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For such great types are even more manifestly the expression of thoughts; and as plain people say, that a special provision implies con- trivance, so the deepest observer, without denying this true * Something of this kind was meant by the truly philosophical Realists, from Plato to Ab^lard, thongh they were often misnnderstood. M. P. 14 210 TYPICAL IDEAS — UNITY OF LIFE. remark, will superadd the broader conclusion that the general types, from which the special is deflected, represent pervading ideas. Nor do I see that any obscurity is thereby introduced into the argument, except so far as I all along acknowledge that the Divine idea may in everything transcend that faint human apprehension of it which is as it were its earthly shadow. You recollect what I said about the doctrine of Madhwa, and how far the Deity is in respect of our apprehensions, Nirguna, which I touched on with reference to justice and moral attributes, the same thought being equally true of power and intelligence as Divine attributes. But we should have no thoughts of justice, if God were not first just ; nor of contrivance, if He had not first contrived ; nor of marrying and giving in marriage, if He had not first balanced the sexes, though individual marriages (we all know) may be unhappy ; nor, again, should we either have great outlines pervading the animal and vegetable kingdoms, if pre- formative thoughts had not first sprung from Creative Mind ; or special contrivances, for the bird to fly, and the fish to swim, and the camel to traverse the desert, if the Creator had not with more or less of pre-arrangement or supervision adapted the crea- tures as He apportioned their abodes. " Need I now do more than add, that the primordial unity of life is only what might be expected by any one who started with the right conception of the unity of God? And again, it ought to serve as no inconsiderable argument in leading one who needs it up to that conception. If there were as many deities as are imagined popularly in the Hindii Pantheon, there might be many originations for life ; but the true idea is, that the Will, the Wisdom, and the Omnipresent Life-giving which ever manifest themselves simultaneously and reciprocally in the world, are still of one Mind; for God is fundamentally One. The fact that life appears more mysterious, and becomes a less explicable riddle, the farther we trace it backward into its primal unity, should only teach us a wholesome modesty, as implying that we are not competent to judge of the scheme of God in its SPHERE OF FINAL CAUSES. 211 large integrity, though we may observe sufficiently things with which we are ourselves conversant, to obtain practical principles for our guidance. Thus the special provisions of life remain for ever witnesses to mankind of a higher Being who cares for them ; and the force of such witnesses will be multiplied the more that any right-minded man considers them not merely as regards his animal wants, but in the deep things which belong to the soul, his affections, his prayers, his sins, his sufferings, and his better aspirations. But if out of a mere desire of knowledge, rather than of the wisdom which endeavours to serve God, we constantly push back our inquiries about life into its primal type, and the mysterious provisions for modifying it, or bewilder our- selves over the design aimed at by our Maker for His creatures as a whole, instead of rather considering the part which falls within our own clear cognisance, we then involve the laws and processes of life in the same mystery which envelopes the being and design of all the worlds ; for we then thrust them into that larger field, in which our limited vision no longer grasps the circumference, and therefore cannot comprehend the design. Yet even as regards sea and land and heaven with its stars, you will clearly understand me to say that all we lose is comprehension of the design, and not in any degree the reasonableness of be- lieving that God has still a wise and beneficent thought, though it may transcend all thinking of ours. For even in the obscurest regions, and the most magnificent expanse of nature, we still observe links of causation everywhere prevailing ; and causation is really the manifestation of a presiding thought. Nor ever can any one be justified in thinking that this causation is with- out an end proposed by design, xmtil he finds the argument from design fail him in that narrower field which concerns our own bodies and souls. But there it never does fail ; for every man, by accepting the evidence of his senses in things to which the senses properly apply, and his mental judgment in things which belong to it, and conscience in the things which it for- bids, and advice in things where others have the duty or right of 14—2 212 EXCEPTIONS. informing him, and the moral instincts or sentences of his purer mind in aspiration and prayer for guidance— in short, I say, every man, by accepting the evidence of his body and soul that he is designed for certain ends, and by attempting in dutiful humility to carry out those ends, arrives at the highest happi- ness of which man in this life is capable — and probably enters into a new life with the firmest hope — ^whereas, on the contrary, by refusing to perceive the Divine design in his own bodily and mental being, and therefore living a lawless life, he is very apt to bring down on himself tangible penalties, and certainly fails of attaining that peace which good men enjoy at heart. You see then, the argument from design does not fail us, so far as we can trace it, but turns out eminently true for ourselves ; we have therefore no reason to doubt that higher spirits behold it equally true for all creation. Possibly in some future existence it may please God to give us, as the reward or climax of our struggling here, a far clearer vision of all things which now perplex us, and so justify His own ways to us, by merely shewing them as they really are in all their largeness of extent. " Entertaining, as I humbly do, so great a hope on the witness of things open to me, I can afford to wait for the clear- ing up of things too high for me. For the same reason I am not much perplexed by the number of apparent exceptions to tne realisation of a beneficent design, which some persons per- versely rather than wisely would throw in my way. It may appear strange, or to our thoughts undesirable, that many lives should be swept away in a pestilence; but I cannot tell how many of the number deserved death as a penalty, or to how many it came as a mercy, and how many were fully prepared for it. So a shipwreck may be in itself a deplorable event ; but the storm which causes it may have arrested pestilence else- where, or the natural conditions of safety may have been neg- lected by those who perished, or they may be taken away from some greater evil to come. At worst they only resign in one GENERAL PROVIDENCE. 213 way a life which they had received on condition of resigning it at any time in some way. Again, earthquakes are terrible, but they may be in part wholesome outlets for those subterranean forces which were necessary to vivify and warm the earth ; and, in part, it may be observed, that when such things burst upon dissolute cities, the cry of whose vices, mingled j^erhaps with idolatry, had gone up to heaven, they do not negative, but rather confirm, that belief in a moral Governor of the world, which is the main point for which I all along contend. Again, it certainly has an uncomfortable sound, that our fellow men may die of famine, or suffer madness, and other terrible inflic- tions, from the want of things requisite to satisfy tlie cravings of their nature. Yet, how comparatively rare, and therefore exceptional such cases are, is almost proved by the notice we take of them ; as we forget to give thanks for health, but com- plain of sickness.