xiii.] FINAL CAUSES. / / . S*9 f 



f , * / ' 



regards yourselves ; you have no busi^ss, witn 'filial 



causes, because final causes are moral causea^And you/ ' ; 

 are physical students only. We, the natural theolo- 

 gians, have business with them. Your duty is to find 

 out the How of things ; ours, to find out the Why. If 

 you rejoin that we shall never find out the Why, unless 

 we first learn something of the How, we shall not deny 

 that. It may be most useful, I had almost said neces- 

 sary, that the clergy should have some scientific train- 

 ing. It may be most useful, I sometimes dream of a 

 day when it will be considered necessary, that every 

 candidate for ordination should be required to have 

 passed creditably in at least one branch of physical 

 science, if it be only to teach him the method of sound 

 scientific thought. But our having learnt the How, 

 will not make it needless, much less impossible, for us 

 to study the Why. It will merely make more clear to 

 us the things of which we have to study the Why; 

 and enable us to keep the How and the Why more 

 religiously apart from each other. 



But if it be said : After all, there is no Why ; the 

 doctrine of evolution, by doing away with the theory 

 of creation, does away with that of final causes let 

 us answer, boldly : Not in the least. We might accept 

 all that Mr. Darwin, all that Professor Huxley, has so 

 learnedly and so acutely written on physical science, 

 and yet preserve our natural theology on exactly the 

 same basis as that on which Butler and Paley left 

 it. That we should have to develop it, I do not deny. 

 That we should have to relinquish it, I do. 



Let me press this thought earnestly on you. I 

 know that many wiser and better men than I have 

 fears on this point. I cannot share in them. 



