ON FINAL CAUSK. 257 



its proper place, the higher philosophy and uatural theology. 

 He is himself a pronounced Theist, and infers his confident 

 belief in God from the teleological ai'gument. The whole 

 extent of his caution is, that when the matter in hand is 

 physical, and the pi'oblem is to discover the true, invariable, 

 physical efficient of a class o( pJienomena, we confuse ourselves 

 by mixing the question of final cause. Thus, in the Advance- 

 ment of Learning, he himself divides true Science into 

 physical and metaphysical ; the former teaching the physical 

 efficients of effects ; the latter, under two divisions, teaching : 

 1. The Doctrine of Forms. 2. The Doctrine of Final Causes. 

 And this third, culminating* in theology, he deems the 

 splendid apex of the pyramid of human knovvledge. 



6. In the second book of his work on the Advancement 

 of Learning, he says : — " The second part of Metaphysics 

 IS the inquiry into final causes ; which I am moved to 

 report not as omitted, but as misplaced.'" (He then 

 gives instances of propositions about final causes improperly 

 thrust into physical inquiries.) " Not because those final 

 causes are not true, and worthy to be inquired, being kept 

 within their own province ; but because these excursions into 

 the limits of physical causes have bred a vastness and solitude 

 in that track. Foi', otherwise, keeping their precincts and 

 borders, men are extremely deceived if they think there is an 

 enmity or repugnancy between them.'' 



7. In fact, the two imply each other. If there is a God 

 pursuing His purposed ends, or final causes. He will, of 

 course, pursue these through the efficient, physical causes. 

 It is the very adaptation of these to be right means for 

 bringing God's ends, under the conditions established by His 

 providence, which discloses final causes. It is the physical 

 cause, — gravity, — which adapts the clock-weight to move the 

 wheels and hands of the clock. Shall we, therefore, say it is 

 contradictory to ascribe to the clock, as its final cause, the 

 function of indicating time ? Does the fact that the physical 

 cause, — gravity, — produces the motions weaken the inference 

 we draw fi-om the complicated adjustments, that this machine 

 had an intelligent clockmaker ? No ; the strength of that 

 inference is in this very fact, that here, the blind force of 

 gravity is caused to realise an end so unlike its usual physical 

 effects in the fall of hail-stones and rain-drops, of leaves and 

 decayed branches. 



8. The evolutionist says, then, that since the physical cause 

 is efficient of the effect, this is enough to account for all actual 

 results, without assigning any " final cause." The lens, for 

 instance, has physical power to refract light. If we find a 



T 2 



