as existent : the very notion
of God includes and implies the Icing of God : Dcus
causa sui est — God is His own cause. It has been
objected in blame to Anselm that, as regards the two
polar elements, Knowledge and Belief, he has given the
precedency to the latter, to belief ; but we may remind
ourselves that, " As the earth must be loosened for the
reception of the seed, so must the heart be softened (by
Belief) for reception of the truth (in Knowledge)." . And,
really, there is, after all, no harder heart than that of
your sceptic — no shallower soul than that of him whose
enlightenment is a sneer. That, as it is the lesson of
Augustine, so it is the lesson of Anselm, to whom the
thought of God means the hcing of God. And with that
word in our ears, we may well conclude this part of the
course. ^

^ ' ' The fallacy lies in the forming the conception of something super-
lative, ami yet leaving out one of the notions necessary to render it
superlative." These words of the little Essay (p. 184), may be interpreted
as unwittingly telling precisely in the opposite sense. That is, it is the
"fallacy," we may say, not of Anselm, but precisely of the fool, so to
leave out ! To smj God and unsay existence, is to say and unsay at once.
If God is a necessary thought, then as sure as His tliought is, He is.
But God is a necessary thought, therefore, etc.

N

THE SECOND COUESE OF LECTURES
THE NEGATIVE.

1890.

GliTORD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

Lectures by Lord Gifford —By whom edited— Germane to, and illus-
trative of, natural theology — Number and nature — Their literary-
excellence — Even poetical — Der laute Larm des Tages — On atten-
tion— On St. Bernard of Clairvaux— (Luther, Gibbon)— What
Lord Gifford admires — The spirit of religion — The Trinity —
Emerson, Spinoza — Substance — Brahmanism — Eeligion — Un-
derstanding and reason — Metaphysical terms— Materialism —
Literary enthusiasm — Technical shortcomings — Emerson and
Carlyle — Social intercourse — Humanity — Liberality and toler-
ance— Faith — Mesmerism — Ebenezer Elliott — An open sense to
evidence.

I BEG to express to you, in the first place, the pleasure
which it gives roe to meet once again an assembly like
the present, in the interest of these lectures on the Lord
Gifford Bequest. Then, in the reference that seems
naturally next, as regards an introductory discourse,
namely, perhaps I may be allowed to say that I might
excusably hold no such prelimiuary to be expected from
me on this occasion, when what we begin is but the half
of a whole that had abundantly its preparatory explana-
tions at first. So far one may incline to accept that,
probably, as a very reasonable view. Still, I know not
that I can proceed to act on it with any grace, in face of
the fact of this little book. As one sees, it is a handsome
little volume ; and it came to me, bound as it is, unex-
pectedly and with surprise, from Frankfort-on-the-Main.
It has, somehow, a singularly simple, pure, and taking
title-page, the words on which are these : " Lectures
Delivered on Various Occasions by Adam Gifford, one of

198 GIFFORD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

the Senators of the College of Justice, Scotland." This
title-page is followed by a perfectly correspondent modest
little note, to the effect, that the lectures concerned are
" a selection from a miscellaneous number of others given
from time to time by request, on very various occasions,
and to greatly differing audiences, the preparation of
which was a great pleasure to the lecturer," and, if " of
necessity sometimes hurried, never careless." " They
were in no case," it is added, " meant for publication, and
we print a few of them now only for his friends." The
signatures to that note — the " we " — are Alice Ealeigli
and Herbert James Gifford ; the one the niece, so long,
in loving attention, associated with Lord Gifford, and the
other his son. The lectures themselves, as we see, are
not to be regarded as published ; and that I should speak
of them here, consequently, may seem to border on
impropriety. But, as we see also, they are printed for
his friends ; and I know not that I speak to others than
the friends of Lord Gifford when I speak to this audience.
I am very certain of this, too, that I can adduce nothing
from these lectures that will not prove admirably illus-
trative and confirmatory of the express terms in which,
in the Trust-Disposition and Settlement, directions are
given with respect to the duties necessarily incumbent on
the holders of this chair. It is in that light and for
that light, that, precisely to me at all events, these lectures
of Lord Gifford's own are very specially welcome. And
if now, by quotation, comment, or remark, I proceed to
make as much as that good to you also, I have the hope
that the result will prove constitutive, as well, of a lecture
in place, a lecture in just such a course as this is, a
lecture on the subject of Natural Theology, and a lecture,
too, even in a way, almost at the very hands of the
founder himself of this chair itself. There are seven of
these lectures of Lord Gifford's, and they are respectively

LITERARY EXCELLENCE. 199

named as they come : 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson ; 2.
Attention as an Instrument of Self-Culture ; 3. Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux ; 4, Substance : A Metaphysical
Thought ; 5. Law a Schoolmaster, or the Educational
Function of Jurisprudence ; 6. The Ten Avatars of
Vishnu ; and 7. The Two Fountains of Jurisprudence.
Only two of them, then, so far as the titles would seem
to suggest, belong to the writer's own profession of law,
while the rest are literary, philosophical, or even meta-
physical. Three of them in spirit, and even more or less
in matter, might not unreasonably be held to have a
direct bearing on the very subject which it has been his
will that the four universities of Scotland should be
bound in perpetuity expressly to discuss.

What strikes one at first in these lectures, and from
the very face of them, is the constant vivid writing, the
literary accomplishment that everywhere obtains in them.
He says once, for example, " If first principles have not
been carried out, if on the firm foundations the walls
have not risen rightly, by truest plummet perpendicular
towards heaven, and by bedded block parallel to the
horizon ; then be sure that sooner or later we must begin
again, for Nature will find out our failure, and ivith her
there is no forgiveness." Surely that last is what is usually
described as a fine thought; and there is concrete re-
fiection throughout, as well as felicitous phrase. It is in
the same way that he says once : " The prophet can tell
liis vision, but he cannot give his own anointed eye."
What we may almost call technical literary balance is
perpetual with him, as when he says : " Hinduism offers
culture to the educated and wisdom to the wise, while
with equal hand she gives superstitions and charms to
the ignorant and to the foolish ; " or when he holds of
Emerson that " Many of his essays are refined and
elevated poems, and some of his poems are really very

200 GIFFORD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH. ^

abstruse and difficult essays." Genius "takes its own
way," he tells us once ; " it comes in its own air-borne
chariot ; it is bound by no forms, tied and swaddled in
uo etiquette of costume. In the rudest garb it enters
the dress circle or the robed conclave, and white neck-
cloths and square caps reverently make room for it."
Similar examples of expression are these : " He (Emerson)
is not covered over and covered up, swathed and swaddled
in his learning, like some learned mummies, but he wears
it like a dress. He possesses it, and not it him. He
bears it with him like an atmosphere and an aroma, not
like a burden upon his back. It is used naturally and
spontaneously. It flows like a fountain or exhales like
a perfume ; never forced, never artificial, never added for
show or effect. — Let no one despise learning, true learning,
the lessons of experience or the words of ancient wisdom,
but remember that the greenness of earth's latest beauty
rests on the rocks and the ashes which it took millenniums
to form." Lord Gifford displays always a like literary
talent when the occasion calls on him to be descriptive,
and often then there are tones and accents of even a very
veritable poesy, as when he says once : " If you will go
up with me step by step, I think we may hope to reach
the mount of Transfiguration and almost to see the glory !
If you will only give me your strength and strive up-
wards with me, I think I can almost promise you that,
even within our hour, we shall enter the white cloud that
rests upon the summit, and feel the dazzling of the light
that is ineffable!" Of the Middle Ages he says: "It
was a fierce world. No wonder gentle natures were glad
to quit it ; and when we think of it and realize it, we
cease to be surprised that dukes and princes, peasants
and paupers, are ready to leave their luxury or their
misery and to seek a haven of shelter, where during this
short life they may say their prayers, and then lie down

DER LAUTE LARM DES TAGES. 201

in peace to sleep, in death." " The Middle Ages ! " he
cries, " what strange scenes and pictures do not the
words recall ! The fortalice of the half-savage baron and
the mean huts of his degraded serfs. The proud pomp
and spiritual power of the haughty churchman, before
which the strength of kings and the might of feudalism
were fain to kneel. The chivalry of Europe drained time
after time to furnish forth the armies of the Crusaders.
Eeligious excitements and revivals passing like prairie-fires
over Europe, and compared with which modern revivals, even
the wildest, seem but the coldest marsh gleams. Strange
and terrible diseases and epidemics, and plagues both
bodily and mental, that mowed down millions as with the
scythe of destruction. The spotted plague, and the black
death, and the sweating sickness. The dancing mania, the
barking mania. The were-wolf and the ghoul. Strange
mystical schools of philosophy exciting popular admira-
tion and enthusiasm to us unexampled and inexplicable.
And below all, the swelling and the heaving of the slow
but advancing tide, which even yet is bearing us upon
its crest." In all that, there is no want of effective
description everywhere ; but, surely, the last sentence is,
in a way, sublime ! What is loudest in the day, what is
most visible, what attracts the attention and excites the
voices of the crowd, is not always to us admirable, is not
always to us cheering, is not always to us hopeful ;
oftentimes it is disappointing, dispiriting, disheartening ;
sometimes it seems degrading, or is even at times sicken-
ing. And then it is that we are glad to think in the
strain of that last sentence of Lord Gifford's. That, that
— on the top — before our eyes — is degrading, beastly,
disgusting ; but " below all " there is " the swelling and
t]ie heaving of the slow but advancing tide " that, " bear-
ing us too on its crest," flows on ever, heedless of the tem-
poralities of earth, on and on to the perpetuities of heaven.

202 GIFFOED LECTUEE THE ELEVENTH.

Of the seven lectures in the little book, there are
specially three which are more particularly in our way :
they are Ealph Waldo Emerson ; Suljstance : a meta-
pliysical thought ; and the Ten Avatars of Vishnu. Of
the two others which are more or less assonant to the
interests that engage us, the lecture on Attention as an
Instrument of Self-culture may be recommended as, in
the midst of its excellent general advice, containing
many useful hints for practical service ; while that on
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, taking moral and religious
occasion from the peculiarities of the theme, is an inter-
esting narrative. We may regard it as, to some extent,
a proof of Lord Gifford's glowing sympathy with w^hat-
ever was heroically moral and religious, that he should
have given himself so much trouble with, and bestowed so
much care on, the career of the young man of twenty-two
who, as he says, " renounced his inheritance and fortune,
renounced his nobility of birth and every title of dis-
tinction, and stood penniless and barefoot, a candidate for
admission at the gate of the monastery of Citeaux." He
certainly became a great power in Christendom, this
young man, perhaps the greatest of his time ; but it was
neither for worldly honours nor for bodily comforts.
Every preferment was at once rejected by him — him
whom Luther " holds alone to be much higher than all
the monks and popes on the entire surface of the earth ; "
while Gibbon says of him, he " was content till the liour
of his death with the humble station of abbot of his
own community." The life in that community, again,
Lord CJifford depicts to us thus: " Tliey (the monks)
were aroused every morning at two o'clock by the convent
bell, and they immediately hastened along the dark, cold
passages and cloisters to the church, which was lighted
by a single lamp. After private prayer they engaged in
the first service of the day, ' matins,' which lasted two

ST. BEENARD. 203

liours. The next service was ' Lauds,' which was always
at daybreak. Lauds was followed almost without inter-
mission by other religious exercises till about nine, when
the monks went, without any breakfast other than a cup
of water, to labour in the fields or in the necessary work
of the house, and this continued till two o'clock. At two
o'clock the famished monk was allowed to dine, as it was
grimly called : and this was the only meal in the twenty-
four hours. The dinner consisted almost always of a
pottage made of peas, lentils, or barley, sometimes with
the addition of a little milk, but oftener not. No
Cistercian monk under Bernard's rule ever tasted meat,
fish, butter, grease, or eggs. On this one meal the monk
had to subsist till the same hour came round another
day — retiring to his hard pallet about nine o'clock to be
roused to the same daily round at two o'clock next
morning." This day's " darg " was worse than a Scotch
ploughman's yet ; and we are not surprised to hear that
Bernard was as thin as a skeleton, and that " physicians
wondered he could live at all." Still we have to see all
this has a charm for Lord Gifford. " All through these
frightful austerities," he says, " it is not possible to with-
hold our tribute of admiration ; here at least is a man
who believes in the unseen, and acts out his belief un-
flinchingly." That, then, is what Lord Gifford admires —
belief in the unseen, and the sacrifice of a life to it.
But all through these essays, the mood, in the main, is
not a different one. Lord Gifford, however it be with
the letter of his creed, is always spiritually religious.
Eeligious feeling is his blood ; and his sympathy is with
the Christian. " Uneventful lives are often the most
influential," he says ; " it is thought, not action, that
ultimately moves the universe. — The ink in the inkstand
of a quiet thinker of Kirk Caldy (Adam Smith) now
floats the commercial navy of the world ; and (to take

20-4 GIFFORD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

with reverence the highest of all instances) a few spoken
and unwritten words of a young carpenter of Nazareth, —
words dropped by the waysides and in the fields of
Galilee, — have regenerated mankind and given His name,
' Christianity,' to half the globe." And not here only,
but elsewhere also, he would seem to testify almost even
to the life of the very letter that is spoken by the
Church. Of incarnations, he says : " Ever and again
man's spirit tells him — ' The gods are come down to us
in the likeness of men,' in the crowd or in the solitude,
by night or by day, ever still the heavens are opened,
the dazzling smites us to the ground, and deep calleth
unto deep." " God's revelations are not over, are not
completed. We have not yet heard His last word, we
shall never do so. We look for His coming still."
" May we not all unite in the wish, which is the prayer,
Thy kingdom come ! " "I find the great central doctrine
of Christianity, that on which all its other doctrines
turn and revolve as on a pivot, to be an impressive, most
mighty, and most magnificent Avatar — God manifest in
the flesh!" It is in reference to Hindu ideas that Lord
Gifford is speaking when he is moved to say, " God is
manifested in the Trinity ! Three essences in one God !
Three aspects of the Infinite." And I may stop here
to remark how deeply philosophical Lord Gifford would
seem to be in his sense of a doctrine that has proved a
stumbling - block and a stone of offence, perhaps to
liundreds and to thousands within the bounds of
Christendom. If what we can number one, two, three,
mean, and must mean, three individual things, essentially
separate and disjunct, then unity in trinity is an ex-
pression that can have, not possibly, any concrete inter-
pretation. I have a vague recollection of having read
somewhere of Carlyle that he once somewhat disparagingly
illustrated the Trinity by a man, in a gig, drawn by a

THE TEINITY, 205

horse. The gig was a unit, the horse was a unit, and the
man was a unit : how could these three units be different,
yet the same ; three, yet one ! If this is true of Carlyle,
I should be very much inclined to hold that, in this
instance at all events. Lord GifFord was the deeper
philosopher. Three aspects of one Infinity, says Lord
Clifford ; while Carlyle refers to three units that are
palpably quite as many finites. Carlyle, had he wished
to illustrate an essential trinity, need not have wandered
out of his own self. That body of his, as he walked
about, was Carlyle ; and that thinking in his head, as he
wrote his book, was Carlyle ; and that ego — that I or
Me — that was one and the same identical es;o all throucfh
his body and all through his thinking, was Carlyle ; and
body, thinking, and ego were three, at the same time that
body, thinking, and ego were one : the three were one !
Had Carlyle remained within himself, and eschewed the
gig, he might have found an illustration for the Trinity
that was, to some extent, essential, and not numerical only.
There cannot be any doubt that Lord Gifford, for his
part, at all events, was perfectly open to the distinction,
and quite beyond the hazard of confounding concretion
with abstraction. Philosophically he knew that there
might be three aspects of the one Infinite ; and, as a
student of the Middle Ages, he was perfectly aware of the
historical position of the idea ecclesiastically. Lord
Gifford terms it " a doctrine of our own Church, I mean
of Christianity, known as the Eternal Procession of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost from the Father, a doctrine
which in scholastic times engaged the learning of the
Church, and helped to clothe the walls of its spacious
libraries." And perhaps some of us, indeed, may not
have yet forgotten a precisely similar mention, in our
course last year, with regard to the early Church, modern
German philosophy, and the relation of the Son to the

206 GIFFORD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

world. Another casiuil allusion of last year's may also
be within our recollection, which was to an apparent
assonance to pantheism in certain expressions of the
Bequest. In the religious reference, it is in place to say
now that some such assonances reappear here in the
little book that at present claims us. I daresay we are
not unprepared for this when we consider that one
lecture is on Ealpli Waldo Emerson, another on Sub-
stance, and a third on what concerns Hinduism. Of
Emerson, Lord Gifford remarks that he " inclines to the
higher or subjective pantheism ; but he (Emerson) will
not limit, and he cannot define. Before all such
questions he stands uncovered and reverently silent. Xo
proud denial, no cynic scoff, no heartless sneer escapes
him ; and without a theory of the universe he clings to its
moral meaning." This is certainly well said as regards
Emerson; and it certainly names a very admirable
catholic attitude as regards religion, which attitude, not
by any means necessarily pantheistic, would do honour to
any man. Lord Gihbrd, Emerson, or another. In the
lecture on Substance, naturally, we are in presence of the
arch-pantheist, named and described by Lord Gifford as
" Benedictus de Spinoza, one of the most eminent of the
philosophers who have treated of substance." Of him,
one cannot fail to see, on the part of Lord Gifford, an
even familiar knowledge. If suhstcmce was to Spinoza
God, it is no less divine to Lord Gifford ; for to him
(xod is the all-pervading substantiality and the single
soul that is alone present everywhere. Of animals, he
says, " Their mainspring is the Eternal, and every wlicel
and every pinion is guided by the Infinite — and there
can be but o)ie Infinite — this is the root-thought of the
fetichism of the Indian or of the Hottentot ; and this is
what the Egyptian felt when he saw sacredness in the
crocodile, in the ibis, or in the beetle. Said I not "

BRAIIMANISM. 207

(Lord Gifford exclaims) — "said I not that the word
svbstance was perhaps the grandest word in any language ?
There can be none grander. It is the true name of (7od.
Do you not feel with me that it is almost profane to
apply the word Substance to anything short of God ?
God must be the very substance and essence of the
human soul. The human soul is neither self-derived nor
self-subsisting. It did not make itself. It cannot exist
alone. It is but a manifestation, a phenomenon. It
would vanish if it had not a substance, and its substance
is God. But if God be the substance of all forces and
powers and of all beings, then He must be the
only substance in the universe or in all possible
universes. This is the grand truth on which the system
of Spinoza is founded, and his whole works are simply
drawing deductions therefrom." These are very trenchant
expressions ; and their full imjDort cannot be mistaken.
As a single sample in the Indian pantheistic reference,
I may quote this : " Whatever Hinduism, or Brahmanism,
may have latterly or in its bulk become, still in its
purest and highest essence it was (indeed I think it still
is, and I am glad to think so) a monism, a monotheism,
and in one aspect a pantheism of a pure and noble kind.
Pure Brahmanism knows only one God, indeed only one
Being, in the universe, in whom all things consist and
exist."

Now, whatever pantheism may be, and however we
may be disposed to regard it, surely we cannot revolve
in mind these various deliverances of Lord Gifford's
without feeling that we can apply to him his own words
in regard of Emerson : " Emerson," he says, " is not dis-
tinctively a religious writer ; that is to say, he does not
profess to teach or to enforce religion, but his tone is
eminently religious." And then he goes on to say that,
do as we may, " religion will not be separated from any-

208 GIFFORD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

thing whatever: j'ou cannot produce and you cannot
maintain a religious vacuum, and if you could, even
secularism would die in it." That is particularly well
said, and is surely a great truth. We are too apt, each
of us, to concentrate ourselves into our own abstractions.
'If we are mathematicians, we will be mathematicians
only, or, similarly, chemists only, physiologists only,
botanists only, and so on. A\Tiereas there is a single
concrete for which all abstractions should unite, to
which they should all tend, and in which tliey should
all terminate. And that is religion, not religion as it is
a dry bone of divinity, but religion as it is the vital
breath of humanity. You might as well expect digestion
in independence of the heart-beat, as foison for humanity,
or any department of humanity, in independence of
religion. That is the truth of the matter, and what
Lord Gifford says is the very word for it : Let Secularism,
once for all, effect its religious vacuum, and Secularism
itself will die in it ! Man doth not live by bread alone ;
and neither will humanity advance on the understanding
only. Above the understanding there is reason. The
understanding distinguishes, and divides, and makes clear
the many ; but it is reason that, in vision and in love,
makes us all one soul, while only in the element of
religion does the soul find breath. " There is," says Lord
Gifibrd — " there is an eternal and unchangealjle system
and scheme of morality and ethics, founded not on the
will, or on the devices, or in the ingenuity of man, but
on the nature and essence of the unchangeable God.
The individual man. Lord Gifford intimates, may worship
" the phenomenon, the appearance ; but the noumenon,
the substance " still is, and still is the truth : " it is a
high strain of Christianity to worship only the eternal,
the immortal, and the invisible." In these and other
expressions of Lord Gifford's, we have observed the

MATERIALISM ENTHUSIASM. 209

occurrence of terms which are strictly and technically
philosophical. He opposes, for instance, phenomenon to
noumenon, and appearance to substance. " Without the
true doctrine of substance and of cause," he says once,
" philosophy would be a delusion and religion a dream,
for true philosophy and true religion must stand or fall
together ; " but of both we are to understand " substance "
to be " the very foundation-stone." There is a " force
behind and in all forces," an " energy of all energies."
" Nature ! 'Tis but the name of an effect. The cause is
God ! " These and such like expressions occur again
and again in the little book ; and, " if all this be a part
of metaphysics," Lord Giffbrd declares, then "metaphysics
can be no empty and barren science." Accordingly, we
find no sympathy here with the mere materialistic views
and tendencies of the present day. " There are some
who say and think " — we may quote by way of example
— " there are some who say and think that they could
find in the grey matter of the brain the very essence of
the soul — to such materialists the proper answer is to
be found in the truths of ultimate metaphysics. Only
go deep enough, and the most obstinate materialist may
be made to see that matter is not all the universe.
Mind is not the outcome of trembling or rotating
atoms." — " The substance and essence of a man is
his reasonable and intelligent soul." — " The substance
of all forms, of all phenomena, of all manifestations,
is God."

I have spoken of literature in connection with Lord
Gifford ; and there are many keen expressions to bear
out the implication, some already seen — such phrases,
namely, as " anointed eyes," or " shining countenances ; "
or " to mete with the measure of the upper sanctuary ; "
or decisions " straight as the rays that issue from the
throne of God ; " or his words when he admonishes his

0

210 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

brothers of the Law, ever, in the first place, to ascend
and meditate on the " moral heights," whence descending,
he assures them, " their pleading robes, in the Courts of
Jurisprudence, will shine with light as from the Mount
of Transfiguration." I have spoken also of philosophy
in connection with Lord Clifford, and certainly we have
seen much tliat is not alone an acknowledgment of
philosophy, but is itself philosophy. Still it is not to be
understood that I would wish to represent Lord Gifford,
whether in literature or philosophy, as precisely pro-
fessional. For both he has splendid endowments: in
both he has splendid accomplishments. One almost
fancies that it was as a literary man he began — witness,
as he expresses it, the " fresh and startled admiration,"
the " overflowing enthusiasm " with which he read
Emerson. " That enthusiasm," he exclaims, " ladies and
gentlemen, / still feel. I rejoice to think that my early
admiration was not misplaced. Time witli his ruthless
mace has shattered many idols of a fond but false
worship. But let us thank God if we were not wholly
idolators, if any of our youthful delights are delightful
still, if some of the morning colours are unfaded, and
part of its fine gold undimmed." To doubt or deny the
full liberty of the guild in the teeth of such expressions
as these, which syllable the very vernacular of the pre-
cincts, trenches very closely on the mere invidious, and
pretty well reduces to foolishness what laudation we
have already expended. Still, with all natural endow-
ment and all acquired accomplishment, we fancy we
catch, here and there, a note at times that betrays the
Gentile, the Ephraimite, the visitant, rather than the
brother. Lord Gifford tells us once, for example, " f)f
sleight-of-hand, of cheiromancy, as it is called ; " or, again,
we hear of Henry VI., " that drum-and-trumpet thing,"
which Shakespeare had, probably, little to do with, as

TECHNICAL SHORTCOMINGS. 211

being yet a " whole drama grandly original I " We saw,
some time ago, too, the phrase, " the higher or subjective
pantheism." Knowing that it is from his perusal of
Spinoza that Lord Clifford has derived his idea of pan-
theism, one has difticulty in associating " subjective " with
it. One thinks that a subjective pantheism would be,
properly, theism, and not pantheism at all ; at the same
time that one knows withal that there is no more
familiar commonplace in philosophy, than the fact that
what the system of Spinoza lacks is precisely subjectivity.
Familiar acquaintance with, is not, in truth, exactly
technical knowledge of, Spinoza. We are accustomed to
this. Statements of theories by admirers of their authors,
which said authors would, it may be, have been some-
what gratefully perplexed with ; finding in them, perhaps,
such partial accentuations or partial extensions, as, witli
similar partial limitations or omissions, made their own
work (so called) strange to them. Such will not prove to
readers by any means an uncommon experience. In the
immediate reference, we can certainly say this, that the
God of Lord Clifford, much as he venerates substance, is
only very questionably the God of Spinoza, and that
Lord Gifford, had he been familiar with what we may
call the accepted statistical or historical return of
Spinoza, would have written of him from considerably
different findings.

But " subjective " is not only ol)jectionably associated
with pantheism by Lord Gifford, we see also a similar
association of it on his part with the word " higher."
" The higher or subjective pantheism," it is said. But,
philosophically, — of any philosophical system, that is, —
the association of " higher " with " subjective " is an
association that, more than any other, perhaps, in these
days, (/rates. It is the objective idealism, for example,
that, to all metaphysical ambition, is the higher, and not

212 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

the subjective. To Professor Ferrier it was little short
of a personal insult to call his idealism sul)jective !

Another point in this connection is that Lord Gifford
signalizes, and dwells very specially on the " learning "
of Emerson. Now, I do not think that any one, formally
and fairly a member of the guild, however much he
might admire Mr. Emerson, would feel prompted to call
him learned — if learned, that is, means erudite, technically
and scholastically erudite. Miscellaneously, no doubt,
Mr. Emerson was an excellent reader. He read many
books, and he meditated on them. Ikit he also walked
in the woods, and meditated there. What he read, too,
was mostly in English. He tells us himself he never
read an alien original if he could at all compass a trans-
lation of it. Mr. Emerson nowise suggests himself to
us in his books as a professed expert in languages,
whether ancient or modern. Neither are we apt to
think of him as a student, properly, of the sciences, or
of any science. Even of philosophy, so to speak, he was
no entered student, — into what deeps and distances so-
ever, and by what means soever, his intellectual curiosity
may have relatively carried him !

Further, in regard to learning, when I am told by Lord
Gifford this : " He (Mr. Emerson) has edited Greek plays
— 'he has edited several Greek standard authors!" I
confess I am astonished at my own ignorance ! (He did
write a preface to a translation of Plutarch's Morcds.)

This is to be said in the end, however : That, with
whatever discount. Lord Gifford is literary and philo-
sophical, even as Mr. Emerson was literary and philo-
sophical. In fact, in reading these lectures of Lord
Giflbrd's, we are constantly reminded of Emerson. Lord
Gifford would seem to have remained so persistently by
Emerson, that we may be pardoned if we conceive him
to have fallen, at times, into Emerson's very attitude, and

EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 213

almost taken on Emerson's very shape. Again and again
in Lord Gifibrd it is as though we heard the very words
of Emerson, and in their own pecuHarity of cadence,
rhythm, or even music. Lord Gifford, at one time, must
have been inflamed for Carlyle. Nevertheless, he has
dwelt so long in mildness at the side of Emerson that
the passionate voice of Carlyle, at the last, hurts him.
So it is that he says, " In Emerson is no savage and
vindictive hatred ; no yells for the extermination of the
wicked and of folly." We see thus that gentleness is
more to Lord Gifford than force. That, in fact, is the
grain of his character ; and it comes out again and again
in this little book. How he rejoices that intercourse with
his fellows, for example, and the friction of a formed
society had, as regards himself, made " an humbler and
more modest man of him than he had been before." A
test that of the amount and quality of the original sub-
stance ; for it is precisely such a situation and precisely
such influences that make the shallow man shallower.
It is characteristic of this sound humanity in Lord
Gifford that he would have us "regard our neighbour's
joy and sorrow," even " his wealth and rank," " in pre-
cisely the same way as if they were our own." That is an
admirable touch, the loeaWi and ranh ! It is a fact that
the- man who looks through the palings need not envy
the man on the other side of them. The scenery, the
woods, the hills, the stately architecture, are as much his
as they are their owner's, and in a free transparency of
mind unsmutched by a single care. " Every sky," says
Lord Gifford, and there is his heart's love to nature in
the word, " gleams, morning and evening, with loveliness
upon us, if we but lift our eye to it, even from the city
lanes" So it is that his fellow is the core always of
the thought of Lord Gifford. He rejoices in " the pro-
phecy of the future," " in every high and holy aspiration,"

214 GIFFORD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

and sympathizes " in every effort to elevate the cliaracler
and improve the condition of man." Lord Gifford is
himself (in a slightly different sense) manly withal. " I
am here to-night," he says to his audience on one occa-
sion, " freely and frankly to talk with you, man to man,
as friend with friend ; " and there is even humour in him.
" An old Scottish lawyer," he remarks, " quaintly said,
' You cannot 'poind for charity,' and so you cannot, by
any form of diligence, compel kindness, or consideration,
or courtesy." As is only to be expected, a wise, an open,
and a liberal tolerance is another characteristic of the
humanity of Lord Giflbrd. He will not have us forget
that " The Church was the last bulwark of humanity in
the Dark Ages," that " the Church, and the Church alone,
was the home of learning and the guardian of letters,"
and that she took always " the poor and forsaken to her
bosom." " To the everlasting praise of the Catholic
Church be it said," lie cries, " she never knew any
difference between rich and poor, between the nobly born
and the lowly born, but welcomed all alike to her loving
though somewhat rigid arms : to her every one horn at
all was well born." Yet it is with comment on the
bigotry and persecutions of this same Church and of his
favourite St. Bernard that he says, " Truth passes like
morning from land to land, and those who have sat all
night by the candle of tradition cannot exclude the light
which streams through every crevice of window or of
wall." It gladdens him, even in the same mood of
enlightenment, to see " some old prejudice given way,
some new view got of the perfect and the fair." That
is enlightenment akin to the Aufkliirung, to the en-
lightenment of name, which, of course, is good so far as
it is enlightened ; but here is the substantial enlighten-
ment. " A few words now," says Lord Gifford, " on the
miracles of Saint Bernard. For [in strong italics] he did

MESMERISM. 215

work miracles — attested Ijy scores of eye-witnesses, whose
testimony nothing but judicial blindness can withstand."
How explain them? "The Talisman is [in small capitals]
Faith ! " "All things are possible to him that believeth ! "
But then, adds Lord GifFord : All " is closely connected
with the modern phenomena of mesmerism," etc. It is,
perhaps, too late in the day for any one to dispute or
deny certain contraventions of the iisual on the part of
mesmerism ; but this was not so at first. The ordinary
routine of common sense, which alone was philosophy to
the Aufgeklarter, the man of enlightenment then, — in his
freedom from prejudice and his hatred of the lie, — the
ordinary routine of common sense could not be said to
be interrupted without a pang to the heart of this
Aufgeklarter in the beginning, at the stupidity of the
vulgar, caught ever by some new trick ! It is told of
Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Ehymer, — a warm-hearted,
honest, able, perfectly admirable man in his day, but still
something of that day's Philistine, or something of that
day's Aufgeklarter, — 'that he was loud in his denuncia-
tions of mesmerism as mere " collusion and quackery," but
that he unwarily undertook to stake the question on trial
of himself. " Accordingly the poet," says the narrator and
the operator, a man whom I personally knew, " sat down
in his chair, and the moment my hand came in contact
with his head, he shrunk as if struck by a voltaic pile,
uttered a deep sigh, fell back upon his chair, and all con-
sciousness fled from him." We are not surprised to
hear, nevertheless, that the poet (Elliott himself), alone
of the whole company, remained unconvinced : he only
" rubbed his eyes," and " would have it that he had
fallen asleep from exhaustion." Lord Gifford, then, has
still the substantial enlightenment that is open to all
evidence, and will not reject, because of physical facts,
others which happen to be psychical.

216 GIFFORD LECTURE THE ELEVENTH.

And with this I will conclude the picture, trusting
that you will find it only natural and sufficiently in place
that, with this little book before me — and the informa-
tion it extended — I conceived an introductory lecture on
the Founder of this Chair only my duty, and the rather
that it necessarily involved much of the matter of Natural
Theology.

GirrOED LECTUEE THE TWELFTH.

A settlement for faitli Lord Gifford's object — Of our single theme
the negative half now — Objections to, or refutations of, the
proofs — Negative not necessarily or predominatingly modern,
Kant, Darwin — The ancient negative, the Greeks, Pythagoreans,
Ionics, Eleatics, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Democritus, (Bacon),
Anaxagoras, Socrates, Sophists, Diagoras, Aristotle, Aristoxenus,
Dicaearchus, Strato, (Hume, Cudworth), Aristophanes, etc., —
Eome — Modern Europe, France, Hume and the seventeen
atheists — Epochs of atheism — David Hume, his influence — To
many a passion and a prejudice — Brougham, Buckle— Style ! —
Taste ! — Blair — Hume's taste. Pope, Shakespeare. John Home
— Othello — The French to Hume — Mr. Pope ! — Some bygone
litterateurs — Personality and character of Hume — Jokes,
stories, Kant, Aristotle — The Scotch — The Epicjoniad — America
— Germany — Generosity, affection, friendship, hospitality —
Smollett — Burke — but Hume, honest, genuine, and even re-
ligious and pious.

We must now address ourselves to the business proper
of the course. I think our shortest statement of the
general object of Lord Gilford at any time during last
session was this : " Faith, belief, — the production of a
living principle that, giving us God in the heart, should,
in this world of ours, guide us in peace." I probably did
enough then, by way of general explanation and illustra-
tive detail, to enforce and give its own due proportions to
this object and this theme, constitutive, as I take it of
the entire burden of the bequest itself. But, had I failed
in this, had my statement of that object — had my repre-
sentation of the spirit of Lord Gifford in setting up the
exposition of that object as the single and sole duty of a

218 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

special chair — had statement and representation been
insufficient and incomplete, we should have had to
acknowledge ample compensation and satisfactory relief
in what we saw, in our last lecture, of expressions of
Lord Gilford's own. Be the language of the Bequest
what it may, that little book, with its seven lectures, as
we may say, on law, ethics, and religion, presents us with
the full length Lord Gilford, and dispenses us from any
relative doubt.

Further, then, now, as regards our treatment of the
theme prescribed to us. I also explained last session
that I took the theme itself precisely as it was prescribed.
That theme, I said, is " Natural Theology and the proofs
for the Being of a God. These proofs I follow historic-
ally, while the reflection at the same time that we have
still before us what Lord Gifford calls the only science,
the science of infinite being, may bring with it a certain
(complementary) breadth and filling." " This is one half
of my enterprise. The other half, the negative half,
shall concern the denial of the proofs. This session
(I said then), I confine myself to the affirmative. Next
session, I shall conclude with what concerns the negative.
In this way we shall have two correspondent and comple-
mentary halves : one irenical, and the other polemical ;
one with the ancients, and the other with the moderns.
For I shall bring the affirmative half historically down
only " — only, in fact, to within sight again of Baymund
of Sabunde.

We have to understand, therefore, that we have now
seen the affirmative of our whole theme — the rise, namely,
and progress of the proofs or arguments for the being of
God as they are thetically presentant in history ; and
what remains for us at present is the exposition and
discussion of the negative. We have to see, that is, what
objections or refutations have been brought forward in

KANT DAEWIN. 219

regard of the proofs ; and we have to consider as well
what weight attaches to these objections, or what cogency
follows these refutations. It appears also that we are
now to find ourselves only in the modern world. This
does not mean, however, that we are to regard the
modern world as only negative in respect of the being
of a God, and never affirmative. That would be a
singular result of monotheism, universal now, as opposed
to polytheism, all but universal then. The reverse is the
truth. Up to within a score of years or so we may say
that modern writers on religion, while countless in num-
bers, were, with but few exceptions, affirmative to a man.
And this we feel we can hold to in spite of Kant and his
Kritik of 1781 ; for Kant, whatever his negative may be,
has his own affirmative at last. It is only since Mr.
Darwin that, as the phrase goes, atheism has set in like a
flood. It was not, then, because of relative numbers
that we made the ancients affirmative and the moderns
negative in regard to the belief in a God. The principle
of determination did not lie there at all. What alone
was considered in the laying out of our theme was the
historical course and fortune of the proofs themselves.

And if the modern world is not for a moment to be
considered exclusively or predominatingly negative ; so
neither is the ancient world to be any more considered
exclusively or predominantly affirmative. There were
atheists then quite as well as now. I suppose, indeed,
to the bulk of the Grecian public, every philosopher
before Socrates was an atheist, not even excepting the
Pythagoreans. Thales and the other Ionics are, as
Hylozoists, nothing but atheists ; while to call the
Eleatics and Heraclitus pantheists is tantamount, for all
that, to an admission, as their doctrines were, that they
were atheists. Empedocles was no better. Democritus
could point to the superhuman powers he believed in, as

220 GIFFOllD LECTURE THE TWELFTH,

it were in the air ; bat still a nature built up by atoms
was his God, no matter that, as Bacon maintains, the
atoms of the atomists were so very immaterial that an
actual atom no one had ever seen — no one ever could see.
Then Anaxagoras with the principal Sophists, even Socrates
himself, had been publicly arraigned as atheists. Diagoras,
in the time of Aristotle, became an atheist in consequence
of a real or supposed wrong unretributed by the gods,
and was known and named, and is still familiar to us in
our books, as Diagoras the atheist. Aristotle himself
hardly escaped a similar imputation ; which, besides, his
own school in the end would only have justified ; for
almost every member of it, at least in the second genera-
tion, gave more and more breadth to what naturalistic
doctrine had taken birth in it. Aristoxenus, for example,
held that " the soul was but a certain tension or intension
of the body itself, like what is called music on the part
of strung cords ; " while Dicaearchus, another Aristotelian,
declared the soul to be " only an idle name and nothing
but the body, which, one, single and simple, acts and feels
by organization of nature." Later than these, too, there
was, above all, Strato, surnamed Physicus, and physicus
is really equivalent to materialist or atheist, not but that
two of our modern authorities in this reference differ,
Hume declaring " Strato's atheism the most dangerous of
the ancient," and Cudworth maintaining atheism at all to
be no necessity of the position ; a view, however, to which
he has been simply won over by persuading himself that
what unconscious spontaneity Strato ascribes to matter
is no more than his own " plastic nature," and only saves
God, as is the very intention of that plastic nature, from
any derogation of direct intromission with the inquination
of sense. But Cudworth's view -is no more the view of
the ancients than it is that of Hume ; for if we look to
Cicero and Plutarch alone, we shall be satisfied that

HUME AND THE ATHEISTS. 2 21

Strato had no God or principle of design in his belief, but
referred all in nature to mere mechanical movement, to
accident and chance. Strato, according to Diogenes
Laertius, became so thin in the end that he slipped away
into death quite insensibly — truly a tenuitas mira, as is
the Latin of it !

It is evident from all this that a negative in regard to
the existence of C4od is by no means to be conceived as
confined to the modern world. Among the Greeks, at
all events, in the ancient world it existed in an undeni-
able plenitude. Nor is the reason of this remote or
hidden from us. Polytheism was dying out ; the popular
religion had ceased to be believed in. And Aristophanes,
who was even intolerant and a bigot in his tenacity for
the old, is as much a proof of the fact as the very
Diagoras to whose atheism he alludes, and whom, as
proclaimed l)y law, he names. Nothing can exceed the
derogatory familiarity of tone with which, at all times,
he treats the very gods in whom he would believe, and on
whom he would depend. After Pericles, indeed, irreligion
and atheism become in Greece rampant ; nor there alone.
Later, it is a like manifestation we witness in Eome on
the fall of the republic. And, later still, we have similar
characteristics in Europe, especially Prance, before the
outbreak of the revolution. David Hume, who, in his
inmost soul thought nothing greater than a named writer
— David Hume, in Paris, to his own admiration, sitting
radiant, at table, among the foremost bookmen in the
whole world then, could not help letting slip his innocent
belief that there were no such things as atheists, that he
had never met any — how he must have been astounded
at the reply — that he must have been very imfortunate
so long, for he was at that moment in the midst of
seventeen of them !

Whether in Greece or in Pome, tlien, whether in the

222 GIFFORD LECTUKE THE TWELFTH.

ancient or the modern world, there are epochs of atheism,
and always from similar causes. In Greece, as I have
said, the popular religion had, among many, ceased to ])e
believed in ; and with religious disbelief, political and
social corruption went hand in hand. Even Sparta,
which was the manly heart of Greece, under such influ-
ences, fell away into individual greed and personal
selfishness. The spot of earth from which Leonidas and
his three hundred marched to their deaths is hardly
known now. As it was in Greece, so was it in Eome,
in modern Europe, France — religious disbelief, political
equivocation, social laxity, portend historical ruin. With
all that can be said, however, of irreligion in ancient as
well as in modern times, it is still specially to these
latter that we turn for our negative ; and for the reason
that in them only is it first fairly formulated to our present
ideas. The same reason leads us to begin with Hume.

David Hume stands out historically as one of the most
interesting and influential figures of modern times. In
the philosophical reference, he constitutes for the various
views a veritable rendezvous, a veritable meeting-place,
if only variously, for the start apart again. He is a
knot - point, as it were a ganglion in philosophy, inUi
which all converge, from which all f/iverge into the wide
historical radiation that even now is. Scotch philo-
sophy, and French philosophy, and ( Jerman philosophy,
all are in connection with him. Under the teaching
especially of John Stuart Mill, he is at this moment
English philosophy. From him come Adam Smith, and
Eicardo, and whatever their names involve. Hume is
the guide of the politician ; through the economists he
is the spirit of our trade and commerce, and I know not
but, in what are called advanced vicics, he lies at this
moment very near even the heart of the Church. At
all events, he is to the mass of the cnliglitencd, the Auf-

STYLE. 223

gcMdrt, their high priest still ; his books are their Bible.
It is really surprising to how many Hume is, or has
been, a passion and a prejudice almost in their very
hearts. You will find articles in the Ee views, especially
of some years back, — in the West^ninstcr perhaps, — that
talk with baited breath of Hume as though he were
divine. I recollect of one in particular that, engaged
in running down George IV., compared that mon-
archical imposition with sundry celebrities near his own
time, and ended with a reference in that sense to Hume,
a reference that seemed simply lost in its mocking feel-
ing of an utter contrast. The article, indeed, might have
been written by Lord Brougham himself, who, from what
we know, alone of all mankind, possibly could have con-
joined the worship of Hume with the application of as
much in reduction of Gentleman George. Mill, and
Mackintosh, and Macaulay, and William Clifford, and
Trancis Jeffrey, were all intense admirers of Hume ; but
I question if any one of them would not have felt lost
in his wits for a moment at so grotesque and absurd a
proposition as the bringing together of two such dis-
parates I I know only one man since Brougham who
could have united with him as well in the prostration of
the worship as in the loftiness of the parallel. It is
possible to find no pair or peer to Lord Brougham here
but Thomas Henry Buckle. I do believe he, too, in his
big way, might have thought it apt — might have risen
into the moral sublime even — indignantly to remark on
the mockery and degradation in the comparison of
George IV. with Hume !

But, further, of this prejudice or passion for David
Hume, it used to be a common experience to find
enthusiastic examples of it, not only among the specially
learned, but even among those of our men of business
who knew what a book was. Sir Daniel Sandford, in

224 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

certain Dissertations of his, at one time popularly pub-
lishing in parts, spoke of " the spotless style of Hume ; "
and just for the word, many scores of delighted Auf-
gcMiirters would have been ready to die for him (Sand-
ford). Style, in fact, was for long, and very much owing
to David, the single thought that was present to every
man the moment he took a book in hand. Addison's
style was, of course, the ne j^ius ultra. But there was
the delightful style of Goldsmith, too, and the excellent
style of Eobertson. There were the stilts of Johnson,
and the wood of Adam Smith. There was the easy, lax,
complacent style of Fielding, and the pointed style of
Smollett. There was the finical style of Blair, and the
measured style of Gibbon — but, oh, the style of Hume,
" the spotless style of Hume ! " And so style was the
one consideration : style was the watchword. We read
for the style, and it was by the style we judged. We
were not at all exigent about the matter, if the form, the
style, the words but — as we said, indeed — fiowed. That
fioiu was enough for us, provided, as the master insisted,
it were but " smooth " enough, " harmonious " enough,
" correct " enough, " perspicuous " enough. It was to
enjoy that flow mainly that, business apart, we took up
a book at all. Of course we expected some matter in a
book, something of information, say. Still, if with that,
with something pleasing, that ran along in the telling,
there was but style — style and the certainty of the
writer's enliglitenment — we sought for notliing more. We
sought for nothing more — that is, as pupils of Hume — •
than pleasing information, antireligious enliglitenment,
and literary style. And I should just like to ask Mr.
Huxley if, with his will, there should be anything else
than that still.

It is in this way we see how much, in the time of
Hume, and after him, depended on taste. Almost it

TASTE — BLAIR. 225

seemed as though, did we but cultivate taste, the world
would be well. But ivhat taste was it that was to be
cultivated ? There are certain formal essays of Hume,
there are certain little propos of Hume, scattered every-
where, that can leave us no difficulty in that regard.
And were there any difficulty, there is Dr. Hugh Blair
with his Lectures on Rhetoric and the Belles Lettres,
to settle it. Dr. Hugh Blair is a kind of henchman to
Hume ; and he has formally set himself to the business
of formally teaching the principles of Hume, and even of
formally representing them, — I mean on Taste, leaving
his clerical principles completely under shelter. To that
latter effect, indeed, Blair can produce a certificate under
the hand of even Hume himself. " This city," ^ meaning
Edinburgh, says Hume, "can justly boast of other signal
characters, whom learniilg and piety, taste and devotion,
philosophy and faith, joined to the severest morals and
most irreproachable conduct, concur to embellish. One
in particular, with the same hand by which he turns
over the sublime pages of Homer and Virgil, Demos-
thenes and Cicero, is not ashamed to open with reverence
the sacred volumes ; and with the same voice by which,
from the pulpit, he strikes vice with consternation, he
deigns to dictate to his pupils the most useful lessons of
rhetoric, poetry, and polite literature." This, as we see,
is prettily comprehensive ; and Hume must have plumed
himself on his success in having touched up in it a
sufficiently good character for Dr. Blair — even of a
Sunday. But still, I doubt not, " polite literature "
forms the keynote in the combination to Hume. Polite
literature, taste : it is probable that David Hume, super-
stition apart, thought of nothing more constantly. I do
not know, however, that we now-a-days would quite
approve of what was to him polite literature, of what

^ Burton, ii, 470.
P

226 GIFFOED LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

to him was taste. In these respects Hume, like most
of his contemporaries in truth, was completely French.
Polish was the word ; human nature in the raw was
simply barbarous : beards were remnants from the woods
— and even the hair on our heads was a growth. We
could not be shaved close enough, and wigs were indis-
pensable ; wigs were civilisation — wigs and ruffles ! So,
the words from our lips, from our pens, would be smooth,
correct, perspicuous. This was the very ^:)?^ope?' way in
virhich Hume felt. He was, in a literary regard, not
what we call a Philistine, a man of the outside, who
knows prose only, but what the Germans call a FJiilister,
a narrowly fastidious, airily-refined formalist. To him
Mr. Pope, as a poet, had carried polish to its uttermost
limit, and Shakespeare was a barbarian. Aioropos of
Mr. John Home and his tragedy of Agis (how many of
us know that there was ever any such tragedy in exist-
ence ; for practically it is very certainly out of existence
now ?) — of this Agis, Hume writes from Ninewells, on
the 18th of February 1751 : " 'Tis very likely to meet
with success, and not to deserve it ; for the author tells
me he is a great admirer of Shakespeare, and never read
Eacine ! " Some three or four years later he writes
again : " As you are a lover of letters, I shall inform you
of a piece of news, which will be agreeable to you — We
may hojoe to see good tragedies in the English language. A
young man called Hume (Home was so pronounced then),
a clergyman of this country, discovers a very fine genius
for that species of composition. Some years ago he
wrote a tragedy called Agis, which some of the best
judges, such as the Duke of Argyle, Sir George Lyttleton,
Mr. Pitt, very much approved of. I own, though I
could perceive fine strokes in that tragedy, I never could
in general bring myself to like it ; the author, I thought,
had corrupted his taste by the imitation of Shakespeare.

SHAKESPEARE JOHN HOME. 227

But the same author has composed a new tragedy
{Douglas); and here he appears a true disciple of Sophocles
and Eacine. I hope in time he will vindicate the Eng-
lish stage from the reproach of barbarism " (Burton, i.
392). Then, some three years later still, he writes to
Adam Smith : " I can now give you the satisfaction
of hearing that the play {Douglas), though not near so
well acted in Covent Garden as in this place, is likely
to be very successful. Its great intrinsic merit breaks
through all obstacles. When it shall be printed, I am
persuaded it will be esteemed the best and, by French
critics, the only tragedy of our language." The letter
winds up with — " I have just now received a copy of
Douglas from London ; it will instantly be put in the
press" (Burton, ii. 17). No doubt, many contradictions
and absurdities that have happened in this world may
well be wondered at ; but surely a greater contradiction
and absurdity than this at the hands of Hume — precisely
the one man in this world who was well assured that it
was perfectly impossible for him (above all, in any such
matters) to commit or perpetuate any such thing as a
contradiction and absurdity — surely, just this, for all
that, is the very greatest contradiction and absurdity that
ever was wondered at, or that ever can be wondered at.
When we examine the volume, or volumes, called Essays
of Hume, we shall find that of the thirty-seven dramatic
pieces commonly printed as Shakespeare's, only three
ever occur to be referred to there. They are Pericles,
Othello, and Julius Caesar ; and of these the second is
actually mentioned twice. In the essay " Of Tragedy "
Hume moralizes in this way : " Had you any intention to
move a person extremely by the narration of any event,
the best method of increasing its effect would be artfully
to delay informing him of it, and first excite his curiosity
and impatience before you let him into the secret. This

228 GIFFORD LECTUEE THE TWELFTH.

is the artifice practised by lago in the famous scene
of Shakespeare ; and every spectator is sensible that
Othello's jealousy acquires additional force from his
preceding impatience, and that the subordinate passion is
here readily transformed into the predominant." In the
essay named " Of the Eise and Progress of the Arts
and Sciences," again,, near its close, remarking on the
encouragement given to young authors in their first
attempts, as leading in the end to their later mature and
perfect ones, Hume declares, " The ignorance of the age
alone could have given admission to the Prince of
Tyre ; but 'tis to that we owe ' the Moor.' " Besides
four lines quoted from Julius Caesar without direct
name, that is all that I find of any reference to Shake-
speare in the whole of Hume's Essays. Of the doubts
subsequently thrown on the amount of Shakespeare's
authorship in the Prince of Tyre, Hume, of course,
could know nothing : what alone he had in mind when
he wrote, probably, was the line from Dryden, " Shake-
speare's own muse his Pericles first bore." Inferentially,
then, we have, on the part of Hume, so far gratitude to
Shakespeare, and the praise of maturity to the Othello.
Shakespeare, too, must be allowed to be indebted to
Hume for a certain amount of approbation in regard to
what is called his " famous scene." Hume says " the
famous scene of Shakespeare," as though, of all the scenes
of Shakespeare, it was the " famous " one ; and we have
thus, and generally, on his part testimony to the great
popularity of Shakespeare even in his day. Of course it
is utterly impossible to say too much of the scene in
question ; but I know not that in all we say it is still
the praise of " artfulness " that we must alone mean.
Artfulness there is — on the part of lago enormous artful-
ness; and impatience that what is hinted at be got to,
must be conceded, as at least one element in that

OTHELLO. 229

appalling convulsion of all terrific elements that is then
the mind, and alone the mind, of the perfectly colossal
Othello. What we have before us are not the mere
miseries and suspicions in the awakening of a small
human thing called jealousy. "What we have before us
are the throes of a volcano — the confusion, anguish, and
bewilderment of a vast nature, a gigantic soul, that in
itself was too mighty, too grand and great ever to have a
doubt — of one, as it is said, " not easily jealous, but
being wrought, perplexed in the extreme I " It is the
perplexity of this great nature that we are to see, and
not the puling pains of a predominant jealousy only
philosophically increased by the artful excitation of a
subordinate and preceding impatience. In fact, what we
are to wonder at is not art, but the marvellous nature,
which alone we are to see breathing, living, moving
throughout the scene.

As for the four lines from Julius Caesar, they occur in
section 7 of the Enquiry concerning the Princijjles of
Morals : " Few men would envy," says Hume there,
" the character which Caesar gives of Cassius —

" He loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music :
Seldom he smiles ; and smiles in such a sort,
As if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything."

Now, is it not monstrous that any man, especially
that any man pretending to education and taste, above
all, that any man bearing himself, as Hume always
emphatically did, to be the very Aristarchus, the very
Simon Pure of critical taste and judgment, should have
been so absolutely blind to what lay there, in all its
reality of power, immediately before his very eyes ?
Hume had seen, and we may say, read Othello, the very
highest height in that kind, it may be, ever by mortal

230 GIFFOED LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

man reached yet ; a composition in its very nature super-
natural ; and his whole soul is not seized, and entranced,
and wonder - stricken by what he sees ! No ; very far
from that, he is rejoiced that, after the author of Agis,
we may hope at last to see good tragedies in the Englisli
language ; we may hope at last to see the English stage
vindicated from the reproach of barbarism ! we may hope
at last to have acquired in the Douglas of John Home
what he is persuaded will be esteemed the best, and, by
the sole true critics, the only tragedy in our language !
Othello lies before David Hume, and yet Douglas is to be
the best and only tragedy in our language ! How any
man could write down even these four lines from the
Julius Caesar, and yet not know that he had in them a
communication from the depths, but should turn from
them to refresh his ear (say) with the tinkling, ten-
syllabled couplets that give us the usual see-saw of
purling streams, and enamelled meads, and warbling
choristers, is a mystery to me ! Hume knew something
even of the Elizabethan drama generally ; he speaks of
the Volpone of Ben Jonson, and of how Every Man in
his Humour was but a preliminary essay tow^ards it. —
" Had Every Man in his Humour been rejected," he
says, " we had never seen Volpone " — and yet in his
essay of " Civil Liberty " he writes thus : " The French are
the only people, except the Greeks, who have been at
once philosophers, poets, orators, historians, painters,
architects, sculptors, and musicians : with regard to the
stage, they have excelled even the Greeks, who have
far excelled the English ! " What strange infatuation !
Shakespeare is so alone in mere dramatic quality, the
breadth and depth of his matchless humanity apart, that
there is not in all ancient times, there is not in all
modern times, one solitary individual that we can set
beside him. — I heard a German once in Paris tell a

MR. POPE. 231

professor there, who was vaunting his Corueilles and
Eacines, that their entire French hterature put into the
scale were all too light perceptibly to lift a Shakespeare
from the spot ; and yet, according to Hume, the French
drama far surpasses the Greek, and the Greek far
surpasses the English ! What a height of superiority
Hume must have feigned for the Eacines and Corneilles
over Shakespeare ! All this, however, is of a piece with
the general literary judgment of the period in which
Hume lived, at the same time that Hume must be seen
to constitute in himself the very extract, and summary,
and personification of that judgment. " A hundred
cabinetmakers in London can work a table or a chair
equally well," says Hume, in his essay "Of Eloquence,"
" but no one poet can write verses with such spirit and
elegance as Mr. Pope." Mr. Pope ! Mr. Pope is very
often on the lips of David Hume, and seldom absent,
very possibly, from his mind. " England," it seems,
according to him, "must pass through a long gradation
of its Spensers, Johnsons,^ Wallers, Drydens, before it
arise at an Addison or a Pope ! " At Spensers and
Jonsons in this rise, one w^onders a little ; and one is
pleased to see no Shakespeares or Miltons in it ; but
why no Chancers ? He, at least, had the ten-syllabled
clinks ! AYell, very possibly, if Shakespeare was bar-
barous to Hume, Chaucer was worse — very possibly he
was to Hume both barbarous and unintelligible. Then
the rise from Spensers, Jonsons, Drydens to Addison !
Why Addison's verse — and it is only verse — is now
absolutely unknown. One thing one wonders at in
Hume is the respect with which, when named, he seems
always to have for Milton. Some time ago at least, I
do not think any true follower of Hume, any genuine
aufgekliirt cpigon of his, was apt to imitate his master in
^ By that "Johnson," Hume must mean Ben Jonson.

232 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

this. Late genuine Aufgeklarters of the Hume stamp,
for the most part, coupled Milton with Shakespeare — in
their aversion. Aufgeklart, as they were, enlightened,
and with a perfect hatred in their hearts at that lie, the
Bible, they did not relish the subjects and the beliefs of
Milton ; and they disliked blank verse ! These were the
men who owned no music in verse, who could not read
any verse, unless it murmured on in regular ten-syllabled
clinking couplets without a break. Any break, even in
these, was a horror to them ; and doubly so, therefore,
any measure else ; for any measure else was but too
often broken into pauses, and was without that charming,
close-recurrent, heroic clink — was, to the ear, in fact, no
better than without clink at all. So it was, in the
main, that these men knew only two poets. Pope and
Goldsmith ; for even Dryden, in his " incorrectness," they
said, did not satisfy them. What alone satisfied them
was " a good author," whom they could take up (as
recommended by Blair) at any interval of leisure, to
beguile them by the murmur of the manner into oblivion
of the matter, whether in verse or prose. I am picturing
a class of men that are not so common now. They were
all what is called well-informed men, and had a taste
for the reading of books. With individual differences,
they were, in literary taste, very much as I say ; and
they were, in religious enlightenment, or anti-religious
enlightenment, still more as I say. After these char-
acteristics, the most notable remaining one was their
freedom from prejudice ! They had not a prejudice,
these men ; they were above every one of the prejudices
that we, common men, their weaker brothers, truckled to,
as in regard to — religion in the first place — but then
also in regard to place of birth, or country, or kindred, or
the wise saws of our grandmothers about " green Yules,"
etc. And yet these all opened, these calm, free, dis-

PERSONALITY AND CHAEACTER OF HUME. 233

passionate minds were the least calm, the least free, the
least dispassionate — the most narrow and the most
narrowly intolerant minds that could well be found in
the whole gradation of humanity. Now of these men Hume
was the originating prototype. Of course, he was much
larger than they. Whatever he was, he was in that, prime,
original, sole and single, himself. He was a most taking
mass of good nature, too, and was capable of generosity,
— generosity with forethought, generosity with prudence.
Kant was surprised that Hume — to him " the fine and
gentle Hume " — should have been " a great four-square
man." Caulfield, Lord Charlemont, speaks of " the un-
meaning features of his visage : his face broad and fat,
his mouth wide, and without any other expression than
that of imbecility, his eyes vacant and spiritless." In
person, too, he was so remarkably huge and corpulent
that he says himself, his " companions," when he and
they were backing from the imperial presence at the
Vienna Court, " were desperately afraid of his falling on
them and crushing them " — a perfect Gulliver among
the Lilliputians ! Then we are to fancy that prodigious
corporeity of a man bashful as a boy, rustic - looking,
uncouth, as shapeless and awkward in his military
uniform as a train - band grocer, speaking his English
ridiculously " in the broadest Scotch accent, and
his French, if possible, still more laughably," and
that, too, in " a creeping voice " that piped a weak
falsetto ! It will only complete the picture if we fancy
such a figure as this of Hume at the opera in Paris, —
his " broad unmeaning visage " " usually rising," as it is
said, entre deux jolis minois (between two piquant female
faces), — or better still, if we fancy him, in the Tableau of
the Salon of a night, as the sultan between the two
sultanas, sorely put to it as to what to say to them, but
desperately ejaculating, " There you are, ladies ! there you

234 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

are ! " and yet, more desperately thumping his stomach or
his knees, for a quarter of an hour continuously, till one
of his sultanas jumps up impatiently, muttering, " I did
just expect as much — the man is only fit to eat a veal ! "
It was in this way that his philosophic dignity suffered
at Paris ; but it is characteristic of the man that he
rather liked it ; he himself " seemed to be quite pleased,"
it is said, " with this way of living." He was particu-
larly simple and soft in fact ; his own mother used to
say of him, " Oor Davie's a fine guid-natured crater, but
uncommon wake - minded." It is really extraordinary
that, in the midst of this mass of simplicity, good-
nature, and, if I may say so, blubber, there should have
been found the subtlest analytic intellect that was then,
probably, in existence — almost as though it were itself
the paradox that it alone loved. That perfect refinement
of written speech, too ; we might as well expect Daniel
Lambert to have the lightest foot in the dance ! How it
is such refinement, indeed, that he would wish to have
before him always ! It is a perfect joy for him to say to
himself, Virgil and Eacine and Mr. Pope ! One is almost
tempted to think that David Hume would have been
contented to pass his life with no more than a schedule
before his eyes of all the great classical names in litera-
ture. He is quite happy to see them, one after the other,
named in his pages. " Of all the great poets," he says,
" Virgil and Eacine, in my opinion, lie nearest the centre."
" 'Tis sufficient to run over Cowley once, but Parnell, after
the fiftieth reading, is as fresh as at first." " Seneca
abounds with agreeable faults, says Quintilian, abunclat
dulcibns vitiis." " Terence is a modest and bashful
beauty." " Each line, each word in Catullus ^ has its
merit ; and I am never tired with the perusal of him."

' It saj's something for Hume that he could see that perfect diction in
Catullus.

HUME ON SWIFT. 235

Ah ! how such studies " give a certain elegance of
sentiment to which the rest of mankind are strangers ! "
How they " produce an agreeable melancholy," and how
" the emotions which they excite are soft and tender ! "
Ah ! " such a superiority do the pursuits of literature
possess above every other occupation, that even he who
attains but a mediocrity in them, merits the pre-eminence
above those that excel the most in the common and vulgar
professions !" Then he laments how far the English are
still behind in such politeness and elegance ! He even
fears that they are " relapsing fast into the deepest
stupidity and ignorance" (Burton, ii. 268); "their
comic poets, to move them, must have recourse to
obscenity ; their tragic poets to blood and slaughter."
" Elegance and propriety of style have been neglected ; "
" the first polite prose they have was wrote by a man
who is still alive (Dr. Swift)." And what a very limited
improvement that was to Hume, we can see from a letter
of his to Eobertson (Burton, ii. 413). Eemonstrating with
Eobertson in regard to certain usages in style on his
part, he says, " I know your affection for wherewith pro-
ceeds from your partiality to Dean Swift, whom I can
often lavigh with, whose style I can even approve, but
surely can never admire. — Were not the literature of
the English still in a somewhat barbarous state, that
author's place would not be so high among their classics."
Then, again, in the same letter, " But you tell me that
Swift does otherwise. To be sure, there is no reply to
that ; and we must swallow your hath, too, upon the
same authority. I will see you d — d sooner," It looks
odd, — it is the custom of even swearing gentlemen to
respect clergymen, — but Hume, for his part, seems to
reserve himself in that way just for his clerical friends !
In a letter of about the same date to Blair, when praising
Eobertson for his second historical work, the Charles V.,

236 GIFFOED LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

he says, playfully enough and good-naturedly enough, for
it concerns the rival whom the public begin to place
above himself: "I hope, for a certain reason, which I
keep to myself, that he does not intend, in his third
work, to go beyond his second, though I am damnably
afraid he will ! " It is really very odd. I have read all
the letters in Burton's two volumes, and I positively do
not believe Hume ever to swear in the whole of them,
except once to each of these two clergymen ! Of course
on both occasions it is what is dearest to him, literature,
that is concerned, and as we forgive the Englishman
who, in his delight, d — d the Swiss Engadine, I suppose,
for some such reason, we may also excuse Hume. "A
celebrated French author, M. Fontenelle," says Hume,
and it is evidently a sweet morsel in his mouth, but why
it should be so, it is difficult to see ; for Eontenelle is no
more than a name now, even to his countrymen, who
have forgotten all he ever in such quantities wrote.
Hume, however, actually quotes Fontenelle three times
oftener than any other French writer ; while Moliere he
only once just names ! Of the Italians, he refers to
Tasso and Ariosto, but never to Dante. I suppose,
however, that, for him, a philosopher by profession,
his very greatest blunder is that about Aristotle. " The
fame of Cicero flourishes at present," he remarks, " but
that of Aristotle is utterly decayed." But Hume's
studies, as we saw formerly, were not at all deep in his
own business — metaphysic. His ambition went out of
that, it would seem, into literature as literature, polite
literature. With what unction he allows himself to cry,
" At twenty Ovid may be the favourite author ; Horace at
forty; and perhaps Tacitus at fifty!" But, at any age, when
he says, " Virgil and Racine," " Mr. Pope and Lucretius,"
he puffs his breath, and actually rises two inches higher !
With all that, undoubtedly, and just with all that, and

JOKES, STOEIES. 237

despite his stupidity of face and mere corpulence of body,
Hume was, in heart and soul, a man of even rare sensi-
bility. It is hardly possible to imagine greater pain,
greater mortification than his was at the failure of his
first literary ventures. He never recovered perfectly
from the prostration of his early unsuccess. It was in
vain for his publisher Millar, somewhat later, to write
him of the sale of his books, of the remarks upon them,
of new editions, etc. ; it was impossible to console him
for that first insult. Even at Paris, in 1764, at the
very moment when he seemed to be worshipped as the
very greatest of living literary celebrities, he writes (as
thouoh from a mind still humiliated and sore under the
recollection of unmerited rebuff and disgust), " I have
been accustomed to meet with nothing but insults and
indignities from my native country, but if it continue so,
ingrata -patria, ne ossa quidem hcibehis : ungrateful native
country mine, thou shalt not even have my bones ! "
Some little time before that, too, he had said to the same
correspondent, " As to the approbation or esteem of those
blockheads who call themselves the public, I do most
heartily despise it." And yet Hume, in that great carcase
of his, like Falstaff, perhaps, was not without humour.
" Is not this delicious revenge?" he writes once to a friend ;
" it brings to my mind the story of the Italian, who,
reading that passage of Scripture, ' Vengeance is mine,
saith the Lord,' burst forth, ' Ay, to be sure ; it is too
sweet for any mortal,' " He was once asked, " What has
put you into this good humour, Hume ? " and answered,
" Why, man, I have just had the best thing said to me I
ever heard." Hume had been complaining, it seems,
that having written so many volumes unreprehended, it
was hard and unreasonable that he should be abused and
torn to pieces for the matter of a page or two. " You put
me in mind," said one of the company, " of an acquaintance

238 GIFFOED LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

of mine, a notary public, who having been condemned to
be hanged for forgery, lamented the hardship of his case ;
that after having written so many thousand inoffensive
sheets he should be hanged for one line ! " Hume
enjoyed jokes even against himself, though not always it
would seem. On one occasion, remarking on the moral
problem of a certain respectable Edinburgh banker
eloping with a considerable sum of money, he was
replied to by John Home, " That he could easily account
for it from the nature of his studies and the kind of
books he read." " What were they ? " said Hume.
" Boston's Fourfold State," rejoined Home, " and Hume's
Essays." It is said David, for a little, did not quite
see the joke.

Kant, as we know, tells some wonderful stories that
seem no better than jokes, as that certain mineral waters,
already hot, come much slower a-boil than ordinary
water, etc. etc. ; and we are tempted to fancy that here,
too, as usual, Kant has been under the influence of Hume,
who records it as a fact that, " Hot mineral waters come
not a-boiling sooner than cold water," as also that " Hot
iron put into cold water soon cools, but becomes hot
again." Kant, however, could not have seen these notes,
which are from a memorandum book of Hume's, first
published by Burton, I suppose, in 1846. If the 6av-
fxdaia cLKova^ara are really Aristotle's, one might think
that both moderns were vying with their ancient master,
who has whole scores of such wonders as that, " In the
Tigris there is found a stone such that whoever has it
will never be harmed by wild beasts ; " or that, " In the
Ascanian lake the water itself cleans clothes ; " or that
" there is a stone like a bean in the Nile, which if dogs
see, they do not bark." But it is not certain that the
studies of either Kant or Hume had gone so deep in
Aristotle ! It is to the advantage of Aristotle, too, that,

THE SCOTCH — THE EPIGONIAD. 239

in his case, the stories are, in all probability, spurious ;
while for Kant and Hume, they are beyond a doubt.
Physical science is apt to be " enlightened" now-a-days, and
to revere Hume as a priest of " enlightenment ; " but, it
would seem, Hume himself does not like physical science ;
he has this memorandum here : " A proof that natural
philosophy has no truth in it is, that it has only suc-
ceeded in things remote, as the heavenly bodies ; or
minute, as light ! "

It is supposed that Kant was rather proud of his
Scottish origin ; but it will be difficult to match the
satisfaction of Hume at times in the literary, and, conse-
quently to him, general superiority of his countrymen.
He opines that we, the Scotch, are "really the people
most distinguished for literature in Europe ! " (Hear that,
Mr. Buckle !) He asks with indignation on one occasion
later. Do not the English " treat with hatred our just
pretensions to surpass and govern them " ? And it is in
consequence of the same conceptions that nothing can
exceed his exultation, or his assurance, that, in the
Epigoniad of Wilkie, the Scotch have produced one of
the world's great epics. It was in the heroic ten-
syllabled tink-a-tink, and it read like Pope's Homer. So
it was that it took David. He just raved about it, and
he actually got seven hundred and fifty copies sold of it ;
but, with all that he raved about it, and all he did for it,
it died. I suppose nobody alive now has ever seen it ;
but no doubt it was as foolish a sham as ever impotence
produced, or honesty believed in. It never served any
purpose in existence, but to show, in the case of Hume,
on what mere rot-stone a literary taste might be founded.
The extravagant language of Hume here, if humiliating for
him, is specially instructive for us. The Epigoniad is for
David " the second epic poem in our language : " "it is cer-
tainly a most singular production, full of sublimity and

240 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWELFTH.

genius, adorned by a noble, harmonious, forcible, and even
correct versification : " its author, " relying on his sublime
imagination, and his nervous and harmonious expression,
has ventured to present to his reader the naked beauties
of nature ! " And so one sees that it was not in David's
eyes that the Epigoniad was a mere teased-up, tricked-
out counterfeit to be taken to pieces in a day : it was
impossible for him to get beyond what for him had " even
correct versification " — a harmony quite possibly, so far
as he could judge, like that of Mr. Pope ! The letters of
Hume, in which these things appear, are always, never-
theless, very interesting, and not without hits at times of
rare sagacity, as when he asks Gibbon, why he composes
in French, and tells him that " America promises a superior
stability and duration to the English language ; " or when,
from his own observations, he expresses it as his opinion
of Germany that, " were it united, it would be the greatest
power that ever was in the world." One learns, too, from
these letters, and, generally, from Burton's Life of him,
many earnest things of Hume. He was a warm and
active friend, without a vestige of a grudge in him. How
generous he was to Eobertson, urging him to write, ne-
gociating for him with publishers, pushing his books, and
praising them to everybody ! And as he was to Piobertson,so
was he to every other possible rival — to Ferguson, to Henry,
to Gibbon. To Adam Smith he had been so kind, and
good, and helpful, that Smith, like the affectionate, simple
creature he was, verital^ly worshipped Hume. Hume's
friends indeed were a host, and not one of them but
loved him. He had old mutton and old claret for them,
and was very hospital )le to them. He was a most
zealous and affectionate uncle and brother ; and did his
best, simply for everybody, related or unrelated. One
might, perhaps, except a little in the case of Smollett,
whom, as a be-puffed rival, he had evidently viewed

SMOLLETT BUEKE. 241

with impatience, and spoken somewhat disparagingly of
in the character of a historian. That was not quite just.
Smollett wrote his History for bread ; but he wrote it
well ; with admirable style in the main, and he broke
his constitution in its service. It was when so worn
and exhausted that Smollett made an application to
Hume, who was at that time a Secretary of State.
Hume's answer, that he had spoken for him, but could
give him no hope of a consulship, is cool business, and
no more. A year later, Smollett, on the eve of starting,
as he says, for his " perpetual exile," writes again to
Hume, not for himself this time, however, but for a cer-
tain neglected, though deserving. Captain Eobert Stobo.
Hume, on this occasion, writes warmly in return ; but
what contributes, perhaps, to move him now is the
opinion, expressed by Smollett, that he (Hume) is " un-
doubtedly the best writer of the age." David cannot
resist that compliment ; it goes to his heart ; and he
" accepts " that " great partiality " of " good opinion " on
the part of Smollett, " as a pledge of his goodwill and
friendship ! " Edmund Burke is said to have affirmed of
Hume, that " in manners he was an easy unaffected man
previous to going to Paris ; but that he returned a literary
coxcomb." There does not appear to have been really
any such change in Hume, so far as we are to accept the
testimony of his friends at home. It would have been
very strange, at the same time, if all his varied circum-
stances of life had left behind them no traces on his
character. Such flatteries as that of Gibbon, who offers
to hum a work if Hume says so, though he would " make
so unlimited a sacrifice to no man in Europe but to Mr.
Hume," or that of Smollett, which we have just seen,
must have been not rare in the end ; and they were pre-
cisely the incense that would intoxicate a Hume, if, in
such a subject, intoxication were possible at all. But,

Q

242 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWELFTH,

really, after everything, his experiences at the hands of
the public and at those even of his friends, his experi-
ences at Paris, his experiences as a Minister of State, he
could not have been any longer the mere floundering
youngling in the dark ; but must, in thought, speech, and
action, have borne himself with the crest and confidence
of a grown man that knew his own support in the train-
ings and trials within him. Hume was too genuine a
man to be carried, so to speak, out of himself — to fall
away into the insolence and conceit of the shallow. It
mifdit have been of him that Dr. Young said : " Himself
too much he prizes to be proud." I think we shall see
reason, too, when we specially come to that, not to be so
very hard and harsh on Hume in the matter of religion.
He hated superstition ; but no thought lay nearer his
heart all his life than the thought of God. He medi-
tated nothing more deeply, more reverently, more
anxiously, than the secret source of this great uni-
verse. Walking home with his friend Ferguson, one
clear and beautiful night, " Oh, Adam ! " he cried, look-
ing up, " can any one contemplate the wonders of that
firmament, and not believe that there is a God ? " On
the death of his mother, too, whom he loved always with
the most constant affection and the sincerest veneration,
a friend found him " in the deepest aflliction and in a
flood of grief : " to this friend, then taking occasion to
suggest certain improving religious reflections, David
answered through his tears, " Though I throw out my
speculations to entertain the learned and metaphysical,
yet, in other things, I do not think so differently from
the rest of the world as you imagine."

We are now prepared to advance to our conclusion in
these matters, as I shall hope to accomplish in our next
lecture.

GIFFOED LECTUEE THE THIETEENTH.

The Dialogues concerning Natural Eeligion — Long consideration and
repeated revision of them — Their publication, Hume's anxiety
for, his friends' difficulties with — Style, Cicero — Words and
things, Quintilian— Styles, old and new — The earlier works —
The Treatise — The Enquiry, Rosenkranz — Hume's provision —
Locke, Berkeley — Ideas — Connection in them — Applied to the
question of a Deity — Of a Particular Providence — Extension of
the cause inferred to be proportioned only to that of the given
effect— Applied to the cause of the world — Natural theology to
Hume — Chrysippus in Plutarch — Greek— The order of argu-
mentation— The ontological — Matter the necessary existence —
Thecosmological answers that — Infinite contingencies insufiicient
for one necessity — The teleological — Analogy inapplicable —
Hume's own example.

In passing now to those works of Hume which more
especially regard our precise subject, we are naturally
led, in so far as literary considerations still influence us,
to the Dialogues concerning Natural Eeligion. At the
time of his death, these Dialogues, it seems, had been
under their author's hands for no less than twenty-seven
years — exactly the judicial nine years three times over !
— twenty-seven years, during which they had been the
subjects of innumerable revisions, corrections, alterations,
emendations, and modifications of all kinds. I daresay
we do not doubt now that what was principally con-
cerned in these was the matter of style. " Stylus est
optiiiiiis magister doqucntiae, style is the supreme master
of eloquence," a quotation of his own from Quintilian,
seems to have been ever present to Hume's mind as his
constant guide in writing. So it is we find that these

244 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE THIRTEEXTII.

twenty-seven years have eventuated in effecting for the
Dialogues in question a perfect finish and a polisli ulti-
mate. Doubtless, it is in his belief of this that their
author manifests so much anxiety in regard to their
posthumous publication. In his will, he leaves his
manuscripts to the care of Adam Smith, with power to
judge in respect of the whole of them, the Dialogues con-
cerning Natural Eeligion alone excepted : these Dialogues
are to be published absolutely. It would appear now
that, in Hume's circle, these dispositions of his will
leaked out somehow and became known ; for already
before his death there is question of these Dialogues
between Hume and his friends. His biographer, Burton
(ii. 491), says, "Elliot was opposed to the publication
of this work ; Blair pleaded strongly for its suppression ;
and Smith, who had made up his mind that he would not
edit the work, seems to have desired that the testamentary
injunction laid on him might be revoked." Hume was
not to be baulked. He becomes sensitive on this subject
of his Dialogues : " If I live a few years longer, I shall
publish them myself," he says ; and, after various re-
jected propositions, losing patience even with Smith, he,
by a codicil to his will, retracts his previous destinations,
and leaves his " manuscripts to the care of Mr. William
Strahan of London," with the express condition that the
Dialogues on Eeligion shall be " printed and published any
time within two years after his death." But the anxieties
of Hume, even after signature of this codicil, were not
yet at an end. He is found to have returned to it, and
to have tacked on to it a paragraph — to the effect that,
if his Dialogues were not published within two years and
a half after his death, he " ordained " the property to
return to his " nephew David, whose duty in publishing
them, as the last request of his uncle, must be approved
of by all the world." And this David it was who did.

STYLE CICERO. 245

in the end, publish the work ; for Strahan, too, had found
it prudent to flinch. After so much gingerhness on the
part of so many of the dearest friends of Hume, one
expects to find something very dreadful in the book. So
far, however, as I may judge, Hume, to use the phrase,
had written much more dreadfully on the same subject
before. The essay Of a Particular Providence in the
Enquiry, for example, certainly seems to me to have left
the Dialogues, relatively, nothing of any importance to
add.

What strikes us at once in these is, as I have said,
the style. One would think that Hume, in his admira-
tion of Cicero, whether in point of matter or in point of
form, had taken Cicero's various dialogues, mostly written
in his own academic spirit, into serious study and emula-
tion ; and had pleased himself with the idea that, as he
resorted to the Latin of Cicero, so, in a far distant future,
with deaths of nations, perhaps, men would resort to his
English — for a like enlightenment of opinion, and even
purity of prose! For, indeed, it is Cicero that is the
model to these writings of Hume, and not Plato ; though
the simplicity of the latter may seem to have no less
place in them than the ineffaceable labour of the former.
It is really as Cicero has his Cotta and his Velleius, his
Varro and his Atticus, and not as Plato has his Socrates,
and his Hippias, and the rest, that Hume has his young
man Pamphilus, writing didactically to his young friend
Hermippus of what Philo, and Demea, and his guardian,
Cleanthes, said to each other in the library of the last.
" My youth rendered me a mere auditor of their dis-
putes," says Pamphilus ; " and that curiosity, natural to
the early season of life, has so deeply imprinted in my
memory the whole chain and connection of their argu-
ments, that, I hope, I shall not omit or confound any
considerable part of them in the recital." That sentence,

I

246 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE THIRTEENTH.

in a way, is a specimen of the whole ; every word in it
has been anxiously chosen; and every clause has received
its place from a sufficient trial of the ear. The actual
dialogue proceeds altogether as the circumstances suggest :
we are in the society of the refined, of the polite, who are
perfect in their consideration each of the other, and whose
lips drop pearls. All here, indeed, is so very fine that
every the least particular of it seems to have been cut by
hand, — to have been pared, polished, trimmed, — nay,
actually, to have been smoothed and finished off with
morsels of window-glass and relays of sand-paper. But
it remains a question whether Hume has not precisely
made a mistake in what was so very dear to him. Even
Lord Brougham, who was the last man, I suppose, that
wrote such things, dropped the Hermippus's and the
Pamphilus's, and took to the Althorps, the Greys, and others
the like around him. It is to be feared that Hume here,
and elsewhere indeed, has, in despite of his well-thumbed
Quintilian, sinned precisely in the way which Quintilian
reprobates — maintaining this, namely, that, insist on
words as you may, you must not, in the first place, for
all that, neglect things, which are as the nerves in causes,
verbal eloquence being a very good thing, certainly, in the
second place, " but only when it comes naturally, and is
not affected" (Quintil. viii., Introd. 18). It is to be
feared, I say, that Hume has not been sufficiently on his
guard in this respect ; for all here is all too fine ; all here
is truly so very fine that it largely fails to impress.
Tliey will always, no doubt, maintain their historical
place and importance ; but I know not that there are
many, in these days, who make much case of these
Dialogues. The Ciceronian set of them — the turns, " Said
Cleanthes with a smile," or " Here I'hilo was a little
embarrassed, but Demea broke in upon the discourse,
and saved his countenance," — I know not that any one.

THE TREATISE. 247

since Lord Brougham, has cared for that kind of thing.
The names Cleanthes, Philo, Demea, etc., are no longer to
our taste. Now-a-days, it is, on the whole, the material
contribution, what Quintilian means as the " things," the
" nerves," and not the mere verbal form, that is the main
desideratum. For that part, indeed, after the more
pointed, forceful, pictorial, less intentional and laboured
style, to which we have been accustomed by our later
writers of all kinds, novelists, historians, critics, publicists,
the older, so very smoothly flowing, well-balanced style
rather affects us as opaque. We lose ourselves, as it
w^ere, in the murmur of it. In Hume, too, the well-bred
Philister, in his super-refinement of craze, is too con-
stantly betrayed to us. " The book," he tells us with
such a proper air, " carries us, in a manner, into com-
pany, and unites the two greatest and purest pleasures of
human life, study and society ! " One could hope, for
Hume's sake, that all would turn out to his wish to leave
something classical behind him that, as such, would be
cherished by posterity, and ever by the young as standard
consulted. But it is time to refer to the " nerves," the
matter of the book. Profitably to do this, however, it
appears to me necessary that we should first know some-
thing of this matter in the form it took in its author's
earlier works.

The Treatise of Human Nature is a work in three
volumes, of which the first and second, when first
published in 1739, fell, its author avows, "dead-born
from the press." Hume, however, pocketed fifty guineas
for these two volumes ; and it is pretty certain he would
not have pocketed fifty shillings for them had his
publisher then been as most publishers now. As for the
third volume, we learn that it ica^ published, a year later,
by another publisher ; and that is all ! At present, I do
not think it is ever read. There are some readable

248 GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRTEENTH.

passages in it on political subjects ; but as for the general
text on morals, one reads and reads — at least I read and
read, and wonder what it is all about — wonder is there
any meaning in that cheerful, endless, prolixity that will
not enter one's mind, and give itself a place there !
Indeed, if others are as I am, then I fear the second
volume may not generally interest more than the third.
But with the first volume it is altogether otherwise.
That volume, with its Book on the Understanding, is full
of interest, and will always command the attention of the
philosophical student. Here Hume is really in earnest,
and always saying something, unless, pei'haps, in the •
mathematical part, where, indeed, his ideas — crude, callow,
wild — fall, on the whole, hopelessly wide. Hume's
style is always excellent where he has, as generally in
this Book, business before him. Where that is the case
— business, reality — Hume discards all unnecessary
ambages ; the softness, looseness of uncertainty dis-
appears, and, in its place, we have the force and the
stroke and the feeling of decision. Xo publicist now
could write a better style than the young Hume then.
Every word is clear, flexible in shape to the meaning
and the mood. I am not sure but that it is a better
style than when in his Essays, a year or two later, he
adds to these qualities — by express effort adds to these
qualities, what is to him elegance; and I am quite sure
that when, some six years later still, judging that his
unsuccess in the Treatise had, as he says, "proceeded
more from the manner than the matter," he " cast the
first part of that work anew," and published it as the
Enquiry — I am quite sure that then, in contradiction
of himself, it was not the manner but the matter he
improved. The new manner, in fact, strikes as something
fZmmproved ; as something that has been artificially taken
in hand, and only unsuccessfully re-made ; as something

Hume's stock-in-teade. 249

externally introduced, and that seems affeeted. It is
certainly that that has been in the mind of Eosenkranz
when he had to apply the term " rcdsdige " to
these essays — dub them, that is, " talkative," or, as we
might say, verbose. In matter, however, the later work
really is an improvement on the earlier, which, with its
ability of any kind, always suggested the idea yoicnfj/ !
At the same time it is to be said, mainly of Hume's
specially metaphysical efforts, and in his own words to
Trancis Hutcheson at the very time he published the
Treatise, that his " reasonings will be more useful by
furnishing hints and exciting people's curiosity, than as
containing any principles that will augment the stock of
knowledge." How accurately Hume judged of himself
then, we are only getting more and more clearly to under-
stand now, after a hundred and fifty years ! Hume was
original on a very small provision — from without, namely.
In effect, it appears to have been the fashion then to read
beforehand little more than contemporaries. It would go
hard to tell what John Locke had read before he wrote
his Essay. With all his Greek in the end, too, Berkeley
seems only to have read Locke at first. Now, these two
writers are really library enough for all Hume's meta-
physics. Eather we may say that, in that reference, it
was with what he took from Berkeley that Hume started
as his whole stock-in-trade. Not but that, again and
again, we may read Locke as Hume, and Hume as Locke.
Berkeley conceived all to consist of two sorts of spirits,
with what he called ideas between them. To finite
spirits an infinite spirit gave ideas ; and these were the
universe. The ideas between the two spirits constituted
the universe. Hume, now, was completely taken by this
thought ; he was absorbed into it. And he issued from
this absorption with his own rearrangements. It
appeared to him, in the end, that the ideas were the only

250 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TIIiRTEEXTII.

facts ; that so they were evidence for themselves, but for
nothing further. The spirit that gave, tlie spirit tliat
received : tlie one as well as the other was a gratuitous
hypothesis. The sole evidence that could be alleged for
either was the ideas themselves. But that the ideas
were, and were together, was no reason for assuming
quite another and peculiar entity in which they were ;
and if we were to start with a presupposition, we might
as well start with the ideas at first hand as with only a
presupposed presupposition at second hand. No doubt,
said Hume, to that presupposed presupposition, to tlie
infinite Spirit, to God, it was what was called reasoned,
from the ideas, and, specially, from the connection of the
ideas. But had they, then, this connection, these ideas ?
This was the question Hume here put to himself ; and
into that question, pretty well, his wdiole metaphysic
summed itself. It is not necessary that we should enter
at full into the resultant theory of cause and effect.
One can see at once, from the materials as put, how it
would all go. There were the ideas ; and they were said
to be connected ; but what did that mean ? They cer-
tainly came in conjunctions ; but if we examined them the
one with the other individually, even as in conjunction, not
one of them showed a reason, a tie, that bound it to the
other. They ivere associated ; no doubt that was the fact ;
but we knew no more than that. We found the associa-
tions to be such and such ; and just so we expected
them as such and such. Even by the habit of the
association, the one member of it suggested the other ;
and that alone was the connection, that alone was the
reason, the sole tie that bound them together. There
was no ground for the necessity, under the name of power
even, which we feigned or believed to exist in the associa-
tion, but, as now fully explained, habit, custom. There
were certainly two kinds of ideas. There were ideas

IDEAS CONNECTION IN THEM. 251

mediate, and there were ideas immediate ; the latter in
two distinctions, the former only in one. The double
distinction was named of externality and internality.
Internal immediate ideas were all our feelings within as
at first hand, or directly experienced ; while external
immediate ideas were what come before us, as the world
of objects perceived, of things seen. Both classes of
immediate ideas, whether within or without, were natur-
ally to be named impressions; while the single class of
mediate ideas were, just as commonly regarded, ideas —
ideas proper. They were but reflections or copies of the
impressions. What is, then, as it all lies there now
before the eye of Hume, may be pictured as an infinitely
minute but sole-existent prism, the light on one side of
which shall represent the impressions, as the resultant
colours on the other shall be surrogates of the ideas.
Ideas and impressions are but the same thing twice. With
Locke and Berkeley, therefore, they may be all called
ideas ; and there seems no reason for making a separate
entity of the spot, the personality, the mere locus, in
which they meet. That they meet is the sole fact ; nor
has the meeting-point any substantiality further. Ideas,
and ideas alone, constitute the universe. This is what
Hume has made of the stock of thought he received from
Berkeley, and he is wholly dominated by it ; he im-
plicitly believes in it ; it constitutes truth for him —
philosophical truth, that is ; for Hume makes the dis-
tinction between natural and philosophical, instinct and
reason. As David Hume, his mother's son, he is quite as
you or I ; sees all things around him just as we do ;
and has no doubt whatever but that there is that in the
cause — an agency, an efficacy, a power — which by very
nature necessitates the effect ; but, as a philosopher, he
challenges you and me and all mankind if an intellectual
reason — an insight, an understanding, not a mere instinct,

252 GIFFOllD LECTURE THE TIIIHTEENTII.

not a mere lilind, unintelligible, mechanical force — if an
intellectual reason can be given for the necessity of the
effect ensuing on the cause, he challenges you and me
and all mankind to produce it — " show," he says, " one
instance of a cause where we discover the power or
operating principle."

We have probably as much of Hume's reasonings
before us now as is necessary, and may proceed to apply
it to the question of a God. In this he takes full advan-
tage of our demonstrated inability, as he thinks, to give
a philosophical reason for the admitted necessity of cause
and effect. He thinks he has proved to a certainty that,
as he says, " the supposition of an efficacy in any of the
known qualities of matter is entirely without foundation ; "
that " all objects which are found to be constantly conjoined
are ujyon that account only to be regarded as causes and
effects ; " that " as all objects which are not contrary
are susceptible of a constant conjunction, and as no real
objects are contrary, it follows that, for aught we can
determine by the mere ideas, anything may be the cause
or effect of anything ; " " creation, annihilation, motion,
reason, volition — all these may arise from one another,
or from any other object we can imagine ; " that " the
necessity of the cause to its effect is but the determina-
tion of the mind by custom ; " that this necessity, there-
fore, is something that exists in the mind, and not in the
objects ; " that " the connection between cause and effect,
the tie or energy by which the cause operates its effect,
lies merely in ourselves, and is nothing but the determina-
tion of the mind from one object to another object
acquired by custom." Hume, now, in the light of
these conclusions, has as little difficulty in emptying
God of all efficacy as any the most common and
everyday agent, fire and water, or earth and air ; for, as
he says, " anything may be cause or effect of any-

THE CAUSE ONLY PEOPORTIONAL TO THE EFFECT. 253

thing ! " " Thought is in no case any more active
(operative) than matter ; " " we have no idea of a Being
endowed with any power, much less of one endowed with
infinite power ; " so far as " our idea of that supreme
Being is derived from particular impressions, none of
which contain any efficacy, there is no such thing in the
universe as a cause or productive principle, not even the
Deity Himself." If any one will take the trouble to read
parts three and four of the first book of the Treatise, he
will find such phrases as these that I have quoted without
difficulty almost upon every page. In these respects the
Enquiry, if more measured and somewhat less direct, is
on the whole fuller and quite as explicit ; and our reference
in it, apart from the express consideration of causality, is
the section Of a Particular Providence. There he puts
the argument, which he engages to refute, thus : " Prom
the order of the work you infer that there must have
been project and forethought in the workman ; " " the
argument for a divine existence is derived from the order
of nature, the marks of intelligence and design in it ; "
" this is an argument drawn from eiiects to causes."
Now, that being so, says Hume, " we must proportion
the one to the other ; we can never be allowed to ascribe
to the cause any qualities but what are exactly sufficient
to produce the effect." And that is the single fulcrum
on which the entire course of the subsequent argumenta-
tion rests. That argumentation we must see ; but may
we not say at once that, on Hume's own premises, any
such argumentation must find itself in the air, for he
himself has already withdrawn beforehand its single
basis of support ? The one absolute fulcrum is to be an
equality of qualities in the two terms of the relation ;
the qualities in the cause must be proportional to the
qualities in the effect ; we must ascribe to the cause only
such qualities as are sufficient to account for the qualities

254 GIFFOED LECTURE THE TIIISTEENTII.

in the effect. I daresay we are all directly not a
little surprised at this. Qualities I qualities that have
eliicacy ! we think to ourselves — why, Hume has just
told us that in the matter of causation we must not
think of qualities at all ! " The supposition of an efficacy
in any of the known qualities of matter is entirely without
foundation ! " And that means, though he says, " known
qualities," any qualities, as implied by his own expressions
now. That means, too, not " matter " alone, but any-
thing whatever ; for he has already said that, so far as
qualities are concerned, anything may be the cause of
anything. We can only secure to Hume some measure
of consistency here, in his demand to proportionate the
(|ualities in the cause to those in the effect, by regarding
the qualities as themselves objects, by assuming out of
the plurality of qualities in the cause and in the efifect
one quality in the one, to have always been respectively
conjoined with a correspondent quality in the other — a
plurality and an assumption, plainly, which will still
bring Hume each its own difficulties. But that apart,
what of the subsequent argumentation ? Now that
still depends on the presupposed fulcrum, the intention
of which we must see to have been this : In reasoning
from the world to God, and so reaching God, we must
not proceed to dwell on the idea reached, and so expand
it in our imaginations beyond what constituted it as
reached and when reached. Eeally in that lies the whole
sul)sequent argumentation itself, just as in what was said
of proportionate qualities in the cause and the effect,
we saw the one fulcrum in support of such argumentation,
" The same rule holds," Ifume says, " whether the cause
assigned be brute unconscious matter or a rational intel-
ligent being : if the cause be known only by the effect,
we never ought to assign to it any qualities beyond what
are precisely requisite to produce the effect ; nor can we,

APPLIED TO THE CAUSE OF THE WOKLD. 255

by any rules of just reasoning, return back from the cause
and infer other effects from it beyond those by which
alone it is known to us." And this here evidently
means that if the order in nature entitles us to infer an
artificer of great power and great wisdom, it is inadequate
to the conclusion of almighty power and almighty wisdom,
and may not improbably suggest other very different
attributes from those of all-justice and all-goodness. In
point of fact, it is precisely of such inoipos on the part of
Hume that the whole subsequent argumentation consists.
It seems to have been summed up by some writers in
this way, that they supposed Hume to say that the world
was a " singular effect." That is true, however, only in
so far as singular shall be allowed to be equal to parti-
cular, so that we are to infer a particular cause from the
particular effect that the world is. If Hume uses singular
of the world, the word does not mean for him, then,
unexampled, unprecedented, incommensurable, transcen-
dent beyond all relation or comparison, but simply, as
I have said, and in the sense I have said, farticular.
Even when a doubt is expressed whether it be possible
for a cause to be known " only hy (that is, only so far as)
its effect, or to be of so singular and particular a nature
as to have no parallel and no similarity with any other
cause or object that has ever fallen under our observa-
tion," what is really meant is precisely what I mean by
particular : the effect of the doubt is to a singularity or
particularity that would bind down the reasoning to
itself alone, which doubt, moreover, is put into the mouth
of the opponent to the argument, who, however, is repre-
sented to acknowledge in the end that the previous
reasonings on the supposition of a singular effect
warranting no more than an equally singular cause,
" seem at least to merit our attention. There is, I own "
(he concludes), " some difficulty how we can ever return

256 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TIIIETEEXTII.

from the cause to the effect, and reasoning from our
ideas of the former, infer any alteration on the latter or
any addition to it ; " and these are the very last words of
the whole section. To say then that Hume calls the
world a " singular " effect, means only, Hume holds the
world to be a particular effect, referring only to a pro-
portionately particular cause.

We have now seen as much as I think it was necessary
to see of the Treatise and the Enquiry, and I return to
the consideration of the Dialogues. They are laid out
into twelve parts, but one cannot say that so much
externality has any bearing on the internality of the
development and exposition of the subject. While the
ontological and cosmological arguments, if touched at all,
are no more than touched, the teleological argument is,
on its side, only most inefficiently and disappointingly
scattered, in a mere miscellany of remark, over the whole
dozen dialogues, or so-called parts. This argument,
though all but exclusively the single subject of con-
sideration, is indeed most confusedly presented to us,
and in a mass, simply, of unmethodized objections. Not
but that Hume has, in his secret self, all his life dwelt
on the question of a God, and gives here now most
respectful voice to his estimation of it. " What truth,"
he says (and these are about his first words) — " what
truth so important as this (the Being of a God, namely),
which is the ground of all our hopes, the surest founda-
tion of morality, the firmest support of society, and the
only principle which ought never to be a moment alisent
from our thoughts and meditations ? " Why, that is a
sentence which Lord Giffbrd himself might have included
without a jar among his own so very similar sentences in
the body of his Bequest. And in regard to the subject
itself, even as named, Natural Theology, Hume speaks
always not less with the most impressive respect. It is

CHRYSirPUS IN PLUTARCH, 257

" the saying of an ancient," he remarks, not far from the
sentence quoted, " ' That students of philosophy ought
first to learn Logics, then Ethics, next Physics, last of
all the Nature of the Gods.' This science of Natura
Theology, according to him, being the most profound and
abstruse of any, required the maturest judgment in its
students, and none but a mind enriched with all the
other sciences can safely be entrusted with it." This
position assigned to our subject. Natural Theology, is
probably no more than in itself it deserves ; but it is
not so certain that Hume is correct in his interpretation
of the authority he quotes. That authority he names
Chrysippus in a certain passage of Plutarch's. Hume
now, in his Autobiography, takes credit to himself, as we
know, for having recovered, while living with his mother
and brother in the country, " the knowledge of the Greek
language, which he had too much neglected in his early
youth." David's Greek, I fear, might have stood a little
more recovery. In his own editions of his books it has
mostly a very shabby look ; and certainly here, so far as
the translation goes, it does not come well to proof.
Hume does not give the original, but I have looked up
the Greek and transcribed it here {irpoirov fiev ovv So/cet
fjiOL Kara ra op$a)^ vtto twv ap-^aioiv elprjixeva rpla jevrj
ro)v Tov ^c\oao(f)ov Oecopr/fidTcov eivai' ra /mev XoyiKa,
ra oe rjOtKa, ra 8e (f)V(TiKd- t6)i> Be (pvacfcwv eaj^arov elvat
TOV irepl rcov Oedv \6yov). Literally translated, it runs
tlius : " First then, it seems to me, as was rightly said by
the ancients, that there are three kinds of theorizinos of
the philosopher. Logics, Ethics, Physics, and that of
Physics the last part is that concerning the Gods." We
have thus three sciences, and in a certain succession, but
it is not intimated that they are to be so studied, and
still less that what concerns the Gods is a fourth study,
and one which is to be taken alone after the other three.

K

258 GIFFQRD LECTURE THE THIRTEEXTII.

On the contrary, what concerns the Gods is only termed
the last part of physics. Nay, if the good David had
only read further, he would have found the Greek going
on to speak of physics, and specially that last part of
physics, not as dependent on and following ethics, but as
precedent to and conditioning ethics (Pint, de repug.
Stoicorum., or dc stoic, paradox, 0pp. i. j). 1035 A). And
it stands to reason that the practical moral should
postulate beforehand all that can be theoretically known.
The passage, however, gives certainly an eminent place
to what concerns the Gods ; and Hume, let his Greek be
what it may, is to be justified in referring to it in support
of the supremacy as a study of Natural Theology, It is
liot a little to his praise, indeed, that, after Paris, and
D'Holbach, and the seventeen atheists who surrounded
him, — after these experiences, and no less than twenty-
seven years of labour and reflection, he should so
unequivocally declare himself.

If, as regards the Dialogues, we take Hume's inl-
ine thodical miscellany interrogatively in hand, and intro-
duce such order and arrangement into it as shall enable
us with confidence and ease to grasp its reasonings, we
shall find these susceptible of falling into such a scheme
as this : — Taking advantage of expressions of Hume's
own, we may say that the arguments in question are,
first of all, either d priori or a posteriori ; and then, that
while, in the latter class, the teleological stands alone,
])Oth the ontological and the cosmological are, by Hume,
conjoined in the former. It cannot be said, however,
that the cosmological argument is strictly or purely a
priori ; for, in reality, it involves an empirical fulcrum, an
empirical basis of support. Nevertheless, as, any further,
it may be named abstract only, the cosmological argument
may be regarded as constituting, from its peculiarity, an
exact mean between the two other artfuments.

THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 259

Taking the ontological argument first, then, we find
that it can hardly be more perfectly and concisely
expressed than by Hume himself. In an early memor-
andum book of his, copied out by Burton, it appears
thus : " The idea of infinite perfection implies that of
actual existence." Of the very idea of God, namely,
existence is a necessary complement. Hume, in his
Dialogues, quotes Malebranche to the eflect that Being
simply, Being, existence, is the very nature of God — " His
true name is. He that is, or in other words, Being without
restriction, All Being, the Being infinite and universal."
In Part IX., however, where the a jjriori argument is
expressly placed, Hume has already dismissed this idea
of Malebranche from his mind, and perhaps quite for-
gotten his own early statement. There his statement
now of the ontological argument is that it regards God
as the " necessarily existent Being, who carries the reason
of His existence in Himself, and who cannot be supposed
not to exist without an express contradiction ; " but of
" this metaphysical reasoning," as he names it, Hume,
who characterizes it also as obviously ill-grounded and of
" little consequence," will show, he says, the " weakness "
and the " fallacy." " I shall begin with observing," he
declares, " that there is an evident absurdity in pretending
to demonstrate a matter of fact." " Nothing is demon-
strable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction.
Nothing that is distinctly conceivable implies a contra-
diction. Whatever we conceive as existent we can also
conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore,
whose non - existence implies a contradiction. Conse-
quently thei'e is no being whose existence is demonstrable.
I propose this argument as entirely decisive, and am
willing to rest the whole controversy upon it." The
reply to this, of course, is, that Grod, as the Infinite
Being, is above and beyond all such reasoning, limited

260 GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRTEENTIT.

and restricted, as it is, only to what is finite. God, as
the Infinite Being implies existence : to deny His existence,
negates his very idea, and is a direct self-contradiction.
But we have to see more of this later when we come to
Kant.

Hume continues, " Why may not the material universe
be the necessarily - existent Being ? " " It may contain
some qualities which would make its non - existence
appear as great a contradiction as that twice two is five."
" No reason can be assigned why these qualities may not
belong to matter ; as they are altogether unknown and
inconceivable, they can never be proved incompatible
with it." I fancy we will all allow the irrefragableness
of that reasoning : it would be a hard matter for any of
us to prove that whatever is utterly unknown and incon-
ceivable is incompatible with anything whatever ! To
talk of the inconceivable as a possible fulcrum of proof
is surely peculiar to Hume. He says himself that " to
establish one hypothesis upon another is building entirely
in the air : " to build upon the inconceivable is hardly
different or better. But why the material universe may
not be the necessarily-existent Being is precisely the
cosmoloffical argument which comes now in its turn.
Hume himself mentions this argument as " derived from
the contingency both of the matter and the form of the
world ; " nevertheless, as he seems to found his notion
of contingency only on Dr. Clarke's rei:)resentatinn
that " any particle of matter may be conceived to be annihil
a ted, and any form may be conceived to be altered," we
cannot feel sure that v/hat he has got hold of is the
quite adequate notion. That notion, however, is simply
to the effect that contingent existence, by very name,
means what is, what exists, simply as supported, and as
unsupported, sinks, falls, — must sink, must fall, and drop
out of being. That is the contingent ; while c contrario,

THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 261

the necessary is the self-supported, the self-subsistent, or
the self-existent, the complete iu itself and sufficient of
itself. By very definition, then, or by very nature, it
follows that the former implies the latter. The contingent
infers the necessary, the accidental the substantial, by
which or in which it is. That simple notion, now, is the
fulcrum of the cosmological argument ; yet, simple as it is,
Hume, on the whole, does not quits seem at home in it.
While it is his single purpose in Part IX., for example, to
dispute, controvert, and refute it ; he had already passed
his own deep imprimatur upon it in the second part, when
he said, " nothing exists without a cause ; and the original
cause of -this universe we call God : Whoever scruples
this fundamental truth, deserves every punishment," etc.
But as much as this, it is not difficult to see, constitutes
the whole cosmological argument, for it simply refers
what is contingent, what is insufficient of itself to God,
to that cause which is alone necessary, alone ultimate
and final in itself. In Part IX., however, somewhat con-
tradictorily, Hume argues against this reasoning in some
such strain as follows : —

He starts, as already referred to, with the question,
" Why may not the material universe be the necessarily-
existent Being ? " and when he is answered by the cos-
mological argument which rests on the necessity of a
regress through a whole possible chain of contingent
causes back to a single absolute cause, he rejoins : " In
such a chain, each part is caused by that which preceded
it, and causes that which succeeds it — where, then, is the
difficulty ? But the whole, you say, wants a cause. I
answer — this is sufficiently explained in explaining the
cause of the parts — add to this, that in tracing an
eternal succession of objects, it seems absurd to ask for a
general cause or first author." That, as one sees, is not
profound argumentation ; and it will be sufficient to

262 GIFFORD LECTURE THE THIRTEENTH.

remark for the pres3nt that no multiplication of parts
will make a whole potent if each part is impotent. You
will hardly reach a valid conclusion where your every
step is invalid. Will you ever fill one full with nothing
l)ut empties, or put together a single significant figure
with a million millions of ciphers ? It will be in vain to
extract one necessity out of a whole infinitude of con-
tingencies. Nor is it at all possible for such infinitude
of contingencies to be even conceivable of reason. If
each link of the chain liangs on another, the whole will
hang, and only hang even in eternity, unsupported,
like some stark serpent — unless you find a hook for
it. Add weakness to weakness, in any quantity, you
will never make strength ; if you totter already,
the tottering against you of ever so many totterers will
only floor you.

But, on the whole, Hume may be said only to mention,
and not seriously to meet, what are to him the d priori
arguments. On the d posteriori argument it is that he
puts forth all his strength. Even here, liowever, his
strength is but a scej)tical play ; for it is at least as a
sincere Deist that he takes up his position before the
curtain in the end. Nevertheless, when one considers
how Adam Smith and the rest were glad to escape any
responsibility here, our curiosity is roused, and we would
fain see for ourselves the terrible argumentation that had
so frightened them. Allowing for the ninth part, which
we have just seen, for the first and last parts as only
the one introductory and the other concluding, and for
two other parts which are taken up with little more than
tirades on the evils of existence, there remain seven parts
in which the strict teleological argument is alone con-
sidered. As I have said, the conduct of the dialogue is
so miscellaneous in these parts that, for one's ease, even
for one's intelligence, one is glad to turn to some principle

THE TELEOLOGIGAL ARGUMENT. 2G3

of arrangement. Now what is considered here is God on
one side and man on the other, with the analogy of
design between them ; and it is with such scheme we may
conceive Hume to open. Accordingly, the omnipotence
of God, even as in supposition, is described at great length
on the one side, as the impotence of man at equal length
on the other, and it is asked. Can there be any analogy
between them ? Man's sc7itiments are " calculated for
promoting the activity and preserving the existence " of
such a finite being ; his ideas, " derived from the senses,
are confusedly (confessedly ?) false and illusive ; " and as
these " compose the whole furniture of the human under-
standing," how can such materials be " in any respect
similar in the human and in the divine intelligence " ?
Are we not " guilty of the grossest and most narrow
partiality, when we make ourselves the model of the
whole universe " ? Of course, the reply to such objections
is obvious. In arguing from design we simply use the
reason which is our very power and our very selves ; and
in which, with whatever accidents, we have all history
and all science to support and encourage our trust. Nor
do we desire in the smallest degree to push our reason
beyond what bounds it can itself realize. We may pre-
sume that reply sufficient for Hume himself even on his
own principles ; for he will be found to grant us the right
of speculation and inquiry to any extent, and into any
region which the desire of knowledge, the love of truth,
or even mere human curiosity may suggest. To as much
as that, indeed, his own example would warrant, not only
liberty, but one might even say, licence. We turn now,
then, to the third consideration which we have indicated
here, the middle that lies between the two extremes of
God on the one side and man on the other, the argu-
ment from design itself. That we shall see again.
Meantime, I may seem, so far, to have been only cursory

264 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE THIRTEENTH,

— to have remarked little, and to have quoted less. But
I have really given all that there is in Hume as regards
either the ontological or the cosmological argument ; and,
perhaps in other respects, I shall be found in the end
even to have hit the truth of the position which con-
ditions Hume's whole way of looking.

GIFFOKD LECTUEE THE EOUETEENTH.

The teleological argument — Two moments — First, the alleged ne-
cessity of thought — It has itself no end — So matter enough — •
Thought itself only a part, limited, imperfect, and in want of
explanation — Thought as thought common to us all, Grote,
Hume, Erigena, Heraclitus — The sole necessity — Second, the
analogy — The supreme cause not situated as other causes —
Other principles, vegetation, generation — The world an animal
— The Empedoclean expedient — The effect only warrants great
power, not Almighty power— Evil — Free opinion — Hume's
friends — Ejiicurus's dilemma — Superstition results — • Four
suggestions — No pain — Special volitions — Greater strength —
Extremes banished from the world — Creation on general prin-
ciples— Erasmus Darwin — Mr. Froude, Carlyle — Finitude as
such, externality as such — Antithesis — Charles V.— Ahdal-
rahman III. — Septimius Severus — Johnson — Per contra —
Wordsworth, Gibbon, Hume — Work, Carlyle — The trades —
Comparison — Self-contradiction — Identity — Hegel — "As re-
gards Protoplasm " — The Hindoos — Burton on cause — Sir John
Herschel — Brown, Dugald Stewart — Spinoza — Erdmann —
Notions and things, Erigena— Rabelais — Form and matter —
Hume in conclusion.

Hume's discussion, in his Dialogues, of the teleological
argument, the argument from design, random as it runs,
requires, in the first place, such arrangement as shall
extend to us the ease of intelligence which is so necessary
here — such arrangement as has been already referred to.
The entire scattered discussion, then, we reduce to, and
consider in, the following order, an order suggested by
the single argument itself, which this discussion would
overthrow. That single argument is this. The design
which is admitted to exist in the world infers — by

2G6 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTEENTH.

the necessity of thought, according to the principle of
analogy — the existence also, or coexistence, of a designer.
Now, here it is only the inference that is denied, and
not the design it founds on : the design itself is admitted
to exist. But that inference can be opposed only in one
or other of its two moments. Either its first moment
(A), the alleged necessity of thouglit, or its second
moment (B), the alleged analogy, is the subject of denial
and dispute. On the first head, (A) it is first (1) argued,
that, granting the necessity of thought, it is not com-
pleted or concluded by the inference, but continues to be
equally valid further. If a material world, or universe
of objects, be such as to require a cause for the arrange-
ment in it ; not less will a mental world, or universe of
ideas, to which as cause the arrangement has only been
transferred, require for itself a cause — a cause of its own.
God Himself, that is, if offered as cause for the one
world, would constitute in Himself just such other
mental world, and would equally stand in need of just
such another cause. The explanation is only shifted one
step back, thinks Hume ; but why stop at the first re-
move ? " \i we stop, and go no farther,'" he says, " why
go so far ? " " Why not stop at the malcrial world ? "
" If the material w^orld rests upon a similar ideal world,
this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on,
without end." " That the parts of the material world
fall into order of themselves " is " as intelligible as
that the ideas of the Supreme Being fall into order of
themselves." And that being so, " we really assert the
material world to be God ; and the sooner we arrive
at that Divine Being, so much the better." These are
Hume's own words ; and it is really sufficient reply, so
far, to say : There is no principle in matter itself to
explain the design it exhibits ; only a Designer can
explain that. So far we believe our argument valid ;

MATTER ENOUGH. 267

and so far we challenge disproof. To ask a second
question is not to dispose of the first. (2) A second
objection to the necessity of thought is : That it does not
apply : we are but a part — our thought is but the part
of a part ; and it is in vain to apply a part in ex-
planation of the whole. Nay, (3) in the third place, our
thought, even as in us, requires an explanation ; at the
same time that, (4) in the fourth place, it is so limited
and imperfect that we can place no dependence upon it.
I think, however, it will be plain that these are cavils,
so far, rather than arguments. It is not true that
thought can be characterized as only a part in reference
to the whole ; nor do we apply it, or wish to apply
it, otherwise than as it justifies itself. It may, in
individuals, and at times, err indeed ; but it is caricature
to throw it out of count, because, as Hume says, " we
never find two persons who think exactly alike, nor does
the same person think exactly alike at any two different
periods of time." Mr. Grote borrows these words, and
relying upon them, cannot help exclaiming in perfect
astonishment, " Can it really be necessary to repeat that
the reason of one man differs most materially from that
of another ? " To which, in the very intensity of its
shallow conviction, I reply, " Can it really be necessary
to repeat that the reason of one man docs not differ
most materially from that of another ; but, on the con-
trary, the reason of one man is essentially identical with
that of another ? " Here, in fact, Grote has not only
forgot Hume, but Hume has forgot himself ; asserting,
as he does elsewhere, that "there is a great uniformity
among men in all nations and ages, and human nature
remains still the same." That is to the effect that there
is but one reason, which is the truth and the cosmical
fact, though we had to go further back for it than
the intellcdus of Scotus Erigena, or even the X0709

268 GIFFORD LECTUEE THE FOURTEENTH.

^vv6<; of Heraclitus. Thought is the one generality,
the one universality, the one general solvent, the one
universal solvent, which nothing may resist. "And
what wonder ! " says Scotus Erigena, " what wonder if
the notion of things which the human mind possesses,
concreated with itself, is found to be the true substance
of the things themselves of which it is the notion ? "
The universal, as the universal, is its own principle
and its own basis of support. Thought, even as thought,
accounts for its own self, if not in the finitude of man,
then in the infinitude of God. There it is the one
avdyKT], the sole necessity, that that could not not-be !

And with this we may suppose sufficiently met and
discussed all that Hume has objected to the necessity
of thought. Matter cannot account for its own arrange-
ment ; a part may apply to the whole, if that part is
thought ; which again, as in tlie race, is not incomplete
and partial, but, as primal entity, as sole and primal
avdyKT] is, with God, the reason for itself. In fact, in
the whole of the relative reasoning, there is not one reason-
able word why man may not think the design which is as
undeniable in his own self as everywhere around him.

The second object of the attack of Hume is (B) the
analogy. Man, as a thinking being, recognises in nature
such adjustment of means to ends as is in perfect analogy
with what he knows to be the product and result of
design in the experiences and proceedings of his natural
life in common with his fellows upon earth. Now, Hume's
objections here may be arranged according as they seem
to concern more especially the cause, or more especially
the effect.

In the first place, on the first head, he intimates
that the cause is not placed as it is placed in the
other cases to which we are accustomed. In these,
we have usually experience of both terms. If we

OTHER PPJNCIPLES. 269

infer the step of a man from a footprint in the sand,
say, the cause is already known to us from a great
number of other effects, and the inference, consequently,
does not really depend on the single experience.
And then, in point of fact, what we see in matter may
depend on principles of its own. We cannot say that
motion, or other arrangement, is not native to it : we
have never assisted at the origination of worlds ; we
have not, as elsewhere, any custom, any to and fro
of effect to cause, or of cause to effect ; we have no
experience of the divine. Nay, in the second place,
if the design be not original to matter, it may be due
to other principles than to the principle of thought,
as to vegetation, for example, or to generation. We
really do see such principles operative in matter. There
is motion in it ;• not one particle of matter, probably,
ever is at rest. Then we do see vegetation and genera-
tion both spontaneously operative. The world may be
as a tree that sheds its seed ; or, as an animal that lays
its eggs. A comet may be a seed— a germ, which,
ripened from system to system, may itself become further
in the inane a system of its own. And so it may have
been with this our world, which, in point of fact, exhibits
the traces of innumerable changes before it settled down
into the orderly arrangement of the present. Indeed, in
the third place, the whole world may be just one animal
— an animal with a body, and an animal with a soul.
This was an idea familiar to the ancients, who could not
conceive, as we do, of souls purely as such— of souls
without a body. The world has really much more
analogy with an organized body than with a mechanical
contrivance. " A continual circulation of matter in it
produces no disorder; a continual waste in every part
is incessantly repaired ; the closest sympathy is per-
ceived throughout the entire system ; and each part or

270 GIFFORD LECTUEE THE FO (JRTEENTII.

member, in performing its proper offices, operates both
to its own preservation and to that of the whole."
Or, in the fourth phace, returning to the idea of innate
material arrangement, Hume has recourse to what I may
call the Empedoclean expedient. We may remember
Empedocles to have feigned the present orderly organic
world to be due to the survival of the fittest, in this
way, that the earth gave birtli at first to all possible
organisms, so to speak, pt'/c mile. There were bull-
headed men, and olive-leaved vines ; but in that hetero-
geneous form they could not survive. What could alone
survive was the homogeneous : there were no stable
or persistent forms till only, at long and last, when what
was homogeneous took its turn. It is absolutely the
like suggestion that Hume now makes for matter.
The particles of matter are all in motion ; and they have
been in motion in the infinitude of time. But, so, they
must have undergone an infinitude of revolution — an
infinitude of vicissitude and change ; or, the complexions
they formed must have passed through infinite suc-
cessions until, I suppose, as mathematically demonstrable,
the present complexion emerged, which, being orderly,
is more or less permanent. And hence the appearance
of design.

On the second head, as concerns the effect, Hume
maintains, in the first place, that the world as an effect
only warrants the inference to great, but not to perfect
power ; while, in the second place, the existence of evil
in the world puts us in no very hopeful situation as
regards the moral attributes of the Deity. It was here,
perliaps, that Hume's friends, one and all of them, took
fright at these Dialogues, and positively fled from any
connection with the publication of them. Here, indeed,
Hume is so very free in his objections and suggestions to
the Almighty, that almost in these more audacious days

Hume's friends. 271

they may shock even us. Hume himself, possibly, had a
consciousness of something of this ; for these words of
his at the end of the work read to us at once as an
apology and a defence, quite as though it was to these
very friends he spoke. " It is contrary to common sense,"
he says, " to entertain apprehensions or terrors upon
account of any opinion whatsoever, or to imagine that we
run any risk hereafter by the freest use of our reason."
And surely it will appear to every one that, as we are
sent here to think, as to think is our vocation, we shall
hardly be held responsible for the expression of our
thought, provided only that both thought and expression
are serious and in earnest. Hume, doubtless, must have
considered himself sufficiently within these bovmds, and
must have been both vexed and surprised at the scruples
of Smith and the rest, especially in view of his having,
by express name, mentioned and met the very apprehen-
sion under which, it could not but seem, they laboured.
Nevertheless, it is quite certain that Hume, in all con-
science, is not at any loss for boldness here. It is
scarcely credible that the evils of this life were ever
more glaringly painted, or the emendations of them ever
more unmisgivingly proposed. But, after all, it comes,
on the one head, to the usual tirades about misery and
pain, and, on the other, to the customary remonstrances
with the Deity for failure on His part either in will or in
power. " Epicurus's old questions are yet unanswered,"
says Hume, " Is God willing to prevent evil, but not
able ? then is He impotent. Is He able, but not willing ?
then is He malevolent. Is He both able and willing ?
whence then is evil ? " " Why is there any misery at
all in the world ? " And human life is human misery
within and without. It is in the sense of his own im-
becility to meet these evils, which come upon him from
a power above him, that man grovels to that power, and

272 GIFfORD LECTURE THE FOURTEENTH.

would fain conciliate to himself its good- will by flatteries
and gifts. Hume has four suggestions of remedy in these
respects. Like Alfonzo of Castile, had he been present,
in the beginning of creation, at the counsels of the
Almighty, some few things, he thinks, would have been
better and more orderly arranged. He would, in the
first place, have made all living creatures incapable of
pain : they should have been impelled to the necessary
action only by the diminution of pleasure. In the
second place, he would have remedied all impending in-
conveniences by particular volitions : he wouM have given
the dram to his brain that would have made Caligula a
Trajan, and he would have taken care to save the Roman
republic by swelling, a foot or two, the sea that threat-
ened Caesar. Thirdly, h*e would have endowed all animals
with a much more satisfactory stock of strength. And
fourthly, he would have given an amended constitution
to the universe at large : the wind should never be
allowed to become a storm, the heat a drought, or the
rain a deluge, " So many ills in the universe," says
Hume, "and these ills, so far as human understanding
can be permitted to judge, might so easily have been
remedied." Why, all is owing simply to " excess or
defect " in consequence of " inaccurate workmanship ! "
These are but a word or two from the pages of the
original ; but they may serve to suggest the never-
doubting openness of Hume in the story he tells and
the propositions he makes. Perhaps of all these propo-
sitions, the most surprising, as on the part of Hume, is
that of a particular providence that would be on its
guard always, and take all necessary precautions against
accidental inconveniences, such as a Caligula or a Caesar.
It is certain that in another work {Enquiry, vii. 1), after
lontf consideration and careful revision, too, Hume holds
it to argue " more wisdom in the Deity " to contrive a

MR. FKOUDE CARLYLE. 273

creation on general principles from the first, and " more
power " to delegate authority to these principles " than to
operate everything by His own immediate volition." Erasmus
Darwin, too, will be found to express himself strongly to
the same effect. But it would seem that others later in-
cline to Hume's later view, and would like a God that
prevents rain at harvest, and would cut in pieces before-
hand the murderers of a Princesse de Lamballe. Mr.
Froude, in his Life, of Carlyle (ii. 260), writes: " I once
said to him (Carlyle) not long before his death, that I
could only believe in a God who did something. With
a cry of pain, which I shall never forget, he (Carlyle)
said, ' He does nothing ! ' " One may be permitted to
express one's surprise here at such crude doctrine under
whatever or whichever name. It is altogether to mis-
take the very possibility of a universe to hang a God
over it, like a big man in the air, to overlook, and inter-
fere, and see that our children do not burn themselves.
There is the fang of the serpent and the claw of the
tiger — I suppose these gentlemen would have God draw
both ; and we must not be incommoded in summer with
midges on the Clyde. A creation is, by the very terms
of it, the finite as the finite, externality as externality.
Now, finitude as finitude, externality as externality,
brings with it its own conditions just as surely as the
triangle involves its own necessity of two right angles, or
parallel lines, theirs never to meet. To have light you
must put up with shade, and to have warmth you must
submit to cold ; you cannot have a right hand unless
you have a left. All in the phenomenon is contradiction,
and it cannot be otherwise if there is to be a phenomenon
at all. The same stress that would take us to the sun
baulks for ever our approach to it. If you draw close
to me, I embrace you as my friend ; but if you draw
closer still, I repel you as my enemy. Were attraction

s

274 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE FOURTEENTH.

alone in this universe, things would be reduced to a
mathematical point ; and were repulsion all, there would
])e nothing but a blank. There cannot be union without
disunion, nor this without that. These and other such-
like contrarieties, infinitely, are the terms on which you
have a finite universe, and alone the terms on which you
possibly can have it. If you will be, then you must be
in the stress of adversatives. The single necessity of
the necessity to be is its own opposite — contingency.
And what does that amount to ? It amounts to this :
Destroy evil and you are straightway fclo de se, you have
committed suicide ; or, what is the same thing, abolish
contingency, which is at once the sole source of evil and
the secret of the universe — -abolish contingency and you
abolish existence, you destroy what it is to exist. When
all is considered, I fancy we have but little business to
set so much store by all these " racking pains," which
Hume enumerates, of " gouts, gravels, megrims, tooth-
aches, rheumatisms." The toothache alone is certainly
bad enough ; but I do not see that we have any right to
make such a noise about toothache, were it only for our
friends, the dentists ! I suppose Hume here would say,
as he literally does say, " If you feel not human misery
yourself, I congratulate you on so happy a singularity.
Others, seemingly the most prosperous, have not been
ashamed to vent their complaints in the most melan-
choly strains. Let us attend to the great, the fortunate
Emperor Charles V., when, tired with human grandeur,
he resigned all his extensive dominions into the hands of
his son. In the last harangue which he made on that
memorable occasion, he publicly avowed, that the greatest
prosperities lohich he had ever enjoyed had been mixed with
so many adversities that he might truly say he had never
enjoyed any satisfaction or contentment. But did tlie
retired life, in which he sought for shelter, afford him any

ABDALEAHMAN III., ETC. 275

greater happiness ? If we may credit his son's account,
his repentance commenced the very day of his resigna-
tion." Gibbon, too, would seem to join his master here,
and only repeat the story. He transcribes " an authentic
memorial which was found in the closet of the deceased
caliph," the great and glorious Abdalrahman III. : " I
have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace ;
beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and
respected by my allies. Eiches and honours, power and
pleasure, have waited on my call ; nor does any earthly
blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In
this situation I have diligently numbered the days of
pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot :
they amount to fourteen. 0 man, place not thy con-
fidence in this present world ! " Nor are these all.
Septimius Severus was certainly one of the most suc-
cessful Eoman emperors, and even he sighs out, " Omnia
fui et nihil expedit ! "

These are what are called the lessons of history ; and
Samuel Johnson, in his Scghcd, Umperor of Ethiopia, and his
Bassdas, Prince of Ahyssinia, drives them well home. But
it seems to me that if these mighty sovereigns had been
content with health, and not perpetually longed for honey,
" the mere sweetness in the mouth " — if they had counted
the days in which they were absorbed in human action,
which is alone The Good, they might have found their
" fourteen days " sufficient to eke out the full sum of their
miseries. I, for my part, when tired of all these tears and
groans, and this litany of woes, am apt to cry. Let me get out
of this eternal whine, which, the brave Wordswortli tells
us —

" Erebus disdains ;
Calm pleasures there abide — majestic pains!"

Gibbon is honest enough, in the end, to speak in this same
sense. " If I may speak of myself," he owns, " my happy

276 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTEENTH.

hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty numbers
of the caliph of Spain." And even Hume, in the person
of Cleanthes, who certainly speaks then as Hume the
man, is obliged to say, " I can observe something like
what you mention of misery in some others ; but, I con-
fess, I feel little or nothing of it in myself, and hope
that it is not so common as you represent it." And it
is not so common ! The misery that is, is largely on the
part of people who hfive nothing to do. He who has
work mostly never whines ; though I admit that some-
times Thomas Carlyle unduly whines over his. Consider
the population as a whole ! Surely the bulk of it cannot
be called unhappy ! The carpenter, the joiner, or other
such under his paper cap, his feet in dry shavings, a
roof overhead, and his body warm, spends the day to the
whistle of his plane and the jokes of his comrades. The
shoemakers, how they prattle in a semicircle to the
tap-tap of their hammers, as the tailors on their shop
boards to the snore of their needles ! If you walk out
some country road, say at four o'clock of the dawn, you
will find the weaver in his village, pipe in cheek, pacing
cheerfully before his door, and snuffing up the morning
air with uncommon satisfaction. Just so, and so early,
in a street at Paris, I have seen the chiffonier, chief of
the proletariate, him, too, with his pipe in the morning air,
quite gaily wliip up, with his hook, over his shoulder,
into the basket on his back, some rag from the dust-heap
before him. At their work they are all quite cheerful —
workman of the proletariate or workman of the trade.
What a strong, healthy fellow is the navigator on the
line, picking with pick, or shovelling with shovel,
always effectively, but always, too, with a stroke so
tempered and temperate, that it never moves a pulse !
There are spells of danger and difficulty to some ; but if
a man in a state of nature is a hunter or fisher, and so,

THE TRADES COMPAEISON. 277

as it were, at play, most of the employments of the
population have still the interest of nature in them, and
many of them its romance. It does not belong to riches,
nor to honours, nor to titles to give happiness. Happiness
is in the mind ; and it will come more readily into the
mind of a rag-picker than into the mind of a lord at
a horse race. Happiness, at least the possibility of
happiness, so far as it depends on the mind, is, there
may be reason to think, not so unequally meted to the
most part of mankind, and for the most part of their
lives. People are apt to mistake what, in regard to
happiness, another can do for us. " She's gi'en me meat,
she's gi'en me claes," says the " young thing " in the song ;
and that is about the total or the staple, the main and
marrow, of what can be done for us from the outside by
anybody. If any of us will look to the substance of our
lives, we shall find that that staple contains all the realities
and strict matters of fact either possible or necessary for
our existence here. Whatever drawback may appear,
we shall find that it comes from our own trick of com-
parison. If we would only look to ourselves and our
own means of enjoyment, we would be contented enough ;
but, unfortunately, we must look to others ; and that is
the shadow that falls for us with a blight on all we
have, let it be in itself what bounty soever. I have
been accustomed to think that a capable handicraftman
who comes home of an evening, pleased with his day's
work, to a tidy wife and tidy children, and a cosy meal,
by a cosy fire, in his room and kitchen, or two rooms and
kitchen, with a chest of drawers and an eight-day clock,
and a book to read, need not envy any prince in the
land, and still less any lord at a racecourse, — were it not
for comparison. Nature is there ready at any moment
to spread all her beauty before his eyes, all her wealth of
hill, and dale, and champaign. There is music in the

278 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTEENTH.

air ; there is glory in the heavens ; and every tiniest
shell upon the shore has its own charm of a loveliness
of form that was never due to sexual selection. Of
course, I do not deny that sex enters in some way
there too ; but I am quite sure that never mollusc
female loved mollusc male, or mollusc male, mollusc
female, for the beauty of his or her shell, in the
same way as a woman may fall in love with a man
for the beauty of his coat, or he with her for the
beauty of her habit. I suppose it never occurred to
Mr. Darwin that the tailor might have something to
do with sexual selection, at least so far as some
anthropoids are concerned !

So it is on the whole, then, with the question of evil
in the world. In short, let Hume harangue as he may,
in his Parts X. and XL of these Dialogues, piling pain
upon pain, and black upon black, human life remains for
all that, even to the individual, a possession that pleases.
Human life, of course, is but another name for work ;
but that is not a fault ; that is rather a laud ; for the
subject has the right of satisfaction in his work, and,
according to philosophy, it is the quality of the universe
to realize no less.

Then as regards the complaints or objections about
design itself, several of which it has been enough only to
exhibit, it really does not appear in the end that Hume in
his ninety pages of the Dialogues has added any strength to
the argument of his nine pages of the Essays. That argu-
ment generally rested on the single idea that, in ascend-
ing from the world to God, we have no right to descend
from God to the world with more than we took up.
The inference to the cause lies in the effect alone ; or
the argument from design gives the cause as equal to the
effect, and we have no warrant to make it more. Of course,
the reply is, just look to the efTect. Can such effect

IDENTITY. 279

as that, the universe namely, not warrant every
supremacy that we name God ? But what dominates
Hume are his own peculiar ideas — the very peculiar
ideas which he has himself come to in regard to cause
and effect. In the first place, Hume, as he says himself
(Burton, i. 97), " never asserted so absurd a proposition as
that anything might arise without a cause ; " still he
did assert that, as regards any insight of reason, we have
no warrant for connecting the effect with its cause,
but our habitual experience of their customary con-
junction ; and that, consequently, so far as we see,
anything may be the cause of anything (" the falling
of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun,
or the wish of a man control the planets in their orbits ").
That, no doubt, is Hume's contention so far ; for these are
his own words. In the second place, however, Hume,
in his reasoning against design, simply contradicts him-
self, and unconsciously implies what principle of con-
nection really exists between the cause and its effect.
That is, he will allow in the cause which w^e infer, only
such qualities as are contained in the effect. Say it is
X we find in the effect, then, says Hume, it is just that ./.',
and no more than that x, that you are to find in the cause.
It is really very odd ; but Hume is never for a brief
instant aware that in that he has answered his own
cardinal, crucial, and climacteric question. The immediate
nexus, the express bond, the very tie, which he challenged
you, and me, and the whole world to produce, he actually
at that very moment produces himself, holds up in his
hand even, openly shows, expressly names, and emphati-
cally insists upon ! That tie is identity. When Hume
will allow no qualities in the cause but those that are
found in the effect, that amounts to saying the x that
virtually is the cause is the same x that virtually is the
effect. And what is that but the assertion of a relation

280 GIFFOKD LECTUIiE THE FOURTEENTH.

of identity between the cause and the effect ? Now, indeed,
that as much as that is manifest, explicit, and express, you
will be astonished how often it has been said — almost in
terms, if unconsciously — positively by every philosophical
writer you can possibly take up. Nevertheless, so far as
I know, it was only first consciously said in Europe by
George William Frederick Hegel, and first consciously
repeated in English, and for the first time of all as con-
sciously directed to the problem of Hume, in the little
essay named As Regards Protoplasm. And I suppose we
owe it all only to the Hindoos. Hegel was well acquainted
with the writings of Colebrooke, and in his pages he found
the Hindoos to say : " The nature of cause and effect is the
same : " "a piece of cloth does not essentially differ from
the yarn of w^hich it is wove ; barley, not rice or peas,
grows out of barley-corns ; rice is in the husk before it is
peeled ; milk is in the udder before it is drawn ; and milk,
not water, is taken to make curds," etc. etc. For I might
quote much more from the same author to the same
effect. And, in reality, is it not precisely the same import
when Hume says, and when it is commonly said, like
effects prove like causes ? The wonder is that Hume, in
spite of this natural conviction, existent in all of us, of
"a more real and intimate connection between the cause and
its effect than habitual sequence," to use the words of Sir
John Herschel — the wonder is that Hume brought over
so many to his way of thinking, that to him was sport
only. Burton in his Life of Hume (i. 82), as late as 1846,
has these astounding words in a note : " This refers to the
notion, which now may be termed obsolete, at least in
philosophy, of an inherent power in the cause to produce
the effect ! " There is no power in the cause to produce
the effect — there was no power in God to create the world I
Hume could be consistent in his theories, whatever his
conviction. Burton himself points out that it was only

BUKTON, STEWAET, SPINOZA, EKDMANN. 281

consistency led Hume to " the annihilation of the notion
of power," as well in the immaterial as in the material
world (i. 275). "As we cannot find in physical causes
any power to produce their effect, so when a man moves
his arm to strike, we have no notion of any power being
exercised ! " There is such a thing as compression,
surely ; and it is a force, a power : if we compress a full
sponge we drive the water out ; and this compression
involves in the body compressing, here the hand, a certain
strain or stress, which we feel, and which, consequently,
we indentify with power. Prick a blown bladder, and
the fluent air, under pressure of the elastic membrane
(as of a hand), escapes. There is a rationale in the whole
process. Surely there is a reason why a garter supports
a stocking, or a button fastens a coat ! To say that the
hammer that knocks a nail in to the head can be reasonably
regarded, not as a force, but only as an antecedent ! It is
really wonderful how Brown, and so many others, could
accommodate themselves to such extravagant ideas. Why,
even Dugald Stewart, despite his master Eeid, must go
over to Hume, and very glaringly stultify himself. Burton
quotes (89) him to the effect that Hume's theory "lays
the axe to the very root from which Spinozism springs,"
and this because " physical causes and effects are known to
us merely as antecedents and con&eqiients" and " the word
necessity is altogether unmeaning." Stewart thus intimates
that Spinoza's system is, as he says further, " nothing
better than a rope of sand," and for the single reason that it is
founded on the necessity of cause and effect. Now-a-days,
in the words of Erdmann (ii. 49), the opinion of philosophy
is, that Spinoza " knows not any actual causal connection,
but only conditionedness in consequence of a Vorbegriff," a
pre-notion ; and surely that is absolutely Hume on both of
his sides, at once as negative of causal power and as
affirmative, instead of the relation only of antecedent and

282 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOURTEENTH.

consequent. Dugald Stewart has not been quite liappy
here. And, in general, it was sufficiently simple on his
part, after all that Eeid had said, seriously to adopt, almost
as a philosophical truism, what Hume himself, who pro-
posed it, had really only sceptically played with, certainly
at last, and for little else than the sceptical conclusion
that,viewing our limited faculties in that and other respects,
it is in vain to expect " ever to satisfy ourselves concerning
any determinations which we may form with regard to the
origin of worlds, and the situation of nature from and to
eternity " {Enquiry, xii., iii.). It was on the eve of his
death, and in allusion to his own health, that Hume himself
said, " A wind, though it extinguishes a candle, blows up a
fire ; " and that contains the whole case. So much power
has this effect: so much more, that. It is decidedly in
contradiction of his own propos that " anything may be the
cause or the effect of anything," that Hume, against
design, asserts it as a fact that thought follows matter, but
not matter thought : " we see every day," he says, " the
latter arise from the former, never the former from the
latter ; " " ideas are copied from real objects, and are
ectypal, not archetypal." That is a vast matter that is
involved, a question of questions, and goes far beyond
the ideas of Hume. In the meantime, we may be reminded
<^>f Erigena's ruling, that it is the notion that is the original
of things, and not things of the notion. Of course that is
not the doctrine we are accustomed to of late. What we
hear now, rather, is much rotund oratory about the physical
basis, that there is an original matter. Well, perhaps there
is, though I cannot say it has ever been held up to me or
anyljody else. But this I can say, that, hold up an original
matter when you may, you will never hold it up without
an original form ; which original form, too, is the original
first and furrow of the whole business. I get it from
Eabelais even that, /orma mutata, mutatur substantia, the

HUME IN CONCLUSION. 28

o

substance itself is dependent on its form. It is the form,
namely, and not the matter, that is the valuable element.
Why, we know that even land, which, surely, is material
enough, has its value in its/o?^m, the form which the hand
of labour has impressed upon it. At all events, we are
evidently under no necessity to conclude with Hume or
his belated followers, that matter is, in any respect, earlier
than form. But, in fact, as is customary with Hume, it
would seem in the end that he has been only at play.
The very Philo in the Dialogues who makes all the sceptical
objections, comes out at last with such an acknowledgment
as this : " The beauty and fitness of final causes strike us
with such irresistible force that all objections appear
(what I believe they really are) mere cavils and sophisms
. . . the Atheist, I assert, is only nominally so, and can
never possibly be in earnest." And Cleanthes had already
said before him : " The order and arrangement of nature,
the curious adjustment of final causes, the plain use and
intention of every part and organ, — all these bespeak in
the clearest language an intelligent cause or author.
The heavens and the earth join in the same testimony :
the whole chorus of nature raises one hymn to the praises
of its Creator." Would you not say here that David had
suddenly grown poetic ? Even speaking in his own name
and character, he is quite as explicit, and not much less
eloquent. " The whole frame of nature," he says in his
Nat. Hist, of Religion, " bespeaks an intelligent author —
one single being who bestowed existence and order on this
vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to one
regular plan or connected system." " Look out for a
people entirely void of religion," he concludes, and " if you
find them at all, be assured that they are but few degrees
removed from brutes ! "

In fact, there can be no doubt that it was only super-
stition Hume hated, and not religion : " You, Cleanthes, are

284 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FOUETEENTH.

sensible that, notwithstanding the freedom of my conver-
sation, and my love of singular arguments, no one has a
deeper sense of religion impressed on his mind." And
when this is said for Philo, it is said for Hume himself.
His reverence of true religion, indeed, he has not been
slow, again and again in his own person, to express. There
was nothing covert in the man : much obloquy he might
easily have escaped by simple silence, or by speech more
guarded ; but he was a big man, and he spoke free : he
scorned to be seen of men otherwise than with face to the
front. He was loyal in his nature, generous. Almost as
much as in his own, he rejoiced in the fame that competed
with it. Letters were his only weakness. When he
ought to have been " poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero
and Virgil were the authors he was secretly devouring."
He was still a boy when he wrote, " I could not quit my
pretensions in learning but with my last breath." It is a
satisfaction to know that, naturally, such zeal and devotion
cannot be without their reward. Hume is a peer only to
the highest of his people, to Scott, and Burns, and Carlyle.
His best works will endure. For perspicuity and ease of
flow, his history is as yet unsurpassed in the language.
Its " careless, inimitable beauties of style " made Gibbon,
when he read, lay down the book in despair. One cannot
but hope that its author, wherever he is, has the satisfac-
tion of reflecting that not a single Scoticism more remains
for the weeding. Though so eager to be an Englishman
in his writing, what a Scot of the Scots he was in his speech,
looks, person, and the pride of his heart ! He was simply
so common Scotch, indeed, that, when the servant girl
breathlessly broke in upon him to say. Somebody had
chalked St. David Street upon his house, he could only
ejaculate, "Never mind, lassie, many a better man has been
made a saint of before ! " And if we cannot discover much
point in the phrase, we can all recognise how like it is to

Hume's house. 285

the great, stout, simple sort of Dandy Dinmont Scotchman
that he was ! And I hope now you will go and look at
that house, the old-fashioned one at the corner of St.
Andrew Square, that, in St. David Street, stood alone at
first. Hume himself had it built, and he lived in it the
last five or six years of his life. Go and look at it, and,
as you look, believe that, whatever his shortcomings and
deficiencies, it is still with love, and respect, and gratitude
that we ought to think always and at any time of the
" good David."

GIFFOED LECTUEE THE EIFTEENTH.

Transition, Hume to Kant — Effect of Kant on natural tlieology —
The centre of Kant's thought — Hume led to this— Causal
necessity — That necessity objective — Still in matters of fact —
Relations of ideas — Hume on one side, Kant on the other, of
the dilemma — Hume quite as Eeid, on natural necessity —
But what the explanation to intellectual insight — Synthetic
addition — Analytic implication — Change — Kant's explanation
is, There are a priori syntheses native to the mind — The whole
Kantian machinery in a sentence — Time and space — The twelve
categories and the three ideas — A toy house — A jjeculiar
magic lantern — A psychology — A nietaphysic— Analysis of
the syllogism for the ideas — Simple apprehension missed — An
idea — The ideal — The teleological proof.

There can be no straighter or nearer transition than
from David Hume to Immanuel Kant. The latter does
himself claim the former as his direct and immediate
predecessor. This is true, too, not only in the reference,
generally, to philosophy, but in that, particularly, to the
special subject presently before us. Perhaps not in
English, but certainly in translations, Kant (very
evidently) is perfectly familiar with Hume's main doc-
trines in regard to the existence of a God ; nor do his
own results differ much from those of his forerunner,
otherwise than in weight and authority. It was princi-
pally because of these results, namely, that the Alleszcr-
tualmender, the everything - to - pieces - pounding Kant,
received his title. Kant's countrymen, unlike their
neighbours, the French, are not reputed to be parti-
cularly versatile ; nevertheless it seems certain that, not

THE CENTKE OF KANT'S THOUGHT. 287

long after reading his three chapters on the impossibility
of each of the three proofs for the existence of God,
most of them who were at least of the same guild with
Kant, suddenly ceased, or were even ashamed, to mention
the subject. For them the whole science of Natural
Theology had, in a moment, passed silently into the
limbo of the lost. And so it is that it is of greater
importance for us to put to scrutiny the relative views
of Kant than even those of Hume. At all to effect this
with any satisfaction, however, requires that we should
preliminarily know at least the spirit of the system from
which these views naturally take origin. That may
sound ominous ; but I do not know that what is con-
cerned may not be put simply and intelligibly enough.

The centre of Kant is, to say so, the a 'priori —
those elements of knowledge, those elements of the
ordinary perception of things, that are native and proper
to the mind itself, even before, or independently and in
anticipation of, any actual experience of these things.
That is what is meant by pure reason. Our minds shall
be at birth, not, as with Locke, so many tabulae rasac, so
many mere blank sheets for things to write themselves
into, so many empty bags or sacks for things to occupy ;
but, on the contrary, they shall be, already, beforehand,
rich quarries, filled, as it were, with the needful handles
and cues of all things. What led Kant to this was
Hume. Hume, as we know, took the cause as one thing
and the effect as another ; and holding them out so,
apart, challenged any man to show any principle of
union between them. Without experience of the fact,
it is impossible to tell that gunpowder will explode, or
a loadstone attract. Consequently it is only by the
custom of experience that we know the effect of the one
on iron, or the consequence on the other of a spark.
Kant was deeply impressed by such examples and the

288 GIFFOED LECTURE THE FIFTEENTH.

general challenge of Hume. He admits himself that he
brooded over the problem concerned for " at least twelve
years ; " and of that brooding I think it is possible to
detect traces as early as the year 176G, or fifteen years
before the publication of his Kritih of Pure Reason.
What, in the end, prevented Kant from agreeing with
Hume in his rationale custom, was perception of the
nature of the necessity which was involved in the
problem. That necessity Kant saw was not a subjective,
but an objective necessity. The necessity by which,
when I think A, I cannot help thinking also B, C, D ;
or when I think 1, then also 2, 3, 4 — that necessity, as
being only one of habitual association in me, is a sub-
jective necessity. But, when I think of an eclipse of
the sun as following the intervention of the moon, I do
not think of a necessity subjective, a necessity for no
other reason than habitual association of my own. On
the contrary, I think of a necessity objective, of a
necessity that exists independently of me, and without
any reference to me or my feelings in any way. In
short, I know that the moon, coming between me and
the light, casts its shadow upon me, and must cast its
shadow upon me ; which is an event and an entire
resultant necessity, utterly independent of me, and of
any way in which I may be pleased to regard it. In
the same way, when I see a bridge overthrown by a
river in flood, it is impossible for me to think the
necessity involved to proceed from custom — to depend
on the influence of custom. I cannot think that neces-
sity a subjective necessity in me, but, on the contrary,
an objective necessity in the facts themselves. This,
then, is what occurred to Kant in face of the contention
of Hume. But then he was obliged to admit at the
same time that Hume was right in pointing out that all
examples of causality were but matters of fact, in regard

HUME LED TO THIS. 289

to which, as matters of fact, we know that they are, or
are as they are, but not that they must he. Cork floats,
coal burns, etc. etc. ; we know the fact or the event ;
but we did not know the fact or the event iu any case
until we tried it ; then and then only we knew that the
propositions, cork floats, coal burns, were true ; but we
did not know, and we know not now, that they must be
true. Cork might not float, coal might not burn : we
see no necessity for cork to float or for coal to burn.
But all examples of causality are just such facts as the
matters of fact that cork floats or coal burns ; and yet
the proposition concerned in every one single example of
causality is as necessary, as apodictically necessary, as
any proposition dependent on what are called relations
of ideas, and which, accordingly, is intuitively known to
carry or involve the necessity iu question. It was pre-
cisely this peculiarity that struck both Hume and Kant.
Both saw that all examples of causality were only known
by experience ; and both saw that they all brought with
them a suggestion of necessity. Both, then, further,
immediately asked how was this ? for both knew that ex-
perience was only competent to say this thing or that thing
is so, not this thing or that thing must he so. But both,
putting the same question, in the same circumstances, and
with the same knowledge, came to an answer, each, which
was the contradictory of the other. Hume said, As it is an
affair of experience alone, it can be no affair of necessity.
On the contrary, said Kant, As it is an affair of necessity,
it can be no affair of experience alone. Hume had no
objection whatever to the necessity in question being
regarded by us as a natural necessity. He did himself
regard it as a natural necessity. Neither did he object
to the reference of it, as a natural necessity, to instinct.
On the contrary, as a natural necessity, he did himself
so refer it. And Eeid, consequently, in the case, might

T

290 GIFFORD LECTUKE THE FIFTEENTH.

have profitably spared himself much gratuitous excitement.
All that Hume insisted on was that, putting aside instinct
and asking for an explanation, an intelligible reason, of
the necessity we felt in the inference from the effect to
the cause, or from the cause to the effect, he, for his part,
could discover or detect none but the constant previous
conjunction, nevertheless, that he was quite open to the
better explanation and the better reason which another
man, abler than himself, or more fortunate than himself,
might have succeeded to obtain. That for Hume is his
whole relative position ; and that for Hume is the whole
relative position that remained the same till the end of
his life. Not, indeed, till some five years after the
death of Hume was there heard in reply to his challenge
the answer of Kant. That answer, as we have seen
(Hume, of the two elements concerned, having chosen
experience for his fulcrum of support), took up its position
ex adverso on the ground left to it of necessity ; where
the first movement of Kant was to point to this necessity
as objective, not subjective, and withal as in its matter
synthetic and not analytic. When you say, Every
change has its cause, you feel that you say something
that is as absolutely and necessarily true as when you
say that a straight line between any two points is the
shortest line. You feel also that you say something
that is true, not for the same reason that it is true that
All windows let in light, or that all peninsulas are almost
islands. It is the very meaning of a window that it lets
in light, and it is the very meaning of a peninsula that
it is almost an island. These last are analytic propositions,
for what you allege of the notion, the window, or the
peninsula, is involved in the very notion itself — in what
it directly means, namely. V>\\t the notion cause is not
in the same way involved in the notion change. A
change has a cause ; but a change is something on its

HUME AND KANT HERE. 291

own account, and does not mean a cause in the same
way that a window means admission of light or a penin-
sula approach to an island. The proposition of change,
therefore, is no mere analytic or tautological proposition ;
and its truth, while as certain as that of any such, is as
certain also as the truth of any non - tautological or
synthetic proposition, an example of which was the truth
that, between any two points the straight line is the
shortest. Straight is not short ; a straight line may be
anything but short. The two things are perfectly dif-
ferent ; nevertheless the proposition brings them together
into a certain identity. So two angles called right are
not the same as the three angles of any triangle ; just as
the two squares on the two sides are not the square on
tlie third side of a certain triangle, and the parallelism
of two lines is not their continuation into infinity.
Nevertheless, the two notions respectively concerned in
these three examples ca7i be brought, however different
they are each by itself, into a certain common identity.
That now is the case with the proposition of causality,
That every effect, or change, has its cause. The change
is not the cause, and the cause is not the change. I
may show you a lobster black, and, leaving the room,
may return with it red. You see the change, then — a
thing quite by itself ; but, even if there be a cause, as
you will certainly surmise, you do not yet know it. I
may have plunged the lobster in a bath of acids, or I
may have boiled it, or I may have done some quite other
unknown something to it. In a word, the change is one
thing and the cause another, and to bring them together
into a relation of identity is an act of synthesis, an act
that involves a synthetic process or a synthetic pro-
position.

Here now, then, we stand before Kant's problem.
We may even assume Hume himself to be present, and

292 GIFFOED LECTURE THE FIFTEENTH.

to admit now that his answer was no answer to the
necessity concerned, and that he is eager to hear Kant's
answer.

Well, says Kant, I have got to find the source of a
necessary truth that is not analytic, but synthetic, and
that at the same time is not due to experience. What
not due to experience means has been already explained.
There is no particular causation, no particular example
of causality that is not due to experience. The indenta-
tion of a cushion by a bullet is an example of causality,
but it is known only by experience. So it is with all
other examples, as the drifting of a ship in a stream, or
the warming of a stone by the sun. All such things are
just seen; they are facts of experience — they are affairs
of perception. Nay, the universal of causality, the
universal proposition of causality, does itself involve eye-
sight, does itself involve experience, does itself involve
perception. Every change has its cause : it is impossible
that we should have any knowledge of what a change is,
unless we had experience of it. There are certainly
intellectual changes, changes in the process of the under-
standing, changes in the process of reason, changes in
belief, etc. ; but any change, even any such change, is
always known to us as an alteration, substantially, of
consciousness, and an alteration of consciousness is just
another word for experience. We can have an experience
only when we have an alteration of consciousness : an
experience is that — an alteration of consciousness. Even
the universal of causation, then, every change has its
cause, is a proposition that involves experience, is a
proposition a iwstcriori — at least so far. But so far only.
Otherwise, it is, in its vital force and virtue, a proposition
a priori. That is the contention of Kant. A change must
have a cause. This is a truth which, though syntlietic,
is also apodictic — necessary and universal namely.

THE QUESTION FOR KANT. 293

But, says Kant, 7iccessity and universality are " sure
criteria of a priori cognition." The proposition of
causality, therefore, must be, as said, at least in its virtue,
of an a priori place. The synthesis it implies, the synthesis
of the two notions, of change on the one hand and of
cause on the other, is not a result of experience, is not a
result a posteriori ; for, in that case, the truth of it would
not be apodictic, would not be universal and necessary,
but a truth only as for the moment found, — a truth only ,
probable, then, and a mere matter of fact.

The question for Kant, now, then, plainly is — How is
this ? How ca7i the causal proposition be possibly
a priori ? How can its validity be a product of mind,
and wholly independent of any experience a posteriori f
It was this single question that led Kant in the end to
his whole cumbrous, extraordinary, and incredible system.
Simply to explain causality by innate principles of reason,
native and original to the mind itself, Kant invented that
whole prodigious machinery — merely for such explana-
tion, Kant forced into the geometrical point of his own
consciousness the infinitude of space and the infinitude of
time, but grasped, throughout their whole infinitude,
together both, by the tree of the categories, the enchanted
and enchantinof Yggdrasil, whose branches reduced the
infinitude in which they spread into the very finite net of
the schematism that held to our ears, and eyes, and
fingers, nostrils, and palate their own sensations always.
That was the monstrous birth to which Kant came at
last after his fifteen years' sitting on the simple egg of
Hume. And, all the time, we may fancy our Indian
fellow-Aryans laughing at them both, and pointing, as
seen, to nothing but identity !

That, then, was the course of Kant. The proposition
of causality was to be placed within us, and made into
a principle of the very mind. Strangely, somehow, the

294 GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIFTEENTH.

first step in this operation was the internalization of
space and time. We may think, if we like, space a
bonndless vacancy without us, and time a mighty throb
which is ever at once throughout the whole of the
boundlessness ; but we are only all wrong — we are only
the victims of our own magical privilege and miraculous
endowment. Newton himself might see " the floor of
heaven thick-studded with patines of bright gold," and,
in rapture of his awe, murmur to himself, " Since every
particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment
of time is everywhere, assuredly the Fabricator and Lord
of all things will not be never and nowhere ; " but he,
too, would only deceive himself and stray. The truth is
that all these unfathomable depths and illimitable
spheres, with all their rich contents, are not without at
all, are not in a heaven at all, but only in me. That, as
I say, was the first step of Kant. Time and space were
only forms of general sense really within, which still, at
touch upon particular {special) sense, were thrown as
mirages apparently without. Then all these touches of
special sense — sensations namely — received into these
mirages, were wrought up into perceptions, objects — the
thinfrs of this external universe — and associated into rule
and system by the twelve categories and the three ideas.
To arrive at such results as these was a work of a long
brooding — a fabrication of multiform piecing on the part
of Kant. There, however, in the end it is, and all for no
other purpose than to demonstrate that the necessity,
which we all feel and know to lie in the connection of
the cause with its effect, was not, as Hume mischievously
argued, subjective and a posteriori, but, on the contrary,
objective and a jjriori. To effect this, time and space
were both retracted within us, and, while there, were
acted upon in the peculiar succession of their parts by
the function of judgment, named antecedent and con-

A PECULIAR MAGIC LANTERN. 295

sequent, till there issued, in category and schema, the
full formed a priori machinery of cause and effect.
Fancy it all — it is like a toy-house, which children
take piecemeal out of a box, and put together in play.
There are first the two long and broad bits, time and
space, folded together, but expansible, at once an
indivisible centre and a boundless circumference. These
are then fitted into another piece which is called
productive imagination — productive, as so contrived, that
is, that, motive of and in them, it can expand the sort of
collapsed wings, the long and broad bits of time and
space, at the same time that it receives into them the
sensations which, come from where they may, gave it the
hint. But, after all, our toy materials do not seem, on
the whole, so very well adapted for the construction of a
house. Let us conceive rather that we put them together
into a magic lantern — a peculiar, a very peculiar magic
lantern. Well, the pieces called time and space shall be
the slides, and imagination shall be the containing case
of the lantern. Now, to complete this case, with the
slides in it, we make an addition from within to its top.
And the piece which we fix there is the most curious
piece of all. It is a sort of cone — in shape, let us say,
something like an extinguisher, but as suited to a
magic lantern, a very magical extinguisher. The little
round top of the extinguisher, now itself at top of the
whole case, shall be the reuniting unity and unit, as it
were, of the entire contrivance. Fancy it the light —
the illuminating light of the whole arran^ijement — or
fancy it rather — this little round top — the eye that sees
into the whole internality of the machine, and, as it were,
throws its light down into it. Well, suppose this
extinguisher in place as the lantern's top : the eye, that
is placed there — a mere bead — throws its glance, its
light, down into the sensations, the figures on the

296 GIFFOKD LECTUEE THE FIFTEENTH.

slides, or, what is the same thing, receives the light
from them up into itself — hit through lenses. Eound the
circle at the wide end of the extinguisher, as fixed in
place, there are twelve lenses ; and these are the
categories ! They are the functions of judgment, which is
the hollow of the extinguisher, and collects and con-
centrates all into the eye, or the mere bead at top.
This eye, this bead at top, is the Pure, Primary, or
Original Apperception, or, as it is otherwise called, the
Synthetic Unity of Apperception. Now, then, that is the
way Kant fancies us to perceive this universe — that is
the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. Sen-
sations, we know not how, but feigned to be due to
things in themselves, — which things in themselves,
whether as what, or as where, are utterly unknown to us,
— sensations, I say, so due, appear, we know not how,
on the slides of time and space in the material of the
imagination ; and, carried up thence by judgment,
through its twelve lenses of the categories, into the
unity of apperception, into the unity of self -consciousness,
suddenly stand around us infinite, as this whole huge
formed, ruled, and regulated universe ! To that grand
finale and consummation, at least, Kant only adds three
toy pieces further. They are what he calls the Ideas :
the Psychological Idea, the Cosmological Idea, and the
Theological Idea. They may be conceived — the three
ideas may be conceived as three lenses, beyond the
twelve categorical lenses, and fitted into apperception, the
eye (I), or bead itself at top. There now, that is the
whole, and that is not, after all, merely a deduction, the
transcendental deduction — that is really the way in
which Kant creates — positively makes for us this actual
universe ! Kant, to construct this universe, takes
absolutely nothing from the universe, but all from him-
self. The sensations are his, the imagination is his, the

A PSYCHOLOGY. 297

categories are his, the Ideas are his, the Apperception is
his — what is not his are alone, the unknown ghosts, the
Things-in-themselves ; and for them he has not a vestige
of a warrant : to his own self they are, by his own self,
admitted and declared to be absolutely unknown ciphers,
nonentities, which nowhere exist, or which exist, as idle
suppositions, only in name. Nor is Kant less autocratic
in his further and final step as concerns the Ideas — God,
that is, and our own soul, are only ideas, without corre-
spondent objects or with correspondent objects only
feigned — again ciphers, then ! — Not but that, in a
practical point of view, we may grant them to be —
what ? — postulates ! And that only means that, as
moral beings, we are under a necessity to — suppose them !
In the prosecution now of our own immediate theme,
it is to these three Ideas that we must turn at last for a
more particular relative inquiry ; and, in the first place,
we are to understand that their function is not con-
siitutive, but only orgulative. This world, as we have
seen, according to Kant, is only an affair of our own
subjective affections, and our own sujojective actions. Our
own categories, acting on our own forms of space and
time, and, through these, on our own sensations, bring all
into our own unity ; and all so far is constitutive. It is
the Ideas now come in as regulative ; for their action has
no part in i\iQ formation of things. To the formation of
things there go only the sensations ; the spectra of space
and time that receive the sensations ; and the categories
which, under the unity of apperception, order, arrange,
condense, and work up the sensations into the perceived
objects of the perceived world in time and space around
us. All these materials, then, are constitutive; and, in
discussing them, we have realised a Psychology, a
Philosophy of the Mind, an Erhenntnisstheoric. It has
been left for the Ideas, especially in their moral reference.

298 GIFFOED LECTURE THE FIFTEENTH,

to realize a IMetapbysic, the interests of which are God,
the Soul, and the Freedom of the Will ; but all here is
only regulative. If the categories give unity to things,
the Ideas, on their side, give only a further degree of
unity to the categories themselves, and are of no .
objective, but only of a subjective or internal application
for the mind's own wants of order, arrangement, sim-
plification, and unity. So far as they seem to effect more
than that indeed, they are the sources of a necessary,
natural, and unavoidable illusion. But we shall under-
stand better what Kant means by that, if we refer, in the
first place, to the peculiar means and method by which
he describes himself to attain to these ideas.

It was by a fortunate recollection of the doctrine of
Judgment in ordinary school logic that Kant, after long
meditation, examination, and trial, came to his categories
in correspondence with the subordinate three moments
under each of the four common and familiar rubrics of
Quantity, Quality, delation, and Modality. It was only
by an extension, as it were, of this hint, that Kant passed
from the section of the Judgment to the section of
the Syllogism ; and from its three forms. Categorical,
Hypothetical, and Disjunctive, extricated, at least to his
own satisfaction, the three Ideas. The three parts of
Logic, as we know, are Simple Apprehension, Judgment,
and Reason ; and it is probable that it was only by an
unfortunate oversight that Kant, in passing forward,
from Judgment (that first occurred to him) to Eeason
(or the Syllogism) did not also pass backward to Simple
Apprehension. If he had done so, he would have made
good for himself the whole of Logic. As Eeason seemed
to yield and legalize the Ideas, Judgment the Categories ;
so from Simple Apprehension he might have drawn an
equal warrant and authority for his Pure Perceptions,
Time and Space. In that case the system would have

ANALYSIS OF THE SYLLOGISM. 299

had the security of an entire science as basis of support,
and not the insecurity and unsatisfactoriness, instead, of
a mere incomplete and partial reference. What im-
mediately concerns us here, however, is only the Ideas.
How Kant came to his pure perceptions, his Esthetic
namely, such as at is, or how, in his Analytic, he
extricated from Judgment his Categories — all that we
leave on one side or behind us ; we have only to do with
his Dialectic, and with the manner in which he there
extricates from the three forms of the Syllogism his
three Ideas. This, as only technical and dry, I pass.
Kant, in fact, may be said here to extricate only what he
wants, and that, too, only by the most arbitrary and
absurd torture for his own convenience.

It is sufficient for us to understand at present that all
such proceedings here of Kant are but respective pre-
liminaries to the destruction of the proofs for the existence
of God. And that they can be nothing else appears at
once from the very definition of an Idea. " I understand
by Idea," says Kant, " a necessary notion of reason, to
which there can be given no congruent object in the
senses." That is, though necessary notions of reason,
tlie Ideas are objectively transcendent, or they suggest
objects that have no existence in rerum natura ; and are
only subjectively transcendental — there, namely, with a
calculated function of regulating the interests of the
understanding into ultimate unity and totality : they
apply a collective, systematizing, or synthesizing con-
dition to experience as a whole ; but are no more than
mental principles only illusively conceived respectively to
denote things. Now, what is called the Transcendental
Ideal, or God, can be no exception here ; and we see at
once that, with such presupposition, Kant can only
declare all the proofs which have so long occupied us,
merely null and void. In this declaration, however, he

300 GIFFOED LECTURE THE FIFTEENTH.

extends to us a scaffolding of demonstration, which we
have now to see. We begin, as has been our way
liitherto, with the teleological argument, the proof from
design. And here Kant is at once profuse in com-
pliments. He acknowledges that " This world opens to
us an immeasurable spectacle of variety, order, designful-
ness, and beauty ; " that the consequent proof " has its
existence from the study of nature, and takes thence ever
new force ; that, accordingly, " it raises our belief in
a Supreme Originator up to an irresistible conviction ; "
and that " it would be wholly in vain to seek to with-
draw anything from its credit " — " one glance at the
miracle of nature and the majesty of the All rescues
reason from every too nice doubt, as from a dream."
He had already praised Plato in the same reference, for
that he, namely, " rightly saw in nature clear proofs of
its origin from thoughts — plant, animal, the order of
nature, and the plan of the whole cogently evincing that
they were only possible on thoughts ; " and he goes on to
exalt these ideas of the philosopher above the copy-like
procedure of the physicist. In fact, in Kant's latest
Kritik, that of eJudgment, the lapse of years has only led to
the recording, if possible, of still stronger expressions of
consideration and respect for the argument from design.
One would like to say, indeed, that Kant is only half-
hearted in his opposition to it, and that he is only
reluctantly compelled to the course he takes by the
exigencies of his system. It is the very essence of that
system, namely, that all objects are only formations of
our own within us, to which design, consequently, as a
modifying principle from without or from elsewhere,
would seem not possibly to apply. Kant, on Ms system,
can allow no source for the notion of design, but a sub-
jective harmony, or a subjective "as if" a subjective
maxim, that is within us, and not from without at all.

AN IDEA THE IDEAL. 301

Hence one is apt to be persuaded that, but for his
system, Kant would be himself the most enthusiastic of
Teleologists. And so, consequently, only to his system is
it to be imputed that he brings himself to make the
objections which we have now to consider. It is from
the standing-ground of the system that he remarks first.
The question here can be readily brought to a conclusive
answer at once, "For how can an experience ever be
given, which were adequate to an Idea ? Why, an Idea,
(that is one of Kant's peculiar three), is just that that has
nothing empirical correspondent to it." And we are
reminded of his earlier words : " The Ideas (his Ideas,
namely) are sophistications of reason's own : the wisest
of men, even when aware and on their guard against it,
can never wholly escape the illusion which is always
there to mislead and mock them." "A necessary all-
sufficient God is a Transcendental Idea so boundlessly
great, so exaltedly high above everything empirical, that
never in all experience were it possible to beat up
matter for the filling of it." To seek in the conditioned
for the unconditioned were in vain and without a clue ;
for were it found, even as found, it would be itself con-
ditioned. And it is only in the conditioned that any
such search can be made ; for the instrument of such a
search is but the principle of cause and effect, a principle
which is only in place in possible experience, and has no
application beyond it. If even, then, what is sought is
out from, and beyond, the conditioned, where find a
possible bridge to it, since for all and any new acquisition
of knowledge, we can only be referred to experience and
the law of cause and effect that obtains in it ?

It is here now that Kant, passing from his own
peculiar views, enunciates that respect for the teleological
argument which we have already seen ; but, even while
commending it and bidding it God-speed, he cannot

302 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE FIFTEENTH.

accept its claims — the claims of this argument to
apodictic certainty : he will attemper and rebate these
claims to a proper moderation and modesty. And he
begins by stating it in what to him are its four moments : —
1. " Everywhere in the world there are to be found
evident signs of an arrangement on express intention,
carried out with great wisdom and in a whole of in-
describable variety of content, as well as of unlimited
magnitude of extent. 2. This designful order is quite
adventitious to the things of this world, and attaches to
them only extrinsically. o. There exists, therefore, a
wise and high being who, as an intelligence, must, with
free-will, be cause of this world. 4. The unity of this
cause may be inferred from the unity of the world in the
reciprocal relation of its parts." That must be admitted,
on the part of Kant, to be only fair statement. He then
alludes to the possibility of a cavil in respect of natural
reason when, from the mere analogy of certain pro-
ductions of nature with those of man, in houses, ships,
watches, etc., we conclude to just such a causality for
these natural productions as well — a will and understand-
ing, namely ; thus referring to another cause the inner
possibility of " free-working nature itself (which perhaps
alone gives possibility to all art and even reason)."
With no more than allusion here, and just the hint that,
peradventure, his own transcendental critique might, if it
chose, subvert all such reasoning, he passes on to his
own formal objections to the main argument itself. And
of these the first concerns form as distinguished from
matter. The argument from design, that is, founds
wholly on the form, which seems to have been added to,
or infused into things, so that, as means to ends, they
appear to constitute a single series and system of final
causes. That form, these connections seem independent
of the things themselves : they (the latter) themselves.

THE TELEOLOGICAL PROOF. 303

and in themselves, are not such that were they not
members, native members, essential members of the series
and system we see, they would contradict themselves.
The contrivance, that is, the designfulness, does not
depend on things in their matter, but only in their form.
What agency seems to be operative, consequently, is that
of an architect or artificjer who may be responsible for
the form, the adaptation, which has been given to things,
but not as Creator from whom derives the very matter of
which they, individually, or as a whole, consist. His
second objection, Kant's second objection in the same
reference, is that, if you infer a cause from an effect, the
former must be proportioned to the latter : you cannot
impute to the cause more than the effect allows you.
Now, who knows this world in its infinitude ? So far as
the knowledge of any of us goes, the world is still
limited, and we have no authority from our own know-
ledge of the world to infer the omnipotent, omniscient,
all-sufhcient God whom we are all forward to assert.
Accordingly, says Kant, it is not from the teleological
argument that we come to that immeasurable conclusion
of a God, but from an unconscious and involuntary shift
— resort on our part to the cosmological and ontological
arguments. The design of the teleological argument is
the contingency of the cosmological argument ; and it is
from that contingency we infer the existence of an
absolutely necessary being, while it is from the influence
of the considerations under the ontological argument that
we come to the idea of an ens realissimum, of a being
that is in himself limitless and the sum of all realities.

And now we have before us the entire course of
reasoning which Kant has instituted against the teleo-
logical argument, partly from the point of view of the
peculiarity of his own system, and partly from considera-
tions which at least take on a more general aspect. The

304 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE FIFTEENTH.

latter alone call for any special remark from us at
present. In that reference, we may say of the objection
in regard to form and matter, that Kant has forgot his
own relative, or at least relevant, metaphysic. Notion
without perception is empty : perception without notion
is blind. This he said once, and it is identically the
same principle that is potent and at work when we say.
Form without Matter is empty, Matter without Form is
blind. A matterless form would vanish, and a formless
matter never even be. Either, in fact, is but an element
of the other. Both together are the concrete truth ; as
much as an inside and an outside. Then as regards the
objection that we can infer no more than an architect or
an artificer, and that, too, only in the relative proportion,
I fancy the answer will he in every mouth. It is precisely
an architect or an artificer that we do infer, and precisely
also in proportion of the work ; but just in proportion of
the work, that architect and that artificer must be, and
can only be, He that is ; and whom there is none other
beside. Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the
beginning and the end.

GIFFOED LECTUEE THE SIXTEENTH.

The cosmological proof — Contingency — Ab alio esse and esse a se —
The siJBcial contingency an actual fact in experience — This
Kant would put out of sight — Jehovah— Two elements in the
argument, experience and ideas — The generality of the
experience — Also of the idea — Contingency is a particular
empirical fact — Ens realissimum — Only the ontological argu-
ment in disguise — Logical inference — But just generally the
all-necessary being of such a world — Hume anticipated Kant
— Why force analogy — Why transcend nature — No experience
of such cause which must not exceed the effect — Hume's early
memoranda — The "nest" — All Kant dependent on his own
constant sense of school-distinctions — His entire world — The
system being true, what is true 1 — The ontological argument —
No thinking a thing will bring it to be — What it all comes
to, the single threefold wave — Hegel — Middle Age view from
Augustine to Tauler — Meister Eckhart — Misunderstanding of
mere understanding — The wickedest then a possible divine
reservoir — Adam Smith and the chest of drawers — Absurd
for Kant to make reason proper the " transcendent shine " — The
Twelfth Night cake, but the ehrliche Kant.

The last lecture concerned the proof from design ; we
come now to the other two, and first to that which is
named Cosmological. As is known, the fulcrum of this
proof is the peculiarity of existence as existence. Exist-
ence, that is, as existence, is contingent. But this word
has so many meanings, important meanings, — even, in
philosophical application, crucial meanings, — that a little
preliminary explanation in its regard may seem called
for, and may prove useful. In a former part of the
course we had a contingency of things which almost
meant chance. It is common knowledge that events

u

306 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE SIXTEENTH.

happen, which might have been foreseen and calculated ;
and it is equally common knowledge that other events
liappen which no faculty of vision or power of reason,
omniscience apart, could either have foreseen or calculated.
Now, philosophically, that to me is, as proper quality
and fundamental condition of things, the main contin-
gency. I may walk the streets with whatever care I
may ; but I may for all that slip on a bit of orange peel,
and fracture a limb or dislocate a joint. Such con-
tingency as that is our very element ; we pass our lives
in it, and are never safe. The powers of nature threaten
us from all sides, and we must wall them out. As I
have already explained, this is the necessary and un-
avoidable result of externality as externality. Then in
passing from the one argument to the other, design was
spoken of as contingency. This, however, is a use of
the word not quite common in English, and was suggested
for the moment to meet the language of Kant. Kant,
that is, in order to reduce the teleological argument to
the ontological, through and by means of the cosmo-
logical, characterized the design which we see in things
as zufdllig to them, contingent to them. And by this he
meant that this ordering of things which we call design
is not inherent in the things themselves, but something
added to them as though from without. Contingency, in
this sense, is inessentiality, adventitiousness, extrinsicality.
It is easy to understand that the order of the things on
a dinner table is such inessentiality, adventitiousness,
e.xtrinsicality, contingency ; it is not inherent in these
things ; it is something given to them — something
zufdllig. And we see so that at least the German word
may, naturally and legitimately enough, be used in such
sense and with such application. As for the English
word contingent, if similarly used, the shade of meaning
implied will not really be found unintelligible or uncon-

CONTINGENCY. 307

formable and misplaced. A third sense of contingent is
proper to the cosmological argument which we have now
in hand. The very fulcrum of that argument, in fact,
lies in the word. Because all the things of this world
are capable of being characterized as effects, we infer a
cause for them. If no more than effects, they are
unsupported in themselves, and seem bodily and miscel-
laneously to fall. That is, they are contingent. So it is
that, in the very word, there lies the call for the argu-
ment in question. The contingent, as an ah alio esse,
necessarily refers to an esse that is a se ; what depends
only must depend on something else. The cosmological,
like the teleological argument, proceeds, therefore, from a
fact in experience. Design is such fact, and so also is
contingency — contingency in the sense of the unsupported-
ness, the powerlessness of things in themselves. In the
three arguments for the being of a God, we proceed either
from the fact to the idea, or from the idea to the fact.
In the ontological argument, namely, we reason from the
idea of God to the fact of His existence, while in the
cosmological and the teleological arguments, we reason
from the facts of existence to the idea of God. What
Kant misses in the ontological argument is the element
of reality, existence, fact, or the element that depends on
experience. It is in vain to look for such element, he
avers, in mere ideas. His action with the two other
arguments, again, is, so to speak, re verse- wise — to y^it
iiiiide this element — the element of actual fact, on which
they, both of them, found. It is Kant's general object,
that is, in regard to the reasoning for the existence of
God, to reduce the teleological to the cosmological argu-
ment and both to the ontological, which, as dependent on
mere notions, he thinks Lhat he will be at little pains to
destroy.

Kant himself states the cosmological argument thus : —

308 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTEENTH.

" If something exists, then an absolutely necessary being
must also exist ; but at least I myself exist : therefore
there exists an absolutely necessary being." My exist-
ence, namely, is contingent. It is no existence complete
in itself and sufficient of itself ; it is only a derivative
existence, and an existence in many ways dependent.
Whether as derivative or dependent, it has its support
elsewhere. It is unsupported in itself, powerless in
itself, a house on the fall, a very terminable security.
But I am no solitary case, I am no exception ; others
are as I, and there is not a single thing in this universe
that is not as the others. All are contingent, all are
derivative, all are dependent ; they are all such that
you postulate an originating and sustaining cause for
them ; but any such cause — any terminal, final, and ulti-
mate cause, it is impossible in the whole series of causes
in the universe anywhere to find. Trace causes as you
may, you must end always with an effect. Now, it is
taking our stand on these facts that we involuntarily
conclude to the existence of an absolutely necessary being
that is the reason at once of the existence and support of
all these things — of all these things which are so utterly
unsupported and powerless in themselves. And so it is
that the cosmological argument has been specially put in
connection wtth the religion of power. Power, indeed,
must have been one of the earliest feelings that, in view
of this great universe of effects, surged up in the human
breast. In the Hebrew Scriptures, for example, what
an attribute is power ! Hence that sublimity in which
tlie earth, the ball of the universe, is but as tlie footstool
of Him who says, I Am that I Am. We have only to
think of this to have it very vividly realized to us that
the cosmological argument is founded in the depths of
man's own soul. It is not an argument forced, scholastic,
artificial, — it is not a thing of words ; it is religion to

WHAT KANT WOULD PUT OUT OF SIGHT. 309

the peoples. That whole image of Jehovah and the
footstool of the universe is but the cosmological argu-
ment itself in its sublimest and most natural form.
The continfrent universe is but the footstool to the
absolute necessity of God.

We must turn now, however, and see how Kant would
deprive us of this rationality that we have, to say so,
almost in our very blood.

The cosmological argument, we may take it, stands
at this moment before us thus : — Inasmuch as so7n,e-
thing exists and contingently exists, there must exist
also something that is absolutely necessary. Of this
argument Kant admits : That " it is based on experi-
ence ; " that " it is not led altogether ct priori ; " that
it is called the cosmological proof, for this reason,
that the world, from which it takes its name and on
which it founds, " is the object of all possible experi-
ence." Nevertheless, it is precisely this ground of
experience which Kant would remove from it ; this, in
his desire to establish it as a mere matter of void ideas
only. There are thus in the argument two interests
against both of which Kant turns. First, namely, there is
the question of the experience ; and, second, there is that
of the ideas. On the first question Kant, as I have said,
would put out of sight the experience ; and, on the
second, he would have us regard the necessary being
that is concluded to, as a mere idea, and as a mere idea,
further, that is only illicitly converted into the other
idea of the eois rcalissimum, or God. Of these two
operations Kant himself gives the description thus :
" In this cosmological argument there come together so
many sophistical propositions that speculative reason
seems to have exerted here all its dialectical skill in
order to effect the greatest possil^le transcendental false
show ; " but he (Kant) will " expose a trick on its part.

310 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTEENTH.

— the trick to set up, in a masked form, an old argument
for a new one, as though with appeal to the agreement of
two witnesses, one, namely, of reason, and the other of
experience, while all the time it is only the former that
is present, having simply changed its clothes and its
voice in order to pass for the latter as well." That
on the part of Kant, plainly, is to the effect that the
cosmological argument is but the ontological argument
in disguise. What is alone concerned in it is the infer-
ence from mere ideas, while the reference to experience
is but an idle trick and an unfounded show. With
that, I think, we may assume as substantiated what has
Iteen said in the assignment to Kant of two relative
operations. So, now, of these in their order.

Collecting, connecting, and reducing the various rela-
tive clauses, we may take Kant's first objection to run
somewhat in this manner : — The cosmological argument
professes to take its ground on experience. This experi-
ence, however, is indefinitely general : it proceeds from
no single definite existence whatever ; and it attains to
no single definite existence whatever. Kant's actuating
motive in such propositions is, probably, again to be
found only in his system. Nevertheless, he begins with
a certain show of general argumentation ; and it is this
we have first to see.

So far as the indefinite generality is concerned, Kant's
expressions are that the proof in question is only
" referent to an existence given by empirical conscious-
ness in general," and it " avails itself of this experience
only to take a single step, namely, to the existence of a
necessary being in general." One, of course, cannot well
understand how a step, as a step, should be objected to
because it is single. A single step may be true enough ;
a step — any step — is not necessarily false because it is
single. But the expression, probably, is merely iuci-

ONLY GENERALITY OF EXPERIENCE AND IDEA. 311

dental on the part of Kant, who has in his eye, at the
moment, only the immediate object of the step, " the
existence, namely, of a necessary being in general ; "
and has no thought, perhaps, but of the generality
involved. It may be asked, however, Are we the least
bit worse off because the experience is a general experi-
ence ? The fact and basis of experience, it at least
allows, in common with the other phrases which have
been already quoted ; and the generality of an experience
is not seen at once to be tantamount to its extinction.
Surely, on the contrary, it is on its side the advantage
lies ; surely it is a great thing to say that we shall
reach the same conclusion if you give us anything at all.
You are only asked to allow the fact that something
exists ; it is enough that you grant us any experience
whatever ; we are not particular what experience ; just
give us an experience of any kind — experience absolutely
general if you like. The objection withdraws nothing from
the argument ; rather, indeed, it only adds to it. Nay,
what does Kant himself say ? " It is something very
remarkable," he naively admits, " that if it is presupposed
that something, anything, exists, the conclusion cannot
be escaped that something also necessarily exists." After
all, then, generality as a drawback does not seem to hold
even in Kant's own eyes.

But there is another side to the generality — this,
namely, that the necessary being inferred is also a
generality. The alleged experience, Kant says, is only a
step to " the existence of a necessary being in general,"
" but not demonstrating this necessity in regard of any
particular thing " ; " what sort of Eigenschaften, what
sort of properties or qualities, the necessary being
possesses, the empirical ground of proof is incompetent to
declare." It must be some importation from his own
system that Kant has in mind here when he objects to

o

12 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTEENTH.

the argument as not leading to a one empirical object.
Otherwise, surely, of all philosophers, Kant is the only
one who has complained that he cannot clap an actual
hand or eye on God ! How could God possibly be any
particular exj)erience ? The infinite is not the finite.
But to take Kant as he speaks, he would seem to be
unhappy and out of heart because, in reasoning to God,
he fails to get in touch with some one empirical object,
or the actual properties of some one empirical object.
Are we to give up or despair of God, then, because He is
not the Pillars of Hercules or the Gates of Gaza ?

But, in the reference to generality, if it is not to be
objected that we do not come to some particular, so
neither is it to be objected that we do not start /ro'/?i
some particular. Nay, if the experience we start from is
in a certain way general, it is also, after all, in a certain
way particular. That is, it is not from mere indefinite-
ness, from mere experience in name, that we start, but
from an actual fact, and actually definite in and of
experience. We start from — the cosmological argument
rests on — an actual, particular, empirical fact. Con-
tingency is a fact ; contingency is particular ; contingency
is empirical ; contingency is actual ; and it is from con-
tingency that all our reasoning starts, and on contingency
that all our reasoning rests. Kant has been no more
able to quash or put out of sight contingency as a fact of
experience in the cosmological argument, than he was
able to quash or put out of sight design as a fact of
experience in the teleological argument. And so long as
such facts remain, the ontological argument, which rests
wholly on ideas, cannot be used as a lever for the
destruction of its cosmological and teleolomcal fellows.

But, now, to turn to Kant's second objection to the
cosmological argument — that, namely, it was still only a
trick when, in intromission with mere ideas, it converted

LOGICAL INFEKENCE. 31

o

the necessary being of the first part of the supposed proof
into the ens realissimum, or supreme being, of the second
part. Arrived once for all at the notion of the necessary
being, Kant intimates, we only look about us for what
other desirable qualities we suppose such a being must
have, in order to arrive at its own complete and perfect
substantiation. These qualities are supposed to be found
in the idea of supreme reality alone ; and so the neces-
sary being at first hand is converted into the supremely
real being at second hand. Kant goes on at great
length in the discussion of this matter. The better to
expose the fallacy, he is even at pains to put the whole
reasoning, as he alleges, in the technical syllogistic form.
" All blind show is most readily detected," he says, " if
we set it down before us in a scholastically correct
shape." "With all, however, sentence after sentence,
phrase uj)on phrase, word upon word, and all the technical
processes of the dryest school logic, it comes to this that
the cosmological argument, having only pretended to
reason from a ground of experience, has intromitted
with ideas only, and has simply converted, fallaciously,
the mere idea of a necessary being into the further idea
of the all-reallest being ; in short, as has been already
said, the cosmological argument is no more and no less
than the ontological argument in disguise. In Kant's
own words, what the cosmological argument maintains is
this : " The notion of the all-reallest being is the only
notion whereby a necessary being can be thought ; that
is, there necessarily exists a supreme being ; " and that is
to Kant an ignoratio clenchi. "We commit no fallacy,
however, no ignoratio clenchi, if from one logically
established proposition we only logically deduce another.
Probably most people would be quite content with the
one proposition, and would give themselves little concern
about the other. All-necessary, they might say, and all-

31-4 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE SIXTEENTH.

reallest come pretty well to the same thing ; it is posi-
tively enough that it should be either. But there is no
difficulty in even logically deducing the one from the
other. What has its necessity within itself is sufficient
for itself, and is without dependence on another. That
is, it is without dependence for its reality on anything
else ; it is without any negation to its reality : it is the
all-reallest ! The one proposition is simply contained in
the other ; and we have no call to go to experience in
search of it. Kant has simply forgot his own doc-
trine of analytic propositions. As certain as (Kant's own
example) the proposition — all bodies are extended — is an
analytic proposition, the truth of which requires analysis
only, and no resort to actual experience, so certain is it
that the proposition — the all-necessary being is the all-
reallest being — is no less an analytic proposition that, as
such and so far, is independent of experience. The
cosmological ara;ument is sufficient within itself, and
neither requires nor takes support from any other. But,
in a general way, we are situated here just as we were
with the teleological argument. Let the teleological argu-
ment prove only a former of the world, then we say the
former of such a world must have been its Creator. And
let the cosmological argument prove only the all-necessary
being of the world, then we say, the all-necessary being
of all that contingency of the world must be, and can
only be, what is reallest in the world ; and that, namely,
is the Most High God.

It would be unjust to Hume not to remark here that,
though the German words and ways seem so very unlike,
Kant, when he wrote, must have had before him all the
three relative writings of the good David : the essay,
namely. Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State,
The Natural History of Eeligion, and the Dialogues con-
cerning Natural Eeligion. Much of what the German

HUME ANTICIPATED KANT. 315

says had, in his own way, been already said by the Scot.
Thus Hume talks also of houses and ships, and conceives
it only to force analogy to transfer it from things finite
to such an unexampled infinite : it may he that for such
powers and quality, says Hume too, we need not go be-
yond nature or even matter itself. We can only reason
from experience, and experience has no locus stafidi on
such an elevation. Then Hume's objection of the uni-
verse being a singular effect, that is, that we can only
credit the cause with no more than we find in the effect;
and that we cannot return from the cause as with new
data to extended inference, — all that is precisely what
Kant means by the translating of absolute necessity into
absolute reality. The young Hume in the early memor-
andum book referred to by Burton (i. 135) has (as we
partly know) some excellent expressions in regard to the
three proofs of the existence of a God, which Kant, of
course, had no opportunity of seeing, but which have
their interest here. The first of these proofs runs, " There
is something necessarily existent, and what is so is in-
finitely perfect ; " and the third, " The idea of infinite
perfection implies that of actual existence." It is really
very strange, but these two propositions suggest, not too
imperfectly on the whole, Kant's entire relative action,
which is the complaint that the cosmological argument
converts, first, necessary existence into infinite perfection,
and, second, infinite perfection into necessary existence,
thus placing itself at last only on the ontological argument,
Kant follows up his general argumentation by indi-
cating and shortly refuting what he calls " an entire nest
of dialectical assumptions that is concealed in the cosmo-
logical proof" The entire " nest," however, may be said
to be a construction of his peculiar system. Kant says,
for example, that causality and the other principles of
reasoning employed in the argument concern only the

o

16 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE SIXTEENTH.

world of the senses and have no meaning out of it ; and,
in each of the four heads which he enumerates, there
appears nothing whatever else. That just amounts to
the one averment peculiar to the system, that whatever,
namely, is incapable of being actually experienced is
nothing but a Hirngespinnst, a cobweb of the brain. As
regards God, it is valid reasoning to Kant that in this
world as he (Kant) has constituted it, there cannot be
an actual object of the senses, named God ; and so God
can only be an Idea, an idea of our own, and useful for
us in giving a sort of convenient unity and arrangement
to the house we live in. God is precisely that to Kant,
and He is nothing more.

All these wonderful constructions of Kant, toys of his
own gluing, all spring from the constant sense of dis-
tinctions that is the single life within him. Every reader
of Kant, even the least familiar, must have memory of
this. There is probably not a page of Kant in which he
does not split up something into two distinctions — dis-
tinctions to which he is apt to give contrasting Latin
names, as the quid fadi, and the quid juris, and actually
thousands of others. Kant, in fact, is a very schoolmaster.
He is constantly laying down the law — a law that con-
cerns verbalisms only. If Kant is ever real, it is where,
as in his Practiced Kritik, he is occupied with Morals ;
and even there I honestly believe that it would be quite
possible to show that his very best findings are but
artificial results of his pedagogic distinctions. Distinctions
and artificiality are certainly both the levers and the
materials of his theoretic system. Time and space are
both within us, and in them there are our own sensations :
these are the materials, and the only materials of per-
ceptive knowledge ; and they become such by being in a
twelvefold manner categorized into our self-consciousness.
There are further, three Ideas, to be sure, but they are

KANT'S ENTIRE WORLD. 317

only ideas — only ideas of order and arrangement for our
own private use. Now that is really the entire world to
Kant, and he has made it wholly and solely out of dis-
tinctions in his own vitals. Does it give more reality to
this soap-bubble of a universe that it hangs between two
absolutely unknown xs, mere algebraical x's, that are only
supposed, only feigned, though named things in them-
selves ; the one on this side for sensation, and the other
on that side for belief ? Never was the world so befooled
by a system as it has been befooled by the system of
Kant ; and the world has no excuse for itself, but that
Kant had, with such perfect conviction, with such lumi-
nous and voluminous detail, fooled himself into it. What,
according to this system, are we to suppose truth to be ?
If it (the system) is, vjJiat is there that is true ?
The sensations are not true. Their truth is only
unknown points in an unknown dark. Time and space
are not true : they are only figments of my imagination.
The categories are not true : they come from a tree, an
Yggdrasil that has no roots, but again in me. The Ideas
have no truth : they are mere illusions. And this me
itself : it is but a logical breathing, a logical dot on a
logical i. Where, according to this system, is there a
single truth in the whole huge universe ?

But we must come to an end with our consideration of
Kant : we must turn at last to our final interest here : we
must now see how Kant disposes of the ontological argu-
ment. The form given to that argument, which we have
seen from the early memorandum book of Hume, is, per-
haps, as simple and short, and as good as any. " The idea
of infinite perfection implies that of actual existence."
Eeally the young Hume has put what is concerned there
in its very best form. If you say you have the idea of
infinite perfection, and yet that actual existence is not
thought of in that idea, then you only contradict yourself.

o

18 GIFFOED LECTUEE THE SIXTEENTH.

It would be a very strange all-perfection that yet was
not. Kant, of course, has a good deal to say in the
reference ; but I know not that all he has got to say
amounts to more than the objection that comes to every
one. We can think what we like, but no thinking of
ours will make a thing to be! It would be a fine thing
if, only by thinking of the " dollars," in Kant's well-known
illustration, we could have them ; but — We can all
readily understand as much as that, and Anselm himself
told us, It was one thing for a painter to think his
picture and another thing to make it. So always when
we think these easy thoughts in regard to this argument,
we are thrown back to the question, Is it, then, a self-
contradiction to think God as non-existent ; and for the
reason that He is infinite, and not like a perfect island,
or a perfect garden, etc., which, with whatever perfection,
are still things finite ? Is God such and so different
from all else, that if we think Him, that is, truly think —
Him — then we will see that He is ? Perhaps to put the
questions in that manner is to put them rightly. But
if so, then the conclusion is — that we are all referred to
ourselves. What we are asked to do is to think God ;
but if it is only in the actual thinking that the truth
emerges, then each of us must do tliat for himself ; not
one of us can do that for another. Of course, Anselm
develops the matter in a formal syllogism, and into a
self-contradiction on the negative side. But, so put, we
cannot help suspecting that we have to do with words
only, and we remain unmoved. We still ask how tJmik-
ing — which will assure us of the existence of nothing
else — will yet assure us of the existence of God ? That
is the question ; and we see that Kant's objections — all
summed up in the illustration of the dollars — are beside
the point, are out of place. The whole matter is for us
to think God. But what is God ? — what is this that we

WHAT IT ALL COMES TO, THE THREE WAVES. 319

are to think ? Now, in attempting to answer that
question, we do think God — we just do what is required.
And what do we find for result ? We find that we have
thought this universe into its source — we find that we
have realized to thought, as a necessity of thought, the
single necessity of a one eternal, all-enduring principle
which is the root, and the basis, and the original of all that
is. In fact, we may say that when this task of thought
is put upon us, we just think, in a moment, and at once,
and altogether, the teleologieal argument, and the cosmo-
logical argument, and the ontological argument, each and
all, summarily, into God. And with that acknowledg-
ment we have the reality and the substantiation of
Natural Theology : our whole task is accomplished — the
whole Gilford problem solved — in a turn of the hand !
What, in effect, are the three arguments in proof of the
existence of God ? There is a triplet of perpetual
appearance and reappearance in the ancient Fathers of
the Church. It is esse, vivere, intelligerc ; and these are
but three successive stages of the world itself. To live
is to be above to he, and to think is to be above to live.
All three are at once in the world ; and though they
offer hands, as it were, each to the other, each is for
itself. So it is that the Three Proofs are but the single
wave in the rise of the soul, through the Trinity of the
Universe, up to the unity of God. And, with such
thoughts before us, it will be found that the ontological
proof will assume something of reality, and will cease to
be a mere matter of words. The very thought of God is
of that which is, and cannot not-he.

It is undoubtedly with such thoughts in his mind that
Hegel declares the ontological proof to be alone the proof.
To him, manifestly, it was not an affair of Barlara, Celarcnt,
Baroho, Bokardo, and the rest in mere words : it was an
actual mood of mind, a veritable process of the soul, a

320 GIFFORU LECTURE THE SIXTEENTH.

movement of spirit to spirit, and a revelation of God to
man. We might almost say that this alone is the meaning
of the work of Hegel — that in this alone he is in earnest
— that, in philosophy and in religion, as struggling to
this, he would present himself almost literally on every
page. He complains that recent theology speaks rather of
religion than of God ; whereas, in the Middle Ages, the
whole interest was to know God. What is now only
a matter of subjective information was then objectively
lived. The true relation is that of spirit to spirit. The
finite spirit, in separating itself from the mundane, or in
gathering up the whole mundane into its essential reality
and truth, rises into unity and community with the
infinite spirit, and knower and known are one. In that
one intensity, where difference is at once identity and
identity at once difference, man is conscious of himself
in God, God is conscious of Himself in man. That
really is what the ontological proof is to Hegel. Spirit
gives testimony of itself to spirit ; and this testimony is
the true inner nature of spirit, " God," says Hegel, " is
essentially self-consciousness;" and it is only when man has
realized himself into union with God, only then also has
he realized his true free will. Eeaders of the history of
philosophy know that Hegel is by no means singular in
these views : they are common and current in the Middle
Ages from Augustine to Tauler. Meister Eckhart alone
has passage after passage which, in intensity and ecstasy,
leaves nothing for Hegel. " The eye," he cries, " with
which God sees me, is the eye with which I see Him ;
my eye and His eye are one ; in righteousness, I am
cradled in God, and He in me. If God were not, I were
not ; if I were not. He were not ; but there is no need
to know this ; for these are things easy to be misunder-
stood, and which are only to be comprehended in the
spirit." As to this of misunderstanding, Hegel, too, says,

MIDDLE AGES ECKHART HECxEL — SMITH. 321

at least in effect : If you speak such things in the terms
of the understanding, you will look in vain to find them
again : If you make an ordinary generalization of such
doctrine, and describe it in common words as the tenet
of the knowing of Man in God and of God in Man, you
have shut yourself out from it ; you are on the outside,
and have closed the door on yourself. These things are
only in the inmost being of a man to be struggled and
worked up to. Another ready objection is — -^MWi^Aew??!.
But if there is an assertion of God in the relation, there
is also no denial of man. My own objection is that it
at least seems to trench on a degradation of God : the
very wickedest and least considerable of human beings
may represent himself as a sort of reservoir from which
at any moment he can draw on God, have God on tap.
Of course, it may be answered that, in the relation, take
it as it is, there is no room for any moment of compulsion
— it is not a case of mere ancient theurgy, black art,
magic ; the divine approach will come at its own good
time — free ; and not any one human being that so
tempers himself is then either wickedest or least consider-
able. Nay, in humanity, is it so certain that the least
and the greatest, the best and the worst, have any such
mighty difference between them ? May not even the
least and the worst cry, And we then — are not we, too,
made in the image of God ?

With all this that concerns a living ontological proof,
these external manoeuvres and contrivances of Kant are
strangely in contrast. To him it is quite clear that as
he can reasonably think a hundred dollars not to exist,
he can equally think God not to exist, but to be a mere
idea of our own respondent to our own human desire for
order. Adam Smith, in reply to the Doctrine of Utility,
was surprised if " we have no other reason for praising a
man than that for which we commend a chest of drawers."

X

322 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXTEENTH.

What, then, should be our surprise if, in Kant's reclama-
tion for order, we have no other reason for the production
of a God than that we have for the production of a chest
of drawers — convenience, namely ! God is but an
illusion or delusion caused by the false light of sense
misleading our judgment. This light Kant calls the
" transcendental shine," and he is very proud of it. He
is wonderfully contented with what he thinks his dis-
covery of these three false lights of the Ideas. But if
any one will just look for himself, his wonder will be
— where they come from ? When we reason from the
contingency of all things, as it were, to the linch-pin of
all things — when we reason from design to a designer —
even when we reason from a certain notion to the exist-
ence of the object of that notion — in a word, in reasoning
towards God, whether from existence to idea or from
idea to existence, we think we have been only reasoning ;
but, no, says Kant, you have been only led by a natural
ignis fatuiis, which you cannot turn your back upon, even
when you know it.

This system of Kant is but a Twelfth Night cake of his
own manufacture, wonderfully be-decked and be-dizzened,
be-queened and be-kinged, be-flagged and be-turreted ; but,
for all that, it is no more than a thing of sugar and
crumb of bread. Nay, even for the quantity of the
bread and the quality of the sugar that are in it, we
cannot but thank Kant, naming him even there/o?', the
ehrliclie Kant, the plain, honest, honourable Kant.

GIFFORD LECTUEE THE SEVENTEENTH.

The three degrees, positive, comparative, superlative in negation
of the proofs, or Hume, Kant, Darwin — The Life and Letters
of Charles Darwin, chapter viii. of the first volume — Darwin
one of the best of men — Design — Uniformity and law — Darwin's
own words — He himself always gentle — But resolute to win —
— Concessiveness — Religious sentiment — Disbelief — Jokes —
Natural selection being, materialism is true, and ideas are only
derivative — The theory — A species Avhat — Sterility — What
suggested natural selection to Darwin — Bakewell's achievements
as a breeder — Darwin will substitute nature for Bakewell, to
the production, not of new breeds, but, absolutely, of new
species — His lever to this, change by natural accident and
chance : such necessarily proving either advantageous, dis-
advantageous, or indifferent — Advantage securing in the struggle
for life survival of the fittest, disadvantage entailing death and
destruction, indifference being out of count — The woodpecker,
the misletoe — But mere variation the very fulcrum— Variation
must be, and consequences to the organism must be : hence the
whole — But never design, only a mechanical pullulation of
differences by chance that simply prove advantageous or dis-
advantageous, etc. — Conditions — Mr. Huxley — Effect of the
announcements of Sir Joseph Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell —
Mr. Darwin insists on his originality — His difficulties in
winning his way — Even those who agree with him, as Lyell,
Hooker, and others, he demurs to their expressions : they fail to
understand — Mr. Darwin's own qualms — "What makes a tuft
of feathers come on a cock's head, or moss on a moss-rose 1 " —
That the question — Still spontaneous variation both universal
and constant.

In regard to the negative on the question of the proofs
for the being of a God, having now passed through what
we name the positive and com'parative degrees of it as

324 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTEENTH.

found respectively in the writings of David Hume and
Immanuel Kant, we have reached at length the similarly
conditioned superlative degree in so far as it is represented,
on the whole, that is, by the views of the celebrated
Charles Darwin. In chapter viii. of the first volume
of The Life and Letters of Cliarles Darivin, a chapter
which bears to inform us in regjard to the relio-ious views
of Mr. Darwin, and which is actually entitled " Eeligion,"
I think w^e shall easily find abundant evidence to prove
that this distinguished naturalist, especially in the latter
part of his life, came greatly to doubt of the existence of
a God at all. I should not find it difficult in this
reference, then, to paint a picture which sliould exhibit
the original of it in a form and colouring still very odious
to the great majority of the English-speaking populations
anywhere. His absolute want of sympathy at last with
all in nature and in art which we are in the habit of
regarding as appealing to what is highest, or to what is
deepest and divinest in the soul of man — that might l:)e
taken advantage of, and, according to ability, worked up
into a representation, or misrepresentation, which should
actually revolt. But I, for my part, have not the
slightest inclination for the daubing — it would be only
that — of any such caricature. I know tiiat, if a man
has long accustomed his thoughts exclusively to run in a
single, S]3ecial, and peculiar groove — I know, I say, that
then all other grooves become distasteful to him. Ln
many such grooves — for many such grooves, he may have
been enthusiastic once. He does not value them the
less now ; but, in the intensity of his devotion to the one,
he has ceased to be susceptible of tlie interest which it
surprises, disappoints, disturbs him to find he no longer
possesses for the others. This is a state of mind which,
in regard of intellectual working, we may expect to meet,
after a time, even in the best of men. And Charles

DARWIN ONE OF THE BEST OF MEN. 325

Darwin ivas one of the best of men. As son, brother,
husband, father, friend, as servant or master, as simple
citizen, that man was, as is well possible here, perfect.
It is to be understood, then, that, if I have to refer at
any time to Mr. Darwin's religious opinions, I do so only
in the regard that my subject compels. That subject at
present is, specially, the negative of the proofs for the
being of a God, and in Mr. Darwin's reference, that
negative is secluded and confined to the argument from '/
design. To this argument his peculiar theory is fatal ;/
and Mr. Darwin himself is not only aware of this, but in
express terms acknowledges it. And that for me is
enough, that for me is all. I have to do with Mr.
Darwin in this respect alone. I know that in regard to
the theory in question — Natural Selection — there are in/
existence all manner of views — I know that there are
those to whom this theory has extended the satisfaction
and consolation of universal uniformity and enlightened
law ; but with these views or representations of views, I
have, in any way whatever, no call to intromit. In fact,
I may say at once in regard to uniformity, that it is not
its presence, but its absence, that I find in the theory of
Mr. Darwin. He who does not see— who does not know
and proclaim that this world is dependent on ideas, is
hunsT on ideas, is instinct with ideas — he to me has no
true word to say for uniformity. I refuse to acknow-
ledge uniformity in mere matter that is figured in mere
mechanical play from beyond the Magellan clouds to
within the indivisible unit of every living soul. My
imiformity is the uniformity, not of matter, but of mind ;
and that is the uniformity which I precisely fail to find
in the theory of Mr. Darwin. He himself, as I say,
acknowledges this. He doubts the existence of God ; he
denies design. What I have first to do here, then, is to
lead evidence in proof of the allegations made. So far

326 GIFFORD LECTUKE THE SEVENTEENTH.

as these allegations concern design, that is the direct
interest ; in other respects they concern only an indirect
implication in consequence of necessary quotation. I
desire Mr. Darwin to be regarded only with respect — or,
in truth and sincerity, only with love. It was in this
spirit that, in the first place here, I contemplated a
psychological inquiry, not only into the life and character
of Mr. Darwin himself, but into those of his father, and
specially of his grandfather, the celebrated Dr. Erasmus
Darwin of Zoonomia and the Botanic Garden. In these
references I collected largely. I ransacked the two lives
of Dr. Erasmus, that of Miss Seward and that of Ernst
Krause, as also that remarkable book of Miss ]\Ieteyard's,
A Group of Englishmen, in which we are introduced
to the enormous bulk of Mr. Darwin's father, " the
largest man whom " the son " ever saw," " abovit six feet
two inches in height, with broad shoulders and very
corpulent," " twenty-four stone in weight, when last
weighed, but afterwards much heavier," a man represented
by Miss Meteyard as " eating a goose for his dinner as
easily as other men do a partridge." Charles denies
this : we must be cautious in receiving such reports ;
others, he says, "describe his father as eating remarkably
little." Evidently that goose is not to the stomach of the
family. I read and made large extracts also from the
various works of Dr. Erasmus, from the Zoonomia and
the Botanic Garden. And it is possible that were I to apply
all the material collected, I might be able to realize some
not altogether uninteresting psychological characteriza-
tion which might even have its bearing on the peculiar
theories of the son and grandson ; but this would lead me
much too far at present, and I am reluctantly compelled to
turn to what my space alone allows me, the theory itself
of Charles Darwin, and in so far as it concerns design.
On that last head, design, we have it in our power to

MR. DARWIN'S OWN EXPRESSIONS. 327

adduce in evidence a great variety of expressions of Mr.
.Darwin's own. Such expressions are principally to be
found in the letters to Mr. Asa Gray, and in the chapter
entitled " Eeligion," which occur in the work already
referred to. From the latter, the eighth chapter, namely,
of the first volume, I quote, for example, this : " The
old argument from design in Nature . . . fails, now that
the law of natural selection has been discovered. . . .
There seems to be no more design in the variability of
organic beings . . . than in the course which the wind
blows." Now, these are only a few words ; but they are
unmistakable. They are crucial as to this. That, to Mr.
Darwin, there is no more design in organic variation,
than in the course of the wind. That, consequently, the
argument from design fails, and That this failure of said
argument is to be attributed to the law of natural
selection. By implication we see that Mr. Darwin's
general doctrine is this, The varied organizations in
nature are due, not to design, but to natural selection ;
or, as we may put it reverse-wise, natural selection
accounts for all organic variation in nature, and any
reference to a so-called principle of design is unwarranted,
groundless, and gratuitous. Of course it cannot be said
that Mr. Darwin exactly triumphs in this supposed
destruction of the argument from design. Mr. Darwin
is a most amiable man. He was ever courteous in
expression — whether by letter or by word of mouth —
almost to a fault ; " he naturally shrank," as his son
says, " from wounding the sensibilities of others in
religious matters." So it is that in his letters to Asa
Gray — an earnest-minded man — all that he has to say
on design is mitigated ever by gentle words in regard to
theology. With respect " to the theological view of the
question. This," he says, " is always painful to me. I am
bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically.

328 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTEENTH.

But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and
as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence
on all sides of us. ... I am inclined to look at every-
thing as resulting from designed laws/ with the details,
whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we
may call chance." It is ever thus in meek conciliant
vein he writes concessively to all his intimate friends, — •
even to Hooker and to Lyell, who were his most intimate.
An element in this was, of course, the desire that was
ever present to him of winning his way for his theory
into the conviction of his correspondents, and of softening
the opposition which he constantly encountered from
them. It is rather amusing to watch his shrewd
manoeuvres in this reference both with Hooker and
Lyell, especially the latter, whom he is always reminding
of his own eminence and of his own teaching in his
geology ! At times lie even gets humorously cross with
his own self when consciousness of this his concessive
attitude has come upon him, as in reference to his having
" put in the possibility of the Galapagos having been
continuously joined to America," though, " in fact con-
vinced, more than in any other case of other islands,
that the Galapagos had never been so joined." At
such instance of concessiveness as this, I say, he gets
humorously cross with himself, and exclaims, " It was
mere base subservience and terror of Hooker & Co."
With all softness of expression, however, Mr. Darwin's
candour is never for a moment in doubt. He says him-
self that he " does not think that the relig;ious sentiment

'o'

I ^ " Designed laws : " Mr. Darwin has just denied design ; tliere is
no law for Mr. Darwin, but natural law, as of "the course of the
wind," — natural mechanics ! The " working out " of the law, " good
or bad," is left indifferently to " chance." The word is the inadvert-
ence for the moment of unpremeditated writing ; — or is Mr. Darwin
in it only conciliant to Mr. Asa Gray ?

THE THEORY. 329

was ever strongly developed in liini ; " and he writes
with perfectly conscious unreserve of his unbelief in a
revelation whether of or hy God, — writes quite jokingly
at times, indeed, with reference to articles of faith and
the priests that teach them. But it is only in what
regards design that there is any interest in Mr. Darwin
for us at present ; and we are happily spared here, con-
sequently, all citation and any further reference to the
subject of religion, so far as Mr. Darwin is concerned.

The result before which we stand now, then, is this :
If natural selection is true, design is false. That, at/
least, is the conclusion of Mr. Darwin ; and Mr. Darwin
it was who, in regard to natural selection, first made
current the phrase and held valid the doctrine. Evi-
dently, then, Mr. Darwin being right, our whole enter-
prise is brought to a very short issue. There is an end
to the whole interest of Natural Theology — an end to all
our relative declamation — an end to all our arguments for
the existence of God, in so far, namely, as, to the general
belief of the modern world, all these arguments con-
centrate themselves in design. Design, namely, is the
product of ideas ; but there can be no ideas to begin with
on the footing of natural selection. Natural selection
being true, ideas are not j)roducers, but produced. What
alone results in that case is that materialism is all, and
that ideas only issue from the order and arrangement
which things themselves simply fall into. The immediate
question that presses on us, consequently, is. What is
natural selection ? And for an answer to this question I
confine myself to the same work already spoken of —
The, Life and Letters. I am not unacquainted with the
other relative writings of Mr. Darwin ; but I find no
answers to all my questions in these references so simple
and direct as those suggested in the three volumes of
the book I have named

o. o

30 GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTEENTH.

y^ Now, to say it all in a word, the theory is this :
Every organism has varieties ; of which varieties certain
examples being selected, settle into longevity, as it were
or into quasi - permanence as species. Species, so far,
are but long-lived varieties ; and the question is. To con-
stitute a species, is that enough — is longevity enough ?
What, in fact, is it that does constitute a species, or
what is the ensemble of qualities that is proper to, and
distinctive of, a species ; what is the definition of a
j species ? Now here, according to Mr. Darwin (ii. 88),
" it is really laughable to see what different ideas are
prominent in various naturalists' minds when they speak
of species ; in some, resemblance is everything, and
descent of little weight ; in some, resemblance seems to
go for nothing, and creation the reigning idea ; in some,
descent is the key; in some, sterility an unfailing test ; with
others, it is not worth a farthing. It all comes, I believe,
I from trying to define the undefinable." A species, then,
would appear from this to be undefinable to Mr. Darwin ;
so much so that he can afford to laugh at his coadjutors
and fellow-workers. When we turn in upon him, how-
ever, actually engaged in the work of determining for
himself a species, we find Mr. Darwin not by any means
in a laughing humour. He tells his friend Hooker (ii.
40) that, " after describing a set of forms as distinct
species, tearing up my MS., and making them one
species ; tearing that up, and making them separate ;
and then making them one again (which has happened
to me), I have gnashed my teeth, cursed species, and
asked what sin I had committed to be so punished ! "
Plainly, if we have first of all to make out for ourselves
what the thing that is to originate is, we have our own
difficulties before us. Nevertheless, from the various
definers laughed at by Mr. Darwin, we may gather a list
of what qualities are, on the whole, considered as more or
less specific ; and they arc these — Eesemblance, Descent,

A SPECIES. 331

Creation, and Sterility. Creation we may dismiss as
almost constituting precisely the single point that happens
to be in question ; Mr. Darwin, that is, holds species not
to be created, but to develop the one from the other./
Of the other characters named, we may assume Mr.
Darwin to allow resemblance and to accentuate descent,
but to deny sterility. Of this last — sterility — Mr. Darwin
holds that neither sterility nor fertility affords any certain
distinction between species and varieties {Origin, 237).
I fancy, however, on this head, that we shall very pro-
bably hit the truth should we say that sterility is, after
all, the rule, and that Mr. Darwin's conclusion, being in his
own favour otherwise, is only plausibly supported on mere
exceptions and consequent superficial discrepancies (some-
what exaggerated) between authorities. What I mean by
the accentuated descent is Mr. Darwin's peculiarity —
the peculiarity of opinion, namely, that there is descent
from species, not only of separate individuals and
separate varieties, but also of other and separate species.
That is what is meant by the " Origin of Species by
means of Natural Selection." How Mr. Darwin was led
to his peculiarity in this respect he tells us again and
again himself. " All my notions," he says (ii. 79), " about
Iwio species change are derived from long-continued study of
the works of (and converse with) agriculturists and horti-
culturists ; and I believe I see my way pretty clearly on the
means used by ISTature to change her species and adapt them
to the wondrous and exquisitely beautiful contingencies to
which every living being is exposed." Of what is meant
by the " change " referred to here, as concerns first its
artificial side (the action of the breeders), he speaks else-
where (ii. 122) thus: "Man, by this power of accumu-
lating variations, adapts living beings to his wants ; he
may he said to make the wool of one sheep good for
carpets and another for cloth," etc. It is the celebrated
Itobert Bakewell of Dishley, and the means by which

332 GIFFOED LECTUEE THE SEVENTEENTH.

he arrived at his wonderfully improved breeds of domestic
animals — sheep, oxen, horses — that are here specially in
allusion. Having observed that the young of animals
are almost quite like their parents in qualities, he was
led to infer that, if care were taken only suitably to pair,
the result would be a breed unitins; in itself whatever
qualities should be the most desirable. Accordingly, it
was in this way that he came to effect all those modifica-
tions in the families of the domestic animals which are
now so well known. Mr. Darwin, then, intimates further
here, on the natural side, that he himself, by example of
Bakewell, was led to place, instead of Bakewell, nature as
a hrcedcr^ with the result tliat he names natural selection.
For the genesis of the idea in the mind of Mr. Darwin,
that is the important point ; and this genesis will be full
and complete if we only add two other less important
and subordinate points. These are — 1. the Galapagos
Archipelago, and, 2. the book of Malthus on population.
In those altogether lonely, singular, and peculiar Gala-
pagos Islands, namely, he thought he had caught nature
in the very act of originating species ; and by Malthus
there was suggested to him the Struggle for Existence.
This phrase, we may add, afterwards led of itself to the
further phrase Survival of the Fittest. So far, then, we
see that Mr. Darwin was minded to discover in nature
such operations upon animals as were exemplified by man
in his artificial breeds ; and that he had accordingly come
to see that the means to these operations was the
Struggle for Life that eventuated in the Survival of the
Fittest. How the strujjgle acted was his ultimate con-

^oo-"

^ To Mr. Darwin, however, nature simply reverses Bakewell. He
exaggerates similarity ; she exaggerates difference — literally that !
Neither is there any " struggle " to Bakewell, but again the reverse.
Man's operations, then, and those of nature are not " exemplified "
the one in the other. One would like to see nature imiriwj for
ir)ij)rovement of breed!

HIS LEVEE. 333

sideration ; and the agent in result was variously named
by him divergence, difference, modification, variation, etc.
It was on this difference, or through this difference, that
Nature operated her selection. Eather, in fact, it was
the difference operated the selection on nature, and not
nature on the difference. When advantageous, that is,
the difference did itself enable the organism to take a
new departure in nature, to rise a step, to seize itself of
a new and higher level in existence, a new and better
habitat, a new and better food, a new and better attack,
a new and better defence, etc. All this is precisely what
is meant by Mr. Darwin when he says (i. 84): "The
modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms
tend to become adapted to many and highly-diversified
places in the economy of nature." To the same effect
Mr. Darwin says more fully elsewhere (ii. 124): "I can-
not douljt that during millions of generations individuals
of a species will be born with some slight variation pro-
fitable to some part of its economy. Such will have a
better chance of surviving, propagating this variation,
which, again, will be slowly increased by the accumula-
tive action of natural selection ; and the variety thus
formed will either coexist with or, more commonly, will
extirpate its parent form. An organic being like the
woodpecker or the mistletoe may thus come to be
adapted to a score of contingencies, natural selection
accumulating those slight variations in all parts of its
structure which are in any way useful to it during any
part of its life." These are Mr. Darwin's own words ;
and his scheme is really at full and entire in them.
Still it may be brought considerably more clearly home
to us, if we will but pay a little separate attention to its
constitutive parts. The one great point in the whole,
however, is the variation. That is the single hinge on
which the entire fabric turns. That is the cue for nat-
ural selection to interfere ; that, and that alone, is the

334 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE SEVENTEENTH.

source of the material that enables natural selection to
succeed. Now that is a very simple affair ; there is
neither complication nor mystery in it. All organisms
are variable ; and all organisms do vary. The interest
is therefore that into which at any time the variation is
made. That may be a mere slight increase of something
already there ; some mere slight change of shape ; some
mere slight change of direction even. Or it may be
some initial new streak, some initial new caruncle, nodule,
tubercle, alto relievo or basso relievo, some mere dimple
or some mere lip, some mere initial crease, fold, pucker — ■
some mere stain even. But whatever it be, there are
necessarily the rudiments of advantage or disadvantage in
it ; and whatever it be, there is a tendency for it to be
propagated. It is inherited by the progeny of whatever
(jrganism we may suppose to have been suscipient
(sufferer or beneficiary) of the change ; nay, not only in-
herited, but inherited with increase and with tendency
of increase. Should it be a dimple, a hasso relievo, for
example, it may grow into a hollow that should hold
water, and as joint on the stem of a plant prevent the
ascent of the insect that would j)lunder its nectary. Or
should it be a tubercle, a nodule, an alto relievo, it may
l)ecome in the end a new fibril, a new tentacle, a new
tendril, an actual new organ to increase of the security,
to increase of the nourishment and support of the plant.
I say in the end ; and that end may be reached only by
a long gradation, only by an accumulation of slowly
successive, almost insensible steps — really insensible, if
only looked at from day to day. What is alone con-
cerned is this, that there shall be a change, and that
that change shall tell upon the life of the organism. If
it tell at all, then, through propagation, it can only
tell with increase. But, with such telling gradation of
cliange fairly conceived, we can be at no loss to conceive
also the process carried out on this side and on that into

CONDITIONS. 335

organisms eventually so changed, that, compared with
their antecedents or originals, they cannot be denied to
be new species. Assume the change to be one of advant-
age, then the accumulation of necessarily increasing
differences can only end in the production of a new
creature. Mr. Darwin is resolute in his adherence
to this, that there shall be no design from elsewhere
— that the whole appearance of contrivance and con-
struction shall be due to nothing else whatever than,
so to speak, to this mechanical pullulation of differences,
that can only end in such mechanical accumulation as
can be only tantamount to a new species. Of course,
it is plant life, animal life, that so pullulates or develops ;
and it is not denied that life may be more than
mechanism. But still, as in life, the process here can
only be called mechanical. "We only assume it to be
certain that organisms do vary, and quite as certain
that any variation they present is in the first instance
no more than an accident — a simple appearance of
chance. Even the influence of conditions is not to
be taken into account : the same organism may exist
under any conditions whatever, from the north to the
south, or from the east to the west. Conditions or no
conditions, it is the appearance of difference alone that is
crucial — difference into advantage, and accumulation of
difference into advantage, until by mere process of nat-
ural eventuation of steps the old has become new — out of
one species another has been evolved. This, whatever
may be said, is the genuine Darwin. Mr, Darwin has
been much impressed by the progress of physical science
— by the enormous revolution in it which the discovery
of one law — the attraction of gravity — has accomplished,
and it would rejoice his heart to introduce a like natural
simplification into the process of organic change. As
primal condition of the realization of this process, Mr.
Darwin expressly excludes (ii. l76 s.) any necessity to

336 GIFFORD LECTUEE THE SEVENTEENTH.

presuppose an aboriginal " power of adaptation " or
" principle of improvement ; " it is enougli that there
be granted " only diversified variability." And " so," he
says, " under nature any slight modification which chances
to arise, and is useful to any creature, is selected or pre-
served in the struggle for life." To Mr. Darwin, the
slight modification only " chcmces " to arise — chances in
italics ! This one passage is decisive ; but there are
many such. He says once to Lyell, for instance : " No
change will ever be effected till a variation in the habits
or structure, or of both, chance to occur in the right
direction, so as to give the organism in question an
advantage over other already established occupants of
land or water ; and this may be, in any particular case,
indefinitely long." And the word chance is again under-
lined. To Hooker, too, he speaks in the same conviction.
" The formation of a strong variety, or species," he says
(ii. 87), "I look at as almost wholly due to the selection
of what may be incorrectly called chance variations or
variability ; " and again he italicizes chance. The adverb
" incorrectly," namely, is only added under the influence
of common parlance.'^ The physical, natural changes, that
are the groundwork of the theory, are to him — as physical,
natural — results of mere mechaDical play that may be
named chance, or, as he says elsewhere, accident. His one
, desire, indeed, is to keep this chance, this accident, pure.
Under it alone he would see a difference arise for a
consequent series of differences, by propagation, heredity,
to accumulate. So it is that he manifests most un-
mistakably, and almost everywhere, a rooted disinclination
to consider any diversity in organisms as the result of an
alteration in external conditions. Courtesy was the very
nature of Mr. Darwin ; and under its leading he goes
always so far as ever he can in agreement with his

^ "Incorrectly" here is pretty well as "designed"' on p. 328 —
see note.

CONDITIONS. 337

various correspondents. In a letter to Herr Moritz
Wagner, for example, who seems to have accentuated
conditions, " I wish I could believe," he says with all i
gentleness, — " I wish I could believe in this doctrine (the !
agency of changed conditions), as it removes many diffi-|
culties." Even here, however, his wish for, is followed
by his objections to. No doubt, Herr Wagner is not the
only correspondent to whom there may be some polite
expression of favour, more or less, for conditions ; but
even within a year of his death, in writing to Professor
Semper with reference to Professor Hoffmann's experiments -
in discredit of conditions, he ventures to tell the former,
— " I thought you attributed too much weight to the
direct action of the environment ; — changed conditions
act, in most cases, in a very indirect manner." Else-
where in these letters, when he judges his correspondent
to be with him, there is to be found quite a superHuity
of expressions unexceptively averse to the belief in
conditions. To Hooker, for example, he says once,
" The conclusion I have come to ... is that external
conditions (to which naturalists so often appeal) do by
themselves very little ; " and this very little is an itali-
cized very little. On another occasion he finds " the
common notion absurd that climate, food, etc., should
make a pediculus formed to climb hair, or woodpecker
to climb trees." " I quite agree with what you say
about the little direct influence of climate," he seems
quite glad to tell Hooker at another time. To Thomas
Davidson, again, he courteously and concessively admits,
" I oscillate much on this head ; " still he takes heart
to intimate that he " generally returns to his belief that
the direct action of the conditions of life has not been
great." To Lyell, he throws off every rag of reserve,
and actually swears. " I feel inclined to swear at
climate" (ii. 174), he says; "no error is more mis-
chievous than this " (ii. 169) ; and again, " It has taken

Y

338 GIFFORD LECTUKE THE SEVENTEENTH,

me so many years to disabuse my mind of the too great
importance of climate that I am inclined to swear at the
North Pole, and, as Sydney Smith said, ' even to speak
disrespectfully of the Equator ; ' " and then he bids Lyell
reflect how " readily acclimatization is effected under
nature " — how " thousands of plants can perfectly well
withstand a little more heat and cold, a little more
damp and dry," etc. As all inorganic phenomena are
under the law of physical gravitation, so Mr. Darwin
would wish all organic phenomena to prove under the
( law of mere physical variation. So it is that he dislikes
all reference to conditions. It is very natural that one,
for a time, should fail to see this in Mr. Darwin ; for
the influence of conditions is so glaringly conspicuous,
so palpably indispensable indeed, that it takes long
to be prepared for their denial. Nevertheless, it is ob-
vious from these quotations — and they might be largely
augmented — that he who insists on conditions as ele-
ments in the construction of an organism, cannot be
in agreement with, but is in opposition to, Mr. Darwin.
And it is here that Mr. Huxley puts us to some difficulty
— not for his opinions, but only in his use of the phrase
"external conditions." As regards the 1844 Essay, for
example, he points out to Mr. Darwin's son that in
it " much more weight is attached to the influence of
external conditions in producing variation, and to the
inheritance of acquired habits, than in the Origin ; "
while to Mr. Darwin himself he had, after reading his
1)0ok in 1859, remarked, — and the remark is the second
of the only two objections that have occurred to him, —
" it is not clear to me why, if continual physical con-
ditions are of so little moment as you suppose, variation
sliould occur at all" (ii. 231). Mr. Huxley, from these
([uotations, had evidently observed that Mr. Darwin put
little moment on physical conditions, and that this ten-
dency on his part was stronger on a later occasion than

MK, HUXLEY. 339

on an earlier. Evidently, also, Mr. Huxley was so far in
disagreement with Mr. Darwin. It cannot be so far,
then, that we mean Mr. Huxley to have put us to
any relative difficulty. No ; the reference in that case
is to a passage in Mr. Huxley's writing, just of the other
day, which {Life and Letters of Chaiies Darwin, vol. ii.
p. 195) runs thus: "The suggestion that new species
may result from the selective action of external con-
ditions upon the variations from their specific type which
individuals present — and which we call ' spontaneous,'
because we are ignorant of their causation — that sug-
gestion is the central idea of the Origin of Species, and
contains the quintessence of Darwinism." Here " ex-
ternal conditions," as we see, have become the very
motor, and agent, and source, and spring of Darwinism ;
and they do give difficulty, if they are to be supposed
the same as before. But they are not to be so supposed
— they are not the same as before. ISTo, very far from
that ! The conditions then were supposed to precede the
variation : the conditions now are supposed to follow it.
Or, while the former were the conditions that brought
about the variation, the latter, again, are those that only
take advantage of it. The first set of conditions were
those of climate, — heat and cold, damp and dry, — food, etc.
What the second set refers to — quite otherwise — are
the increased means of nourishment, support, shelter,
security, which have lieen already described as the
advantages on the part of nature, pictured in the theory,
to be consequent upon the variation. As was said then :
It is on the variation that Nature operates her selection ;
or, as it may be otherwise conceived, the selection is
operated on nature by the variation. Now, that is the
whole meaning of Mr. Huxley in the apparently dis-
crepant usage of the phrase " external conditions," in his
respective passage that has just been quoted. Further,
as we may allow ourselves to note, when, in the same

340 GIFFOED LECTUKE THE SEVENTEENTH.

passage, Mr. Huxley calls the variation " spontaneous,"
there can be no hesitation in acknowledfrino- that lie
is absolutely correct in asserting the single suggestion
he has in view to be the central idea, and to constitute
the quintessence of Darwinism : the suggestion, namely,
that new species may result from such and such selective
action on such and such individual variation. A variation
occurs spontaneously in an organism ; and it is followed
up by a selective action on (or through) the conditions in
its environment. These are the conditions Mr. Huxley
means now ; and that to him, as it is to us, is the whole
[idea of Darwinism — the quintessence of Darwinism —
the centre, and the soul, and the very self of Darwinism.
For the sake of clearness, I may just point out here a
third set of external conditions. The " attraction of
gravity," namely, " light," etc., which Mr. Darwin names
in connection with the " power of movement " in plants,
are quite entitled to the same designation ; but, however
relevant as referred to, they are not to be regarded as
elements in the Darwinian construction.

We may return now to this, that, in their first sense,
Mr. Huxley disagreed with Mr. Darwin as to the action
of external conditions in respect of variations in in-
dividual organisms — disagreed so widely, indeed, that it
was not clear to him (Huxley) " how, without continual
physical conditions, variation should occur at all." Con-
fusion in regard to the various sets of conditions is
not to be thought of when these words were written.
There must, at that time, have been points of serious
disagreement on the part of Mr. Huxley with the views
of Mr. Darwin. It is Mr. Darwin himself who writes
to Mr. Huxley in 1800 (ii. 354): "This makes me
feel a little disappointed that you are not inclined to
think the e-eneral view in some slicjht decree more
probable than you did at first. This I consider rather
ominous. 1 entirely agree with you that the difficulties

EFFECT ON THE PUBLIC HOOKER AND LYELL. 341

on my notions are terrific," Nor, if it was so with Mr
Huxley, was it in any respect better — rather, was it
not worse? — with Sir Joseph Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell,
who, as the confidants of Mr. Darwin, had, on various
public occasions, been the means of trumpeting the story
of our Ions-tailed or four-footed ancestors to an astonished
world, which could but breathlessly rush to see and
to know ? Mr. Darwin will have it (i. 87), that it was
not, " as it has been sometimes said, that the success
of the Origin proved ' that the subject was in the air,'
or ' that men's minds were prepared for it.' I do not
think that this is strictly true," he says, " for I occasion-
ally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened
to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about
the permanence of species. Even Lyell and Hooker,
though they would listen with interest to me, never
seemed to agree." Of Lyell he had already written to
Dr. Asa Gray in 1863, "You speak of Lyell as a
judge ; now what I complain of is that he declines to
be a judge. I have sometimes almost wished that Lyell
had pronounced against me." To Lyell himself, too, he
writes (ii. 300), "It is a great blow to me that you
cannot admit the potency of natural selection ; " and
again, " I grieve to see you hint at the creation of
distinct successive types, as well as of distinct aboriginal
types." To the same Gray he avows also, " You never
say a word or use an epithet which does not express
fully my meaning. Now Lyell, Hooker, and others, who
perfectly understand my book, yet sometimes use ex-
pressions to which I demur." It is to be feared that even
this Dr. Asa Gray, who never said a discrepant word,
was pretty much, for all that, in the same state of mind
as Hooker and Lyell. Mr. Darwin, himself, in the very
next paragraph of the very same letter, can only say
of him, "I yet hope, and almost believe, that the time
will come when you will go farther, in believing a very

342 GIFFOKD LECTUKE THE SEYENTEENTir.

large amount of modification of species, than you did
at first, or do now. Can you tell me wliether you
believe further, or more firmly, than you did at first ? "
It is quite touchingly suggestive of the situation, and
quite pathetic, to hear Mr. Darwin, so painfully, simply
in earnest, follow up his question by, " I should really
like to know this ! " Mr. Darwin, indeed, must have
occasionally suffered dreadfully at this time from dis-
trust, and mistrust, and want of confidence in the sound-
ness and cogency of what he had so much his heart
in. He tells Asa Gray of the thought of the eye making
him " cold all over." Nay, he says, " the sight of a
feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes
me sick ! " It is in much the same mood of mind, or
with the same problem before him, that he cries out once
to Huxley, " If, as I must think, external conditions pro-
duce little direct effect, what the devil determines each
particular variation ? What makes a tuft of feathers
come on a cock's head, or moss on a moss-rose ? "

For us, from such expressions as these, we are brought
very close to the question as Mr. Darwin sees it. There
is no formed difference that he would not like to account
for; and he does not always see his way to this in
a start from certain rudimentary or initial spontaneous
differences, which his theory obliges him to assume.
' I believe," he says, " most beings vary at all times
enough for selection to act on,"- — that is, he means, as it
I were, and as Mr. Huxley directly says, " spontaneously "
\vary. Hence advantage and disadvantage in the struggle
for life, with the necessary survival of the fittest.

AYe have thus broken ground on the views of Mr. Dar-
win, and will be already able to judge, in some degree, of
the relation which, according to Mr. Darwin himself, these
views bear to the argument from design ; and that alone is
the consideration which interests us here. We must con-
tinue the subject with, I hope, a closer approach in our next.

GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

The theory — Individual variation — Darwin early looked for natural
explanation of design — Creation, its senses — Antisthenes, Cole-
brooke, Cudworth — Creative ideas — Anaxagoras — Aristotle —
Mr. Clair Grece and Darwin — For design Mr. Darwin offers a
mechanical pullulation of individual difference through chance,
Lut with consequent results that as advantageous or disadvantage-
ous seem concerted — The Fathers — Nature the phenomenon of
the noumenon, a boundless externality of contingency that still
is a life — Nature, the object will only be when it reaches the
subject — That object be, or subject be, both must be — Even the
crassest material particle is already both elementarily — As it
were, even inoi'ganic matter possesses instincts — Aristotle, design
and necessity — Internalization — Time space, motion, matter —
The world — Contingency — A perspective of pictures — The
Vestiges and evolution — Darwin deprecates genealogies, but
returns to them — The mud-fish — Initial proteine — There are so
many mouths to eat it up now— Darwin recants his pentateuchal
concession to creation — Depends on " fanciers and breeders" —
The infinitudes of transition just taken by Mr. Darwin in a step
— Hypothesis — Illustration at random — Difference, would go on
to difference, not return to the identity — Mr. Lewes and Dr.
Erasmus — The grandfather's filament — Seals — The bear and the
whale — Dr. Erasmus on the imagination, on weeping, on fear,
on the tadpole's tail, on the rationale of strabismus.

We have now reached something of an insight into the
theorem or theory of Mr. Darwin. I know not that it
can be better put than as we have seen it put, in his
own clear way, by Mr. Huxley. " The suggestion," he
says, " that new species may result from the selective
action of external conditions upon the variations from
their specific type which individuals present, and which/

344 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

we call ' spontaneous,' because we are ignorant of their
causation — that suggestion is the central idea of
the Origin of Species, and contains the quintessence of
Darwinism," Perhaps we might object to the phrase
"variations from their specific type" as insufficiently
exact. Variation from specific type, we might say, has
already achieved the whole problem — at a word ! If
there is spontaneous variation from the specific type —
if that is a fact, then "the selective action of external
conditions " seems supererogatory, seems to have nothing
left for it to do : what was wanted is already accom-
plished. A variation from the specific type, a new
creature, is already there ; and we are just simply ignor-
ant of its causation. Mr. Darwin himself does not con-
ceive the first variation to be more than an individual
variation (children only individually vary from their
parents) — he does not conceive it to be by any means
a specific variation — a variation at once into a new
creature. Specific variation, a new creature, is to Mr.
Darwin only the result — perhaps after millions of
generations — of the eventual accumulation, by inherit-
ance, of an indefinite — almost of an infinite — number
of individual differences. So much importance, indeed,
does Mr. Darwin attach to the first individual difference,
to the very first initial modification as the absolutely first
step in the process, and the consequent divergence of
character from the gradual accumulation of steps, modi-
fications, that he would almost consent to withdraw the
phrase natural selection. " Compared to the question of
Creation or Modification," he says (ii. 371), "Natural
Selection seems to me utterly unimportant." And that
brings us to the question that is between Mr. Darwin
and ourselves — the question of design, namely. Early in
life Mr. Darwin's father " proposed that he should be-
come a clergyman," and he himself in the first instance

CREATION or MODIFICATION. 345

was nothing loath. He was " heartily laughed at too,"
he says, " by several of the officers of the Beagle for
quoting the Bible." Nevertheless, he seems, still early
in life, to have taken an antipathy to creation as the
explanation of the adaptations and contrivances he saw
in organic life. How was the woodpecker, for instance,
so wonderfully formed for the climbing of trees, he asked
himself ; and he could not at all quiet himself by the
answer, it has been just so made. That was a super-
natural explanation, and he for his part could only be
satisfied with a natural one. If all that is morganic is
absolutely determined by natural law, why should not
all that is organic be similarly determined ? And so, as
I have just quoted, he came to his idea of " modification,"
on which as a principle of explanation he took his stand,
in opposition to, and supersedure of, " creation." That
was the colour he definitely nailed to his mast —
" Creation or Modification." And his or here is an
italicized or ; for to Mr. Darwin there could be no
other or. In fact, to the general crowd of naturalists at
this moment it would appear that there can be — rather
that there is, no other or, no other alternative whatever,
than " creation or modification." A good deal depends
here, however, on what sense is to be given to " creation."
Antisthenes must have believed snails and locusts to have
been mere products of the earth ; for Diogenes Laertius
reports him to have called the Athenians no better than
such low spawn when they bragged of being earth-born.
The Indian philosophers, too, according to Colebrooke,
held the " spontaneous generation of worms, nits, maggots,
gnats, and other vermin." Then Ealph Cudworth was
undoubtedly a most devout, sincere, and pious Christian ;
but he seems to have felt it such an indignity to God to
hold that " God Himself doth all immediately ; and, as it
were, with His own hands form the body of every gnat

346 GIl'FOED LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

and fly, insect and mite," that he invented, and extended
as medium between God and the world, what is known
to all students as his " Plastic Nature." This Cudworth
describes, not as " the divine, not archetypal, but only
ectypal," as " reason immersed and plunged into matter,
and, as it were, fuddled in it and confounded with it."
We see, then, from this what sense Ealph Cudworth gave
to creation. And I at least am so far of his mind that
I as little believe God to have put hand to gnat or fly,
insect or mite, as I believe Him to have manufactured,
({uarried, or mason-like made, the little bare rock on the
top of Arthur's Seat. But, again, in the other direction,
I am absolutely of the same mind with Cudworth in
regard to ideas. To him " knowledge is older than all
sensible things ; vov'i, nous is senior to the world, and
the architect thereof." Since Anaxagoras, it will be
within recollection, that is the view that has been argued
in these lectures ; and since Aristotle design has been the
name of our conviction. " It is better to be than not to
be," says Aristotle, " and nature always strives to the
better" (336b); "it is not the wood that makes the
bed, but the skill ; and it is not water itself that makes
out of itself an animal, but nature" (335). Anaxagoras
was, as we know, nicknamed vov<i ; and with quite as
much reason the boys and girls of Athens might have
cried after Aristotle, eveKa ov, eveKu rov, TeA,09, reXo?, all
of which words mean design. Mr. Darwin, I repeat, never
made a greater mistake in his life than when he allowed
Mr. Clair Grece's translation to make him believe that
Aristotle, like himself, was above design and all for
natural necessity on chance. As I say, Aristotle might
liave been as appropriately called Design, as Anaxagoras
was called Mind ; and even mucli more appropriately,
for Aristotle, unlike Anaxagoras, was true to his
principles throughout ; design was his first word and his

CREATIVE IDEAS. 347

last. Now, it is in consequence of just such a belief in
design that it is impossible for me to accept the theory
which Mr. Darwin offers us in lieu of it. Mr. Darwin,,
for his part, has no such belief, and he offers us, instead,
a mechanical pullulation of individual difference which is
to eventuate in all the beautiful and complicated forms,
whether of plant or animal, which we see around us.
We have seen that it was the alternative of " creation "/
or " modification " that determined him to this. Othersi
might call in the supernatural, the god from the machine,
if they liked ; he, for his part, would only have the usual
at work. He would see all these fine adaptations just
naturally inflect themselves. He had only one sense for
" creation," and apparently it was only the crass, common,
literal one of a workman turning something out of hand.
As we have seen also, Cudworth, to say nothing of
Antisthenes and the Indians, could not away with this
conception, but felt under a necessity to interpose a
plastic nature between God and the world. For their
parts, the most and greatest of the Fathers, Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Hilary, and
especially Augustine, believed that the world was called
into existence even as by a wish ; and in this way, handi-
work there was none. To a certain extent that illus-
trates what we may call perhaps the true or correct idea in
the immediate reference. Nature is but the phenomenon
of the noumenon, the many of the one, the externale of the
internale, thrown down from the unity of reasoned co-
articulation and connectedness — thrown down and abroad
into the infinitude of a disunited, disconnected, and dis-
articulated inorganic chaos, which, however, turns upon
itself — turns upon itself for restoration and return to the
image from which it fell. Nature is not dead, nature is
a life, and, if all unconsciously to itself, it has still an
aim in view. " It is better to be than not to be," says

348 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

Aristotle ; and so, as I take it, it is, that what is, is.
And if it is for the better that what is, is, so it is that
this same better is never lost sight of. " We say that
nature," as is the expression of this same Aristotle,
" always in all things strives — opi'yea-OaL — reaches,
stretches out hands to the better." In a word, nature would
articulate itself, nature would see, nature would be seen
— nay, at the last, nature would see its own self. Nature
with all its rocks and seas and mountains, with all its
suns and moons and planets, with all its vast star-
systems and all its immensity of space and all its
infinitude of time, would be — if only that — no more
than the blackness and silence of a point — no more than
the blackness and silence of an all-indefinite point. But
nature would not remain that — nature would Ic — nature
would be a universe — a marvellous crystal universe, with
an eye to see it, and an ear to hear it. The object would
be the subject; and then only, first of all, would itself
he — then only first of all would the object be the
object — then only first of all would it be even an
object. Nature must have a man to make it even
nature — object must have subject to make it even
object. Alone, unseen, the Bayadere of the universe
will not even dance. Now the subject is what hears
and sees and thinks, while the object is what is heard
and seen and thought ; and that there he, just that
anything be — that there be anything, both must be. But
it is not to be supposed that there is only such union to
be found when we come to find ourselves, when we come
to find a man. The mud of the river, the sand by the
sea, the very dust beneath our feet, is at once both.
Were it not so, it would be naught, nothing ; it would
disappear — it would be incognizable of us. That it is
cognizable of us depends upon this, that it is already a
concretion of categories, a complexion of thoughts. As

THE INOEGANIC HAS INSTINCTS. 349

you may wash away all colour from a clot of blood, and
be left at last with a pure transparent ultimate, a pure
transparent web which held the colour, so you may
discharge materiature from any particle of dust, or sand,
or mud, and be left at last with a pure diamond of
fibres intellectual. No particle of dust, or sand, or mud
but is there in quantity, and quality, and measure, in
substance and accident, in matter and form, and in quite
a congeries of many other categories. In this way one
can see that it may be said that even inorganic matter
possesses instincts. Not dog alone, or rat or cat, or bee
or swallow, is endowed with instinct, but even the rocks,
and stones, and all the materials around them. The
lower animals to Mr. Darwin, as he says, " seem to have
the very same attributes in a much lower stage of per-
fection than the lowest savage" (ii. 211). To him, that
is, there is an intellectual gradation from the lowest
animal to the highest man. Still he calls it " a strange
view of instinct, and wholly false," that would " regard
intelligence as a developed instinct." That, however,
must arise from Mr. Darwin's peculiarity to look upon
instinct as only an inherited habit. Most people mean,
by instinct the whole thinking faculty of an animal, so
far as it has a thinking faculty at all. It is in the same
way that Aristotle, though he says that " God and nature
do nothing in vain," yet assigns to nature no divine
quality, but only one that is daemonic, acting on un-
conscious motive, even as we might conceive wood to act,
did it make out of itself a boat or a bed ; for nature's
ends are wrought out blindly and without reflection.
Nevertheless, even so working, nature, continues Aristotle,
645a, affords inexpressible delight to those who are
able to discover causes, and are philosophers by nature ; "
not but that, as he says elsewhere, 677al6 — , "design
is not always to be looked for, inasmuch as, certain things

350 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

being such as they are, many others follow from them
through necessity." This operation of necessity, as we
see, is what Mr. Darwin alone trusts to, and under its
iron feet, unlike Aristotle, he would annihilate design.
But alone the consideration gives pause to that — the
consideration, what would the whole universe be, did it
not attain to an eye that would look at it, to an ear
that would listen to it? To that co-articulation of
mutual necessities it is impossible for any thinking
being to conceive of chance as the cause. As we saw,
it is better to be than not to be, and so there is ; but
if there is, then there is both object and subject. Either
without the other were a blank ; either without the other
were in vain. In order that anything be, there must
both be. No one can look at nature, even as it is there
before our eyes, without acknowledging that what it
shows everywhere is the rise from lowest object up to
highest subject. Science has already divided this rise,
and made of it a succession of terraces, of wliicli any one
is already more reasonable than its predecessor. To take
this succession and progression from below upwards is,
as it were, a reversal of emanation, a sort of retrograde
emanation, and the only truth, perhaps, of that whole
doctrine. We have first utmost space :ind furthest time,
and then motion and the moved merely — the moved
merely, matter, namely, that, as space is externality
outwards, has already commenced to be externality
inwards, and so approached the subject, as it were,
individually and from within ; while motion, that has
thrown the whole into the unity of law and system —
astral system — is the same approach, as it were, uni-
versally and from without. Nay, earlier still, we may
])laee the beginning of the approach. Space in itself is
manifestly the externale as the externale ; it is exter-
nality pure and simple, externality as such ; it is always

SPACE TIME. 351

out and out endlessly, it is never in and in. And it lies
there motionless, a motionless, infinite Out. There seems
no pure internal framework there as in the clot of blood,
no hidden categorical nucleolus of ideas as in material
particles. Yet, even as these particles have categories,
space has, as its soul, time. Space is in the clutch of
time : in each moment of time the whole infinitude of
space at once is : no moment of time but is at once
everywhere. Is it not strange just to think of that —
that even the perishable moment of time is, as every-
where in space, at once infinite ! And yet for us to
count the infinitude of space, we should require the
eternity of time. Evidently, whatever they are, they
must both go together ; time and space are a concrete,
of which the one is the discretion and the other the
continuity. But the universe, in that it holds of the
infinite and absolute, is independent of either. No one
can say v.ihcrc the world exists, nor when — it is above
any where or any when : it is its own there and then,
and everywhere, and at once, and always. As we have
said, it is the phenomenon of the noumenon ; and as
everywhere the turn and return of the out to the in, it
makes confession of its origin. Even in the finite there
is rise of the object into the subject, and science tells
us of it — in astronomy, and geology, and botany, and
zoology, and man. The whole effort of nature in its
zoology is to get to man ; and it is a long ascent to get
to him, through sponge and mollusc, fish and reptile,
bird and beast. Nature, all the time, is in no hurry or
haste, however, but spreads itself out, in its contingency,
in millions and millions of indifferent shapes which, never-
theless, collect and gather themselves in their contingency
to the rounds and rungs of their ladder in its rise.
Nature scatters its living products abroad, as the sea its
shells upon the strand. Contingency is the word ; he

352 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

that cannot put himself at home with contingency as
philosophically understood, will never philosophize this
world. Mr. Darwin's inherited individual differences
will never prove a match for the contingency that is.
Mr. Darwin had the richest memory of anecdotes in
nature of any man that ever lived, and, with an even
infinite conjectural ingenuity, he carried every anecdote
to its purpose in the march. But what these anecdotes
were to illustrate or establish was, in the first instance,
this. Mr. Darwin said to himself, Children resemble
their parents ; but they also differ from them. Evidently,
therefore, they are as likely to propagate differences as
to propagate resemblances ; for the fact of propagation,
the fact of inheritance, is to be admitted, is simply to be
named. Now, any given difference may be an advantage,
or it may be a disadvantage. That is, the animal, by
reason of the difference propagated and inherited, may be
obstructed in the exercise of its functions and the use of
its conditions ; or, in all these respects, it may be fur-
thered. The ultimate of obstruction can only be ex-
tinction. But, in the case of furtherance, inasmuch as
furtherance only encourages furtherance, ever the more
and the more, say for incalculable periods, the ultimate
can only be something perfectly new — can only be a new
organism, in fact, that is tantamount to a new species.
Now observe how, all this time, and even as I have been
using the words — observe how we have all passed through
a long, fascinating, and most natural-seeming perspective.
We have all, in imagination, quite pleasedly, and without
a rub or a check, assisted actually at a new birth.
We could not help ourselves. Seeing that inherited
difference going incalculably on and on, we felt involun-
tarily minded to admit any intermediate metamorphosis
with any terminal result whatever. We heard words
which gave us a picture in imagination ; and we sub-

THE VESTIGES. 353

mitted to them. Xotliing can be more plausible than
an incalculable time ; nothing can be more plausible than
an infinite series of infinitely small numbers — here of
infinitely small differences that gradually pass into one
another. It belongs to the human mind to picture an
endless time, — an endless continuity, — and then break it
up into an endless number of points — an endless number
of discretes. We yield to the plausibility of all this,
then, I say ; we yield and — we are lost. But, consider,
is it a fact that lengtli of time will of itself account for
anything ? Is it a fact that we must allow the capability
of insensible degrees to account for any change whatever ? /
Given a thing that is granted to vary, surely we may see
it in imagination vaiy into anything whatever — should
there further be granted any number of insensible degrees
and any length of time we may wish. Such conditions
must prove irresistible to any imagination that has not
prepared and fortified itself for opposition in advance.
Our possible mental pictures have really a most potent
effect upon us, but a new species, made by man, or made
by nature, has it been ever proved .? Followers of Mr.
Darwin have been asked, Is it at all conceivable that any
length of time, or that any insensible degrees, would
ever convert a canary into an elephant, or a bee into a
bull ? And followers of Mr. Darwin have always turned
upon the questioner with contempt for his ignorance, and
indignation for his injustice. Did he not know that Mr.
Darwin ever poured scorn on all such questions ? Even
in the case of a man so eminent as Dr. Robert Chambers,
and of a book so justly authoritative as the Vestiges, did
not Mr. Darwin find " the idea of a fish passing into a
reptile, monstrous " ? Did not such things amuse him
in the great geologist Sir Eoderick Impey Murchison ?
and did it not give him " a cold shudder (ii. 334) to hear
of any one " — Professor Parsons it was — " speculatin

z

»S

o

54 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

about a true crustacean giving birth to a true fish ?
How very different his own ideas of genealogy were, we
may understand from this. " We might give to a bird the
habits of a mammal," he says (ii. 335), "but inheritance
would retain almost for eternity some of the bird-like
structure, and prevent a new creature ranking as a
mammal." That is, a bird, even though it had already
the habits of a mammal, would remain bird-like, and
never, in all eternity, rise to the rank of a mammal.
Fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, must have
had, for each of them as a class, their one " necessary
and peculiar progenitor, having a character like the
embryo " of an individual of eacli of them. It is Mr.
'Darwin's own declaration always, " We must imagine " —
he does not say discover — " we must imagine some form
as intermediate — I cannot conceive (ii. 335) any existing
reptile being converted into a mammal." It is gross
ifjnorance, then, to hear enemies of Mr. Darwin courafie-
ously maintain that they, for their parts, had never come
from a cow, just as though Mr. Darwin had ever said
that ! This is something like those enemies of Berkleian-
ism who attribute to Berkeley the direct communication
on the part of God to man of every possible absurd
particular, whereas Berkeley has no thought in his mind
but of communication on the part of God to man of this
whole orderly, law-regulated, systematized universe. Sucli
caricaturists in objections are to be found in opposition
to every new truth. As there were those who told
Ikrkeley to knock his head against a lamp-post, so therc^
are those who tell Mr. Darwin they did not come from
a cow ! Well, then, I suppose we may grant that, as on
the part of the friends of Mr. Darwin, to be all right.
It is gross ignorance to say that Mr. Darwin ever holds
us to come from a cow, or can be construed into so
holding. When Mr. Darwin called " the idea of a fish

GENEALOGIES THE MUD-FISH. 3oo

passing into a reptile, monstrous," he also expressly
declared, as for his own part, " / will not specify any
genealogies — much too little known at present." We
see, however, that Mr. Darwin's knowledge must have
very sensibly increased, for we are in his debt in the end
for several genealogies. He is quite confident at last,
for example, that the early progenitor of man was a
catarhine monkey covered with hair, its ears pointed and
capable of movement, its foot prehensile, its body pro-
vided with a tail, and it habits arboreal {Descent of Man,
155-60). At an earlier period he says, " Our ancestor
was an animal which breathed water, had a swim bladder,
a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull, and undoubt-
edly was a hermaphrodite!" (ii. 260). Mr. Darwin is
so sure of his aiTair here that he can say " undoubtedly."
Of course we, for our parts, are accordingly impressed ;
but if Mr. Darwin had said, " Our ancestor was not an
animal which breathed water, had no imperfect skull, and
no great swimming tail, and was undoubtedly not a herma-
phrodite," I question whether we should not have been
equally accipient, and quite equally impressed. But now
that Mr. Darwin has come after all to have as much con-
fidence in genealogy as the author of the Vestiges himself,
we have to see that it is the lepidosiren or mud-fish that
is his greatest favourite in the propagation race. When
Sir Charles Lyell ventures to say a word about " the
necessity of the continued intervention of creative power,"
Mr. Darwin is immediately reminded of the mud-fish, and
of the ease with which (to use his own expression) it will
Jioor Lyell. " I cannot see this necessity," he says, " and
its admission, I think, would make the theory of natural
selection valueless. Grant a simple archetypal creature
like the mud-fish or lepidosiren with the five senses and
some vestige of mind, and I believe natural selection
will account for the production of every vertebrate

356 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

animal ! " Why the mud-fish is such a favourite with
Mr. Darwin probably is because, as he tells us, it is
intermediate " between reptiles and fish, between mam-
mals and birds on the one hand and reptiles on the other
hand." The mud-fish, should we look it up, as we easily
may in any zoological primer, will be found a creature
something like an eel, and of no great size. When Mr.
Darwin asked to be allowed to endow it with " the five
senses and some vestige of mind," we may have thought
that he was only asking to be gTanted what the problem
itself amounted to ; but should we look at the fish itself,
and consider what materials Mr. Darwin only asked for
in order to make it a man, I doubt not we shall admire
his modesty. For the commencement of all the marvels
of animal life, Mr. Darwin, as he says, would seem to
require only " a proteine compound chemically formed in
some little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phos-
phoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present ; " but,
alas ! as he very pointedly laments, " at the present day
such matter would be instantly devoured and absorbed,"
now that there are so many " living creatures " all about
(iii. 18). The want of this primordial life-matter, which
Mr. Darwin quite cheerfully opines might be quite easily
" chemically formed," does not discourage him from evolv-
ing all animals whatever from a single specimen of them
(mce he has got one — the mud-fish say, which for him,
too, has only to " appear." " I have long regretted," he
says (iii. 18), "that I truckled to public opinion, and
used the pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really
meant ' appeared ' by some wholly unknown process."
This is how he recants the wind-up of his great book,
the Oriffin, " into that grandeur of view " which sees " the
\ Creator breathe life into a few forms or into one." No,
no ! there can be no " creation," but only " modification ; "
all the materials of which are imaginatively prepared for

FANCIERS AND BKEEDEKS. 357

it in the first imagined " appearance " out of the first
imagined protcine. Then how he got to all this ! He i
tells Dr. Asa Gray (ii. 79), as we saw once already,/
" All my notions about liow species change are derived!
from long-continued study of the works of (and converse!
with) agriculturists and horticulturists ; " and accordingly
he admits, " I have found it very important associating
with fanciers and breeders."

Nay, he even confesses that he did not disdain to find
himself seated in pursuit of knowledge under difficul-
ties " amongst a set of pigeon fanciers in a gin palace in
the borough!" (ii. 281). It is, then, in consequence of
what he has learned in this way about pouters and fan-
tails, the horns of cattle and the wool of sheep, together
with bands, stripes, or bars upon the backs and legs of horses
and donkeys (ii. Ill), that he feels himself empowered
at last to declare that " all vertebrata have descended from
one parent " (ii. 211), and that analogy leads him to the
conclusion of the descent also " from one parent of the
great kingdoms (as vertebrata, articulata, and the rest) "
(ii. 212). Nay, so high did he mount in his rapture of
discovery (imagination)," that he applied the theory of evolu-
tion to the whole organic kingdom from plants to man ! " i
(ii. 6). What a wonderful thing that first only chemically- /
formed proteine must have been, which already contained ■
in its invisible " seed-bags," as Jean Paul Eichter might say,
plants, animals, and man, Adam and Eve, and all ! Nay/
what a much more wonderful thing, if possible, is that
spoon of mere individual difference by chance, which
alone enables Mr. Darwin to dig into the initial material
identity, and deal it out into the infinity of the infinitely
varied plant life and infinitely varied animal life v/hicli
we see around us ! .Once Mr. Darwin has finished with
the vertebrata — only the vertebrata ! — what a wonderful
leap that is, a salto mortale, a flying leap on the single

358 GIFFORD LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

trapeze of " analogy," that enables liim without more ado to
find the articulata, iusecta, mollusca, molluscoida, and what
not, all in the same Noah's ark of a pedigree with man !
It is not an expensive matter to p»hilosophize in that way.
The grandfather, Erasmus the first, said omnia ex conchis,
or ex conchis omnia, " all from oysters ; " Mr. Darwin
surpasses his grandfather and cries all, oysters too, from
l)roteine. For if one will consider of it, there is, at
bottom on Mr. Darwin's part, certainly with illustrations
enow, pictures enow, little more than a cnj. Let us look
back on what we have seen — let us turn up any one page
as alluded to in Mr. Darwin, and we shall find, with all
his illustrations, that the method of Mr. Darwin is one
of hypothesis, supposition, probable conjecture only. It
is so easy to prove this that, without troubling to look
back and turn up pages behind us, I just open a book of
Mr. Darwin's at random — I just positively take it up
from my table, open it at random, and read what I see.
I find I have opened at page 594 of the second edition
of the Descent of Man. " At a very early period, before
man attained to his present rank in the scale, many of
his conditions would be different from what now obtains
amongst savages. Judging from the analogy of the lower
animals he would then either live with a single female
or be a polygamist." (He would not have been a
bachelor, it seems ?) " The most powerful and able males
would succeed best in obtaining attractive females."
(We know that the weakest succeed now in that respect
quite as well as the strongest !) " They would also
succeed best in the general struggle for life. ... At
this early period the ancestors of man would not be suffi-
ciently advanced in intellect to look forward to distant
contingencies ; they would not foresee that the rearing of
all their children, especially their female children, would
make the struggle of life severer for the tribe. They

DIFFERENCE GOES ON NEVER RETURNS ! 359

would be governed more by their instincts. They would
not at that period," and so on. That is a perfect speci-
men of how the mind of Mr. Darwin works. Difference
would be — difference would go on incalculably into new
identities, not possibly turn back, as all facts past or
present seem on the whole to suggest, into the old ones
again. "With him it is always so and so " would be."
One correspondent seems to have objected to him his
constant " I believe, or I am convinced," and to have
advised rather what he might depend upon as " I prove "
(ii. 240). " I cannot doubt" is another such expression
of his. " I cannot doubt," he says, " that during millions
of generations individuals of a species will be born with
some slight variation profitable to some part of its
economy." That is his whole doctrine in its one creative
bud : individuals vary to advantage ; and it rests on a
mere subjective " I cannot doubt," and that, too, in
regard to a mere mental picture of millions ! — millions
of generations ! — that some one individual, from time to
time among them all, we may be safe to assume, will
experience " some slight variation profitable to some part
of its economy." The whole tendency of the natural
indefinite picture, which, as such, we cannot well gainsay,
is to blind us to the pure assumption of the single pro-
position — ■ individual differences will so accumulate to
advantage in millions of generations as to constitute a
new species. Of course it is useless to ask for the proof
which the correspondent suggested ; proof there can be
none given ; naturally, that record of millions of genera-
tions can have a place only in the imagination ; and by
way of proof there can be nothing for it but illustratively
to allude to all manner of conjectural likelihoods and
specious possibilities, which in a great many cases will be
found to admit of a no, iiot one whit less satisfactorily
than of a yes. To read what Mr. Darwin, in the Krause-

360 GIFFOKD LECTUEE THE EIGHTEENTH.

hook, quotes from Mr. Lewes in regard to Erasmus Darwin,
one is led to believe that Mr. Lewes had a very high
opinion of that respected grandsire. That is certainly
the impression Mr. Darwin desires to convey. We come
to the very opposite conclusion, however, when we turn
up the passage and read in Mr. Lewes himself, who
tells us how Erasmus, " as he proceeds, gets more ■ and
more absurd ; " how, " as a poet, his Botanic Garden by
its tawdry splendour gained him a tawdry reputation ; "
and how, *■ as a philosopher, his Zoonomia gained him a
reputation equally noisy and fleeting." The grandson
speaks of his grandfather's " overpowering tendency to
theorize and generalize." And certainly no one will
dispute as much if he reads the Zoonomia. All life
for Erasmus proceeds from an organic filament ; there is
a different one for the different kingdoms ; yet, probably,
he says at last, " one and the same kind of living filament
is and has been the cause of all organic life." And here
I, for my part, prefer the grandfather's filament to the
grandson's proteine. Mr. Darwin conjectures seals to
begin to feed on shore (ii. 339), and so, consequently, to
vary; and yet he admits (ii. 336), "I know of no fact
showing any the least incipient variation of seals feeding
on the shore." The grandfather will have it, again, that
all animals were at first fish, and became amphibious by
feeding on shore, and so gradually terrestrial. This is
vastly more wholesale than what the grandson says
about seals, and yet I know not that the grandfather's
teeming imagination ever gave birth to a more Brob-
dingnagian monster than this on the part of the grand-
son. At page 141 of the latest issue of the Origin of
Species we read : " In North America the black bear was
seen by Hearne swimming for liours with widely open
mouth, thus catching almost like a whale insects in the
water." A bear swimming and catching insects, even as

THE BEAR AND THE WHALE. 361

a whale mioht — this on the part of Mr. Darwin is to
make easy to us the transition of one animal into
another. Truly, as I said, Mr. Darwin does not always
scout genealogy ! He could not stomach it in the case
of Dr. Eobert Chambers and the passage of a fish into a
reptile ; but in fifteen years — the interval between his
reading and his writing — he has learned something — he
has acquired himself a swallow wide enough for both a
whale and a bear. The passage, it seems, according to
a note in the IJfe and Letters (ii. 234), was omitted in
the second edition. Nevertheless, it is to be read in the
last issue now. Mr. Darwin, then, must have deliberately
restored it. I say deliberatehj, for we find him, November
24, 1859, consulting Lyell about it. "Will you send
me one line to say whether I must strike out about the
whale ? it goes to my heart ! " Next day also we find
him assuring this same Lyell, " I will certainly leave
out the whale and bear." Nay, in September of the
following year he cannot help writing once more on the
subject to Lyell, but this time — so much has it gone to
his heart — appealingly. " Observe," he cries, — " observe
that in my wretched polar bear case I do show the first
step by which conversion into a whale ' would be easy,'
' would offer no difficulty ! ' " He had already said in
the first of these three letters, " In transitions it is the
premier pas qui coute," and we are to understand, there-
fore, that supplied with the first step of the transition of
a bear into a whale we could be at no loss in picturing
to ourselves the easy remainder of the entire process.
An easy remainder, surely, seeing we had to refer for it
only to our own imaginations ! It is to the imagination,
at all events, that the grandfather testifies great grati-
tude. He cheerfully allows it a chief place in " meta-
morpJwscs," and surely with reason ! It shall be the
imagination of the mother that colours the eggs of her

3G2 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE EIGHTEENTH.

progeny ; he even brings in the imagination of the
father in a wonderful {Shandy -an) manner ! Then it is by
imagination afterwards of the original irritation of the
lachrymal glands at birth that we are able during life to
weep when in grief, as it is by imagination of our first cold
shivering, also at birth, that when in fear we always
tremble, etc. I suppose it is still the effects of imagina-
tion he alludes to when he says : " The tadpole acquires
less and lunsfs — when he wants them ! and loses his tail
— when it is no longer of service to him ! " And certainly
it is only by a signal effort of the imagination that he
himself has been enabled to discover this astonishing
rationale and causality of squinting {Zoonomia, ii. 143).
" Squinting is generally owing to one eye being less
perfect than the other, on which account the patient
endeavours to hide the worst eye in the shadow of
the nose ! " We may break off here, and resume next
week.

GIFFOED LECTUEE THE NINETEENTH.

Dr. Erasmus Darwin — Student scribbles on Zoonomia — Family dif-
ferences, attraction and repulsion — The Darwins in this
respect— Dr. Erasmus of his sons, Mr. Charles and Dr. R. W.
— Dr. R. W. as to his sons — Charles on his grandfather,
father, brother — Mr. Erasmus on his brother's book — On the
d primi — On facts — Darwin's one method — Darwin and
Hooker on facts — Family politics — Family religion — Family
habits — Family theories — Mr. Darwin's endowments — His
Journal — The Zoonomia — Theories of Dr. Erasmus — Paley — ■
Instinct — An idea to Dr. E. — Dugald Stewart — Picture-
thinking — Dr. E.'s method — Darwin's doubts — His brave spirit
— The theory to his friends — Now— Almost every propos of the
grandson has its germ in the grandfather (Krause) — Yet the
position of the latter — Byron on — Mr. Lewes also — The greater
Newton, original Darwinism now to be revived — Dr. E.
admirable on design — Charles on cats made by God to play
with mice ! — Dr. E. on atheism — The apology— But will con-
clude with a single point followed thoroughly out: the Galapagos
— Darwin held to be impregnably fortified there — The Galapagos
thrown up to opponents at every turn— But we are not natural-
istsj — Dr. E. rehabilitates us — Description of the Galapagos
from the Journal — The islands, their size, number, position,
geographical and relative — depth of water and distance between
— Climate, currents,wind — Geology, botany, zoology — Volcanoes,
dull sickly vegetation, hills, craters, lava, pits, heat, salt-
pools, water — Tortoises, lizards, birds — Quite a region to
suggest theory.

When we left off on the last occasion we were engaged
in drawino- illustrations in regard to the source and
nature of the doctrine of natural selection from the
special theories and peculiar character of Erasmus
Darwin, the elder. We saw how it was the imagina-
tion that predominated, whether in the theories or in

36-i GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINETEENTH.

the mau. A curious testimony to this on the part of
general readers may be found in the scrawls and scribbles
on the University copy of the Zoonomia. Some one has
been wicked enough to tear out a good number of pages
from one of the volumes. Of scrawls, there occur :
" Imaginary — Darwin, beware ! That is the rock you
have split upon, Hypothesis, where other barks as well as
yours have been wrecked ;" and again, "Darwin's dreams!"
One writer laments that Erasmus strayed beyond the
Botanic Garden; had he not done so," the writer says,

"Then disappointment had not marked thy name ;
And Darwin's laurels rivalled Newton's fame."

There may have been remarked a peculiarity in
some families according as it shall be the principle of
attraction or the principle of repulsion that rules in
them. Of some the members are, as the Germans say,
sprode, mutually repellent ; they have no confidences witli
each otlier. That they are sons, brothers, sisters is, in
respect of one another, a reason for depreciation and dis-
regard, almost for offensive familiarity and contempt.
They never think of the opinion of one of themselves
as an opinion at all ; and with one another there is no
end to the liberties they take. With others, all that is
reversed. Thei7' geese are all swans. They support
each other. In season and out of season they cry each
other up. They never think of the members of other
families, they never can see anything in them. All on
the outside of themselves are the ^e^r]\oi, indifferent
people, people of no account. Charles Darwin was a
loyal, modest man, who was quite incapable of being-
unjust to others. Such a trait, too, is probably to be
found, more or less, in all the Darwins. Still, on the whole,
perhaps, tlie Darwins, at least of three generations, may
be not too unrighteously admitted to have exhibited

THE DARWIN FAMILY. 365

something of the mutual - admiration principle. The
grandfather prints with pride the literary productions
of his sons, "Mr." Charles and ''Dr. B. W." Darwin. What
a father Dr. R. W. again was to his two sons, Erasmus
and Charles, the latter of them has expressly chronicled
in the warmest terms. Of his grandfather he is cor-
respondently eulogistic : " He (the grandfather) had
uncommon powers of observation," he says. But as for
his father, Dr. E. W., Dr. E, W. was to Charles " incom-
parably the acutest observer he ever knew," " the best
judge of character he ever knew," " the wisest man he
ever knew ; " and he was also, as we have seen, " the
largest man he ever knew ! " Of his brother Erasmus,
the opinion of Charles is that he was the " clearest-
headed man whom he had ever known." Then this
Erasmus, for his part, must be granted to have been
equally true to the family principle. When his brother's
book, the Origin, reaches him, and he reads it, he cannot
help exclaiming to the author of it (ii. 233), " I really
think it is the most interesting book I ever read. . . .
In fact, the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory
to me that if the facts won't fit in, why, so much the
worse for the facts, is my feeling." And here Erasmus,
as I may observe, only expresses the same opinion as I
have expressed in regard to his brother's method. There
is an a priori theory, and then there is a miscellany of
remark in regard to facts to support it. Erasmus is very
honest in Ms avowals. The theory is the all and all to
him, the facts but poor wretches that have only to knock
under and adapt themselves. Indeed, this opinion about
facts does not seem confined to Erasmus the younger ;
there would appear even some fatality incident to facts so
far as they occur in natural history at all. Charles himself
avows to his friend Hooker (ii. 45), " It is really dis-
gusting and humiliating to see directly opposite con-

o

G6 GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINETEENTH.

elusions drawn from the same facts ; " to which remark-
Sir Joseph Hooker's reply must have been peculiar, for
Charles (ii. 70) rejoins to it, "It is a melancholy, and I
hope not quite true view of yours, that facts will prove
anything, and are therefore superfluous ! " But as
regards the family, there is more than mutual love in it :
there are family politics — they are all Whigs; and there
is a family religion — they are all, we may say, in regard
to the Creed, heterodox. Other things, too, run in it as
a family, such as early rising, hatred of alcoholic beverages,
and a practical love of natural history. In fact, there
can be no doubt that we are right in this, that a family
agreement, down to the most individual particulars, was the
very hinge, as it were, on which the whole three of them,
grandfather, father, and son, turned. The constitution
even of their very minds seems to have been pretty well
identical. As we have seen, the grandfather had an
" overpowering tendency to theorize " (i. 6) ; the father
" formed a theory," the son says, " for almost everything
that occurred" (i. 20); and the son himself, as regards
hypotheses, confesses (i. 103), " I cannot resist forming
one on every subject." Mr. Darwin also admits that the
" passion for collecting " was in him " clearly innate ; '"
and again, that his " scientific tastes " were certainly
innate. In fact, there cannot be a doubt that, than
Charles Darwin, there never was a man born with a
purer and stronger innate or inherited faculty to observe.
Why, the love for everything that crawls was so absorbing
in him that he put a black beetle into his mouth as
another man might put a bon-bon ! At Down there was
not a bird's nest in his garden, or all about, that he did
not know. Almost, it might be said, that there was not
to be found on his grounds even a single worm that was
not his familiar acquaintance. We have many journals
of naturalists on scientific voyages, but never such a

THE ZOONOMIA. 367

journal as that of Mr. Darwin in the Beagle. It is a
practical lesson in geology, sncli as can he got nowhere
else, even to read it. Then as regards animals and
plants, during the whole expedition, not one sample of
the one kind or the other seems to have escaped his
recognition. There never was such a hrain as that of
Charles Darwin, stuffed full, teeming, and running over
with a thousand facts that no one before him ever had
a mind to think of, to notice, or to record. Then his
ingenuity in adjusting fact to fact or in eliminating con-
trarieties and contradictions was marvellous — utterly
unexampled — such success in these ways was never
exhibited in a book before. Fancy the grandfather with
similar powers, but free from the practice of medicine
and the production of poetry, what a book the Zoonomia
might have been ! And see what it is instead I A crude
melange of crass theories, and undigested, inconsistent,
miscellaneous particulars! The author of it starts with"
his d priori theory of " all from oysters ; " he submits it
to the test of his miscellany, and that is the result ! Fish
wliich are generally suspended in water, and swallows
which are generally suspended in air, have their backs,
we are told, tlie colour of the distant ground and their
bellies that of the sky. Why this ? That the swallows
may escape hawks which, being above them, will mistake
their backs for the ground, while below them they will
mistake their bellies for the sky ! I suppose it is the
pike that, as above or below, is similarly to be duped of
his fish ! Di\ Erasmus actually fancies insects to be
undoubtedly formed fi'om the sexual appendages of
plants, the honey-loving stamens and pistils of the
flowers, as he calls them, some acquiring wings, others
fins, and others claws from their ceaseless efforts to pro-
cure their food, or to secure themselves from injury :
" changes," he avers, " not more incomprehensible than

368 GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINETEEXTII,

the transformation of tadpoles into frogs and caterpillars
into butterflies ! " On another physico-metaphysical con-
ceit of Erasmus Darwin's we have a commentary by
I*aley. " I am not ignorant," he says {Natural Theology,
cap. 18), " of the theory which resolves instinct into sensa-
tion. Tlius the incubation of eggs is accounted for by the
pleasure which the bird is supposed to receive from the
pressure of the smooth convex surfaces. . . . The affec-
tion of viviparous animals for their young is, in like
manner, solved by the relief which they receive in
suckling. . . . The salmon's urging her way up the
stream of fresh-water rivers is attributed to some grati-
fication or refreshment which, in this particular state of
the fish's body, she receives from the change of element."
It is not worth while quoting what Paley says in answer
to all this. The groundless arbitrariness, perhaps even
the st'wt i-seriousness of such propos cannot escape us.
As regards incubation, we know it to be a fact that such
noxious and poisonous animals as snakes, serpents, boa-
constrictors, and cobras will, as with a mother's solicitude,
so obstinately sit on their eggs that they will rather die
than leave them. Is such devoted affection in appear-
ance only relief of a colic in fact ? If you rescue a
young sparrow fallen from the nest and expose it in a
cage at your window, I wonder if it is only for relief to a
pain in the stomach that the she-sparrow and the he-
sparrow will, for many days, cling incessantly to the cage
with food in their bills for their little one within it! Dr.
Erasmus Darwin ventures, even in respect of what is
purely metaphysical, to tell us wliat an idea is. To him
it is, as it were, only the stamp on the body of the things
without. He defines it " a contraction, or motion, or
configuration of the fibres which constitute the imme-
diate organ of sense." Of this definition Dugald Stewart
remarks that it is " calculated to impose on a very wide

PICTURE-THINKING. 369

circle of readers by the mixture it exhibits of crude and
visionary metaphysics," and I think we may, without
intolerable injustice, extend the criticism to all those
semi-physical and semi-metaphysical reels in bottles,
which men like the author of Zoonomia are so innocently
busy, bee-like, to construct. Most unformed men do not
reason, to call it reason. Proof with them is the
instinctive recourse to a picture. They are, as Kant
has it, only on such stage as the Egyptians or the Chinese,
whose minds as yet are not fine enough for pure notions,
and can only understand by the help of physical repre-
sentations — not possibly by the mere letters of an
alphabet. They think in tropes, they see in metaphors.
The circulation of their brains is a circulation in images.
Their metaphysics in general are so thickened with
physics that they can only settle into what is bizarre
and biassed, counterfeit and mock. For gold they can
only offer us pinckbeck. Dr. Erasmus was a medical
man, and medical men, at least, had not always then the
advantage of courses in logic, metaphysics, and morals,
they had not always then transformed their hieroglyphics
into the letters of the alphabet. It is just possible that
there is a little of that physical thinking even now-a-
days, and not on the part of the Bob Sawyers alone.

The procedure of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, then, is alto-
gether the method and manner of a man who starts with
an a 'priori theory, and looks miscellaneously to heaven,
and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is, for
illustrations, mere pictures in proof. As Dr. Asa Gray
objects to the natural selection of his grandson, in all
that quasi-ratiocination, there is no point of departure
undenialjly and manifestly made good as a vera causa.
Or as Professor Sedgwick similarly objected, there is no
movement on the Baconian principle, no regular induc-
tion, from point to point, and step to step, accurately,

2 a

370 GIFFOED LF.CTURE THE NINETEENTH.

precisely, and convincingly carried out. " Alany of his
wide conclusions are built upon assumptions which can
neither be proved nor disproved." There are times when,
in respect of his own work, such objections start up in
all their force even to Mr. Charles Darwin himself,
almost as definite barriers to his own advance. To Asa
Gray he fully admits (ii. 217) "that there are very
many difficulties not satisfactorily explained by my
theory." These difficulties, he confesses to Jenyns (ii.
219), "stagger him to this very day." Even to Mr.
Huxley, as we saw, he writes, " I entirely agree with you
that the difficulties on my notions are terrific" (ii. 354).
In regard to these same difficulties, we have this further
admission to Dr. Asa Gray (ii. 315), " I could myself,"
says Charles, " write a more damning review " — of his
own book, that is — " than has as yet appeared." Who-
ever can read between the lines, however, in these
writings of Mr. Charles Darwin's, will have no difficulty
in discovering that he (Darwin) was, despite his doubts,
as brave a man as ever li^'cd. He cowers beneath his
checks at times ; but ever he whispers to himself, like
a true Englishman as he is, " It's dogged as does it ! "
It is in few things more interesting than to watch him,
during the incubation of his theory, in his various letters
to his chosen friends. His despondent moods are in-
teresting, and ever again his renewed courage. But
what, perhaps, is still more interesting, is the persistent
resolution he manifests to win these friends over, together
with the shrewd, almost insidious, but never ignoble,
adaptations and accommodations he sets into operation
according to the peculiar character of each. Lyell,
Hooker, Huxley, Carpenter, Gray are all most delicately
handled. He says once to one of these, " Often and
often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have
asked myself whether I may not have devoted my life

THE THEORY TO HIS FKIENDS. 371

to a phantasy . . . but investigators of truth, like
Lyell and Hooker, cannot be wholly wrong, and there-
fore I rest in peace." Still I know not that that peace
was a well-assured one. There is ample evidence in
these letters that Lyell, Carpenter, Gray, and, we may
say, all his less-noted friends, were never believers in his
theory, pure and simple. We have seen difficulties
called ominous even with Mr. Huxley ; and as regards
Sir Joseph Hooker, it may be that he will march with
his friend to the very end still — not that these letters
show him to have been ever much more assured than
Lyell, or Gray, or the rest were. And how is it, now,
that the Origin of Species has been thirty years before
the public ? As regards the great outside woild, while
still caviare to the orthodox, it is understood among
those who are above tlie Bible that natural selection is
a demonstrated and established doctrine. It is not so
certain, however, that as much is understood among
experts. I don't know but what we begin to hear
murmurs in camp. I cannot follow this farther now,
however. I will only call to mind the last Presidential
Address of the British Association, and its warnings
against incautious assertions as to organic life.

And not quite to be misunderstood, I will add this,
whatever I have said, I have no intention to deny that
there may be at this moment many and good and
worthy men, believers both in Mr. Darwin and their
Bible. To me, however, the consideration of his grand-
father's theories, as well in themselves as in their fortune
and fate, give, if not warrant and assurance, at least
suspicion, of a foundation of sand. With the single ex-
ception of what is meant by the one word " modification,"
I know of no genetic doctrine in the works of the grand-
son that will not be found, at greater or less length,
suggested, mooted, propounded, discussed in the works

372 GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINETEENTH.

of the grandfather. Dr. Ernst Krause wrote in the
specially Darwinian number of the evolutionary journal,
Kosmos, an essay, " The Scientific Works of Erasmus
Darwin," which Mr. Charles Darwin so much relished
that he wrote Dr. Krause " thanking him cordially . . .
and asking his permission to publish an English transla-
tion of the essay." In this he was joined by his brother
Erasmus the younger. Dr. Krause is a foremost evolu-
tionist, and, with much else, writes a special work,
Charles Darwin and his Relation to Germany. The
translation in question was entrusted to Mr. W. S.
Dallas, also a distinguished Darwinian, who executes
the admirable index to the Variation of Animals and
Plants, the translation of Fritz Miiller's Filr Darwin,
and the glossary to the sixth edition of the Origin.
To the resultant book by Mr. Dallas, Mr. Darwin con-
tributes, in the shape of a " preliminary notice," more
than one half of the whole. " Many persons," says i\Ir.
Darwin in his autobiography, " have been much interested
by this little life, and I am surprised that only 800 or
900 copies were sold." Other book-makers may be sur-
prised, but hardly for Mr. Darwin's reason ! From all
this, I think we may conclude that Dr. Krause can claim
an absolute Darwinian approbation and endorsement,
when, in said little book, he writes of Mr. Charles Dar-
win, that he " has succeeded to an intellectual inlieritance,
and carried out a programme sketched forth, and left
l)ehind by his grandfather. Almost every single work
of the younger Darwin may be paralleled by at least a
chapter in the works of his ancestor, . . . heredity,
adaptation, the protective arrangements of animals and
plants, sexual selection, insectivorous plants, and the
analysis of the emotions and sociological impulses ; nay,
even the studies on infants are to be found already dis-
cussed in the writings of the elder Darwin, . . . who, a

POSITION OF DE, EEASMUS. 373

Lamarckian before Lamarck first established a complete
system of the theory of evolution." Of the parallel
between the younger and the elder Darwin, that is to
say more than even I mooted, and in such circumstances as
to give an authority to the general position utterly beyond
dispute. Are we to suppose, then, that the course of
literary and philosophical history in Great Britain has
gone all wrong ? Before the culmination and success of
Mr. Charles Darwin, whether in literature or philosophy
the name of Erasmus Darwin had pretty well ceased to
be heard of. As we knew that there had been a John
Philips and a Splendid Shilling, or a Scotchman Wilkie
and a thing called Eyigoniad, or a Bishop Wilkins and
his Discovery of a New World, so we knew of a Botanic
Garden and a Zoonomia; but as we only hnew of the
former, so we only knew of the latter : we had never
read either. As regards Zoonomia, we had taken Dugald
Stewart and Dr. Thomas Brown's word for it : it was
something merely crude and visionary, the mushroom
product of uninitiated crassitude ; and as for the Botanic
Garden, we had, perhaps, heard the recitation from it of
" Eliza on the wood-crowned height," or of the grand
passage, " Pioll on, ye stars ! exult in youthful prime," or
of the melancholy passage, " So the sad mother at the
noon of night ; " and had thought to ourselves always
how happy was that line of Byron's that dubbed Erasmus
but " a mighty master of unmeaning rhyme ! " ^ In fact

1 In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Byron exclaims in prose,
" The neglect of the Botanic Garden is some proof of returning taste,"
while in verse be has these pretty plain lines : —

" Let these, or such as these, with just applause,
Restore the Muse's violated laws ;
But not in flimsy Darwin's pompous chime,
That mighty master of unmeaning rhyme ;
Whose gilded cymbals, more adorned than clear,
The eye delighted, but fatigued the ear ;

374 GIFFOED LECTURE THE NINETEENTH.

on tlie whole matter we just took it for granted that
when Mr. Lewes said, " tawdry splendour gained him a
tawdry reputation," which, in another respect, proved
" equally noisy and fleeting," — we just took it for grantetl
that when this was said all was said, and that, as regards
Dr. Erasmus Darwin, we might, with perfect tranquillity,
leave him henceforth quite undisturbed in the limbo of
other poetasters and philosophasters. If, however, we
are to believe the Herr Dr. Krause, all this is wrong, —
all this is a sin, and a shame, and a disgrace, — all this
is a flagrant injustice to one of the greatest scientific
discoverers that ever lived — a discoverer that antici-
pated the discoveries of even the illustrious Charles
Darwin, whom it has not been esteemed excessive praise
of late to style " The Greater Newton." Nay, there are
others, it seems, who surpass even the Herr Dr. Krause
in his admiration of Dr. Erasmus. Dr. Krause tells us
himself of a wish seriously expressed on the part of some
to revive original Darwinism now. It is not so with
him, however, let him admire the elder Darwin and
Darwinism as he may. On the contrary, any such wish
to him " shows a weakness of thought and a mental
anachronism which no one can envy." And yet, I, for
my part, after all that even Krause himself has told me,
know not that, in reference to the oricrin and transforma-
tions of plants and animals, the thought and thoughts of
the grandson differ from those of the grandfather, unless
in so far as the former (Charles), unlike the latter, rejects
the interposition of a designing cause : Charles Darwin

In show, the simple lyre could once surpass,
But now worn down, a])pear in native brass ;
While all his train of liovering sylphs around
Evaporate in similes and sound :
Him let them shun, with him let tinsel die :
False glare attracts, but more ofl'ends, the eye."

DR. ERASMUS ON ATHEISM. 375

has only one device for the creation of that whole mar-
vellous panorama of life on earth ; and, in two words, it
is, individual difference I I, for my part, then, who stand
up here for the certainty of Natural Theology and the
cogency of all its arguments, ontological, cosmological,
tcleological, must believe Erasmus Darwin, the grand-
father, to have been, in his reverence for design, much
nearer the truth than Charles Darwin the grandson : I
cannot forget the many passages I have seen in the
former expressive of his deep sense of the reality in this
world of an organization on ideas. All that contrasts to
me wonderfully with the strangely young, the innocently
simple admissions, which, as fruit of adequate reflection,
the grandson so unmisgivingly imparts to the inexperi-
enced youths who write to him for guidance. He seems
to have been greatly exercised in mind that, given a
beneficent and omnipotent Deity, flies should feed within
the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play
with mice (ii. 312). The grandfather, for his part,
though, like the grandson, he " disbelieved in any revela- 1
tion," could never see his way to give up his faith in the
existence of God. He even published an ode on the '
folly of Atheism, of which this is the first verse : —

" Dull Atheist, could a dizzy dance
Of atoms lawless hurled
Construct so wonderful, so wise,
So harmonized a world % "

And now I have to say a word of apology. I cannot
do that justice in these lectures to the whole theme of
Darwinism for which I had prepared myself. I have by
me, one way and another, not much less than a hundred
and a half of closely-written quarto pages of extracts and
memoranda, which were to serve me as mere core and
nucleus to a complete statement on the whole subject.

876 GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINETEENTH.

The attempt to carry out this programme gave me great
pain, and cost me much anxiety for long, inasmuch as,
with the space at my command, I was simply endeavour-
ing to reconcile impossibilities. I do not believe that
even the whole course of lectures would have enabled me
to exhaust the materials I had gathered. What I had to
content myself with in the end was simply to sit down
and write according as the information in my head
prompted me. Even to turn up my authorities proved
for the most part as distressing and as futile as to
operate on a needle in a bundle of hay. It is for that,
then, I apologise — that I have been able to present to
you the subject only in a certain miscellaneousness.

In conclusion, however, I will now take up one point
and follow it out. Every one who has at all approached
this subject has heard of the Galapagos, the Galapagos
Islands, or the Galapagos Archipelago. In the index to
the Life and Letters, the fauna of them are named " the
starting-point of investigations into the origin of species ; "
and Mr. Darwin himself more than once avows that it
was what he had observed there led him to study the
origin of species (i. 82, ii. 23, iii. 159); while it is well
known that the adherents of Mr. Darwin generally throw
up the bastion of the Galapagos as a barrier so strong
that no enemy can carry it. But that being so, it is
evident that there may be that there whicli, if seen and
understood, would convince us too. We, too, have no
interest but the truth. I, for my part, am quite willing
to be convinced, if there be any evidence to convince,
whether in the Galapagos or anywhere else.

For the information which is necessary to us here, we
have to turn to that admirable volume which Mr. Darwin
names his Joiimol of Researches. I have already men-
tioned how it is a work singular and single in its ex-
cellence. Mr. Darwin devotes one whole chapter in it.

DE. ERASMUS REHABILITATES US. 377

the seventeenth, to the Galapagos Archipelago ; and it is
to that chapter I have to direct your special attention.
We have not the advantage of either the knowledge or
ability of Mr. Darwin ; but if these islands were of such
a nature as to impress Mr. Darwin only in one direction,
surely we must expect them, in the same direction, more
or less to impress us too. No doubt there is an objection
not unfrequently taken which would summarily sist the
appeal to the possibility of any such influence for us :
we are not naturalists, and only naturalists can judge of
what is concerned in the Galapagos ! Mr. Darwin
himself, however, writes to Asa Gray : " I think it of
importanx3e that my notions should be read by intelligent
men, accustomed to scientific argument, though not
naturalists." There is, to be sure, a certain presumption,
after all, in the assumption, and in the proceeding to
judgment on the assumption of just as much as that — but
perhaps a reference to the grandfather will put us right
again, and pretty well confirm to us some locus standi in
as great a matter as the present. We have seen that,
in view of its excellence even in the direction of the
grandson, whose peculiar lines it precisely anticipated, it
has been seriously proposed to restore the elder Dar-
winism. Now, of the Bible of that Darwinism, the
Zoonomia, this is the Dedication : " To all those who
study the operations of the mind as a science, or who
practise medicine as a profession." If only the word
" practise " had been in the past tense, one might have
been excused for the thought that, in no very distant
regard. Dr. Darwin had been, to say so, almost pro-
phetically personal ! Nc sutor supra crcpidam is, of
course, the rule ; but it need not prove exceptionless. I
have the idea that Mr. Huxley would look a little
torvous, did any man dispute his right to a judgment on
Descartes !

378 GIFFOKD LECTURE THE NINETEENTH.

The Galapagos are a group of small islands, of various
sizes, and some thirteen in number, of which only two
seem unnamed. Six of them may be regarded as out-
lying, and seven central. Of the former on the north,
three, as scarcely referred to by Mr. Darwin, may be left
out of count. On the east, Chatham Island is distant
(say) 2 2 miles, and on the south, Charles Island 3 2 from
the nearest central island. Twelve miles may be the
greatest, and two or three the least, distance from one to
the other among the central islands themselves. These
measures, however, are dependent on Mr. Darwin's own
map and scale in his Journal, and cannot be considered
rigorously exact. The situations, and especially the dis-
tances, in each other's regard, are the important points
in the consideration so far. We advance to a second
important point when we recognise the position of these
islands to be right under the equator in the Pacific Ocean,
and (the third important point) at a distance of between
five or six hundred miles west of South America. The
climate of these islands, despite their position on the
equator, is represented as far from being excessively hot,
the great Polar current from the south, namely, surround-
ing them with a sea of a singularly low temperature.
For winds these islands are exposed, of course, to the
southern Trades, which blow over them as far as four
degrees farther north ; but above a certain height they
are apt to be overhung with vapours. It is only under
tliese vapours, and especially to windward, that vegetation
can be said to thrive, for everywhere else these islands
are of a monotonously repulsive sterile aspect. They are
all volcanic, and supposed to be geologically recent.
Some of the craters surmountinf]: the larjjer islands are
of immense size, and they rise to a height of between
three and four thousand feet. The flanks of these as
they rise are studded by innumerable orifices, and there

THE GALAPAGOS. 379

must be in the whole archipelago at least two thousand
craters. These craters have their southern sides either
much lower than the other sides, or quite broken down
and removed in consequence of the combined action of
the Pacific swell and the southern Trades. Landing on
these islands, nothing can be less inviting than the first
appearance, says Mr. Darwin. A broken field of black-
basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and
crossed by great fissures, is everywhere covered by stunted,
sunburnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life.
The dry and parched surface, heated by the noonday
sun, gives to the air a close and sultry feeling, like that
from a stove : one fancies even that the bushes smell
unpleasantly. The brushwood appears, from a short dis-
tance, as leafless as our trees during winter, even when it
is in full leaf, nay, for the most part, even when it is in
flower. The entire surface, he says once, seems to have
been permeated like a sieve by the subterranean vapours :
here and there the lava, while soft, has been l)lown
into great bubbles ; and in other parts the tops of caverns
similarly formed have fallen in, leaving circular pits with
steep sides. Of two of the islands Mr. Darwin reports :
" Both are covered with immense deluges of black naked
lava, which have flowed either over the rims of the great
caldrons, like pitch over the rim of a pot in which it has
been boiled, or have burst forth from the smaller orifices
on the flanks ; in their descent they have spread over
miles of the sea-coast." " Scrambling over the rough
surface " of this extraordinary region is most fatiguing,
and Mr. Darwin describes how horribly disappointing it
is when, " choked with dust " and thirst, one " hurries
down the cindery slope eagerly to drink " from some
solitary pool over a crater, one finds he has in his mouth
only what is " salt as brine." As one walks, one finds
the rocks abound with great black lizards, between three

380 GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINETEENTH.

and four feet long, and on the hills an ugly yellowish-
brown species equally common." On one occasion, " as
I was walking along," he says, " I met two large tortoises,
each of which must have, weighed at least two hundred
pounds (more than 1 4 stone) : one was eating a piece of
cactus, and as I approached, it stared at me and slowly
stalked away ; the other gave a deep hiss, and drew in
its head. These huge reptiles, surrounded by the black
lava, the leafless shrubs and large cacti, seemed to my
fancy like some antediluvian animals. The few dull-
coloured birds cared no more for me than they did for
the great tortoises." We have a great deal more from
Mr. Darwin about these huge hideous reptiles, whether
tortoises or lizards, that is very interesting and strange.
Both seem to swarm. The tortoises for food are open to
capture at any time. "It is said that formerly single
vessels have taken away as many as seven hundred, and
that the ship's company of a frigate some years since
l)rought down in one day two hundred tortoises to the
beach." Vapour-crowned volcanic heights studded with
orifices; miles and miles of black lava, red scorite, and dusty
cinders ; great black or yellow-hideous lizards sleeping
in the sun ; huge monsters of tortoises lazily crawling
along paths they have worn through centuries to where
water lies : how startling it must be in the midst of such
lonely weird sights as these to come suddenly on the
ghastly gleaming skull of a buccaneer captain who had
been murdered by his crew !

One cannot wonder that such a region as this went
to the heart of Mr. Darwin, and remained ever afterwards
with him a constant problem of the most intent and
absorbing interest, — one cannot wonder that it was here
lie found the motive for his peculiar theory. The spot
was solitary and remote ; and what life there was upon
it, seemed to have for him only a strange, unnatural, and

THE GALAPAGOS. 381

old - world look. The possible influence of isolation,
simply as isolation, woiild probably first occur to him ;
and then, perhaps, the question, if the isolation had been
the source of so many changed forms, how was it that
there were others which had remained seemingly un-
changed ? Such conjectures appear at least not alien to
the genius of a Darwin; but we must postpone our further
consideration of these matters till the next week.

GIFFOED LECTUEE THE TWENTIETH.

The action — South American types, left here to themselves, change
into new species from accumulation of their own individual
spontaneous differences — The birds — Differences in the times
and modes of arrival between land and sea birds — Carte and
tierce — Contradiction — Parried by a word — An advocate's proof
— The printer and Mr. Darwin's v:oulds — The sea-gull — The
tinches — Sir William Jardine — The process to Darwin — What
was to him "a new birth" — Where the determinative advantage
for these different beaks — The individual central islands not
incommunicably separate — French birds at Dover — Isolation —
Ex-contrario — Individual difference the single secret, that is
the " law " which has been " discovered " of " natural selection '
— A]iply influence of external conditions to the Galapagos —
Kant — The Galapagos rat and mouse — New beings but yet the
old names — If difference goes always on only to diff'erence
without return to identity, why are there not infinitely
more species? — Bowen — Darwin only empedoclean — Parsons
— Lyell — Monsters (giants and dwarfs) sterile — Frederick's
grenadiers, the pj'gmies — Divergent species at home— The
Galapagos but the Mr. Jorkins of the Darwinians — The tortoise,
where did it come from ? — The amblyrhyncus similarly inex-
])licable — Lizards of the secondary epoch — The Galapagos
Islands absolutely without a vestige of the struggle for life in
any direction — The breeder, and nature, can act only on what
is already there — The breeder deals in identity, not difference,
and his breeds would all turn back to the original — No breeder
a new species — Nature acts not on Darwin's method, but design
—Toothed birds, the hipparion, the otter-sheep — Accidental
individual diff'erence to be the sole creator in the end of all
that enormous and infinitely complicated concert to unity! —
Farewell.

]^)K1NG now possessed of some idea of the scene of the
action, we may proceed forthwith to this latter itself.

SOUTH AMEEICAN TYPES. 383

And that is, to this sole effect : That South American
types of life became, in process of time, specifically
changed in these islands of the Galapagos, in consequence
of their isolation, as well partial as total. The types
particularly selected to be dwelt on are the birds. " In
the Galapagos Islands," says Mr. Darwin in the Origin
(348), "there are 26 land-birds ; of these 21 (or perhaps
23) are peculiar, whereas of the 11 marine birds only 2
are peculiar ; " and this difference Mr. Darwin explained
by difference in the nnmhers of the immigration and
in the times of it. " Species," he said, " occasionally
arriving after long intervals of time in a new and isolated
district, and having to compete with new associates,
would be eminently liable to modification, and would
often produce groups of modified descendants." We are
to understand, that is, this to have been the case with
the land-birds : they only " occasionally " arrived " after
long intervals of time," and they had to " compete with
new associates." As for the sea-birds, the excess of non-
modification in them was due, it is said, " partly " to
their " having immigrated in a body, so that their
mutual relations were not much disturbed," and " partly
to the frequent arrival of unmodified immigrants from
the mother-country, with which the insular forms have
intercrossed." We see here that invariable felicity of
Mr. Darwin that, if there is a foin in carte, it is as
swiftly followed up by a fence in tiei-ee. Few immi-
grants, at long intervals, give us modification — carte ; but
many immigrants, at frequent intervals, quite as much
withdraw modification — tierce ! Mr. Darwin blows hot
and cold with equal vigour. It is only fair to observe,
however, that Mr. Darwin has a reason why sea-birds
have immigrated differently from land-birds. " It is
obvious," he says, " that marine birds could arrive at
these islands much more easily and frequently than land-

384 GIFFORD LECrUKE THE TWENTIETH.

birds." But even here, in his own facts, is there not
pretty well his own contradiction ? If marine birds can
immigrate more easily and frequently than land-birds, it
at least sounds strange that, while there are 26 of the
land, there are only 11 of the sea. It is quite possible,
of course, as regards new species that the many come
from the few, and, contrariwise, the few from the many.
No one can doubt, at any rate, that Mr. Darwin's
ingenuity could make it appear so. He can find a word
at any moment that is an open sescnnd to any difficulty.
He says himself that, from end to end of it, his Origin
of Species is " one long argument." And so it is !
From end to end of it, it is what the Germans call an
Advocataibcweis : from end to end of it, it is an advocates
'proof. Even in what lies at this moment before us, just
in the same way as we saw already, he that continues to
i-ead will find almost every proposition conditioned by a
would. It is always this ivould take place, and that
vjould take place. In point of actual fact, there are so
many ivoidds in Mr. Darwin's books on natural selection,
that one may be forgiven if one finds oneself speculating,
with some curiosity, about the resources of a printer's
fount. In this reference, and as concerns the many
from the few or the few from the many, won.ld it be
unfair to say that one looidd not expect such an animal
as a gull to be one of the only two remarkably modified
sea-birds ? One would expect it to arrive always in very
large numbers, and on occasions of very frequent
occurrence. From the known habits of the gull, one
would expect this almost more in its case than in that of
any other sea-bird — one would really, least of all, expect
the gull to be the exceptional sea-bird to display in the
Galapagos even as much modification as the land-birds.
Mr. Darwin himself cannot help exclaiming here, " Con-
sidering the wandering habits of the gulls, I was surprised

THE FINCHES. 385

to find that the species inhabiting these islands is
peculiar." It is a situation and a circumstance naturally
to give exit to a whole flight of woulcls and would nots !
{Journal, 380).

But if the birds at the Galapagos are j^eculiarly
selected for remark, of these it is the finches that, as
Mr. Darwin would have it, are specially to be considered.
" Ornithology — curious finches," are his own words in
the heading of the chapter in his Journal. Of the twenty-
six land-birds, in fact, the finches are so remarkable that
they constitute one half of them. In the Galapagos
Islands there are no less than thirteen new species of
finches ; and Mr. Darwin is so much impressed with
them that he illustrates his description of them in the
Journal by actual drawings of them. I have the book
here, and they may be seen. The figures given are very
evidently heads of finches even as we know them in this
country. No. 1 refers to the Gcospiza magnirostris, and is
distinguished by a very full large beak. The beak of
No. 2, the Geospiza fortis, is less large, but still strong.
That of No. 3, the Geos2nza joarvula, is very much such
as we may see in our own finches, sparrows, or even
canaries. The beak of No. 4 is small and sharp, almost
as in our own wrens. Between Nos. 1 and 3, it appears,
there is not only one, but actually six intermediate
species. " The perfectly graduated series in the size of
their beaks," Mr. Darwin calls " a probable consequence
of their numbers ; " and it is by reason of these numbers
that " one might really fancy," he says, " that from an
original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species
had been taken and modified for different ends." Now,
in these four finch heads we have what, in the mind of
Mr. Darwin, was the motive and the generative speck of
the whole ultimate theory. Because he found in these
islands so many finches, and in the different islands

2b

386 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWENTIETH.

different ones, Mr. Darwin was led to speculate on their
possible origin. There was a common analogy in all of
them ; and that analogy was an analogy that bore only
on a certain South American type. The obvious in-
ference, accordingly, was that all these finches, however
much they were modified, had been actually modified, one
and all of them, out of a single characteristic type ; and
that type was to be found only in South America. As
one sees, it is at once assumed here that the thirteen
different finches constitute or represent thirteen different
species ; and, consequently, the first thing it occurs to us
to ask is. What is a species ? We remember how Mr.
Darwin was himself put to it to determine a species in his
Cirrepedes, and how he needs must laugh at his brother
naturalists in the same endeavour generally. We are
told that, be the differences what they may, these birds
always bear to each other the closest resemblance. Tlie
thirteen males are all black, the thirteen females are all
brown, and they are to be found, all, or the most of them,
feeding together. We really should like to know if they
cannot 'pair together. Mr. Darwin is chagrined ; but it
does not, at least at first sight, seem unnatural that Sir
William Jardine, I suppose the greatest ornithological
authority, thought that " some of the Galapagos so-called
species ought to be called varieties," and that " some of
the sub-genera, supposed to be wholly endemic, have been
found on the continent " (ii. 246). On the whole, we
really should like to know on what it was that the
specific difference turned for Mr. Darwin himself. This
is plain that, if they were not species, and species en-
demic to the Galapagos, Mr. Darwin must have made a
bad start. But suppose them species, and that they were
not specially or directly created, as seems to Mr. Darwin
(though not to us), the only other alternative, how does
he conceive his own process of modification, the pullula-

THE SEPARATION OF THE ISLANDS. 387

tion of differences, to have naturally evolved them ? As
we see, and as is insisted on, they vary in their beaks.
Is it there that Mr. Darwin finds his peculiar pulse ?
In the Life and Letters, he expressly exemplifies to us
what he would call " a new birth." It is " a bird born J
with a beak j^^th of an inch longer than usual." That,'
evidently, to him is a good instance of the first step in a
pullulation of differences. May we suppose, then, that
lie sees the beaks of these finches pullulate and pullulate
into the new species which he describes and draws in his
book ? If Mr. Darwin asserts it, we cannot deny it.
But when we look at his own pictures, great beaks, strong
beaks, small beaks, tiny beaks, may we be allowed to ask
on which side we shall assume the determinative " ad-
vantage " to lie — the determinative " advantage " that is
always postulated in the theory ? Shall it be the great
beaks that have pullulated into strength, or shall it be
the small beaks that have pullulated into fineness ? We
know that Mr. Darwin regards the isolation of these
islands precisely as the one determining condition of this
growth of species. But that being so, we cannot but
recognise that his very condition must blow quite as
vigorously cold as hot — fence quite as securely in tierce
as in carte. If the strong and great are due to it, so
also are the small and fine. Mr. Darwin sees so much
potency in the isolation, and lays so much stress on it,
that he attributes to it, not only the general difference of
life in the archipelago from life on the continent, but
even the individual difference of life on one island as
compared with life on another. " By far the most
remarkable feature in tlie natural history of this archi-
pelago is, that the different islands to a considerable
extent are inhabited by a different set of beings " (394) ;
" Several of the islands possess their own species" (397) ;
" Different islands have their representatives of Gcospiza "

388 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWENTIETH.

— the finch (395). To such expressions as these Mr.
Darwin adds others to the effect that, in his beUef, these
islands are incommunicably cut off the one from the
other. This latter circumstance, as in the interest of the
view which it is his dearest wish to impress, he is even
at some pains, in his usual colouring way, at least to
accentuate. In the Origin, these islands, he says, " are
separated by deep arms of the sea, in most cases wider
than the British Channel : the currents of tlie sea are
rapid, and sweep between the islands, and gales of wind
are extraordinarily rare ; so that the islands are far
more effectually separated from each other than they
appear on a map." Now, as regards distances, the
statement here must be confined to what I have called
the outlying islands : it is wholly out of place when
referred to those in the centre. At most, five or
six miles will bring all the latter into connection, the
one with the other ; and these five or six miles
concern only the separation of two from the other five
islands, while, otherwise, all are very much nearer
each other than even five or six miles. The Gala-
pagos Islands, therefore, specially at least those that
constitute Mr. Darwin's references, are not separated by
arms of the sea " in most cases wider than the British
Channel," which is a gap of twenty-five miles. Then the
currents between may be " rapid ; " but, in that respect,
they must vary much with different states of the tides.
Lastly, as regards gales of wind, they may be " rare ; "
but 'the very phrase allows them from time to time to
exist. Nay, the very lizards would seem, numerous as
they are, to be somewhat dependent on storms for their
support. " They consume," says Mr. Darwin, " much of
the succulent cactus, the tranches of which arc occasionally
hroJcen off hy the. ivind ! " We may remember, too, that
the craters on these islands have their windward sides

FRENCH BIRDS AT DOVER. 389

" either much lower than the other sides, or quite broken
down and removed in consequence of the combined
action of the Pacific swell and the southern Trades."
Gales of wind, then, may be " extraordinarily rare ; " but
they do happen, and w^e can hardly conclude with Mr.
Darwin, from the mere rarity of them, that " neither the
birds, insects, nor lighter seeds would be blown from
island to island." On the contrary, it does seem precisely
certain that seeds, insects, and birds ivould, from time to
time, not possibly escape being blown from island to
island. But what of the prevailing serenity and calm ?
Mr. Darwin describes, in the Origin (356), many of the
birds as specially well adapted for flying from island to
island : are we to suppose that two, or three, or five, or
six miles would not, in such circumstances, prove to all
such birds rather a temptation and an attraction than an
intimidation and restraint ? Even the British Channel
was but a step to the French birds that covered the cliffs
of Dover when lihcrU, ^gcdiU, fratcrniU took, during
the Eevolution, to slaughtering them. On the whole,
whether we look to Mr. Darwin's own measures or to
Mr. Darwin's own facts, we are without any warrant to
conclude that, in the Galapagos, island, isolated from
island, stands a region of its own.

For the most part, Mr. Darwin is very resolute in his
faith in isolation as a main element or agency in the
birth of species ; but there are times, especially latterly,
when he actually seems to vacillate. He writes to
Hooker in 1844 : " Isolation is the chief concomitant or
cause of the appearance of new forms." As late as 1876,
" it would have been a strange fact," he exclaims (iii.
159), "if I had overlooked the importance of isolation,
seeing it was such cases as that of the Galapagos which
chiefly led me to study the origin of species." Still,
four years earlier, we can get such an avowal as this from

390 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWENTIETH.

him (iii. 156): "I rejoice to think that I formerly said
as emphatically as I could, that neither isolation nor
time by themselves do anything for the modification of
species." What, however, is really emphatical here
ought to fall on the words " by themselves." The
declaration alluded to occurs in the fourth chapter of
the Origin. There we find isolation described as " an
important element in the modification of species," but
not as an absolutely necessary and indispensable element.
It is only important as giving the chance for variation.
That, too, is the role of time in the process ; and, says Mr.
Darwin, " it has been erroneously asserted that the
element of time has been assumed by me to play an all-
important part in modifying species, as if all the forms of
life were necessarily undergoing change through some innate
lavj." No ; it is neither isolation, nor time, nor " innate
law " that shall be allowed to interfere with what to Mr.
Darwin, as to Mr. Huxley, is the central idea and
quintessence of the system, individual difference. That —
individual difference — is the law of natural selection
which has been discovered; and years only corroborate and
confirm Mr. Darwin's allegiance to the purity of it. So
it is that he says in 1876 (iii. 159) — no doubt with
isolation in his mind — " I cannot doubt that many new
species have been simultaiieously developed within the
same large continental area ; " while, two years later, as
regards individual difference he writes (iii. 161) in this
strong way : " As our knowledge advances very slight
differences, considered by sytematists as of no importance
in structure, are continually found to be functionally
important." Evidently, it is more and more what de-
pends on difference that occupies his thought and absorbs
his attention. Nevertheless it was certainly isolation in
the first place, the isolation of the Galapagos, that
availed to suggest to him the possibility of new species

KANT. 391

forming themselves, or being formed, on the ordinary
terms that are usual in nature. Then, undoubtedly, it
had appeared to him that a changing organism, if left to
itself, uncrossed and uninterfered with, would be in the
precise position favourable for the transmutation of itself
into a new species. Isolation might not create species,
or could not create species, but it would be at all events
the peculiar feeding-ground in which species, through
the manifestation and accumulation of difference, would
create itself.

If it is in the interest of modification, difference,
as the centre of the theory, that Mr. Darwin may seem
somewhat to vacillate as regards isolation, we may
recollect that we saw some similar vacillation in respect
to external conditions. In the first instance he appeared
to have an implacable aversion to all such conditions
as climate, etc., having had anything to do with the
modification of organisms. By and by, as to Moritz
Wagner in 1876, he admits that, in regard to "the
direct action of the environment, there is now a large
body of evidence." Well, now, is there any reason why|
we may not apply that here ? Everything was strange/
and new in these islands — how strange, how new !
Craters and caverns, and black lava, and red scoriae, and
salt pools — suffocating heat — brown brushwood even
when in flower, that smelt sickly — huge tortoises crawl-
ing, more than fourteen stone in weight — big black and
yellow lizards on the rocks or in the cinders by thousands
— how could we expect to find anything whatever the
same here ? " In birds of the same species which have
to live in different climates," says Kant (WW. vi. 321),
" there are provisions for the growth of a new coating of
feathers, should certain of them inhabit a cold climate,
which provisions, however, in a temperate climate, are
kept in reserve. Since wheat, in a cold country, must

392 GIFFOED LECTURE THE TWENTIETH.

have more protection from wet and cold than in a dry
and warm one, it possesses a natural capability of cloth-
ing itself in a gradually thicker integument. This
forethought of nature, by calculated precautions, to
prepare its creature for all future contingencies, in order
that it may preserve itself and adapt itself to the diver-
sity of climate and soil, is a just subject of wonder, and,
with the migrations and transplantations of animals and
plants, gives rise to new species in appearance, which
are nothing else than races and varieties of the same
kind, the natural, inborn capacities of which have
variously developed themselves in long periods of time
according to occasion." Thus, then, for the production
of apparent new species, Kant points to innate original
nature as respondent to the influence of the varying
external conditions ; whereas Mr. Darwin, for an equal
result, depends on " accumulation of individual ditl'er-
ences," and that, too, only " spontaneously," only by
" accident," only by " chance," as, for example, in " a
bird born with a beak j^^th of an inch longer than usual."
But, after all, was not Mr. Darwin coming round to
Kant's way of it, when, as late as 1876, he confesses
(iii. 159): "In my opinion the 'greatest error which I
have committed, has been not allowing sufficient weight
to the direct action of environment, i.e. food, climate,"
etc. ? In his earlier days, indeed, Mr. Darwin did
admit as much as this even for the Galapagos. He
found in them, he says, only two mammals, a rat and
a mouse. The rat has evidently been imported, Mr.
Darwin says, and " is merely a variety, produced by the
new and peculiar climate, food, and soil to which it has
been subjected" (378); nor, as regards the mouse, are
we left in any doubt that his opinion was identical.
Now, Mr. Darwin tells us in the Origin (113), that the
rat and the mouse " have been transported by man to

THE GALAPAGOS EAT AND MOUSE. 393

many parts of the world; they live under the cold
climate of Faroe in the north and of the Falklands in
the south, and on many an island in the torrid zones."
If, then, the strange environment of the Galapagos could
so change forms so persistent as these, that the one may
almost be allowed to rank, and the other does rank, as a
new species, why should we resort to a different genesis
for the birds and the rest ? Mr. Darwin says of these
islands {Journal, 377 and 393) that in them "avast
majority of all the land animals, and more than half of
the flowering plants, are aboriginal productions : it was
most striking to be surrounded by new birds, new
reptiles, new shells, new insects, new plants ! " Mr,
Darwin says this ; he calls all these animals and plants
new ; and yet he gives to the whole of them all the old
names ! Of the twenty-six birds, thirteen are finches,
three are mocking thrushes, and three tyrant fly- catchers,
two are owls, and two are swallows ; there are a hawk,
and a wren, and a dove. If the animals themselves
are new, and if, as Mr. Darwin says also, " most of
the organic productions are aboriginal creations, found
nowhere else," so that " we seem to be brought somewhat
near to that great fact — that mystery of mysteries — the
first appearance of new beings on this earth" (378), —
how is it that we have in our ears all the old familiar
sounds, and see before our eyes only all the old familiar
names ? New creations should be new creations, and
quite unlike the old — new creations, consequently, should
have names of their own, and not only misleadingly
carry the appellatives of creations past. If, indeed, the
peculiarities here have led Mr. Darwin to the discovery
of the true rationale of creation, how is it that we have
more to surprise us than even this strange matter of
names ? — how is it that new creations are not much
more common experiences ? In each of the million

39-4 GIFFOKD LECTUKE THE TWENTIETH.

upon million of individuals that exist always and every-
where upon our globe an accumulation of differences
ought to be going on constantly — ought to be the one
event ; and species, consequently, ought, by this time
of day, to be absolutely innumerable. Something like
this objection has been already made to Mr. Darwin ;
and, though he says little, I think he shows himself
sensitive to it. Professor Bowen of Harvard writes
once, " If the doctrine were true, geological strata would
be full of monsters which have failed." "Whereat Mr.
Darwin contemptuously scoffs : " A very clear view
this writer " (whom he afterwards styles " a singularly
unobservant man ") " had of the struggle for existence "
(ii. 304, 372)! We have only here again, however, the
earliest — the Greek — suggestion of the struggle for ex-
istence and the survival of the fittest unwittingly come
upon by Mr. Darwin. Empedocles fabled, as we have
seen, that all sorts of organisms spontaneously take birth,
but only those survive which are fit ; and that is pre-
cisely the import of Mr. Darwin's scoff to Bowen : In
the struggle for existence, namely, monsters would dis-
appear. Professor I'arsons, also of Harvard, seems to
have repeated Bowcn's objection. Mr. Darwin calls his
whole paper "worth nothing" (ii. 331); but at the
same time he writes, on the same day, to another corre-
spondent, " If you see Professor Parsons, will you thank
him for the extremely liberal and fair spirit in which his
essay is written ? Please tell him I reflected much on
the chance of favourable monstrosities," etc. Now these
two professors are outsiders ; but it is a strange thing
that Sir Charles Lyell, who is no outsider, makes also
to Mr. Darwin precisely the same objection (ii. 290).
' You ask (I see)," writes Darwin to Lyell, " why we do
not have monstrosities in higher animals ? but when they
live they are almost always sterile (even giants and

THE GRENADIERS THE PYGMIES. 395

dwarfs are generally sterile)." There is a little addition
here — sterility — to the Empedoclean idea ; but may we
not attempt to take the point off it, in Mr. Darwin's own
manner, by counter-instances ? To say " generally " is
to say too much ; for we know that the inhabitants of
Potsdam are a tall race, inasmuch as they are the de-
scendants of the Prussian king's seven-foot, eight-foot,
and nine-foot grenadiers ; and as for dwarfs, we are just
on the point of hearing from Mr. Stanley about a whole
nation of such, who, under the name of pygmies, have
been fighting the cranes since the beginning of history !

But as regards the Galapagos organisms bearing the
same names as those elsewhere — as regards the Gala-
pagos birds, for example, being for the most part finches,
one wonders that Mr. Darwin should have had any call
to find his idea only in them or their neighbours. We
have plenty of divergent species — finches, wrens, linnets,
etc. — at home. Why go so far afield for an idea that
we may find within our own doors ? Nay, what, after
all, does the whole thing come to ? How is it that we
are brought face to face with that mystery of mysteries,
creation, any more here than, absolutely, anywhere else ?
No doubt Mr. Darwin's words have a peculiar excitation
for us — " somewhat near to that mystery of mysteries,
the first appearance of new beings on this earth ! " We
breathlessly read further, we feel an awe as though on
the point of seeing the very veil at last upraised from
the countenance of the universe, the secret of the birth
of all the beings that have lived, the secret of the birth
of man — is it any wonder that we are coerced, and con-
strained, and surprised into a mere " pshaw ! " in the end,
when all that we come to are these four finches ? It
has been well for the friends of Mr. Darwin that the
Galapagos archipelago has been kept, as the ultimate
referee, only in its own cloud. It was uncommonly con-

o

96 GIFFOED LECTURE THE TWENTIETH.

venient for Mr. Spenlow, in David Co'pinrjieM, to be able
on occasion to point conclusively upstairs to the unseen
Mr. Jorkins. Once seen, however, the terrible Mr.
Jorkins proved to be the most harmless of mortals.
Even so the Galapagos, when se&n, are not seen to take
us one step nearer the mystery of life. We have seen
what has been said of the birds ; but is it any better with
the reptiles ? The huge tortoise is called " aboriginal ; "
" it is found nowhere else in this quarter of the world ; "
" it may be questioned," Mr. Darwin avows, " whether it
is in any other place an aboriginal." One asks with
astonishment, then, where did it come from ? No South
American type will account for it here. And, pullula-
tion of individual differences ! are we to suppose that it
pullulated out of the bare rock ? Of what avail is the whole
theory in such a case ? Then are we one whit better off
with the lizard, the amblyrhyncus ? Mr. Darwin speaks of
its progenitor " arriving " at the Galapagos ; but he adds,
" from what country it is impossible to say, as its aftinity,
I believe, is not very clear to any known species " (ii.
336). That is, he has no warrant but his own sup-
position for speaking of it as even " arriving." He warns
the geologist who may " refer back in his mind " to the
monstrous lizards of the Secondary epochs, " that this
archipelago, instead of possessing a humid climate and
rank vegetation, as was the case then, cannot be considered
otherwise than extremely arid, and, for an equatorial region,
remarkably temperate." Trom Secondary lizard to Gala-
pagos lizard, were connection even possible, that is a vast
difference, an incalculal)le difference, is it possible to sup-
pose that the puUulation of difference could ever bridge it?
We have seen that Mr. Darwin speaks of the struggle
for existence as an essential element of the theory, and
we- know it otherwise to be such ; what countenance,
then, does the very feeding ground, and breeding ground,

OF THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE — NOT A VESTIGE. 397

and originating ground of natural selection show it ?
Why, none — absolutely none ! Throughout the whole of
•the Galapagos archipelago there is not a vestige of the/
struggle for existence — not a trace ! We have attempted'
to make good that there arc storms of wind ; hut these,
as Mr. Darwin says, are " extraordinarily rare." Then
there is heat, but it is temperate, and, for the most part,
there is no rain. The birds live there, if anywhere on
earth, in perfectly halcyon weather, and they have all
food ; they have never the slightest occasion in that
respect to affect the slightest quarrel with one another.
Nor is it otherwise with the only other inhabitants, the
lizards and tortoises. " The numbers of individuals of
each species are extraordinarily great." Of the lizards,
Mr. Darwin remarks, their numbers are such that " we
could not for some time find a spot free from their bur-
rows on which to pitch our tent." " This reptile," he
says, " has no enemy whatever on shore." " They are
not at all timorous." As they crawl, " they often stop
and doze for a minute or two." " I have seen," says Mr
Darwin, " these lizards and the huge tortoises feeding
together." " I have seen," he says again, " one of the
thick-billed finches picking at one end of a piece of
cactus, while a lizard was eating at the other end ; and
afterwvards the little bird, with the utmost indifference,
hopped on the back of the reptile." Only " if two are
placed on the ground and held together, they will fight
and bite each other ; but I," adds Mr. Darwin, " caught
many by the tail, and they never tried to bite me."
The tortoises have " broad and well-beaten paths in every
direction from the wells down to the sea-coast : it was a
curious spectacle to behold many of these huge creatures,
one set eagerly travelling onwards with outstretched
necks, and another set returning after having drunk their
fill." " I frequently got on their backs," says Mr, Darwin,

398 GIFFORD LECTURE THE TWENTIETH.

" and then giving a few raps on the hinder part of their
shells, they would rise up and walk away." The female
" drops her eggs indiscriminately in any hole" — she has
no fear for them ! To this entire scene of peace, and
calm, and indolent enjoyment it cannot be said that even
the hawk, " the carrion-feeding buzzard " as it is otherwise
called, is a single exception ; for only the young, newly-
hatched tortoises are its prey. As for the old ones, they
" seem generally to die from accidents, as from falling
down precipices." It is maintained that nobody had
ever found any one of them dead " without some evident
cause." All living things on these islands, birds and all,
even the carrion-buzzard, are of a tameness in the ex-
treme : " all of them often approached sufficiently near
to be killed with a switch, a cap, or a hat — a gun is here
almost superfluous ; for with the muzzle I (Mr. Darwin)
pushed a hawk (the carrion-buzzard) off the branch of a
tree ! "

I need go no farther, prohatiun est ; the case is now
complete. This archipelago, whatever it was in the way
of suggestion to Mr. Darwin himself, can hardly be
allowed, so far as I see, to be anything better than a
Mr. Spenlow's Jorkins to anybody else. As for " the
central idea, the quintessence of Darwinism," the puUu-
lation of differences, it is quite possible, as Mr. Darwin
suggests, that there might be "a bird born with a beak
j-Jgth of an inch longer than usual ; " but is the con-
ception of such initial step enough to enable us to picture
even in imagination the eventual production of all those
beaks, to say nothing of the various birds themselves ?
Individual does differ from individual ; no two indivi-
duals are perfectly alike. Manifestly, then, there is
development of difference, of difference after difference,
of differences infinite. But is it so certain, as Mr.
Darwin will have it, that difference goes on — that

ACCIDENTAL DIFFERENCE THE SOLE CREATOR! 399

difference adds to itself — that difference never stops — •
till there emerges — what ? — its own opposite, an iden-
tity, a fixed new identity that actually propagates its
own identity, as a species, before our eyes, illimitably ?
But does the difference go on only so ? — does the difference
add to itself only so ? If there is advance of difference /
into a neiv, is there not return of difference into the old^
identity ? We can see the latter at every minute of the
day, and on all sides of us ; but we never see the former
• — never have seen the former. No man, not even a
breeder, has ever seen the former. A breeder, if he is to
breed, must have his material to work on ; he knows
that to effect the modifications he wants, he can only
take advantage of what is already there. Nay, it is not
by the accumulation of differences that the breeder
effects his purposes, but by the accumulation of identities.
If he wants wool, he adds wool to wool ; if he wants
flesh, he adds flesh to flesh ; if he wants bone, he adds
bone to bone; if he wants weight, he adds weight to
weight ; if he wants speed, he adds speed to speed. But
do as he may, the breeder knows well that, but for his
artifices, his breeds would all turn back again to what
they were at first. You must keep the coal up, if you
would keep the fire up. But with all his skills, and all
his contrivances, and all his perseverances, no breeder has
ever yet produced a new species. We do not deny, any
more than Kant, that nature can produce new species :
we only deny that nature has no secret for the process
hut the accumulation of the differences of accident. We
know no proof of this — toothed birds, the hipparion
itself, and even the wonderful "otter" sheep notwith-
standing. We claim design for nature, whatever we
admit !

Mr. Darwin follows up his suggestion of the accident,
the chance, of his 100th of an inch more than usual, in

400 GIFFOED LECTUKE THE TWENTIETH.

this emphatic way (iii. 33) : " The more I work, the more
I feel convinced that it is by the accumulation of such
extremely slight variations that new species arise." That
is as much as to assert that, out of an accidental speck
of proteine, the accidental pullulation of difference (mere
difierence) produced, — without design, — mechanically, as
it were, — you and me, the circulation of the blood, the
respiration of the lungs, the action of a brain !

• But I must break off here : these lectures are now at
an end. It was to expound Natural Theology that this
place was given me. The proofs for the being of a God
are Natural Theology. These proofs I followed histori-
I cally, on the affirmative side, with some fulness, almost
from first to last. On the negative side, I had to make
a selection of what history offered me there ; but I
endeavoured to meet the want by the production of what,
on the whole, are generally and publicly esteemed the
three authoritative degrees of the relative argumentation.
I beg to thank you for the great attention with which
you have always honoured me, and to bid you respect-
fully, Tarewell !

I

INDEX.

Abdaluaiiman III., 275.

Abstraction, 136.

Action and reaction, 49, 50.

Actuality, 126.

Addison, 224, 231.

Advanced views, 14, 15, 222.

Affirmative, 35.

Agis, 226, 230.

Agnosticism, 15.

Agriiijja, 68.

Alexandria, 166.

Alplioiiso of Castile, 57, 272.

Amalrich, 117.

Analogy, 268.

Anaxagoras, 39, 46-49, 55, 60, 65-

67, 72, 73, 77, 80, 220, 346.
Anselm, 33, 34, 45, 173, 177-193.
Antisthenes, 345, 347.
Antithesis, 49, 160.
Ariosto, 236.
Aristophanes, 221.
Aristotle, 33, 41, 45, 49, 54, 60, 66,

77, 80, 82, 83, 96, 97, 124-156,

220, 236, 238, 346-349.
Aristoxenus, 220.
Arnobius, ISO.
Ascent, The, 137.
Astronomy, 32, 33, 76-80.
Athanasius, 181, 347.
Atheists, 219, 221, 283, 374.
Athenagoras, 182.
Attraction, 50.
Aufklarung, 14-16, 115-124, 145,

163, 215, 232.
Augustine, 23, 28, 32-34, 189, 193,

320, 347.
Augustus, 108.
Auius Gellus, 29, 160, 178.

2

Eacon, Lord, 49, 51-56, 67, 95,

96, 117, 220.
Baghavad Gita, 63.
Bakewell, Robert, 331, 332.
Basil, 347.
Baumgarten, 118.
Baur, F. C, 182.
Beaks, 387 sq., 392, 398, 399.
Bear, 360.
Begriff, 11, 12, 13.
Bekker, 154.
Belief, 17.
Bell, SirC, 26.
Bequest, The, 5.
Berkeley, 67, 249, 354.
Bernard, St., 202.
Bible, The, 24, 28, 36, 149, 179,

181, 308, 345.
Biese, 153.

Blackie, Professor, 156, 175.
Blair, Dr. Hugh, 183, 224, 225,

232, 235, 244.
Blindness, 86.
Boethius, 190.
Bonitz, 151.
Books, Sacred, 18.
Boston, 238.
Boswell, 108, 109.
Botanic Garden, The, 373.
Bowen, Professor, 394.
Brahmanism, 207.
Brandis, 154.
Breeder, 339.

Bridgewater Treatises, 25, 169.
Brougham, Lord, 26, 223, 246.
Brown, Dr. Thomas, 178, 183, 281,

373.
Browning, 17.

O

402

INDEX.

Bruno, G., 69.

Buckle, 19, 49, 108, 223, 239.

Button, lf)0.

Burke, 241.

B.urns, 284.

Burton, 280, 281.

Byron, 144, 373.

Bytlios, 37.

C.ESA11, Julius, 174, 272.

Cffsar, The, 164.

Cain, 16, 19.

Calic,nila, 272.

Calvin, 117.

Carlyle, 16, 17, 74, 80, 81, 120-122,

204, 213, 273, 276, 284.
Carpenter, Dr., 370.
Catechism, The Shorter, 12, 13.
Categories, 68, 294 sqq.
CatuUus, 234.

Causality, 278-283, 292 sqq.
Causes, the Four, 41-44, 49-.o2, 54,

103, 137.
Cervantes, 17.

Chambers, Dr. R., 353, 361.
Charlemont, Lord, 233.
Charles II., 49.
Charles v., 274.
Chaucer, 231.
Chemistry, 32, 33,
China, 36.
Chinese, The, 369.
Christianity, 27, 34, 166, 204, 208.
(.'hrysippus, 160, 171, 257.
('hrysostom, 180.
Church, The, 214.
Churches, The Three, 10, 11.
Cicero, 23, 28, 108, 148, 168-177,

220, 225, 236, 245.
Clarke, 25, 124, 260.
Clean thes, 171.

Clement of Alexandria, 180, 347.
Colebrooke, 36, 37, 39, 40, 102,

280, 345.
Coleridge, 14, 82.
Comparison, 277.
Condillac, 82.

Conditions, 335 sqq., 391 sqq.
Confucius, 18.
Consensus gentium, 179.
Constantine, 161.
Contingency, 69, 111, 112, 125,

126, 260, 305 sq., 351 sq.

Corneille, 231.
Corporeity, 49.
Cosniological Argument, 45, 124,

260 scpj.
Cowley, 234.

Creation, 344 sqq., 356, 393 sq.
Cudworth, 25, 44, 68, 220, 345,

346, 347.
Cuvier, 133, 154, 155.
Cyril of Alexandria, 180.

Dallas, W. S.. 372.

Dante, 236.

Darwin, Charles, 127-134, 155,

219, 278, 323-400.
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 273, 323-400

pas-sim.
Darwin, Mr. Erasmus, 365.
Darwins, The, 365.
David of Dinant, 117.
Davidson, Thomas, 337.
Day, The— its roar, 201.
Degrees, The Three, 323, 324.
Democritus, 159, 219.
Demosthenes, 225.
De Quincey, 28.
Derham, 25, 36.
Descartes, 22, 50, 51, 71, 117, 188,

193, 377.
Design, 57, 93-96, 100, 114, 127-

13>, 150, 168-175.
Diagoras, 220.
DiciX'archus, 220.
Dickens, 396.

Difi"erence, 103, 353 S(iq., 398-400.
Diogenes, Apol., 87.
Diogenes Lrertius, 60, 158, 221.
Bom/kis, 226-230.
Dryden, 228, 231, 232.

Ear. See Eye.

East, The, 166.

Eckhart, Meister, 320.

Ecstasy, 161.

Egyptians, 29, 369.

Eleatics, 219.

Elliot, Sir Gilbert, 214.

Elliott, Ebenezer, 215.

Emer.son, 4, 82, 199, 200, 206, 210,

212, 213.
Empedocles, 134, 219, 270, 384.
Encyclopedists, 120.

INDEX.

403

Enerwy, 50.

Eiigadine, The, 236.

Ennius, 168.

Epictetus, 161.

Epicurus, 23, 158, 271.

Epigoniad, 239.

Enlmann, 72, 142, 186, 192, 281.

Erigena, Scotiis, 267, 268, 282.

Essay, The Little Moral Philosophy,

183,
Esse, vivere, intelligere, 25, 319.
Essenes, 167.
Ethieality, 88-91.
Eusebius of Ca?sarea, 181.
Evil, 160, 270 sqq.
Existence, 62.
ExternalizatioD, 69.
Eye and Ear, 77, 78, 84-87, 95, 101.

Faith, 16, 215, 217.

Falklands, The, 393.

Families, 364.

Fanciers, 357.

Faroes, The, 393.

Fathers. The, 24, 27, 106, 177, 179,

182, 346.
Fi^nelon, 25.
Ferguson, 240, 242.
Fichte, 80, 151.
Fielding, 10, 224.
Filament, 360.
Finches, 385 sqq.
Finite, 191.
Fleming, Dr., 183.
Fontenelle, 236.
Forces, 48, 49.
Form, 43, 44, 54, 68, 136, 282, 283,

303 sq.
Franzius, 154.
Freewill, 13.
Fronds, 273.

Galapagos, The, 332 sqq.
Gassendi, 51.
Gaunilo, 185,
Genealogies, 355, 376-400.
(renesis, 37.
Genlis, Mme. de, 145.
George IV., 223.
Germany, 240.

Gibbon, 118, 120, ■:02, 224, 240,
241, 275.

Gifford, Lord, 3-11, 32, 38, 62, 63,

197-216.
Gifford, W., 223.
Gnostics, 37, 38, 167.
God, 5, 6, 19, 22, 23, 24, 31, 34,

37, 38, 58, 62, 63, 70, 126, 138,

147, 192, 193, 252.
Gods, Pagan, 28, 29, 98.
Goethe, 93, 119, 121.
Goldsmith, 183, 224, 232.
Good, The, 106, 107, 160.
Gray, Asa, 327, 341, 342, 357, 369,

371, 377.
Grece, Clair, 128, 133, 346.
Gregory of Nyssa, 181.
Grew, 25, 36.
Grote, 67, 267.

Ham ANN, 118.

Happiness, 145, 213, 274, 277.

Hearne, 360.

Heavens, The, 77.

Hebrew Scriptures, 18, 19.

Hegel, 45, 187, 280, 319.

Henry, 241.

Heraclitus, 23, 49, 219, 268.

Herder, 118.

Herschel, Sir John, 280.

Hesiod, 37, 40.

Hcxaemeron, 25.

Heyder, 154.

Hilary, 347.

History, Course of, 162.

Hobbea, 14, 71, 117.

Hodgson, 74.

Hoffmann, 337.

Holbach, d', 258.

Home, John, 226, 238.

Homer, 153, 172, 225.

Hooker, Sir Joseph, 328, 330, 336,

337, 341, 365, 370.
Horace, 236.
Humboldt, 149.
Hume, 14, 19, 57, 82, 108, 117, 150,

183, 220, 222-285 ;ms.vini to end.
Hutcheson, 22, 249.
Huxley, 224, 338-343, 370, 371,

377,
Hymn, Aristotle's, 139.

Ideas, 250 sqq., 299 sqq., 368.
Identity, 103, 279.

404

INDEX.

Imagination, 361 sqq.
Immanent, 60, 6-i, 152.
Immortality, 72.

India, 36, 37, 38, 39, 280, 345, 347.
Infinite, 34, 35, 38, 191.
Irenwus, 179.
Isocrates, 174.
Isolation, 387 sqq.

Jacobi, 118.

Jardine, Sir William, 386.

Jefirey, Francis, 223.

Jehovali, 179, 308 sq.

Jenyns, 370.

Jerielio, 19.

Jerome, 181.

Jews, 18, 36.

John of Damascus, 181.

Johnson, Dr., 108-112, 183, 224,

275.
Jonson, Bon, 230, 231.
Jorkins, Mr., 396.
Julian, Apost., 180.
Juvenal, 29.

Kant, 45, 74-77, 80, 93, 101, 144,
219, 233, 238, 286-324, 369, 391.
Kepler, 32.
Klopstock, 118.
Krause, 326, 372, 374.

Lactantius, 180.

Lagrange, 57.

Lamarck, 373.

Lamballe, Princesse de, 273.

Lao-tse, 36.

Lfirm, Des Tages, 201.

Latinity, 174.

Lavater, 118.

Law, No innate, of evolution, 390.

Lecturer's purview, 7.

Lectures, Tlic, how laid out, 400.

Leibnitz, 22, 74, 75, 125, 127, 188.

Leonidas, 222.

Lessing, 118.

Leucippus, 159.

Lewes, 185, 360, 374.

Light, 78, 85.

Linuicus, 133.

Lizards, 396.

Locke, 117, 249, 287.

X070J ^o/o;, 26/.
Louis XL, 113.
Lucretius, 236.
Luther, 202.

Lyell, Sir Charles, 328, 336, 337,
341, 355, 370, 371, 384.

Macaulay, Lord, 223.
Mackintosh, Sir James, 223.
Macrobius, 175.
Mahometanism, 12.
Maimonides, Moses, 71.
Malebranche, 259.
Malthus, 332.
Mankind, 141.
Matter, 43, 44, 54, 68, 136, 261,

267, 303 sq.
Maxwell, Clerk, 49.
Mendelssohn, 118.
Mesmerism, 215.
Metaphysic, 33, 51-56.
Metcyard, Miss, 326.
Method, 358.
Michelet 154.
Middle Ages, '24, 25, 27, 106, 200,

320.
]\Iill, John Stuart, 222, 223.
Milton, 28, 57, 150, 184, 185, 231,

232.
Mind, 69.

Minucius Felix, 173.
Miracles, 17, 18, 214.
Modification, 344 sqq.
Moliere, 236.
Monks, their life, 202.
Monotheism, 31, 34, 35, 36, 98.
Monsters, 394 sqq.
Montaigne, 24, 25.
Morality, 88, 91.
IMormonism, 12.
Mover, A First, 138.
Iilud-fish, 355, 356.
Muir, Dr. John, 39. ^
Mukharji, Ras bihari, 37.
Miiller, Fritz, 372.
Miiller, J. v., 154.
Miiller, Max, 39.
Murchisou, Sir R. I., 353.

Napoleon, 150.
Natural Science, 32, 33.
Nature, 67, 68, 69, 143.

INDEX.

405

Necessity, 111, 266.

Negation, 161.

Negative, 35.

Neo-Platonists, 161, 167.

Newton, 49, 57, 58, 59, 374.

Nice, Council of, 161.

Nicolai, 118.

No-God Men, 16.

JVoHS, 46 and jxcssivi, 61-67, 79, 84.

Numeuius, 106.

Object, 102, 349 sqq.

Ogle, Dr., 133, 135.

One and many, 69.

Ontological Argument, 39, 40, 45,

182-193, 259 sqq.
Origen, 347.

Origin, The, of species, 384.
Othello, 227-231.
Ovid, 236.
Oysters, 358.

Paine, Thomas, 15, 16.

Palf^y, Dr., 25, 26, 30, 36, 168, 368.

Paley, Mr., 40.

Pantheism, 62, 63, 64, 207, 211.

Parnell, 234.

Parsons, Professor, 353, 384.

Particular, 70.

Pentateuch, 356.

Percy, 73.

Pericles, 221.

Ph(edo, The, 46, 48,

Philip of Opuntium, 100.

Philips, John, 373.

Philister, 226.

Philo Judseus, 106, 172.

Philosophy, 31, 35, 53, 81, 209,

222.
Philosophy of religion, 26, 27.
Phj^sical science, 32, 33, 34, 239.
Physical theories, 73.
Physics, 53.
Picture-thinking, 369.
Plato, 47, 54, 65, 68, 82, 92, 96-

114, 159, 300.
Pliny, 29, 177.
Plotinus, 32.

Plutarch, 161, 220, 257, 258.
Polytheism, 31, 34.
Pompey, 108.
Pope, 183, 226, 231, 232, 234, 236.

Porphyry, 32.

Positive, 11, 12, 13.

Potentiality, 126.

Practice, 141.

Prantl, 154, 174, 185.

Prayer, 107.

Press, The, 16.

Proofs, The, 30, 31, 35, 45, 93,

182-193, 218, 256-324.
Proteine, 356, 360.
Protoplasm, As regards, 280.
Pygmies, 395.
Pythagoreans, 23, 61, 167, 219.

Quantity, 85.
Quintilian, 234, 243, 246.

Rabelais, 282.

Racine, 226, 227, 231, 234, 236.

Bas^elas, 275.

Rationalism, 13-16.

Ray, 25, 36.

Raymund of Sebonde, 24, 25, 27,

36, 218.
Reason, 13, 14.
Reflection, 162.
Reid, 42, 56, 74, 80, 181, 183, 281,

282, 289.
Reimarus, 118.
Religion, 4, 8, 11, 20, 34, 35, 107,

203.
Religion, Pagan, 35.
Religion, Philosophies of, 26-30.
Repulsion, 50.
Revolution, 163.
Revolution, French, 16.
Ricardo, 222.
Richter, J. P., 119, 357.
Roar, The, of the day, 201.
Robertson, 183, 224, 235, 240.
Rome, 164.
Rosenkranz, 249,

Sacred Books, 18.
Salto JMortale,
Sandford, Sir D. K., 223.
Scepticism, 163.
Schelling, 54, 80.
Schiller, 93, 119.
Scholastics, 22.

406

INDEX.

Scotch, Tlie, 239.

Scott, 28i.

Scriptures, 18, 19.

Schwegler, 67, 151, 165.

Seals, 360.

Sects, The, 157-168.

Secularism, 15.

Sedgewick, Professor, 369.

Seghed, The Emperor, 275.

Selection, Natural, 325, 330 sqq.

and passim.
Semler, 118.
Semper, 337.
Seneca, 177.
Septimius Severus, 275.
Sextus Eminricus, 171.
Seward, Miss, 326.
Shakespeare, 59, 210, 226-232.
Simon of Tournay, 117.
Singular effect, 255 sqq.
Skeptics, 157.
Smith, Adam, 44, 203, 222, 224,

240, 244, 245, 262, 271, 321.
Smith, Sydney, 337.
Smollett, 48, 224, 240, 241.
Socinians, 117.

Socrates, 46-50, 65, 87-96, 99.
Sophists, 115-124.
Sophists, The, ISTote on, 165.
Sophocles, 227.
Soul, 153.
Sound, 78, 80, 85.
Sound views, 7.
Space, 74-76, 83, 294 sqq.
Sparta, 222.
Species, 330 sqq., 386.
Speculation, 140.
Spenser, 231.
Spinoza, 14, 63, 71, 72, 117,

207, 211, 281.
Squinting, 362.
Stahr, 154.
Stanlej', 395.
State, The, 166.
Stewart, Dugakl, 108, 109,

281, 282, 268, 373.
Stillingfleet, 25.
Stobo, 241.
Stoics, 159.
Strahan, 244, 245.
Strato, 220.
Struggle, 332, and passim,

400.
Style, 223 sqq., 243 sqq., 248.

206,

183,

396-

Suhject, 102, 349 sqq.
Subjective, 211.
Substance, 63, 206, 207.
Suetonius, 173.
Superstition, 107-115.
Swift, Dr., 235.
Syzygies, 37.

Tacitus, 177, 236.

Tages, Des, der laute Larm, 201.

Tailor, The, 278. -

Tasso, 236.

Taste, 225.

Tauler, 320.

Tavlor, Thomas, 37.

Teeth, 96, 129-133.

Teleological argument, 38, 39, 40,

45, 46, 56, 93, 262-285, 299-305.
Terence, 234.
TertuUian, 180.
Thales, 219.
Theologies, 23.
Theology, 21, 33.
Theology, Natural, 6, 19, 21-26,

30-3.5" 41, 42, 53, 55, 56, 67, 79,

80, 84, 170, 198, 256-258, 287.
Theophilus, 182.
Theory, 141.
Therapeutfe, 167.
Thomson, Dr. A., 173.
Thomson, James, 87, 184.
Time, 74, 75, 76, 80, 83, 104, 105,

149, 294 sqq.
Tortoises, 396.
Trades, The, 277.
Trajan, 272.
Transcendent, 60, 152.
Trendelenburg, 154.
Trinity, The, 27, 28, 105, 106, 137.

Ueberweo, 185.
Understanding, 14.
Unity, 153.
Universal, 69, 70.
Universe, 70.

Valentinus, 37.
Varro, 23, 24.
Vedas, 18.
Vesiifjes, The, 353.
Vinnius, 284.

INDEX.

407

Vrgil, 225, 234, 236, 284.
Voet, 284.

Voltaire, 14, 19, 117.
Vorstellung, 11, 12, 13.

Wagner, 336, 391.
Waitz, 154.
Waller, 231.
Weathering, 73.
Westminsler Bevietv, 223.
Whale and Bear, 360.
Wilkie, 239, 373.
Wilkins, 373,

Wolff, 46, 188, 192.

Wordsworth, 275.

World, The, a life, 67, 68, 69, 77,

84-87.

Xenophon, 47, 92, 93.
Young, Dr., 242.

Zeller, 67, 154.
Zorzi, 68.

MORRISON AN'D OIBB, PRISTERS, EDINBURGH

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HISTORY

OF

THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

FROM THE REFORMATION TO KANT.
By BERNHARD PUNJER.

Cranslatcti from tijc (German
By W. HASTIE, B.D.

mMi\) a preface
By ROBERT FLINT, D.D., LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, UNIVERSITV OF EDINBURGH.

' The style is simple, natural, and direct; the only sort of style appropriate
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strictly relevant. Nowhere else will a student get nearly so much know-
ledge as to what has been thought and written within the area of Christen-
dom, on the philosophy of religion. He must be an excessively learned man
in that department who has nothing to learn from this book." — Extract from
Preface.

' Piiujer's " History of the Philosophy of Religion " is fuller of infoi'mation
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translation appears to me true to the German, and at the same time a piece of
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even indispensable, as well for clei'gymen as for professor and students.' — Dr.
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KANT'S PHILOSOPHY OF LAW.

Eecently published, in crown 8vo, price 5s.,

r//£ PHILOSOPHY OF LA W.

AN EXPOSITION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PEINCIPLES OF
JURISPRUDENCE AS THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT.

By IMMANUEL KANT.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY W. HASTIE, B.D.

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' Bellissima ed opportuna traduzione che fara conoscere all'Inghilterra
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ft^t'staricnllg antj Sicrjcttcallg ConsitirrEti.

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SiHttf) illustrations anli fHaps.
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Volume I.

THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS.

I'filvmr TJT.
ROMANS to PHILEMON.

Vohrnr II.
ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL

AND THE

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

Vohimr IV.

HEBREWS to REVELATION.

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THE ROMANS.

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DEFENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.

TRANSLATED BY THE HON. AND REV. CANON LYTTELTON, M.A.,
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THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF
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By LAURA M, LANE.

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ELEMENTS OF LOGIC

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KANT, LOTZE, AND RITSGHL:

31 Critical (E.vMininatiott.

By LEONHARD STAHLIN, Bayreuth.
Translated by Principal SIMON, Edinburgh.

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