348 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



human friend and master ; and all that we can 

 learn, by observing the course of men's feelings 

 and actions, tends to convince us, that this belief 

 of the being and presence and government of 

 God, leads to the most elevated and beneficial 

 frame of mind of which man is capable. 



2. How natural and almost inevitable is this 

 persuasion of the reality of Final Causes and 

 consequent belief in the personality of the Deity, 

 we may gather by observing how constantly it 

 recurs to the thoughts, even of those who, in 

 consequence of such peculiarities of mental dis- 

 cipline as have been described, have repelled 

 and resisted the impression. 



Thus, Laplace, of whom we have already 

 spoken, as one of the greatest mathematicians of 

 modern times, expresses his conviction that the 

 supposed evidence of final causes will disappear 

 as our knowledge advances, and that they only 

 seem to exist in those cases where our ignorance 

 leaves room for such a mistake. " Let us run 

 over," he says, " the history of the progress of 

 the human mind and its errors : we shall per- 

 petually see final causes pushed away to the 

 bounds of its knowledge. These causes, which 

 Newton removed to the limits of the solar system, 

 were not long ago conceived to obtain in the 

 atmosphere, and employed in explaining meteors : 

 they are, therefore, in the eyes of the philosopher 



