264 PKOl'ESSOR R. L. DABNEY, D.D.^ LL.D. 



shall reject any conception of the divine working, though 

 reached by normal (human) inference^ merely because it may 

 be anthropomorphic^ appears thus. It would equally forbid 

 us to think or learn at all, either concei-ning Grod^ or any 

 other Being or concept different from man : for, if we are not 

 allowed to think in the forms of thought natural and normal 

 for uSj we are forbidden to think at all. All man^s cognition 

 must be anthropomorphic, or nothing. 



18. But the complete answer to these exceptions is in the 

 facts already insisted on : that, in reasoning from " finality ^^ in 

 nature, to " intentionality," we are but obeying an inevitable 

 necessity ; we are not consulting any peculiarity of human 

 laws of thought. In the operations of Nature, just as much 

 as in our own consciousness, we actually see ends which 

 follow after their physical efficients, exerting a causal in- 

 fluence backward, before they come into existence, on the 

 collocations of their own physical means, which precede. 

 There is no way possible in physical nature by which a cause 

 can act before it is. The law of plij'sical causation is absolute; 

 a cause must have existed in order to operate. Hence we are 

 driven out of physical nature to find the explanation of this 

 thing, — driven, not by some merely human law of thought, 

 but by an absolute necessity of thought. The final cause 

 which acted before it existed, must have pre-existed in 

 forethought. Forethought is a function of mind. Therefore, 

 there must be a Mind behind nature, older and greater than 

 all the contrivances of nature. A great amount of thinking 

 has been done in the finalities of nature. Who did that 

 thinking? Not nature. Then God. The only alternative 

 hypothesis is that of chance. We have seen that hypothesis 

 fall into utter ruin and disgrace before the facts. 



19. Were all the claims of the Evolutionist granted, this 

 would not extinguish the teleological argument, but only remove 

 its data back in time, and simplify them in number. For then, 

 the facts we should have would be these : a few, or possibl}'' 

 one primordial form of animated matter, slowly, but regularly, 

 producing all the orderly wonders of Life, up to man, through 

 the sure action of the simple laws of slight variation, influence 

 of environment, suiwival of the fittest. Here, again, are 

 wonderful adaptations to ends ! And chance would equally be 

 excluded by the numbers, the regularity, the beneficence of 

 the immense results. The problem would recur: — Who 

 adjusted those few but ancient elements so as to evolve 

 all this ? Teleology is as apparent as ever. We may even 

 urge, that the distance, the multitude, the complex regularit}^ 



