262 • PEOFESSOR E. L, DABNEY, D.D,, LL.D. 



he observes tlie other's outward acts, and infers final causes 

 in the other's mind, from the great mental law of *'like 

 causes, like effects/' by an induction guided by the perfect, 

 visible analogy, 



15. But when we observe, in nature, these visible actions exactly 

 analogous to combinations seen in our fellow-man when he 

 pursues his final causes : why do not the same analogy and in- 

 duction justify us in ascribing the]same solution ; that there are 

 final causes in nature also ? Why is not the one induction as 

 valid as the other ? There is no difference. It is vain to object, 

 that whereas we see in our fellow a rational person ; we see 

 in nature no personality, but only sets of material bodies and 

 natural causations. For it is not true that we see in our 

 neighbour a rational person, competent to deal with final 

 causes. His soul is his personality ! And this is no more 

 directly visible to us than God is visible in nature. What 

 we see in our neighbour is a series of bodily actions executed 

 by members and limbs, as material as the physical organs of 

 animals : it is only by an induction from a valid analogy 

 between his acts and our own, that we learn the rational 

 personality behind his material actions. The analogy is no 

 weaker, which shows us God's personality behind the final 

 causes of nature. The question returns : Why is it not as 

 valid ? 



16. Is a different objection raised: That man's pursuit of his 

 final causes is personal and consciously extra-natural, exercised 

 by personal faculties acting from without upon material nature; 

 while the powers which operate everything in nature are 

 immanent in nature ? The replies are two : First, in the 

 sense of this discussion, human nature is not extra-natural, 

 but is one of the ordinary spheres of nature, and is connected 

 with the lower spheres by natural laws as regular as any. 

 When the personal will of a man pursues a final cause, he 

 does it through means purely natural : there is, indeed, a 

 supra-material power at work, coordinating mind; but nothing 

 extra-natural or supra-natural appears. Why, then, may we 

 not press an analogy so purely natural through all the 

 spheres of nature ? Second : our opponents [Evolutionists, 

 or Materialists, or Agnostics] refute themselves fatally; for 

 they are the very men who insist on obliterating even that 

 reasonable distinction which we make between the material 

 and mental spheres. They plead for monism in some form : 

 they deny that mind and matter are substantively distinct ; 

 they insist on including them in one theory of substance and 

 force. They have, then, utterly destroyed their own premise, 

 by denying the very distinction between personal mind and 



