_Of the Supreme Cause._--In the utterance of Science, no cadence is heard with which the human mind can feel satisfied. Yet we cannot but go on listening for and expecting a satisfactory close. The notion of a cadence appears to be essential to our relish of the music. The idea of some closing strain seems to lurk among our own thoughts, waiting to be articulated in the notes which flow from the knowledge of external nature. The idea of something ultimate in our philosophical researches, something in which the mind can acquiesce, and which will leave us no further questions to ask, of _whence_, and _why_, and _by what power_, seems as if it belongs to us:--as if we could not have it withheld from us by any imperfection or incompleteness in the actual performances of science. What is the meaning of this conviction? What is the reality thus anticipated? Whither does the developement of this Idea conduct us? We have already seen that a difficulty of the same kind, which arises in the contemplation of causes and effects considered as forming an historical series, drives us to the assumption of a First Cause, as an Axiom {252} to which our Idea of Causation in time necessarily leads. And as we were thus guided to a First Cause, in order of Succession, the same kind of necessity directs us to a Supreme Cause in order of Causation. On this most weighty subject it is difficult to speak fitly; and the present is not the proper occasion, even for most of that which may be said. But there are one or two remarks which flow from the general train of the contemplations we have been engaged in, and with which this Work must conclude. We have seen how different are the kinds of cause to which we are led by scientific researches. _Mechanical Forces_ are insufficient without _Chemical Affinities_; Chemical Agencies fail us, and we are compelled to have recourse to _Vital Powers_; Vital Powers cannot be merely physical, and we must believe in something hyperphysical, something of the nature of a _Soul_. Not only do biological inquiries lead us to assume an animal soul, but they drive us much further; they bring before us _Perception_, and _Will_ evoked by Perception. Still more, these inquiries disclose to us _Ideas_ as the necessary forms of Perception, in the actions of which we ourselves are conscious. We are aware, we cannot help being aware, of our Ideas and our Volitions as belonging to _us_, and thus we pass from _things_ to _persons_; we have the idea of _Personality_ awakened. And the idea of Design and _Purpose_, of which we are conscious in our own minds, we find reflected back to us, with a distinctness which we cannot overlook, in all the arrangements which constitute the frame of organized beings.