ends of the universe than any other possible form; and this tendency he ascribes not to the Divine Will, but to the essence of the thing itself. Again, he allows that the cohesion of the particles of matter in water may be a necessary result of the possibility of water in general. Even where an exact symmetry might be supposed to require a particular artificial agency, Kant attributes it to the necessary action of universal laws, and refers to what he calls the rule of unity as excluding the resort to an artificial disposition. The expansion of bodies by heat, light, electricity, and magnetism implies, in his opinion, one and the same natural activity; the regularity of snow figures, and he might have added of crystallised structures generally, are the collateral consequence of more comprehensive laws which include the formation of these productions. Nor must we omit, in this place, to signalise one remarkable instance of symmetrical arrangement which surely cannot be attributed to an omniscient Author of the universe: the "sharply defined" figures which are seen in sand when excited by sonorous vibrations, thus made visible as in Chladius' beautiful experiment, exhibit a singular variety and a marvellous regularity of pattern. The order of nature, of the great planetary masses and their orbits, the great German thinker, from whom we have so often quoted, attributes to universal mechanical laws in the case of the earth, whose figure he ascribes to the action of rotatory motion on her original fluid condition, both commending Newton for regarding as consequences of

these laws arrangements not unworthy of Divine Wisdom, but censuring him for having immediate recourse to that Wisdom where the structure of the planets, their revolutions, and position of their orbits are in question.

The admissions of philosophical writers thus justify us in affirming that, assuming the existence of matter not as a passive, inert, impossible substance, but as an aggregate of forms and forces, a consensus of properties and activities—regarding nature, in fact, as a self-evolving, self-adjusting power, we can interpret the appearances of order which everywhere meet our view as the inevitable consequences of the interaction of those properties and forces. The order which we observe is a resultant, not an idea of nature. The multitude of living beings, says De Jouvencel, presents itself before us not as the execution of a natural plan, but as a historical result continually modified by a multitude of causes, which have acted consecutively, and in which every accident, every irregularity represents the action of a cause.

As an appropriate termination to the present, and a fitting introduction to the next division of the subject, we shall cite an instructive passage from the Natural Theology of Dr. Chalmers.1

"Matter must have had some properties to certify its existence to us; it being by its properties alone, and not by any direct view of its naked substratum, that we come to recognise it; so that to learn of

1 Natural Theology, by Thomas Chalmers, D.D., &c., vol. i. p. 190.

matter at all, it must have had some properties or other belonging to it. Now these properties might be conceived of variously, and all the actual laws of the material system might be discovered in a confused medley of things strewn around, without any principle of arrangement, its chemical and optical and magnetic and chemical laws; and yet from the study of these no argument might be drawn in favour of a God who either called matter into being or endowed it with the attributes which we find it to possess."

CHAPTER III.

ORDER AND GENERAL ADAPTATION-FUTILITY of the TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.

THE idea of an order existing in the universe is called out by the impression which the sight of its more conspicuous phenomena leaves on the awakening mind. The recurrence of day and night, of the ebb and flow of the tide, the succession of the seasons, and the phases of the moon, attract the notice of the least instructed observer now, as they once attracted the notice of the primitive man, exciting in him the sentiment of a sequential regularity. The order disclosed by a more profound examination of natural phenomena still more powerfully impresses the mind of the educated explorer of the methods of nature. But the sentiment thus elicited suggests in many, perhaps in most minds, more than the perception of an external order strictly warrants. Besides arrangement, symmetry, correspondence in time and place, and all those concurrences which we have designated harmonical relations, there is a dim, dreamy sense of resemblance as if to something we had seen before. We measure, we arrange, we weigh, we number, and where we find regularity of disposition, identity of weight, numerical

conformity, we precipitately conclude that an agency like our own has produced effects analogous to the results of our own mental activity. In an advanced stage of thought we assume the existence of an intelligence, of a volition resembling the human intelligence and volition, but immeasurably superior to them. The argument, which is that from effect to cause, is founded on a supposed analogy between the operation of man and the operation of God. The assumption is that what we call nature is a work of art. Voltaire maintains that this is really the case, but Strauss acutely observes that the French logician imports into the argument the conclusion which he desires to draw out of it. All prepossession excluded, the question really comes to this: Is nature a self-existing or created thing? The answer of the average theist is: a created thing, for nature is art. Conceived as art, nature no doubt implies an artist, for with a work of art the artist is presupposed. But why is nature assimilated to art? Is it not because of the arbitrary separation of force from matter?

I. Matter is regarded as passive, as devoid of all regulative force or organising activity. Thus regarded, matter of course requires an external power to impart to it motion, order, purpose. But why do we assume that matter is without a formative principle? What justifies the violent separation of the pervading, and, as far as our experience goes, the indissoluble unity of force and matter? Matter is recognised as essentially active; it has powers of attraction and repulsion; its very