382 NATURE AND MAN. 



inferred * Newton, then, was the unquestionably greatest revealer 

 the world has yet seen of the order of the universe. As was grandly 

 said by a contemporary poet — 



•' Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, 

 God said, ' Let Newton be,' and all was light." 



But so far was he from claiming to have revealed anything of 

 the cause of that order, that he most distinctly repudiated the 

 notion. I altogether deny, then, the ri5,^ht of the so-called philo- 

 sophers of our time to attribute to Newton's or any other hypothesis 

 the solution of the problem of the Kosmos. No law of pure 

 science can be anything but an expression of the 7^^/ of its orderly 

 uniformity. And that fact gives us in itself no clue to its cause. 

 But it clearly does not exclude the notion of an Intelligent First 

 Cause, or Causa causarum. And to that notion we seem to be 

 led (as I pointed out in my former paper) by our own experience 

 of volitional or purposive agency. To me the uniformities of 

 Nature, so far from suggesting blind force, have ever seemed to 

 present, in their wonderful combination of unity and variety, of 

 harmony and diversity, of grandeur and minuteness, the evidences 

 of such a Designing Mind as we recognize in any great human 

 organization which approaches our notion of ideal perfection, 

 such as a well-conducted orchestra, a thoroughly disciplined army, 

 or an admirably arranged manufactory. To see a great result 

 brought about by the consentaneous but diversified action of a 

 multitude of individuals, each of whom does his own particular 

 work in a manner that combines harmoniously with the different 

 work of every other, suggests to me nothing but admiration for 

 the Master-mind by which that order was devised, and by the 

 influence of which it is constantly sustained. And so, as I wrote 

 more than forty years ago, " every step we take in the progress of 

 "generalization, increases our admiration of the beauty of the adap- 

 " tation, and the harmony of the action, of the laws we discover ; 

 "and it is in this beauty and harmony that the contemplative mind 

 "delights to recognize the wisdom and beneficence of the Divine 

 " Author of the universe." And I persuade myself that to those 

 who have followed me through this discussion, it may not be 



'• System of Logic " (eighth edition), vol. i. p. 366. 



* (i 



