23. What is the Teleological argument, or that which estab- lishes the existence of God from the existence of design in his works ?
We have already proved that the world must have had a cause, a cause distinct from and exterior to itself, since eternal succession and successive development have both been proved to be absurd. In order to prove that this cause is a God, we have further to show that this eternal self-existent cause is an intelli- gent free agent, and a righteous moral governor.
Design, or the wise and skillful adaptation of means to a cer- tain end according to an evident purpose, always infallibly proves two things with regard to the cause, 1st. That it is endowed with intelligence as well as power. 2d. That it is endowed with free will, exercised in purpose, selection, direction, etc. In other words, that the cause is a person, or a plurality of persons.
Now, G-ocVs universe in all its parts is full of design, as is evi- dent in the balanced forces acting on such a vast scale in astron- omy, in the laws of terrestrial nature, so wonderfully correlated to each other, and to the wider laws of the universe beyond. It is preeminently manifested in the wonderful organizations of plants and animals, and above all, of man, and the adaptation of each to his peculiar circumstances and purposes of life. It is mani- fested also in the constitution of the human soul, which is a created effect, the relation of the soul to the body, the adaptation of the world to the moral constitution of man, and the mutual relations of intellect, will, emotion, and conscience in man. It is manifested also in the constitution of man as a social being, in the organization of all communities, conjugal, family, and na- tional, and in the universal history of the race, etc., etc. For the illustration of this great argument, see Paley on design in organ- ized life, Chalmers and Brougham on design as exhibited in the mental and moral constitution of man, and Hugh Miller on de- sign as exhibited in the successive creations during the geologic eras. — See Ps. xix., 1, and Bom. i., 20.
24. How do ive derive the conviction that design universally implies intelligence ?
26 THE BEING OF GOD.
This principle necessarily resolves itself into the more ele- mentary one above stated, viz., that every effect must have a cause. Every work evidencing design is an effect. The real nature of every effect proves as incontestibly, by force of the essen- tial laws of reason, the nature of the cause from which it springs, as the mere fact of the effect proves the mere fact of the cause. A great effect proves a powerful cause. An intelligible effect proves an intelligent cause. A design not understood may to us prove nothing with regard to the cause from which it springs ; but the instant we do understand it, that instant we must at- tribute to it intelligence and purpose in addition to efficiency.
Here we are necessarily brought to the decision of the great question presented by the Materialists. They hold that there is but one substance in the universe to which the phenomena of mind and matter are alike to be referred, because intelligence is only one of several special results of material organization.
Now, all we know of power, of intelligence, of free choice, of feeling, we derive from consciousness. But consciousness presents these as always the ultimate, never the derived or constituted, attributes of ourselves. And, moreover, as far as our experience ever reaches, free intelligence is always the cause of organization, and never organization or material aggregation the cause of intel- ligence. The reason of the case, therefore, and the analogy of an unexceptive experience, absolutely uniform and universal, con- strain us to refer all intelligible design to intelligence, and never intelligence to organization, or any kind of material evolution. — See Sir William Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, Lecture 2.
25. What are the principal objections urged against this argu- ment from design, and hoiv may they be answered ?
I. Hume, (see Essays, vol. i., p. 157,) as quoted by Chalmers, says that the sole rational source of our conviction that design implies intelligence is our experience in time past that such and such designs were produced by an intelligent cause. If we see a house, a watch, or a ship, we certainly know that they were formed by skillful men, because we have anterior experience of the pro- duction of precisely such effects by such causes. But the world, he maintains, is altogether a "peculiar effect;" and since we have no experience whatever of world-making, so we have no reason to
OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 27
conclude that the apparent contrivances of nature are the product of intelligence.