But, like
the belief in them, the belief in Him has become an article of our
common sense. And that this designing mind is, in some respects,
similar to the human mind, is proved to us (as Sir John Herschel
well puts it) by the mere fact that we can discover and comprehend
the processes of Nature.
But here again, if we be contradicted, we can only reassert. If the
old words, "He that made the eye, shall He not see? He that planted
the ear, shall He not hear?" do not at once commend themselves to
the intellect of any person, we shall never convince that person by
any arguments drawn from the absurdity of conceiving the invention
of optics by a blind race, or of music by a deaf one.
So we will assert our own old-fashioned notion boldly; and more: we
will say, in spite of ridicule, that if such a God exists, final
causes must exist also. That the whole universe must be one chain
of final causes. That if there be a Supreme Reason, He must have a
reason, and that a good reason, for every physical phenomenon.
We will tell the modern scientific man--You are nervously afraid of
the mention of final causes. You quote against them Bacon's saying,
that they are barren virgins; that no physical fact was ever
discovered or explained by them. You are right as far as regards
yourselves; you have no business with final causes, because final
causes are moral causes, and you are physical students only.
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