LAW OF CAUSATION. 



241 



With regard to the modem philosophers 

 (Leibnitz and the Cartesians) whom I had 

 cited as having maintained that the action 

 of mind upon matter, 80 far from being 

 the only conceivable origin of material 

 phenomena, is itself inconceivable ; the 

 atten)pt to rebut this argument by assert- 

 ing that the mode, not the fuct, of the 

 action of mind on matter was represented 

 as inconceivable, is an abuse of the privi- 

 lege of writing confidently about authors 

 without reading them ; for any knowledge 

 whatever of Leibnitz would have taught 

 those who thus bpeak of him, that the in- 

 conceivability of the mode and the im- 

 possibility of the thing were in his mind 

 convertible expressions. What was his 

 famous Principle of the Sufficient Reason, 

 the very corner-stone of his Philosophy, 

 from which the Pre-established Harmony, 

 the doctrine of Monads, and all the opinions 

 most characteristic of Leibnitz were corol- 

 laries? It was, that nothing exists the 

 existence of which is not capable of being 

 proved and explained d priori : the proof 

 and explanation in the case of contingent 

 facts being derived from the nature of their 

 causes ; which could not be the causes unless 

 there was something in their nature siiow- 

 ing them to be capable of producing those 

 particular effects. And this " something" 

 which accounts for the production of phy- 

 sical effects he was able to find in many 

 physical causes, but could not find it in 

 any finite minds, which therefore he un- 

 hesitatingly asserted to be incapable of 

 producing any physical effects whatever. 

 " On ne saurait concevoir," he says, "une 

 fiction reciproque de la mati&re et de I'in- 

 telligence I'une sur I'autre," and there 

 is therefore (he contends) no choice but 

 between the Occasional Causes of the Carte- 

 sians and his own Pre-established Har- 

 mony, according to which there is no more 

 connection between our volitions and our 

 muscular actions than there is between 

 two clocks which are wound up to strike 

 at the same instant. But he felt no simi- 

 lar difficulty as to physical causes; and 



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 

 countenanced by eminent writers on Natu- 

 ral Theology, in particular by Dr. Chalmers, 

 who thinks that though design is present 

 everywhere, the irresistible evidence of it 

 is to be found not in the laws of nature, 

 but in the collocations, i.t. 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 re- 

 gards as the proof of a Divine Providence. 

 Mr. Baden Powell, in his Essay entitled 



throughout his speculations, as in the pas- 

 sage I have already cited respecting gravi- 

 tation, he distinctly refuses to consider as 

 part of the order of nature any fact which 

 i.s not explicable from the nature of its 

 physical cause. 



Witli regard to the Cartesians, (not Des- 

 cartes; I did not make that mistake, 

 though the reviewer of Dr. Tulloch's Essay 

 attributes it to me,) 1 take a passage almost 

 at random from Malebranche, who is the 

 best known of the Cartesians, and, though 

 not the inventor of the system of Occa- 

 sional Causes, is its principal expositor. 

 In Part 2, chap. 7, of his Sixth Book, 

 having first said that matter cannot have 

 the power of moving itself, he proceeds 

 to argue that neither can mind have the 



Power of moving it. " Quand on examine 

 id6e que Ton a de tons les esprits finis, on 

 ne voit point de liaison n^cessaire entre 

 leur volonte et le mouvement de quelque 

 corps que ce soit, on voit au contraire qu'il 

 n'y en a point, et qu'il n'y en peut avoir," 

 (there is nothing in the idea of finite 

 mind which can account for its causing 

 the motion of a body;) "on doit aussi 

 conclure, si on veut raisonner selon ses 

 lumieres, qu'il n'y a aucun esprit cr66 qui 

 puisse remuer quelque corps que ce soit 

 comme cause veritable ou principale, de 

 mfeme que Ton a dit qu'aucun corps ne 

 se pouvait remuer soi-m6me:" thus the 

 idea of Mind is, according to him, as in- 

 compatible as the idea of Matter with the 

 exercise of active force. But when, he 

 continues, we consider not a created but 

 a Divine Mind, the case is altered ; for tlie 

 idea of a Divine Mind includes omnipo- 

 tence ; and the idea of omnipotence does 

 contain the idea of being able to move 

 bodies. Thus it is the nature of omnipo- 

 tence which renders the motion of bodies 

 even by the Divine Mind credible or con- 

 ceivable, while, so far as depended on the 

 mere nature of mind, it would have been 

 inconceivable and incredible. If Male- 

 branche had not believed in an omnipotent 

 being, he would have held all action of 



"Philosophy of Creation," has returned 

 to the point of view of Aristotle and the 

 ancients, and vigorously reasserts the doc- 

 trine that the indication of design in the 

 universe is not special adaptations, but 

 Uniformity and Law, these being the evi- 

 dences of mind, and not what appears to 

 us to be a provision for our uses. While I 

 decline to express any opinion here on this 

 vexata qucestio, I ought not to mention Mr. 

 Powell's volume without the acknowledg- 

 ment due to the philosophic spirit which 

 pervades generally the three Essays com- 

 posing it, forming in the case of one of them 

 (the " Unity of Wo rids ') an honourable con- 

 trast with the other dissertations, so far as 

 they have come under my notice, which have 

 appeared on either side of that controversy. 



