648 - Proceedings. 



things are made by intelligent beings ; but what reason have we for sup- 

 posing that mind or intelligence is the sole cause of the existence of 

 things which seem to show marks of design ? The conditions of existence 

 necessitate certain relations which look like design, and yet, apart from 

 other considerations, may be nothing of the sort. 



Mr. Tregear said he considered that almost all metaphysical discus- 

 sion arose from the fact that the medium through which our thoughts 

 were conveyed was the imperfect one of words. Words were sometimes 

 beautiful things in their long history and adaptation, but they were, after 

 all, things which were our heritage from barbarian forefathers, and not 

 perfect tools by any means. Metaphysics, so long as we use words, was like 

 the effect of elaborate fencing-rules being followed by people armed with the 

 weapons of the Stone Age. Mr. Carlile's notion, of course, was not tenable. 

 He was not himself a cause, except as an intermediary cause, himself the 

 sum of infinitely numerous effects. The cat quoted by Mr. Carlile as having 

 removed some slippers was not to be regarded as anything like the real 

 cause : behind the cat were the cat's father and mother and their fathers and 

 mothers ad infinitum. Science could only look for intermediate causes 

 and effects ; the final cause might be conceivable, but was not within the 

 domain of knowledge or field of science. Every intermediary cause had 

 millions of effects, which in themselves became causes in turn, and made 

 investigation as to finality impossible. He (Mr. Tregear) denied the 

 doctrine of " design " as inferred and mentioned by Mr. Carlile. If one 

 took up a board on the floor and found that it had once been varnished 

 and beaded as a desk it would be reasonable to suppose that it had 

 not always been a flooring-board. So, when the President had said that 

 " a whale was always a whale," he (the speaker) did not agree with him. 

 The whale had within his body two leg-bones, rudimentary and tiny now, 

 with which he had once walked. So did the boa-constrictor. Man had 

 his tail-bones tucked in and useless, the muscle in his cheek with which he 

 once pricked forward his ears, the pituitary body in the brain through 

 which he had once breathed water, the intestine (dangerous as well as 

 useless now) which in the horse was a valuable organ. Man was just a 

 " second-hand " animal ; the evidence proved that he had once other uses, 

 just as the polished board proved that it had not been always a floor- 

 board. Man, as man, had been adapted, not designed. 



Mr. Hawthorne referred to the rules of the Society to show that such 

 a paper as Mr. Carlile's should not be read before the Society, as it touched 

 on religious subjects. On hearing such a paper members were lost in a 

 maze of unprofitable speculation. He thought it would be better if more 

 attention was paid to natural history. 



Mr. Harding disagreed with the last speaker. He thought that Mr. 

 Carlile's paper dealt with a subject quite within the sphere of the Society, 

 and with his general conclusions he was disposed to agree. Here, as in 

 other debatable matters, one of the chief difficulties and causes of mis- 

 understanding arose from the imperfection of language as an instrument 

 of thought, and arguments and supposed facts to a great extent resolved 

 themselves ultimately into disputes about definitions. The argument 

 from " common-sense " was sufficient to dispose of the more unprofitable 

 metaphysical subtleties, and was a safeguard on the one hand against in- 

 dividual hallucination, and on the other against the wilder nights of the 

 unrestricted scientific imagination. The ideas of conception and object 

 of conception and the thing conceived were so clearly separable that it 

 was only by considerable mental effort that they could be confused. It 

 was so also with the idea of a chain of cause and effects — of consequence 

 as distinguished from mere sequence. A first cause was doubtless beyond 

 the sphere of physical science, but had been of necessity assumed by 

 philosophers of all ages; and rightly so, for, reasoning by analogy, as had 

 already been pointed out by our President, we found that every develop- 



