' ON I'lNAL CAUSE. 263 



nature, on which alone their objection rests. On their ground, 

 our analogical induction for final cause in nature is a perfect 

 proof. They admit that our minds consciously pursue final 

 causes. But mind and physical nature, say thoy, are mani- 

 festations of the same substance and force. Hence, when we 

 see the parallel coordinations of physical causes to future ends 

 in nature, just like those we consciously employ ; there is no 

 other inference possible, but that nature, like us, pursues final 

 causes. 



17. The exception of Hume and his followers of our genera- 

 tion is already virtually answered. He cavilled that the in- 

 ference from our conscious employment of final causes to the 

 same fact in nature is unsound, because of the difference 

 between a person and a natural agency. Mr. Mill has echoed the 

 cavil, while completely refuting it in another place.* Mr. H. 

 Spencer has reproduced it in the charge that the inference 

 labours under the vice of aitthropomorpltism ; that it leaps 

 from the conscious experience of our limited minds to an 

 imaginary acting of an infinite mind (if there is any divine 

 mind), about which we can certainly know nothing as to its 

 laws of acting ; and it unwarrantably concludes that this abso- 

 lute Being chooses and thinks as we finite, dependent beings 

 do. The argumentum ad liominem' just stated would be a 

 sufficient reply. Or we might urge that, if God has made the 

 human mind "after His image, in His likeness,^^ this would 

 effectually guarantee all our legitimately rational processes 

 of thought against vice from anthropomorphism. For, in 

 thinking according to the natural laws of our minds, we 

 would be thinking precisely as God bids us think. And, 

 should Mr. Spencer say that we must not " beg the question " 

 by assuming this theistic account of man's origin, we might 

 at least retort, that neither should he beg the question by 

 denying it. We might also urge, that the diff'erence between 

 the normal acting of a finite mind, and of an infinite one, can 

 only be a difference of degree, not of essence ; that the 

 thinking of the finite, when done according to its laws of 

 thought, must be good as far as it goes ; only, the divine 

 thinking, while just like it within the narrow limits, goes 

 greatly farther. Sir Isaac Newton knew vastly more mathe- 

 matics than the school- child; yet, when the school-child did 

 its little '^sum'' in simple addition, "according to rule,'' 

 Newton would have pronounced it right ; nor would he have 

 done that " sum ^' in any other than the child's method ! 

 Once more; the unreasonableness of the demand, that we 



Theifiw, part i., "Marks of Design in Nature." 



