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results, and that we can to a very considerable degree examine 
the means, and see their connection with the results. . W e 
say further that this process thus perceived by us is so 
absolutely identical with our own methods of procedure that 
we have no hesitation in asserting that such an arrangement 
as this must come from a mind capable of foreseeing the 
connection of cause and effect, and from a will competent to 
ordain and make the requisite arrangement. This chain of 
intention, purpose, agency, and result we hold to be simply 
and absolutely certain. That it is so seems to be almost 
proved by the fact that those who deny it, as distinguished 
from those who hesitate about it, seem driven to adopt what 
are, in fact, the metaphysics of Spinoza. If .we believe with 
him that freewill in man is a chimera of the imagination, and 
that in truth every act of man is a link in a chain of neces- 
sity, — that our purposes are merely phantoms possessing no 
real existence,— that we seem to adapt means to certain ends 
which we wish to accomplish, but that all this is a phantas- 
magoria, and we are only accomplishing our destiny,— then, 
indeed, the purpose in nature may be equally illusory with the 
fancied purpose in our own bosom. But as long as we refuse 
to surrender our own clear perceptions at the bidding of 
« great thinkers,” so long will our deduction from our own 
knowledge of the connection of means and ends, of purpose 
and results, be to our own minds irrefragable. And why ? 
Because it is intuitional. Because it appeals to our mental 
constitution as surely as the axioms of Euclid. Because it 
lies (as Dr. Porter says) “ at the ground of all our knowledge 
as a necessary relation of things, and a first principle or axiom 
of thought.” On this basis the human mind is built. It 
discerns arrangement, peculiarities of structure, succession of 
results. It considers these, it deals with these, it acts upon 
these, whether in matters social, political, historical, mecha- 
nical,' or whatever else may be its sphere of activity. To deny 
the relation of purpose to the connection of cause and effect 
is for the human mind to deny itself, and to abdicate its own 
prerogative, as Spinozism does. , . 
The strength of this belief lies in the point already indi- 
cated the universality of this connection. Wherever our 
investigations reach we discern it. The anatomy of our own 
bodv or that of the animal creation generally ; the geological 
arrangement and constitution of the earth; the balance of the 
oceanic and atmospheric currents, the weight and speed ol 
the planets ; what the microscope and the telescope reveal 
it matters not where man's researches extend, they all come 
back to him laden with the same tidings : here are cause 
