264 INDUCTION. 



Final Cause, he proceeds to say, that most of the early philosophers recognized only the sec- 

 ond kind of Cause, the Matter of a thing, rile kv vXtjq eldei /novag u^drjaav dpxug elvai ttuvtuv. 

 As his first example he specifies Thales, whom he describes as taking the lead in this view of 

 the subject, 6 ttjc TOLavrrjc upxV7<i? <pL?ioao(piag, and goes on to Hippon, Anaximenes, Dioge- 

 nes (of Apollonia), Hippasus of Metapontum, Heraclitus, and Empedocles. Anaxagoras, 

 however (he proceeds to say), taught a different doctrine, as we know, and it is alleged that 

 Hermotimus of Clazomencs taught it before him. Anaxagoras represented, that even if these 

 various theories of the universal material were true, there would be need of some other cause 

 to account for the transformations of the materials, since the material can not originate its 

 own changes: ou yap dij to ye viroKeifievov avrb noiel /leTajSuTiAeiv kavTO' Myu & olov ovre 

 TO fw/lov ovre 6 ;^a/lx:c)f aiTLog tov [iETajid7i7.eLv iKUTspov avTuv, ovdt noiel to fiiv ^v7mv kMv7}v 

 o 6e xo-^i^o^ avdpMVTa, uXk' tTepov ti T^g [leTafioT^rjg oItlov, viz., the other kind of cause, odev 

 T) apxv TTJc KivTJaeuc — an Efficient Cause. Aristotle expresses great approbation of this doc- 

 trine (which he says made its author appear the only sober man among persons raving, olov 

 VTJ^uv e(pdvrj Kap' eIktj XeyovTag Tovg nporepov) ; but while describing the influence which it ex- 

 ercised over subsequent speculation, he remarks that the philosophers against whom this, as he 

 thinks, insuperable difficulty was urged, had not felt it to be any difficulty : ovdtv Idvaxepuvav 

 kv iavTolg. It is surely unnecessary to say more in proof of the matter of fact which Dr. Tul- 

 loch and his reviewer disbelieve. 



Having pointed out what he tliinks the error of these early speculators in not recognizing 

 the need of an efficient cause, Aristotle goes on to mention two other efficient causes to which 

 they might have had recourse, instead of intelligence : tvxv< chance, and to avTo/xuTov, spon- 

 taneity. He indeed puts these aside as not sufficiently worthy causes for the order in the uni- 

 verse, ov6' av Tu) avTOfjuTCf) Kal Ty Tvxy tooovtov EncTpifai Ttpuy/iia KaAug elxEv ; but he does 

 not reject them as incapable of producing any effect, but only as incapable of producing that 

 effect. He himself recognizes tvxv and to avTo/xuTov as co-ordinate agents with Mind in pro- 

 ducing the phenomena of the universe ; the department allotted to them being composed of 

 all the classes of phenomena which are not supposed to follow any uniform law. By thus in- 

 cluding Chance among efficient causes, Aristotle fell into an error which philosophy has now 

 outgrown, but which is by no means so alien to the spirit even of modern speculation as it 

 may at first sight appear. Up to quite a recent period philosophers went on ascribing, and 

 many of them have not yet ceased to ascribe, a real existence to the results of abstraction. 

 Chance could make out as good a title to that dignity as mimj other of the mind's abstract 

 creations : it had had a name given to it, and why should it not be a reality ? As for to av- 

 TOjuuTov, it is recognized even yet as one of the modes of origination of phenomena by all 

 those thinkers who maintain what is called the Freedom of the Will. The same self-deter- 

 mining power which that doctrine attributes to volitions, was supposed by the ancients to be 

 possessed also by some other natural phenomena : a circumstance which throws considerable 

 light on more than one of the supposed invincible necessities of belief. I have introduced it 

 here, because this belief of Aristotle, or rather of the Greek philosophers generally, is as fatal 

 as the doctrines of Thales and the Ionic school to the theory that the human mind is com- 

 pelled by its constitution to conceive volition as the origin of all force, and the efficient cause 

 of all phenomena.* 



* It deserves notice that the parts of nature which Aristotle regards as representing evi- 

 dence of design, are the Uniformities : the phenomena in so far as reducible to law. Tvxv 

 and TO avTOfiuTov satisfy him as explanations of the variable element in phenomena, but their 

 occurring according to a fixed rule can only, to his conceptions, be accounted for by an In- 

 telligent Will. The common, or what may be called the instinctive, religious interpretation 

 of nature, is the reverse of this. The events in which men spontaneously see the hand of a 

 supernatural being, are those which can not, as they think, be reduced to a physical law. 

 What they can distinctly connect with physical causes, and especially what they can predict, 

 though of course ascribed to an Author of Nature, if they already recognize such an author, 

 might be conceived, they think, to arise from a blind fatality, and in any case do not appear 

 to them to bear so obviously the mark of a divine will. And this distinction has been counte- 

 nanced by eminent writers on Natural Theology, in particular by Dr. Chalmers, who thinks 

 that though design is present eveiywhere, the irresistible evidence of it is to be found not in 

 the laws of nature but in the collocations, i. e. , in the part of nature in which it is impossible 

 to trace any law. A few properties of dead matter might, he thinks, conceivably account for 

 the regular and invariable succession of effects and causes ; but that the different kinds of 

 matter have been so placed as to promote beneficent ends, is what he regards at the proof of 

 a Divine Providence. Mr. Baden Powell, in his Essay entitled "Philosophy of Creation," 

 has returned to the point of view of Aristotle and the ancients, and vigorously re-asserts the 

 doctrine that the indication of design in the universe is not special adaptations, but Uniformi- 

 ty and Law, these being the evidences of mind, and not what appears to us to be a provisioa 



