tions probably no very definite and certain answer can be given, to deny that they can in any measure be answered, to pronounce all speculation regarding ultimate ends as wholly vain, would justly be deemed the expression of a rash and thoughtless dogmatism. Science claims not only to explain the past but to foretell the future. The power of prevision possessed by a science is the best criterion of its rank among the sciences when rank is determined by certitude. And most significant is the boldness with which some of the sciences have of late begun to forecast the future. Thus, with reference to the end of the world, the spirit of prophecy, which until very recently was almost confined to the most noted religious visionaries, is now poured largely out upon our most distinguished physicists. This we regard as a most significant and hopeful circumstance, and trust that ere long the prophets of science will be far less discordant and conflicting in their predictions even of the remotest issues than they must be admitted to be at present.

While speculation as to final causes in the sense of ultimate ends is, within certain limits, as legitimate as it is natural, its results are undoubtedly far too meagre and uncertain to allow of our reasoning from them to the existence or wisdom of God. We must prove that there is a Divine Intelligence from what we actually perceive in things,

and not from what we can conjecture as to the final destinies of things. In fact, until we have ascertained that there is a Divine Intelligence, and in some measure what are the principles on which that Intelligence proceeds, our chance of reaching truth through speculation as to the ultimate ends of things is, in all probability, exceedingly small. It is on no hazardous speculations of this kind that we would rest an argument for the Divine existence, although questions have been raised as to the Divine character and government which will, at a later stage of the discussion, involve us to some extent in the consideration of ultimate ends.

When final cause is employed to signify design in any reference, be it to intrinsic, extrinsic, or ultimate ends, I have nothing to object to Bacon and Descartes's condemnation of it as illegitimate and unprofitable in science. I know of no science, physical or moral, in which, while thus understood, it can be of the slightest use as a principle of scientific discovery. It is as much out of place in the world of organic as of inorganic nature. It is quite incorrect to say that although it does not lead to the discovery of new truths in strictly physical science, it does so in physiology for example, or in psychology, or in ethics. It is only when it means merely the inherent order and adjustment of things-not when it means designs and purposes regarding them-that the search after it can.

possibly lead to scientific truth, and, when so understood, it leads to truth in all sciences alike. It was the suggestive principle in Adams and Leverrier's discovery of the planet Neptune from certain unexplained perturbations of the planet Uranus, quite as much as in Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood from the observation of certain unexplained valves at the outlet of the veins and the rise of the arteries. It is involved in the very nature of the inductive process, and is only confirmed and enlarged by the progress of inductive research. It stands in no opposition to the principle of efficient causes, and is in no degree disproved by the discovery of such causes. Assertions to the effect that it has gradually been driven by the advance of knowledge from the simpler sciences into those which are complex and difficult, that it is being expelled even out of biology and sociology-and that it always draws its confirmation, not from phenomena which have been explained, but from phenomena which await explanation, are often made, but they rest almost exclusively on the wishes of those who make them. They have no real historical basis.'

See Appendix XXI.

LECTURE VI.

OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER

EXAMINED.

I.

THE universe is a system which comprehends countless subordinate systems. It is full of combinations of parts which constitute wholes, and of means which conspire to ends. The natural and obvious explanation of the order and adjustments which it thus presents is that they are due to a mind or intelligence. And this is the only rational explanation of them. Mind can alone account for order and adjustment, for the co-ordination of parts into a whole, or the adaptation of means to an end. If we refer them to anything else, the reference is essentially contrary to reason, essentially irrational. It may seem at the first superficial glance as if there were a variety of hypotheses as to the origin of the order we everywhere see around us, all equally or nearly equally credible; but adequate

reflection cannot fail to convince us that they must be reduced to a single alternative-to two antagonistic theories. Our only choice is between reason and unreason, between a sufficient and an insufficient cause, between, we may even say, a cause and no cause. This will be brought out by an exam. ination of the various hypotheses which have been suggested by those who are unwilling to admit that the order of the world originated in mind. They try their best to suggest some other alternative than that which I have said is inevitable; but every suggestion they make only raises the alternative which they would avoid-mind or chance, reason or unreason, a sufficient explanation or an absurd one. Before proceeding to establish this, however, it may be necessary to remark on some direct objections which have been taken to the design argument,-objections which might be valid, although no explanation of order could be given or were even attempted.

The inference which the theist requires to draw from the existence of order in the universe is merely the existence of an intelligence who produced that order. It follows that it is an unfair objection to his argument to urge, as has often been urged, that it does not directly and of itself prove God to be the creator of the universe, but only the former of it-not the author of matter, but only of the collocations of matter. This objection, which