implant in and elicit from unconscious bodies activities which are intelligent in appearance and result. Thus we can construct calculating machines and train animals to perform many actions which have a delusive semblance of rationality. "Truly intelligent action" we know as being intelligent and rational in its foresight, and therefore as necessarily conscious in the very principle of its being. "Unconscious, appropriate action," improperly called "intelligent" or "wise," is that which is intelligent and wise only in its results, and not in the innermost principle of the creatures (whether living or mere machines) which perform such action. To speak technically, we have "formal" and "material" * intelligence, as we have "formal" and "material" vice and virtue. It is the failure to apprehend this distinction which is at the root of a vast number of current philosophical errors, and the error which consists in asserting the existence of "unconscious intelligence" is one of them. "Intelligence" exists, indeed, very truly in the admirably directed actions blindly performed by living beings, as also in processes of repair† and reproduction. It only exists in them, however, materially," and not "formally." It exists"formally in some cause external to them, which has implanted in them the powers they exercise in such admirable modes. The human mind, when developed to a certain extent spontaneously seeks the explanation of these phenomena in something external to them, which can be regarded as their primordial cause. To the investigation of this question, the supreme question of science, the next chapter will be devoted.

As to these terms, see above, pp. 239, 249. + See above, p. 170.

See above p. 171.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A FIRST CAUSE.

The existence of the universe as we know it, shows that it must have had God for its First Cause, and makes known to us at least some portion of the Divine purpose in creating it.

Law of causation and the universe-Needs an adequate First Cause, God-Pantheism-God and the intellect-Motion and causationCreation-Nature's prodigality-The evils of life-Possibility of inscrutable purposes-Seemingly unworthy creations-Anthropomorphism-God's existence and creating action-Difficulty from tardiness-A future life and theism · Recapitulation — Final causes-Hierarchy of ministrations-Highest purposes.

HAVING Completed the brief survey we have been able to take of the universe about us, and sought for the best answer we could find to the question "what things are," we have next to inquire into their causes, and learn as far as we may, "why things are."

The world was represented in the last chapter as containing two fundamentally different kinds of entitiesentities capable of thought (spiritual entities), and entities not so capable. In the latter category we placed every known body, every kind of substance, and every nonrational living thing; each being regarded as a compositum of matter and some form of immaterial energy, and yet as being each one true, substantial unity. All these members of the universe, possessing very diverse powers, were further stated to constitute an orderly whole, replete with a logic and reason not formally present therein, save in those spiritual entities-the souls of men-in which reason and logic were present, both materially and formally.

causation

universe.

We saw in the fourth chapter of the first section of Law of this work that the law of causation is a primary, universal, and the and self-evident objective truth, declaring that every change, or new existence, and every existence which has not within itself a sufficient reason for its being as it is, must be due to some cause. We also saw, in our second section,† that science, even physical, is continually occupied with investigations concerning causes, and we terminated our last chapter by declaring that the time had come to apply ourselves to the investigation of the supreme question of all science, namely, that which treats of the existence and nature of a primordial Cause of the universe-the fountain whence all its powers and properties have sprung, and spring.

Now, incessant change is the condition of the world about us, and new existences are continually arising within it. That each and every one of those changes and new existences must have had its cause, or group of causes, is what no sane person will deny. A multitude of such causes are discoverable by physical science; but our present object is to consider those causes and existences, not as isolated or in groups, but as forming one great, unimaginably complex whole. Does science unequivocally point to any beginning of such a whole? That it points both to a beginning and to an end of the world we actually behold, and to that of our solar system, is hardly to be questioned; but, compared with the whole material universe, our planet is but an atom of cosmic dust, and our solar system is, as it were, but the gyrations of a few such particles out of a vast simoon of a stellar Sahara. It cannot be positively affirmed as an evident datum of science that the whole cosmos, considered as one vast unity, ever had a beginning, or will ever have an end. It is conceivable that the cosmos may be a real system of perpetual motion in one of two forms. It may be conceived of as eternally passing, as one whole, from a state of nebula to that of worlds and suns, and back from a state of worlds and suns to a state of nebula; or it may be conceived of as undergoing such changes locally-now here and now there.

*See above, pp. 48-50.

† See above, pp. 80-83.

According to the former conception, the stellar universe unceasingly pulsates to and from a state of nebula; according to the second conception, such a change may eternally creep over the cosmos of suns and worlds, so that each part in its turn, but never the whole simultaneously, may undergo such a transformation. Reason and science do not positively affirm that such changes may not have proceeded in cycles for a past eternity, owing to an eternal arrangement, or collocation, of causal agencies and conditions. As we saw in our first section,* our reason does not tell us that everything must have a cause, but only that some existences must be caused, and that some cause must certainly precede any change or new condition of existence. Now, a little reflection shows us that the cosmos could never have grown into the state in which we now know it to be, from one single universally diffused and similar substance, unless that substance was acted on by something external to itself. It has been absurdly represented by Herbert Spencer, that if a homogeneous universe were only unstable, this instability would account for the world's development. But, as Dr. Gasquet has well said, "instability" is no principle of action, but merely means a state in which, equilibrium being very delicate, a very slight external force is enough to disturb it. But evidently no internal change could take place in a homogeneous universe without some external action. Such a change would contradict the principle of causation, and also the first law of motion. It is impossible to obtain the category of quality from that of quantity; and one substance everywhere identical in the mode of its being and activity, and with nothing whatever external to it, or everywhere pervading it but distinct from it, could never alter at all. Whether it was large or small could make no difference, even if it could be supposed to have dimensions, since, by the hypothesis, it would always have existed absolutely by itself, and therefore could neither be large nor small, those being essentially relative conditions. The universe, therefore, if it existed from all eternity must, as a whole, have existed from all eternity in the multiform complexity we know it See above, p. 48.

*

to exist in now. Moreover, such a universe, as one whole, could never itself have been evolved by any process of natural selection. An eternal universe could never have been naturally selected-that is, have proved itself, through competition, to have been a universe able to survive others -because, by the hypothesis, it must have eternally existed by itself, and could, therefore, have had no competitors. But the universe we know, is a universe of most complex composition, replete with order, beauty, and harmony, governed by general laws with most admirable correlations, and the abode of at least one race of beings (men) possessing intellect, capable of understanding and appreciating truth, goodness, and beauty, and endowed with a wonderful power of voluntarily intervening in the chain of physical phenomena, and so changing (to however relatively minute an extent) the whole subsequent course of events. Moreover, these human beings did somehow come into existence in a world previously devoid of organisms endowed with any such marvellous faculties.

adequate

-God.

Now, if the universe be conceded to have had a be- Needs an ginning, then it is simply evident that such a beginning First Cause must have been due to a First Cause; and if the universe never had a beginning, then a First Cause is equally required to account for those special orderly arrangements of secondary causes, and those collocations of conditions which have eternally existed in their mazy complexity from all eternity, or, indeed, for its existence at all, or for the existence of any part of it not containing a sufficient cause for its existence within itself. An eternal, most complex mixture of different substances, with very different powers, all harmoniously co-ordinated, and which were never otherwise than harmoniously co-ordinated, could not evidently contain within itself the sufficient cause for its own existence; and the greater the number of the natural laws which physical science reveals to us, thus acting in harmony, so much the more does reason make evident to us the necessity of one integrating First Cause, sustaining that harmony unchanged from all eternity. But a First Cause necessarily acting from all eternity must be eternally necessary as long as its effects endure. Hence, an ever-present