To this we answer : 1st. That design and intelligence are correlative terms, it is impossible for a sane rumd to separate them. An intelligible design, wherever seen, must suggest intelligence. 2d. All our experience leads to the same result, viz., not merely that some instances of design have been produced by intelligence, but that all design is always and only so produced. 3d. The science of geology does bring an instance of world-making within the circle of our investigations, and we do practically find, as we were assured upon a priori principles we would, that the same laws of cause and effect, of intelligence and design, prevail in world-making that prevail in every human art.
II. It is objected that we arbitrarily stop short with this argu- ment without leading it to its legitimate conclusion ; for if the world must have a cause, so much more must God ; and if the world must have a designer, so much more must God.
We answer : 1st. An infinite series of dependent causes is re- jected as absurd by reason and disproved as false by science, there- fore the eternal must be self-existent and uncaused. To this conclusion science leads, and in it reason rests, although the nature of self-existence can never be comprehended by a finite mind. 2d. The world and human souls being effects, or something new produced by causes, present indubitable traces of design; but God, being self-existent, presents no evidence of design. Self-existent intelligence no more suggests the idea of design than self-existent chaos.
III. M. Aug. Comte, the great apostle of the Positive Phil- osophy, maintains that human reason has to deal with phenomena and their order, or laws of succession solely, and that we have nothing to do with either causes or design. He says that the adaptations of elements and organs in nature are nothing more than " conditions of existence." If these were absent there would be no existence, and they are present only because they are neces- sary to the existence in question. Where the circumstances proper to the life of fish exist there fish are found. " Only those stars are inhabited which are inhabitable."
To this we answer : 1st. The human mind always has, and of rational necessity must discuss causes. Laws account for no-
28 THE BEING OF GOD.
thing, they merely discover how causes act. 2d. Happily con- trived " conditions of existence" are the very marks of design for which we argue, but of necessity there must be a designing cause. A lake is the place for a fish to live in, but no fish will live there until he is made or put there. A star might be habitable for ever without being inhabited. 3d. A large part of the design with which God's works are full are not bare conditions of exist- ence, but conditions of beautiful, happy, useful existence. Thus the symmetry of the human frame, and the relation of the eye and taste to beauty, are not mere conditions of existence, but the work of a God, whose thoughts are beautiful, wise, and benevo- lent, as well as effective.
IV. It is objected by many that the argument from existing dependent creatures to a first cause, and from design in the world to an intelligent designer, although valid as far as it goes, could not possibly lead us to the knowledge of an infinite God. The universe is only finite. The highest conclusion, therefore, that we ought to form from the premises is, that a great though finite being exists adequate to produce the actual effect.
To this we answer : We not only admit but insist upon the fact, that all the modes of human consciousness, feeling, as well as thought, being finite, we can never positively embrace in our minds the idea of an infinite being. This arises from the essential limitations of our own minds. We must believe in the existence of the infinite, though our highest positive conception of God is that of a being indefinitely great, i. e., we set no limits to our view of any of his attributes in any direction. Precisely to this result does the argument from design lead us. We believe that the world is finite only from rational necessity, not as the result of experience. To us it is indefinitely great. The microscope and the telescope have alike failed to see through creation ; on either hand it reaches indefinitely beyond our faculties of perception. Science of the infinite and absolute is impossible, but faith in them is necessary to reason. We can not think of time or space without believing in eternity and immensity. We can not think of dependent causes without thinking of one cause from which all the rest spring. We can not think of finite and dependent being without thinking of independent and absolute being. — See Morell's History of Moral Philosophy, vol. ii, App., p. 645, and
MORAL ARGUMENT. 29