English
All such things as famine, pestilence, and shipwreck, might here come in ; but especially such suflFerings as seem to be least probably traced to any individual transgression, and such as imply a neutralisation or defeat of what is generally alleged as the Divine plan. Now I conceive myself to have described your second difficulty as regards the doctrine of design.'* "Certainly,'* said Wolff, "things of that kind have been urged by one of the native speakers, and, it appears to me, not without a certain force." "I too," replied Blancombe, "have thrown out some general reflexions, in considering the nature of evil, which go a great way, as I conceive, to remove the difficulty ; and I have also something to add about the largeness of the scheme in which we live. First, however, we must consider the effect of discovering that special provisions in animals are deflexions from a more general outline. " Have you ever reflected, why it is that we draw our in- stances of design from our own bodies, or those of other animals, rather than from the grander structure of heaven and earth? Probably day and night, when taken in connexion with our need of alternate labour and rest, are as clearly convincing proofs of a benignant care being extended over the world, as any we could easily find. Or I might go a step farther, and remark, that all the genial processes of nature, as personified and deified in the hymns of the Rig- Veda, are in reality sufficient instances of a heavenly providence, supposing only we refer them to a more living power than dwells in the things them- selves. Yet, somehow or other, it seems as if all persons who want instances of special design look for them not so much in the grand laws of the natural world, as in our own limbs, or beings, or experiences. Again, so far as they do take such in- stances from the larger laws of the universe, it is chiefly from the points at which those laws come in contact with our per- sonal wants or constitution ; so that the mutual fitness or corre- spondency becomes the ground of inferring design. That light. SPECIAL RELATIVE TO MAN. 207 for example, corresponds to the eye, and fragrance to our sense of smell, and other things to our senses severally ; just as dark- ness also to our need of sleep, and the seasons of the year to our appetites for food, and the recurrence of variety in beauty and sensation, are all remarks which have often been made, yet which we need not be ashamed of repeating. So it is said that if the earth were all rock, it would not admit of vegetation, or much softer than it is, it would not admit of free movement; if the air had much more oxygen than it has on the whole, it would madden us ; or if much less, it would not animate us ; so if the water were not pretty much what it is, it would neither admit of inhabitation by the tribes of fish, nor of navigation by men; so that, in short, the whole world seems in the mass adapted for man, and such creatures as are the servants or com- panions of man, to live in. But now in all such cases our favorite instances of design are drawn from the larger, at points where it comes into contact with the lesser; that is, with ourselves. I apprehend, moreover, such a practice is quite right ; for the great scheme of the heavenly bodies is far larger than we can com- prehend in its ultimate design, though we may observe clearly enough that an order traceable by Mind, and therefore devised by Mind, is pursued in its conservation. Hence, as regards day and night, we might be puzzled by some laborious sophist, who should prove to us that these recurrences of light and darkness depend on causes very remote in space, and afiect perhaps pri- marily regions very much more important than our speck of earth. We might, it is true, answer that the largeness of a scheme does not destroy its particularity ; or that one who gives ourselves light is not less to be thanked by us, because he gives it simultaneously to a hundred others. Still this kind of ex- planation would be rather less gratifying to our natural egotism; our grasp of mind might be scarcely firm enough to take hold of the conception that we may be minute parts of a much larger plan, and yet abxmdantly cared for; and, in short, we might become bewildered. Whereas, that other class of things which 208 GENERAL, MODIFIED PROVIDENTIALLY. falls within our own experience of daily movements, wants, satisfactions, and conveniences, with all that we see more or less corresponding to us in creatures of the same fleshly natures as ourselves, we cannot be well mistaken about. No man in his senses has any serious doubt that feet are intended to walk with, and hands to take hold of things. So it is with other parts of our frame. And so all our capacities mental, no less than bodily, persuade us that we are intended to be social beings, and duties and afiections thrust themselves in, as being in practice even more necessary to our happiness than appetites, and hence, according to our instinctive logic, as parts of a plan which some higher Being intended us to fulfil. Is then this inference of design, I ask, vitiated, either as regards our bodies or our souls, by any discovery of our special powers being a deflexion from some general type. It appears to me, we have only discovered that ends are attained through means ; or that the Divine work- ing is on a far larger scale than we had ignorantly supposed. Nothing is more common than to see all sorts of figures, cups, and jugs, made out of metal or clay. Some one may perhaps have fancied such things were fashioned by man's hand ; then he may have discovered that they are made in moulds, into which the fiised metal or earth flows like liquid fire, and there takes whatever shape it was intended to take. Such a disco- verer may thus find such things made with a far more wonderful freedom, and in larger abundance, than he had previously thought possible ; in fact, the operation may acquire in his eyes a look of comparative spontaneity; but he does not therefore really doubt that it is under control; nor is his perception of the uses to which the vessels may be applied, when made, for a single moment obscured. Whereas a philosopher of your stamp might here as well step in and say, the chances were equal whether these jugs should assume their present shape or any other ; if they were to hold water, they must be rounded rather than flat ; but I don't feel bound to account for their holding it, any more than I should for their not doing so; in short, he ANALOGY OF POITER. 209 might finish, I can trace no marks of design, or of contrivance ap- plied to an end, but only necessary accidents to the fact of there being jugs at all. Just of this kind is really the entire reason- ing with which people deny the marks of design in the world. They begin, with saying, If a thing was to exist — forgetting that the existence of a thing such as the world implies a Creator, as much as the jug implies a potter ; then they go on to observe the general modified into the special ; and they forget that this power of transforming one thing into another, or of adapting means to ends, is a proof of what devout persons all along con- tend for, namely, of a Maker who works by wisdom and not at random ; and surely they must be cursed with a moral blindness not to see that existing diversities or species, however brought about, imply the pre-existence of Divine thoughts or creative foresights*, to which things severally correspond, as the statue to the sculptor's conception ; or, again, if they do not under- stand that all varieties of climate and place and circumstance are to the great Moulder of life, that which the moulds are to the earthly potter, that is, instruments of his process, but in- struments which would not even exist, still less be arranged in order, if he had not first willed them. Just as the unity of the material in the metal or clay does not prevent the jugs and vessels from having difierent shapes and being intended for difiVirent uses, so the imity of life does not destroy the tokens of design in the various adaptations of species. Rather, indeed, I should say, that the doctrine of grand outlines or types in the animal world, not only consists very well with our himibler argument from design, but it gives a new phase of the same argument, and thereby transmutes rather than destroys it, by removing it into a higher region of generalisation.