"The careless inquirer into physical truth would certainly think he had seized on a sound principle of classification, if he should divide the object with which philosophy, natural and mental, is conversant, into two classes those objects of which we know the existence by our consciousness; that is, external objects which we see, touch, taste, and smell, internal ideas which we conceive or remember, or emotions which we feel and those objects of which we only know the existence by a process of reasoning, founded upon something originally presented by the senses or by consciousness. This superficial reasoner would range under the first of these heads the members of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdom'; the heavenly bodies; the mind-for we are supposing him to be so far capable of reflection, as to know that the proof of the mind's separate existence is, at the least, as short, plain, and direct, as that of the body, or of external objects. Under the second head he would range generally whatever objects of examination are not directly perceived by the senses, or felt by consciousness." Now, we object that the classification which is thus put into the mouth of the "careless inquirer," for the purpose of the intended comparison, is not that which any but a very careless reasoner would have used for the purpose. For it simply amounts to a distinction between all reasoning, and all the facts or data of reasoning, on every subject whatever; the deductions of logical inference, are; confused with the perceptions of sense or consciousness. Between these the noble lord discovers a similarity which has no relation whatever to the classification of methods of reasoning, or sciences; and suppresses the precise difference which destroys his comparison. The argument by which this egregious feat of logic is performed, is worth noting for its dexterity; it is somewhat elaborately shewn, that the intimations of sensation are fallacious, until interpreted by a process of reasoning and by experience. Every one is aware of the general fact, that our perception of external objects, is modified by experience; but every one also who reflects upon this experience must be aware that this habitual discipline of the senses has not been in any degree the effect of reasoning; but is much more similar in its progress to those unconscious adaptations which take place in the functions of animal life. The alleged cases may, it is true, be referred to an intellectual process; but it is latent and unconscious; and so far from being a process of logical ratiocination, (which the purpose of the argument requires,) the observer is, in most instances incapable of stating the reasons by which the justness of the perception might be supported. The process alleged is the result of science, only; the actual process, takes place in infants, and in the brute creation. We admit the possible substitution of reasoning, but the case is not in point. Cheselden's operation is not to the purpose; in such a case the two classes of mental operations (not departments of science) become accidentally united. As for the classification upon which the noble lord depends, we must now shew that it suppresses the only distinction which is of any practical value; and adopts one which, however truc, is quite nugatory. Of the distinction between human and divine science the noble lord observes : "Yet it is equally certain, that nothing but an imperfect knowledge of the subject, or a superficial attention to it, can permit us to think that there is any welldefined boundary which separates the two kinds of philosophy; that the methods of investigation are different in each; and that the kind of evidence varies by which the truths of the one and of the other We do not mean to deny the value of this investigation, if limited to its proper use; we merely object to the application--a false analogy. The relation between observation and inference is not that between the classes of science, with which they are attempted to be compared. The laws of strict reasoning, and those of our habitual modes of perception, have, probably, a common principle, which it would be profitable as well as curious to trace. But all our sensible applications of reasoning begin where observation ends; could we reach a step further back by any logical process, that step must become the first of the argument. class are demonstrated. The error is far more extensive in its consequences than a mere inaccuracy of classification, for it materially impairs the force of the proofs upon which natural theology rests. The proposition which we would place in its stead is, that this science is strictly a branch of inductive philosophy, formed and supported by the same kind of reasoning upon which the physical and psy chological sciences are founded." Strange as it must appear, the noble lord here rests his argument upon the artifice of a false and arbitrary classification; which suppresses a distinction, unfavourable to his and purpose, essential to any practical division of sciences. His argument is the sophism of composition and division, by which he ranks together that which is dissimilar, and disjoins that which is similar. We may, at once, grant that all knowledge derived by reasoning from facts, may be considered as the result of induction, and still insist that both what he terms human science, and what he terms divine, each contain two branches of enquiry, severally to be ranked in the opposite class; if any regard is to be had to the essential differences, as to mode of investigation, class of phenomena, and even of the intellectual faculties they employ. The laws of physical nature, the proof of the existence of God on one side: on the other, the indications of his providence, and the investigations of moral and intellectual philosophy, whether relative to God or man: all of them inductive, are nevertheless widely to be distinguished by the difference of the actual phenomena from whence they are to be sought. All right reasoning is the same, and every truth equally true. But our means of acquiring information, and estimating its accuracy when acquired, widely different. That which is constant, from that which is occasional-the uniform from the irregular, the simple and unvarying from the complicated and changing. We could multiply distinctions, and in so doing point out various modifications of research, terminating in all the various degrees of probability. The return of a comet, after a revolution of the generations of man, can be estimated within a few hours; the actions of a man, equally the result of causes-equally the subject of reason ing, vaguely and uncertainly even for an hour. But the mode of observation, the precision of the data, and the law of action are different and on this difference depends the consequen tial value of the several reasonings. The noble lord may assume some elementary rule of abstract observation, which, in point of fact, has no existence he may assume some superhuman eye and mind, observing and calcu lating the elements of the erratic orbit of man's minds; and tell us that by his compendious science, it must arrive by a rigid method to a precise result. If the ordinary principle of classification, which we have pointed out, be understood, it will be apparent how little can be gained in clearness or certainty by distinctions which confuse it. The method of induction may be proved to be co-extensive with reasoning, but we must still be compelled to admit, that all probable inference is not equally certain, nor the ground of all the sciences equally defined, certain, and precise. We once heard some witty mountebank endeavour to settle a disputation by observing that all language might be resolved into the alphabet; with as much hopes of suc cess may the metaphysician attempt to clear away difficulties, by the compendious expedient to which the noble lord has had recourse. The same impenetrable cloud of mystery rests upon the unrevealed portion of the divine system, although he should establish that the logical sounding-line, with which philosophy has ever groped with the same success, has not been hitherto called by its correct name. And when the noble lord shall have succeeded in raising the vague and conflicting-the never-ending and never-concluding search into final causes-into the dig nity of a stricter science; we must still be thrown upon the actual means which the practical part of the world have ever used for the discovery of truth, and the fixing of assent. We shall be obliged to value each inference by the value of its premisesthe certainty, distinctness, and definable character of its facts. There are indeed, in such speculations as those which the noble lord has attempted to illustrate, causes of error, and of confidence in error, which are concealed by the enormous and ill-esti. ! mated difficulty of such subjects. A difficulty which increases as the subject enlarges and ascends above the sphere of actual sense. The noble lord has been enabled by his own studies to appreciate the difficulties of that most comprehensive and subtle system of reasoning which has reached the remote and refined discoveries of the mecanique celeste. He is aware how much of labour, of life, they must have sunk-how many giant minds they must have employed-how rash would have been the hope to have made even the thorough comprehending of these, the amusement of a vacant hour in the evening of life. Again, his lordship is quite aware of the varied errors that have been committed by intellects of enormous power, during the progress of this elevated structure of human science; he is aware that these errors would, in many instances, have been rendered permanent portions of our knowledge, were it not that actual observation detected the errors of reason, and that one of the results of the most certain of all the sciences, is an inductive proof of the fact that reasoning, unless corrected from step to step by observation or experiment, has no security of deviating into innumerable false directions, from which there is absolutely no clue. The divine mind, and the nature of the human mind, have also from the beginning occupied the attention of inquisitive and curions philosophy, but with this remarkable difference, that while there has been less success, there has been more confidence; and, that, while in physical science men's confidence has diminished with the difficulty of the science, and the remoteness of the object, in these it has increased. The reason is this, and we earnestly recommend its consideration to the noble lord, that in metaphysical speculation there are few precise facts to correct the vagueness of verbal reasoning-of man's nature, few-of God's, none; the presumptuous theologian cannot be either rectified as he proceeds, or detected when he infers fallaciously. He may triumph in the profound obscurity he has wrapped about him, in proportion as its darkless is more objectless and more pro found. The principles of theology have been the subject of three very distinct species of investigation, directed toward very different fields of search: the word of God, the phenomena of nature, and the argument from abstract notions, called the a priori argument. Of these, the a priori argument has been generally abandoned as quite untenable, by all recent writers of authority. The noble lord has, in his fourth section, discussed it with much good sense; we can only afford to say, that we concur in his view. In his attempt to raise natural theology into an inductive science, Lord Brougham but follows many able recent writers. And if due caution had been observed, in scrupulously defining its limits, and thus placing a barrier against presumptuous speculation, upon a subject, in the investigation of which error is dangerous, and additional light not comparatively valuable, we should not have lifted our testimony against this most shallow and empirical of sciences. As the matter stands, we deny the science, while we concur in the proposition, that the proof of the first great fact, viz. the existence of an intelligent contriver and creator of the natural world, is an argument strictly inductive, and to be drawn with the completest force of inference from the facts of either moral or physical sci ence. The main intent of the noble lord is to erase the line of distinction between human science and what he terms divine. In his second section, in which he states the main argument for the existence of a deity; he also follows up his purpose by an effort to establish the identity of this argument with physics. We grant his position, p. 28, that the "two paths of investigation for a great part of the way, completely coincide." But he overlooks the fact that the mathematical argument which led to the physical conclusion, ceases there. And the psychological begins with the fact which it discovered. The conclusion of one is the datum for the other; and the reasonings are altogether different in kind. So much for the "common path." The great psychological inference of design, however attained, is a fact sui generis, deduced not from the reasonings of mixed mathematics, (the actual reasoning of physics) but from certain inferences thus arrived at. It is one great truth, of which all the proof to be obtained from physics, is not merely a repetition of the same argument, leading to the same single inference; but not leading a single step further. The moral additions to this argument belong to a science wholly different in its principles, facts, and degree of assurance. The connection we do not deny in this more than in the other; the physical result was attained by mathematical reasoning on facts; the psychological, by a purely logical inference from the inferences so obtained; the moral conclusion is founded upon a wide induction of particulars, differently ascertained, and requiring much more complicated and less certain modes of inquiry. In his second section, the noble lord states, and illustrates, by a variety of well selected examples, the argument from nature for the existence of God. It is not merely inductive, but the most perfect specimen of induction. The inductive argument is an analogy founded upon the law of reason, that like effects are to be attributed to like causes, so far as the phenomena admit; for instance, as design is uniformly traceable to mind, in one class of known instances; it is referred to mind in another class. We premise this statement because the noble lord, in his anxiety to enlarge the principle of induction, occasionally disguises it in his various deductions from this argument. Within the entire compass of reasoning there is not an argument of more conclusive force than by which the existence of a first cause can be inferred from the phenomena of nature. It is in the strictest sense inductive, and perhaps the most perfect example to be found of this argument. The systematic combination of distinct parts and materials, the adaptation and mutual adjustment of systems, otherwise wholly distinct, so as to operate together to some common end, as for instance, the eye and light, the ear and sound, the solar system and the whole phenomena of animal and vegetable life: again, the several phenomena and mutual relations between these. Are all instances of that instrumentality which is referred to intelligent design, from the precise analogy which arises from the fact already noticed, that such adaptations and adjustment are univer sally traced to design so far as we have any knowledge. Lord Brougham, who is particularly eloquent in the statement of the illustrations of this argumeut, is by no means so fortunate in his method of stating the inference, which he mostly draws in such a manner as partly to conceal the point which he is laboring to establish, namely, that it is a strict induction. This we must attribute to the double purpose of confusing this argument to first causes, with that leading to final causes. Of this, any one who attentively reads the statement at p. 44, must become aware; for instance: "We know that if some of our works were seen by others, who neither were the intention with which we made them, aware of our having made them, nor of they would be right should they, from seeing and examining them, both infer that we had made them, and conjecture why we had made them.” Of these statements, we have perused, with much pleasure, the noble author's clear summary of the principles of the stability of the planetary system; and with still more gratification, his description of the process of the comparative anatomist's investigations of fossil remains. From this last eloquent description, which reanimates to our conception the broken up and buried worlds of the past, we are compelled to make a brief citation for the ungrateful purpose of cavil; for this purpose we must allow him the advantage of his own words. Now the question is this : investigation, in the strictest sense of the term, forms a branch of physical science, and that this branch sprang legitimately from the grand root of the whole, induction; in a word, that the process of reasoning employed to investigate-the kind of evidence used to demonstrate its truths, is the modern analysis or induction taught by Bacon and practised by Newton. Now wherein, with reference to its nature and foundations, does it vary from the inquiries and illustrations of Natural Theology? When from examining a few bones, or it may be a single "There can be as little doubt that the fragment of a bone, we infer that, in the wilds where we found it, there lived and ranged, some thousands of years ago, an animal wholly different from any we ever saw, and from any of which any account, any tradition, written or oral, has reached us, nay, from any that ever was seen by any person of whose existence we ever heard, we assuredly are led to this remote conclusion, by a strict and rigorous process of reasoning; but, as certainly, we come through that process to the knowledge and belief of things unseen, both of us and of all menthings respecting which we have not, and cannot have, a single particle of evidence, either by sense or by testimony. Yet we harbour no doubt of the fact; we go farther, and not only implicitly believe the existence of this creature, for which we are forced to invent a name, but clothe it with attributes, till, reasoning step by step, we come at so accurate a notion of its form and habits, that we can represent the one, and describe the other, with unerring accuracy; picturing to ourselves how it looked, what it fed on, and how it continued its kind. "Now, the question is this: What perceivable difference is there between the kind of investigations we have just been considering, and those of Natural Theology—except, indeed, that the latter are more sublime in themselves, and incomparably more interesting to us? Where is the logical precision of the arrangement, which would draw a broad line of demarcation between the two speculations, giving to the one the name and the rank of a science, and refusing it to the other, and affirming that the one rested upon induction, but not the other ?" Now be it observed; we say both rest upon induction; and add that the one is a science and the other not. It is not because the reasoning differs in principle, but because one is a system, implying a certain theory of appropriate principles, observations, methods of observation, and registered facts. The other is but a fact; the foundation of an assumed science. The error consists, in not noticing wherein consists the line between any science, and every other distinct from it-the chain of its inferences. Induction is the same, however applied; and simply a logical method. We cannot too much praise the clearness and beauty of style with which the same inference is drawn from the constitution of the mind. The argument has recently been stated by several writers; but the noble lord has, to some extent, made it his own by the completeness of his details. tuted for the various individual and That the mind is wonderfully constiobserved to fulfil, is a fact easily ascersocial purposes which it is actually tained from no very difficult inquiry into its observable constitution: the inference, that it was therefore designed for these purposes, is but a single step precisely parallel with, and of the same force as those derived from physics. The importance of the topics which remain to be noticed, must prevent our entering into this, further than may be required by its connexion with another speculation, to which the public is indebted for a very able and eloquent reply from Mr. Wallace.+ The proposition may be best stated in the words of the noble lord : "Such is the process of reasoning by which we infer the existence of design in the natural moral world. To this abstract argument an addition of great importance remains to be made. The whole reasoning proceeds necessarily upon the assumption that there exists a being or thing separate from, and independent of, matter, and conscious of its own existence, which we call mind. For the argument is—' Had I to accomplish this purpose, I should have used some such means; or, Had I used these means, I should have thought I was accomplishing some such purpose,' Perceiving the adaptation of the means to the end, the inference is, that some being has acted as we should ourselves • We do not here mean to deny such value as some able philosophers attach to systems of morals and of natural theology. We simply deny these, or any that can be similarly constructed, the authority of stricter sciences. The true value of such, (if they have any) is derived from the authoritative sanction of revealed religion. + Observations on the Discourse of Natural Theology, by Henry Lord Brougham. By Thomas Wallace, Esq., LL.D. London: D. Ridgway and Sons, Piccadilly. 1835. |