492 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



result in a certain and accurate aim, or in a trem- 

 ulous or uncontrolled arm, lay beyond the pale 

 of physiological knowledge in the time of Homer. 

 So here it was that the goddess intervened. When 

 nervous action became fully understood, the final 

 cause receded and took refuge in some deeper 

 arcanum of our ignorance. Jove was never ex- 

 pected to make thunder and rain without clouds ; 

 nor was the falling of the rain ever ascribed to 

 his interference, because every one believed that, 

 if the drops were once formed, they would fall at 

 once to the ground without any action on his 

 part. But the mixing currents of moist and cool 

 air, and the processes of condensation which lead 

 to the formation of rain and electricity, were not 

 understood. So here Jupiter had a chance 1 to 

 work unseen by man. When the mode in which 

 clouds were formed was once understood, the 

 god of thunder left his seat upon Mount Olympus 

 for a more distant abode. From the earliest his- 

 toric times the man who took a large dose of 

 poison has died, as a matter of course. Neither 

 good nor evil spirit had anything to do with it. 

 But if brain-disease bereft him of reason, the 

 malevolence of an evil spirit was called in to ac- 

 count for the result. If the best man now living 

 should draw up plans and specifications for a 

 dwelling, and then try to induce Providence to 

 erect it in a night, complete in all its parts, without 

 further action on his part, we should look upon 

 him as not less remarkable for the feebleness of 

 his intellect than for his moral excellence. We 

 should tell him that he was expecting a miracle, 

 and that the age of miracles was past. But it 

 would not seem absurd should he appeal to Provi- 

 dence for a shower of rain to facilitate the growth 

 of his garden vegetables, because the effect would 

 not appear at all miraculous. 



It thus appears that the dividing line between 

 mechanical and final causes, as drawn by the hu- 

 man mind in all ages, has not been fixed in any 

 absolute manner, but only near the limits of the 

 knowledge possessed by each generation. Sci- 

 ence has extended the line entirely beyond ordi- 

 nary mental vision, not by introducing any new 

 theory of Nature, but by extending the bounda- 

 ries of exact knowledge, and with them the field 

 in which, by common consent, final causes do 

 not admit of being traced. The telescope has 

 revealed to us a universe compared with which 

 that known to the ancients is but an atom, and 

 geology has opened up to our view a vista of 

 ages in which the lifetime of our generation is 

 hardly more than a moment. And thus final 

 causes have taken their flight from a vast region 



in which they before lay hid in obscurity. The 

 fall of a simple drop of rain at any future time 

 in any other way than that of exact accordance 

 with the chain of causes now and always in oper- 

 ation would be as complete a miracle as would 

 the appearance of a building without the inter- 

 vention of human hands. You may now ask, 

 " Have they simply taken refuge in the more dis- 

 tant but vastly wider circumference which now 

 marks the boundaries of our knowledge, or are 

 we to suppose them entirely banished from Na- 

 ture ? " This is entirely a question of intuition, 

 and not at all of scientific investigation. I have 

 described the scientific theory of Nature as not 

 admitting scrutable final causes at all ; but as 

 claiming that the law of the falling rock is sym- 

 bolic of all her operations. We must always ex- 

 pect that men will incline to this view in propor- 

 tion to their familiarity with the material side of 

 Nature. At the same time, it is evident to all that 

 there must have been a beginning of things, and 

 that Nature could not have commenced herself. 

 We have, therefore, a wide belt left between the 

 origin of Nature and the boundaries of our knowl- 

 edge, in which we may suppose the inscrutable 

 cause to have acted. But the questions of phi- 

 losophy which here present themselves lie outside 

 of our field, and we cannot now stop to consider 

 them. 



The exact bearing of the subject will be better 

 understood by condensing what has already been 

 said, so as to present the whole in a brief 

 space : 



1. When men study the operations of the 

 world around them, they find that certain of 

 those operations are determined by knowable 

 antecedent conditions, and go on with that blind 

 disregard of consequences which they call law. 

 They also find certain other operations which 

 they are unable thus to trace to the operations 

 of law. 



2. Men attribute this latter class to intelli- 

 gent, anthropomorphic beings, or gods, having 

 the power to bring about changes in Nature, 

 and having certain objects, worthy or ignoble, 

 in view, which they thus endeavor to compass. 

 Men also believe themselves able to discern these 

 objects, and thus to explain the operations which 

 bring them about. The objects are worthy or 

 ignoble according to the state of society. In 

 ancient times they were often the gratification 

 of the silliest pride or the lowest lusts. 



3. As knowledge advances, one after another 

 of these operations is found to be really deter- 

 mined by law, the only difficulty being that the 



