ADDRESS. Ixxvii 
“ Were men,” says Hume, “led into the apprehension of invisible intelli- 
gent power by contemplation of the works of Nature, they could never possibly 
entertain any conception but of one single being, who bestowed existence and 
order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts to one regular system.” 
Referring to the condition of the heathen, who sees a god behind every 
natural event, thus peopling the world with thousands of beings whose caprices 
are incalculable, Lange shows the impossibility of any compromise between 
such notions and those of science, which proceeds on the assumption of never- 
changing law and causality. “But,” he continues, with characteristic 
penetration, “ when the great thought of one God, acting as a unit upon the 
universe, has been seized, the connexion of things in accordance with the law 
of cause and effect is not only thinkable, but it is a necessary consequence 
of the assumption. For when I see ten thousand wheels in motion, and 
know, or believe, that they are all driven by one, then I know that I have 
before me a mechanism, the action of every part of which is determined by 
the plan of the whole. So much being assumed, it follows that I may inyes- 
tigate the structure of that machine, and the various motions of its parts. 
For the time being, therefore, this conception renders scientific action free.” 
In other words, were a capricious God at, the circumference of every wheel 
and at the end of every lever, the action of the machine would be incalculable 
by the methods of science. But the action of all its parts being rigidly 
determined by their connexions and relations, and these being brought into 
play by a single self-acting driving wheel, then, though this last prime mover 
may elude me, I am still able to comprehend the machinery which it sets 
in motion. We have here a conception of the relation of Nature to its 
Author, which seems perfectly acceptable to some minds, but perfectly 
intolerable to others. Newton and Boyle lived and worked happily under 
the influence of this conception ; Goethe rejected it with vehemence, and the 
same repugnance to accepting it is manifest in Carlyle*. 
The analytic and synthetic tendencies of the human mind exhibit them- 
selves throughout history, great writers ranging themselves sometimes on the 
one side, sometimes on the other. Men of warm feelings, and minds open to 
the elevating impressions produced by nature as a whole, whose satisfaction, 
therefore, is rather ethical than logical, lean to the synthetic side; while 
the analytic harmonizes best with the more precise and more mechanical 
bias which seeks the satisfaction of the understanding. Some form of pan- 
theism was usually adopted by the one, while a detached Creator, working 
more or less after the manner of men, was often assumed by the other. 
Gassendi, as sketched by Lange, is hardly to be ranked with either. Having 
formally acknowledged God as the great first cause, he immediately dropped 
the idea, applied the known laws of mechanics to the atoms, deducing 
thence all vital phenomena. He defended Epicurus, and dwelt upon his 
purity, both of doctrine and of life. True he was a heathen, but so was- 
Aristotle. He assailed superstition and religion, and rightly, because he 
did not know the true religion. He thought that the gods neither rewarded 
nor punished, and adored them purely in consequence of their completeness ; 
here we see, says Gassendi, the reverence of the child instead of the fear of 
the slave. The errors of Epicurus shall be corrected, the body of his truth 
* Boyle’s model of the universe was the Strasburg clock with an outside Artificer, 
Goethe, on the other hand, sang 
“Thm ziemt’s die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, 
Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen.” 
See also Carlyle, ‘Past and Present,’ chap. v, 
